R. D. Fulk is Class of 1964 Chancellor’s Professor of English at Indiana University. He is the editor of Interpretations of Beowulf: A Critical Anthology (1991), author of A History of Old English Meter (1992), co-editor of Eight Old English Poems (third edition, 2001), and co-editor of the fourth edition of F. Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (forthcoming). Christopher M. Cain is Assistant Professor of English at Towson University, Maryland.Rachel S. Anderson is an Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• List of Illustrations viPreface viiIntroductionAnglo-Saxon England and Its Literature: A Social History 11 The Chronology and Varieties of Old English Literature 362 Literature of the Alfredian Period 483 Homilies 704 Saints’ Legends, by Rachel S. Anderson 875 Biblical Literature 1066 Liturgical and Devotional Texts 1207 Legal, Scientific, and Scholastic Works 1488 Wisdom Literature and Lyric Poetry 1649 Germanic Legend and Heroic Lay 193ConclusionMaking Old English New: Anglo-Saxonism and the Cultural Work of Old English Literature 225Notes 235Works Cited 269Index 339

“Now the oldest English texts have a literary history for the twenty-first century. One of the chief virtues of A History of Old English Literature is the rich elaboration of contexts, extending from the manuscripts to the literary and intellectual world of Anglo-Saxon England, to the early modern criticism, and to the most recent critical reception.” Professor Daniel Donoghue, HarvardUniversity