Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge (review)

We all know what to expect in a festschrift. Usually the editors assemble a group of former graduate students and greying colleagues, who offer a gallimaufry of contributions, a dismaying number of which may be brief notes that had been gathering dust – for good reason – in file cabinets across the academic world. The two volumes presented to Michael Lapidge stand out as an exception to this (not entirely parodic) characterization for reasons that go beyond its nine-hundred-page length, although the size has its own obvious significance. A large proportion of the forty-one contributors have at one time or another collaborated with Michael Lapidge during his broad and vigorous career, which began with a PhD from the University of Toronto, so the reader is reminded again and again how much Lapidge has moved the field of Anglo-Saxon studies not by issuing learned studies from some reclusive sinecure, but by working the very warp and woof of the field. The contributors' notes of personal thanks for Lapidge's guidance and collegiality, again a conventional part of the festschrift genre, seem remarkably genuine and heartfelt. Another measure of his shaping influence can be found sprinkled throughout the footnotes. We all know (again) the opening gesture in which the festschrift contributor makes a rhetorical nod to some prior work done by the honorand before the article embarks on its real business, which may finally have little to do with what the honorand wrote. In Latin Learning and English Lore, however, the footnotes of article after article reveal that the very conditions for the argument presented depend on the scholarship of Lapidge. His influence has been, and will continue to be, that extensive. A third measure concerns the quality of many of the articles. It seems that to an unusual degree the contributors went out of their way to present Lapidge with their best efforts. Much of the work is original; much of it will be consulted as essential reading for years to come. Because space does not permit me to comment on each contribution, the rest of this review will group a selection of them into larger categories with brief comments.

The editors, Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe and Andy Orchard, have arranged the essays in a roughly chronological order and end the first volume with five essays on Beowulf (which for the nonce was considered early). In addition to Beowulf, the first volume is dominated by Aldhelm, Bede, and Alfred; the second volume is more eclectic, with much attention to Ælfric and Old English prose. But Latin literature figures prominently throughout. Indeed, for his entire career Lapidge has emphasized the interconnectedness of Latin and the vernacular in medieval England. For example, Andy Orchard's survey 'Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition' reveals how perceptive such binocular vision can be as he considers not only the familiar Old English poetic riddles in the Exeter Book, but also the broader context of Latin enigmas including those of Boniface, Aldhelm, Tatwine, and Eusebius, all the way through the eleventh century. It is a fitting vindication of Lapidge's comparatist approach by one of his first graduate students.

Other essayists who like Orchard offer an up-to-date survey of a topic include Michael Fox on Alcuin's career. Michael Herren on 'Aldhelm the Theologian,' Neil Wright on Bede's metrics, Christopher A. Jones on Alcuin's protégé Wizo Candidus, David N. Dumville on ninth-century script, Jane Stevenson on 'Anglo-Latin Women Poets,' Patrizia Lendinara on 'Contextualized Lexicography,' and Rosalind Love on the literary output of Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. Essays like these may not offer much in the way of new discoveries, but all of them synthesize complex topics in ways that will be of practical benefit to medievalists.

A significant number of contributions present editions, which correspond to...