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James D. Woods & David A.E. Pelteret, "The Anglo Saxons: Synthesis and Achievements"

This book is not a synthesis, but it does celebrate an achievement, because it consists of the papers given at a colloquium on "The Anglo-Saxons and their neighbours" held at Scarborough College in the University of Toronto in 1979. One can see that it must have been a most stimulating occasion, especially since several of the papers are concerned with subjects which were real growth-points in 1979, but a great deal of its impact has been lost by the delay of six or seven years before its publication.

The volume is dedicated to the memory of two of its most distinguished contributors, who unfortunately did not see its publication. In "The Boundaries of Old English Literature," Angus Cameron argues forcefully that Neil Ker's Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (1957) is "the most important contribution which has ever been made to the study of Old English literature. "Why? Because it enables scholars to establish the complete corpus of Old English literature, which can now be seen to consist of some 2,300,000 running words of text. Surprisingly poetry accounts for only 8½ percent of the total. What were the other 91½ percent about? Cameron tells us, and all Anglo-Saxonists should read him. Colin Chase is equally interesting in his exploration of the contrast of the thought-worlds of Bede and Beowulf. Borrowinga phrase from Patrick Wormald, he concentrates on the "zone of silence" between them and asks how they could possibly have belonged to the same civilization. As with Cameron, Anglo-Saxonists should read him and consider his argument carefully.

The papers are not arranged in any chronological or thematic order-a fact which will be regretted by those in search of a synthesis-but are printed (presumably) in the order in which they were delivered. Nonetheless, Colin Chase's theme is taken up by other papers at various points in the book. J. Douglas Woods uses a computer and lexicostatistics, not only to compare Old Saxon with Anglo-Saxon, but also to discover how far the Old Saxon author of Heliand succeeded in accommodating the heroic world to that of Christianity. More conventionally, John Corbett writes about Oswald and Cuthbert as two holy men in a post-Peter-Brown vein. Claude Evans gives an admirable introduction to "the Celtic Church in Anglo-Saxon times," a model of how to make a learned paper interesting for experts and non-experts alike. In a narrower field Antoinette di Paolo Healey explores the Anglo-Saxon attitude to the New Testament Apocrypha, though here the non-expert will probably need more information about what these apocryphal writings were, and how they were viewed elsewhere in Christendom.

There are two excellent papers on aspects of Anglo-Saxon society. In "Domestic peace and public order in Anglo-Saxon Law," Rebecca Colman considers the term hamsocn which first occurs strangely late (936 x 946) in English laws, but owed its importance to the fact that "an isolated homestead would contain within its confines subsistence for its occupants from one harvest to the next." In "Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England" David Pelteret investigates a topic which is too often slurred over. He examines the known facts and develops the discussion into a persuasive account of the development of Anglo-Saxon society. Andrew J.G. Patenall on "The Image of the Worm" combines perception on Anglo-Saxon interlace (the reason for a fine reproduction from the Book of Durrow on the cover) with a challenging translation into the ideas it implies in Anglo-Saxon language and literature. Finally, though in the book it comes first, there is an engaging study on "The Bayeux Tapestry: History or Propaganda" by Shirley A. Brown. She comes down on the side of propaganda as most others would do, this being one of the cases where the passage of time has deprived a paper of much of its novelty.

The volume ends with a twenty page bibliographical essay in which David Pelteret succeeds, amongst other things, in doing something to bridge the gap between 1979 and 1985. But his statement that it is "designed to assist those who are not specialists in the areas covered by the essays" prompts one to ask who this volume is really for.

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