Hybrid Healing

Lori Ann Garner is Professor of English at Rhodes College

• Introduction: an Old English poetics of health and healing1 With hope and humility: hybridity as theoretical framework2 Of swords and status: hybridity of metaphor in Ic me on þisse gyrde beluce3 When healers are heroes: hybridity of battle in Wið færstice4 To persuade a plant: hybridity of rhetoric in Harley 5855 Of mandrakes and manuscripts: hybridity of being in Harley 6258B6 On health and hearing: hybridity of environment in Bald’s Leechbook7 From remedies to riddles: hybridity of genre in an Exeter Book riddleConclusion: With empathy and imagination: hybridity in the fieldIndex

'The success of Garner’s work is to emphasise the importance of nuanced and attentive analysis, and that it is crucial to recognise the uniqueness of each individual text. What also comes through in Garner’s work are benefits of carefully reflecting on those individualities and the multifaceted (or even hybrid) influences that shaped their production.' R. J. Salter, Scriptorium 'This book is not quite what it seems [it] does not focus on medicine as a discipline, or as a set of practices. Its subject is medical texts, or rather a small and very specific selection from those extant in Old English, and the ways in which they can be seen as “hybrids” between different literary genres...There has, of course, already been much cross-fertilization between the history of medicine and literary studies, so far looking mainly at texts in Latin or later European vernaculars. This is to the benefit of both disciplines, as long as each recognizes the value of the other, and its own limitations. Old English scholars are still catching up with this trend, and thus work like Garner's must be welcomed as helping to extend this stimulating dialogue into new territory. 'Debby Banham, Journal of British Studies