Project MUSE®: JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology.daily12026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 108 (2009) through current issueLatest Articles: JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic PhilologyTWOProject MUSE®JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology1945-662X0363-6941Latest articles in JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Understanding sceaðena mǣst in Genesis B
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988462
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Having failed to convince Adam of his credentials as God's messenger, Satan's lieutenant in Genesis B turns to Eve to use Adam's recalcitrance as a weapon against her defenses:
        Wende hine wraðmod    þær he þæt wif geseah,
        on eorðrice                Euan stondan,
        sceone gesceapene.        Cwæð þæt sceaðena mæst
550  eallum heora eaforum    æfter siððan
        wurde on worulde:        "Ic wat, inc waldend God
        abolgen wyrð,              swa ic him þisne bodscipe
        selfa secge                þonne ic of þys siðe cume
        ofer langne weg,          þæt git ne læstan wel
555  hwilc ærende swa        he easten hider
        on þysne sið sendeð.      Nu sceal he sylf faran
       
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallUnderstanding sceaðena mǣst in Genesis B2026-04-21text/htmlen-USUnderstanding sceaðena mǣst in Genesis B2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®1388522026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Wassail! A Multilingual and Multivariate History of the Medieval Drink Salutation and its Related Customs
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988463
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It is often suggested that the "waking up" of fruit trees with a toast of wassail! around the winter solstice is likely to be a very old tradition with pagan roots, and folk histories of wassailing's pre-Christian origins as well as the performative allure of ritualistically shouting a medieval drink salutation have inspired multiple resurgences in modern Britain (and further abroad), most recently at the moment of my writing.1 Scholarly attention, however, has not quite matched perennial folk enthusiasm, and the origins and medieval contexts for wassail! remain largely unelaborated, as a wintertime custom, but also when it comes to the now defunct and uniquely medieval use of wassail! as a less specially
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallWassail! A Multilingual and Multivariate History of the Medieval Drink Salutation and its Related Customs2026-04-21text/htmlen-USWassail! A Multilingual and Multivariate History of the Medieval Drink Salutation and its Related Customs2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®1829182026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Unnr and Auðr djúpúðga: On Language Change and Scribal Interpretation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988464
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In early Icelandic literary sources, such as Laxdœla saga, Eyrbyggja saga, Eiríks saga rauða, Njáls saga, Landnámabók, and Íslendingabók, the daughter of Ketill flatnefr and mother of Þorsteinn rauðr is referred to alternately as Unnr, Uðr, or Auðr with the epithet djúpúðga or djúpauðga. Similarly, the daughter of Ívarr víðfaðmi is now named Auðr, now Unnr. The daughter of Snorri goði, too, is in some sources identified as Auðr while others give her name as Unnr. This inconsistency has often been remarked upon, for instance by Einar Ól. Sveinsson in his edition of Eyrbyggja saga, without, however, attempting to clarify the relationship between the different names.1 The form Uðr is a known side form of Unnr in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallUnnr and Auðr djúpúðga: On Language Change and Scribal Interpretation2026-04-21text/htmlen-USUnnr and Auðr djúpúðga: On Language Change and Scribal Interpretation2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®2162642026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21The Persuasive Agency of Objects and Practices in Alfred the Great's Reform Program by Georgina Pitt (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988465
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Georgina Pitt's study of the literature, material culture, and military reforms connected to Alfred the Great offers a multifaceted interpretation of learning and politics in Wessex and its neighbors in the late ninth century. This clearly written and engaging book will be of great use to historians and literary scholars alike.At the heart of Pitt's book is the idea of persuasion, indicated in the "Persuasive Agency" of the title. Alfredian persuasiveness, Pitt suggests, is made up of the qualities of friendliness, informality, and accessibility. This friendliness, a recurring theme throughout Pitt's book, is closely linked to loyalty, which is at the core of Alfredian ideology, as Pitt sees it. Through the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallThe Persuasive Agency of Objects and Practices in Alfred the Great's Reform Program by Georgina Pitt (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USThe Persuasive Agency of Objects and Practices in Alfred the Great's Reform Program by Georgina Pitt (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®119082026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Verbal Medicines: The Curative Power of Prayer and Invocation in Early English Charms by Leslie K. Arnovick (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988466
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In one of the charms at the center of Leslie K. Arnovick's Verbal Medicines, instructions tell the charmer to write passages from Scripture onto a paten, then wash them off with water. The charmer should add wine, have Masses sung over the liquid, and follow those with a distinctly Christian range of recitations: five different psalms, a Creed, the Gloria, litanies, and the Pater Noster. Clearly, religion was central to the performance of this charm, as it is to other early English examples. But why were these psalms chosen, and why these ritual actions? This is the question Arnovick seeks to answer in Verbal Medicines, which asks exactly how and why early medieval healing charms used prayers and invocations.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallVerbal Medicines: The Curative Power of Prayer and Invocation in Early English Charms by Leslie K. Arnovick (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USVerbal Medicines: The Curative Power of Prayer and Invocation in Early English Charms by Leslie K. Arnovick (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®97832026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21The History of the Physiologus in Early Medieval England by Mercedes Salvador-Bello (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988467
