Ebook: Ælfric / Aelfric

The inclusion of Ælfric in the Twayne English Authors Series might suggest a number of perennial questions about the continuity of English literature and the propriety of maintaining or not maintaining the great gulf that ordinarily separates Old English and later literature. These questions certainly deserve the attention they have received, but I have chosen to ignore them in this brief study of the most accomplished prose writer of the Old English period. I have taken for granted that Ælfric and his works are worth studying for their own sake and that they deserve the attention of anyone interested in good writing, whether he is especially interested in Old English or not.

I do not minimize, however, the problems that confront the nonspecialist in approaching the work of a writer so remote from us chronologically and, in some ways, intellectually. I have therefore attempted in the first chapter not only to summarize what is known of Ælfric’s life but also to suggest something of his social, political, and intellectual environment. The brevity and superficiality of this survey may offend the specialist, but I have chosen to risk doing so rather than to puzzle other readers by omitting all mention of the conditions which inspired Ælfric’s work and guided its course.

In the succeeding chapters, rather than following an all-inclusive, chronological plan, I have selected five aspects of Ælfric’s achievement and organized each chapter around one of these topics. Chapter 2 deals with Ælfric as a homilist; Chapter 3, with his work as a hagiographer; Chapter 4, with his Bible translations; and Chapter 5, with his pedagogical texts for Latin instruction. The final chapter abandons this organization by content to consider Ælfric’s prose style, the aspect of his work for which he is chiefly remembered.