Old English Tradition: Essays in Honor of J. R. Hall ed. by Lindy Brady (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Old English Tradition: Essays in Honor of J. R. Hall ed. by Lindy Brady Andrew Breeze Old English Tradition: Essays in Honor of J. R. Hall. Ed. by Lindy Brady. (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 578) Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies. 2021. xxiv+ 339 pp. $90. ISBN 978–0–86698–636–6. Twenty-one items make up this tribute to Jim Hall of Mississippi, a scholar known for scrupulous work on Beowulf and the like. The results are serious and worthy, with professionalism everywhere. We start with an editorial note on how the contents 'were written and submitted in 2014'; then an Introduction by Fred C. Robinson (d. 2016) and bibliography of the honorand's publications; thereafter eighteen studies in five sections. First is 'Old English Poetics' with four pieces: Roberta Frank on the semantics of Old English wine 'friend' (and its cognates in Old Norse and Old Saxon); Jane Roberts on personification of Death in Guthlac and beyond; Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe on The Wife's Lament-, Thomas Cable on new aspects of Old English metrics. Longer is 'Old English Christianity', a matter dear to the heart of Jim Hall. A. N. Doane expounds the iconography of Enoch in the Junius Manuscript of Genesis and Exodus; Frederick M. Biggs attends to Apparebit repentina' as source for Christ III; Paul E. Szarmach relates Alcuin of York to Latin homilies in Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 25; Thomas D. Hill explains the eucharistic dance of angels mentioned in laws of King Cnut; R. D. Fulk edits (from Bodleian manuscripts) two Old English homilies, on the deadly sins and on Lent. Section 3, on Beowulf, has three contributions. A characteristic study by Eric Stanley (d. 2018) has as subject a possible confusion in the text of words for 'thrive' or 'determine' or 'intercede' or 'oppress'. Lindy Brady writes on the poem's 'swords [End Page 603] of doomed inheritance'; Howell Chickering offers clarification of its lines 3074–75. After that, codicology, with David F. Johnson on the Worcester 'tremulous hand' in a manuscript of the Old English Bede at the University Library, Cambridge; and Gregory Heyworth on ruinous attempts to elucidate the Vercelli Book with chemicals vis-à-vis better ones with modern technology. Last are observations on pioneer scholars of Old English: Daniel Donoghue on Junius and The Metres of Boethius; Carl T. Berkhout on Laurence Nowell and the Old English Bede; Dabney A. Bankert on how Benjamin Thorpe influenced Joseph Bosworth as lexicographer and as editor of the Old English Orosius (by an unknown Cornish cleric) and Gospels. John D. Niles provides a satisfying close on an unsigned essay of 1851 (about the Anglo-Saxon race) as 'very likely' by the poet Longfellow. Much progress is made here on Early English, reflecting that elsewhere (the Chronicle, Riddles, Battle of Brunanburh). Others may now take further what is to be found in this book. Here is one instance. While recommending it as useful for getting a sense' of Old English metre, Thomas Cable yet describes Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as 'anonymous' (p. 53). Not so. It was written in 1387 by Sir John Stanley (d. 1414) for recitation at Chester Castle, then a viceregal court under Robert de Vere (d. 1392), Duke of Ireland (and Stanley's boss). The evidence is there for all to see in Ann W. Astell, Political Allegory in Late Medieval England ((Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 124, 126), and J. M. Bowers, The Politics of 'Pearl' (Cambridge: Brewer, 2001), p. 71), with obvious implications for alliterative poetry in Cheshire and Lancashire during the reign of Richard II. Andrew Breeze University of Navarre, Pamplona Copyright © 2023 Modern Humanities Research Association