Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: Exploring the Vernacular

The fruits of Anglo-Saxon learning continue to captivate Anglo-Saxonists and scholars of natural science and medicine, witness recent publications such as Martin Blake's edition of Ælfric's De temporibus anni (2009), and the proceedings of the Storehouses of Wholesome Learning and Leornungcræft projects. In 1992, Stephanie Hollis and Michael Wright took stock of secular learning in the vernacular, in their monumental annotated bibliography Old English Prose of Secular Learning. The present volume surveys and evaluates advances in the study of Anglo-Saxon secular learning from the past two decades. It also consolidates an ongoing interest in scholarship by Anglo-Saxons by presenting nine original essays that focus on the disciplines of law, encyclopaedic notes, computus, medicine, charms, and prognostication, with a focus on learning in the vernacular, or the relationship between Latin and the vernacular. This volume is of interest for Anglo-Saxonists who work with vernacular sources of learning, and for historians of law, natural science, medicine, divination and magic.