Ebook: Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry. Vol. 2. The Major Germanic and Celtic Texts in Translation

Translated by Daniel G. Calder and Robert E. Bjork (Germanic Texts), Patrick K. Ford (Welsh Texts), Daniel F. Melia (Irish Texts).

The second volume of "Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry" contains material relating to a wide range of Anglo-Saxon poems, from religious works such as "Genesis" and "Exodus", through the riddles and wisdom poetry, to battle poems and the elegies. The range of original literature translated here is very wide: some of it is relatively well-known, such as the Welsh "Gododdin" or the Norse poems from the "Elder Edda", while other pieces, notably those from Old Irish and the Old Saxon "Genesis", are unfamiliar territory to all but the scholar who can read these languages. This volume and its predecessor of Latin texts together form an invaluable companion to Anglo-Saxon studies, setting Anglo-Saxon poetry in its widest, cultural context and thus presenting it, not as an isolated phenomenon as is sometimes done, but as the crossroads between heathen northern tradition and Christian Latin civilisation.