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The protean work known as the Physiologus—the word means a person learned in the nature of things—is a description of animals, birds, fantastic creatures, and a few stones and plants, along with allegorical interpretations of their significance. It originated with foundational Greek texts in the second and third centuries, continued through several distinct branches of Latin texts from the fourth century onwards, and was translated and adapted into a host of languages, including Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Slavonic, Syriac, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Provencal, Slavonic, Spanish, and English. It drew heavily on the encyclopedic tradition, especially Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae; influenced a range of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallThe History of the Physiologus in Early Medieval England by Mercedes Salvador-Bello (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USThe History of the Physiologus in Early Medieval England by Mercedes Salvador-Bello (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®131522026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21The Battle of Maldon: A New Critical Edition ed. by Mark Griffith (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988468
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The fragmentary late Old English poem known as The Battle of Maldon can hardly be said to be understudied. Next year will see the three-hundredth anniversary of the poem's first appearance in print. In the centuries since, the text has been edited several times and has appeared regularly in readers and anthologies. Both the poem and the battle that it commemorates have been the subject of extensive scholarly investigation. Nevertheless, the poem has surely never received such sustained, detailed, and insightful attention as that now afforded it by Mark Griffith in this splendid new critical edition.This is a very substantial volume, nearly three times the length of the previous standard edition by D. G. Scragg (The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallThe Battle of Maldon: A New Critical Edition ed. by Mark Griffith (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USThe Battle of Maldon: A New Critical Edition ed. by Mark Griffith (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®137732026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988469
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Scholars have long recognized that medieval history writing needs to be understood in medieval terms. Medieval historians had a particular kind of training and a particular set of ideas about the purpose of their work. Studies have considered the implications of a Latinate rhetorical education in forming the writers of the twelfth-century renaissance. They have explored the limitations of modern ideas about fact and fiction when it comes to reading medieval histories. And they have shown the complex mingling of political and religious motivations in the works of many medieval historians. But Hannah Weaver's engaging new study suggests that one element central to the medieval understanding of the historian's craft
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallExperimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USExperimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®97702026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight by Arthur Bahr (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988470
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For those inclined to meddle with punctuation (and medievalists are more inclined than most to meddle with punctuation) the subtitle of Arthur Bahr's monograph offers an enticing bit of grammatical frisson. With its commas in place, the subtitle scans as a provocative list of descriptors for Bahr's project: the speculation that the enigmatic Pearl-Manuscript—the unique witness to Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—invites in both its singularity and its aesthetic strangeness; the architectonic shapes or "fayre formez" that inhere to the four poems and to the codex itself; the puzzling spiritual, intellectual, and literary delights that the work has long offered to readers. Take away the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallChasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight by Arthur Bahr (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USChasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight by Arthur Bahr (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®110482026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Netzwerke der Nonnen. Kritische Edition der Briefsammlung der Lüner Benediktinerinnen (Hs. 15, ca. 1460–1555) ed. by Eva Schlotheuber and Henrike Lähnemann (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988471
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The voluminous edition of letters from Benedictine nuns in Lüne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, during the Reformation is an eye-opener. The letters were means of communication as well as indications of friendship for cloistered women. Especially during the Reformation, these letters, transmitted in both Low and High German, were means of justification for the existence of convents. One characteristic of the letters here edited is that they were authored by the various members of the religious communities: by young women entering the convent, by young nuns, and by established members of the communities. The letters include the communities of convents among themselves, that is, the nuns and their relatives, as well as laity
