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This book sheds new light on the Latin background of various Old English homilies, and of certain homilies from related vernacular traditions. Two broad themes are treated, the Nativity of Christ and Christian eschatology; the volume contains five Latin texts dealing with each theme. Critical editions, full English translations, and detailed introductions and commentaries are included, as well as case studies that demonstrate the relevance of each text to one or more homilies written in Old English, and, in a few cases, early Middle English and Old Norse. While the volume is intended for scholars of early English preaching, many of the texts hold considerable intrinsic interest and should have general appeal for medievalists, students of preaching, and those working on the transmission of biblical apocrypha in the Latin West.
About the author
Stephen Pelle is Assistant Professor in the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto, and co-editor of the
Dictionary of Old English. The author of numerous essays in various collections and articles in
Anglia, Gripla, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Medieval Sermon Studies, and
Traditio, among other journals, he is co-editor (with Brigitte Bulitta, Robert Getz, and Katja Schmidt) of a forthcoming collection of essays dealing with Old English and Old High German lexicography, glossography, and related topics
