The Old English Catholic Homilies
Aelfric author Roy M Liuzza editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Published:25th Oct '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A contemporary edition and translation of one of the great monuments of Old English literary and religious culture.
The homilies of the monk Ælfric, written in the last decade of the tenth century, offer some of the most important prose writing in Old English. They convey mainstream Christian thought, a distillation of the spiritual inheritance of the English Church before the Norman Conquest and during a time of monastic reform. The homilies cover a broad range of topics, from biblical exegesis to saints’ lives to general Christian history, with a strong focus on the gospel reading at Mass, explained in language that laypeople could understand. Ælfric is famous for his lucid prose, which he later developed into a rhythmical and alliterative style that has often been likened to verse.
In his first series of Catholic Homilies, Ælfric drew on the works of Church Fathers such as Augustine, Gregory, and Bede to create forty sermons for use throughout the church year. This is the first complete translation of the Catholic Homilies since 1844, presented alongside the newly edited Old English text.
Producing out of the different [Old English] chronicles an accessible, coherent edition is a formidable challenge. Producing one in which the Old and modern English appear together doubly so. The editors of The Old English Chronicle have, in this initial volume, sensibly decided to offer a facing-page translation simply of the ‘A-text,’ the annals’ oldest surviving version. Editorially, we are in the safest – and most distinguished – of hands. Their translation is predictably fluent; the accompanying introduction and explanatory notes are reliably helpful…a fantastic resource. -- Pablo Scheffer * Times Literary Supplement *
Another hugely useful volume from the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library…makes superb use of the best scholarship on Ælfric to shape an efficient and appealing presentation of the first homiletic cycle created by the most prolific writer of Old English. Liuzza’s translation is accurate and readable and in the process broadly recreates the style of Ælfric…making a voice that once sounded loudly in tenth- and eleventh-century England broadly accessible to a twenty-first century audience. -- Jonathan Wilcox * Medieval Review *
Amidst the ongoing contemporary devaluation of the humanities and the study of ancient languages, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library and Liuzza have, rather, committed to the value of both, to the benefit of anyone desiring greater knowledge of early medieval culture and language as well as anyone open to the wisdom of this Benedictine abbot from a millennium ago. -- Jacob Riyeff * American Benedictine Review *
ISBN: 9780674297685
Dimensions: 203mm x 133mm x 37mm
Weight: 962g
912 pages