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallNetzwerke der Nonnen. Kritische Edition der Briefsammlung der Lüner Benediktinerinnen (Hs. 15, ca. 1460–1555) ed. by Eva Schlotheuber and Henrike Lähnemann (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USNetzwerke der Nonnen. Kritische Edition der Briefsammlung der Lüner Benediktinerinnen (Hs. 15, ca. 1460–1555) ed. by Eva Schlotheuber and Henrike Lähnemann (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®55282026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Rosenkränze, Marienmäntel, Seelenhäuser. Gebets- und Andachtsübungen des Spätmittelalters zwischen Bildrede, Immersion und Figuration by Björn Klaus Buschbeck (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988472
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An attempt to expand coverage of textual, material, and mental practices subsumed under the rubric of late medieval piety, a popular topic in recent research, this vast study concentrates on the rosary, prayer dress as textile and literary figuration, and the allegorical architecture of interior prayer. After around 401 pages of the main text follow a long series of appendices providing editions of primary texts as well as discussions of their manuscripts and editions. The book is a revised Stanford University dissertation (2021) that draws upon a diverse body of source material, ranging from devotional manuals and Marian hymns to allegorical treatises and miracle narratives. The author embarks on a nuanced
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallRosenkränze, Marienmäntel, Seelenhäuser. Gebets- und Andachtsübungen des Spätmittelalters zwischen Bildrede, Immersion und Figuration by Björn Klaus Buschbeck (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USRosenkränze, Marienmäntel, Seelenhäuser. Gebets- und Andachtsübungen des Spätmittelalters zwischen Bildrede, Immersion und Figuration by Björn Klaus Buschbeck (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®126932026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21XXI Seminario avanzato di Filologia germanica. Il Culto Micaelico nelle Tradizioni Germaniche Medievali ed. by Dario Bullitta (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988473
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The volume collects the proceedings of the 21st Advanced Seminar of the Italian Association of Germanic Philology (AIFG), which took place between 20 and 22 September 2022 and focused on the cult of St. Michael the Archangel in the Medieval Germanic traditions. The first part of the volume ("Lezioni," pp. 1–483) gathers the essay versions of the lectures that were given by nine academics from Italian and international universities. The second part ("Comunicazioni," pp. 484–586) gathers shorter essays by undergraduate and graduate students; these essays are not related to the subject of the conference but provide insight into current scholarly trends in Early Medieval Germanic Studies in Italy. Thanks to Dario
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallXXI Seminario avanzato di Filologia germanica. Il Culto Micaelico nelle Tradizioni Germaniche Medievali ed. by Dario Bullitta (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USXXI Seminario avanzato di Filologia germanica. Il Culto Micaelico nelle Tradizioni Germaniche Medievali ed. by Dario Bullitta (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®98152026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21The Hidden Lives of Viking Women: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives ed. by Michèle Hayeur Smith and Alexandra Sanmark (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988474
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The book aims to draw together the works of current scholars of the Viking Age to present detailed modern research into the less well-known aspects of the lives of Viking Age women. Rather than producing an edited volume of conference papers or an examination of different stages of Viking women's lives, the book seeks to answer the question "did women contribute to society only as caregivers bound to the home, or were their lives and roles more complex with responsibilities and opportunities that at times might have complemented, and at other times, supplanted their roles as caregivers and domestic workers?" (p. 1). To answer such a fascinating question, the book offers an overview of current scholarship regarding
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallThe Hidden Lives of Viking Women: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives ed. by Michèle Hayeur Smith and Alexandra Sanmark (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USThe Hidden Lives of Viking Women: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives ed. by Michèle Hayeur Smith and Alexandra Sanmark (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®124192026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21Cultural Memory in the Icelandic Contemporary Sagas: Constructing Continuity at a Time of Transformation by Lucie Korecká (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988475
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Cultural Memory in the Icelandic Contemporary Sagas by Lucie Korecká is a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis, which she defended at Charles University, Prague, in 2021. This is the third volume in a new series, Memory and the Medieval North, which, as stated on the cover:
focuses on cultural memory studies in relation to the extensive and varied Nordic cultural goods from, and since, pre-modern times. Its interdisciplinary monographs and essay collections analyze the roles of memory, remembrance, commemoration, and other forms of anamnesis in, and deriving from, the Viking Age and the Middle Ages in Scandinavia.
Promotional material on the content of the book states inter alia:focuses on cultural
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/450/image/coversmallCultural Memory in the Icelandic Contemporary Sagas: Constructing Continuity at a Time of Transformation by Lucie Korecká (review)2026-04-21text/htmlen-USCultural Memory in the Icelandic Contemporary Sagas: Constructing Continuity at a Time of Transformation by Lucie Korecká (review)2026-04-212026TWOProject MUSE®179802026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-04-21