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Informed by multi-cultural, multidisciplinary perspectives, The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature offers a new exploration of the earliest writing in Britain and Ireland, from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-twelfth century. Beginning with an account of writing itself, as well as of scripts and manuscript art, subsequent chapters examine the earliest texts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the tremendous breadth of Anglo-Latin literature. Chapters on English learning and literature in the ninth century and the later formation of English poetry and prose also convey the profound cultural confidence of the period. Providing a discussion of essential texts, including Beowulf and the writings of Bede, this History captures the sheer inventiveness and vitality of early medieval literary culture through topics as diverse as the literature of English law, liturgical and devotional writing, the workings of science and the history of women's writing. Table of Contents Introduction: literature in Britain and Ireland to Part I. Word, Script and Image: 1. Writing in Britain and Ireland, 2. The art of writing: scripts and scribal production 3. Art and writing: voice, image, object 4. Of Bede's 'Five Languages and Four Nations': the earliest writing from Ireland, Scotland and Wales 5. Insular Latin literature to 900 6. Bede and the northern kingdoms Part II. Early English Literature: 7. Across borders: Anglo-Saxon England and the Germanic world 8. English literature in the ninth century 9. The writing of history in the early Middle Ages: the Anglo-Saxon chronicle in context 10. The literary languages of Old English: words, styles, voices 11. Old English poetic form: genre, style, prosody 12. Beowulf: a poem in our time 13. Old English lyrics: a poetics of experience 14. Literature in pieces: female sanctity and the relics of early women's writing 15. Saintly lives: friendship, kinship, gender and sexuality 16. Sacred history and Old English religious poetry 17. Performing Christianity: liturgical and devotional writing 18. Riddles, wonder and responsiveness in Anglo-Saxon literature Part III. Latin Learning and the Literary Vernaculars: 19. In measure, and number, and weight: writing science 20. Legal documentation and the practice of English law 21. Latinities, 22. The authority of English, 23. Crossing the language divide: Anglo-Scandinavian language and literature 24. European literature and eleventh-century England 25. Gaelic literature in Ireland and Scotland, 26. Writing in Welsh to 1150: re-creating the past, shaping the future.