Reviewed by Sara Pons-Sanz, University of Nottingham
When people encounter Old English texts for the first time, they tend to experience mixed feelings: on the one hand, they are very curious about a literature they did not know much about (the fact that English literature did not start with Chaucer seems to take many people by surprise), but, on the other hand, they become increasingly concerned about the demands of learning Old English grammar. Unfortunately, sometimes those demands become too difficult to handle, and this leads to loss of motivation and a feeling of alienation from texts which could, otherwise, have been greatly enjoyed.
Carole Hough and John Corbett place the pleasure of reading Old English texts at the centre of their book, making the reader engage with slightly simplified texts right from the beginning. Readers are reminded, time and again, that Old English is the ancestor of Modern English and, therefore, they already know a significant amount of vocabulary even before they formally start learning the language. This encouragement and feeling of familiarity is certainly something beginners will welcome.
The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, the reader is introduced to the historical background, spelling, basic grammar and vocabulary of Old English, or rather its West Saxon dialect, which became a sort of koiné during the late Old English period. Making readers aware of the existence of dialectal variation during the Old English period is indeed fundamental, because texts written in other dialectal varieties do not tend to be studied (especially by beginners), and this can give people a false sense of linguistic homogeneity. In the second part, the authors ask the reader to consider the content and style of the so-called Cynewulf and Cyneheard episode in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a fragment from Beowulf, and the whole extant text of The Dream of the Rood and The Battle of Maldon. The texts come together with grammatical information and lists of both difficult terms and terms which the reader may be expected to recognise, on the basis of either their similarity with Modern English vocabulary or the fact that they have been explained in the first part. It would have been useful if the authors had included translations of the texts in an appendix, so that readers could check, more easily, their understanding of the texts. Finally, the book also includes a glossary of linguistic and literary terms, and an appendix with some basic paradigms.
Unfortunately, the book has some statements which can be somewhat misleading: for instance, the authors say that Old English and Old Norse terms differ mainly in their grammatical inflexions, and give as an example OE wyrm ‘worm, serpent’ vs ON orminn (11). We should remember, though, that ON -inn is here not a declensional ending, but a form of the suffixed definite article, which does not always appear after a noun. Readers are told that ‘verbs end in -an‘, but it would have been more accurate to talk about the infinitives of verbs because, as the paradigms included in the appendix show, -an is by no means the only verbal ending (22). In another passage, the neuter pronoun hit is used to replace his hund in the sentence Þæt child ‚sende his hund ‘the child sent his dog’, but OE hund is actually a masculine noun and, therefore, from a grammatical perspective, the direct object should have been replaced with hine (36). While it is certainly the case that sometimes Old English texts present pronominal substitutions on the basis of natural rather than grammatical gender, a beginner who is aware of the actual gender of the noun could be slightly puzzled; therefore, an explanation of this example should have been included, or, even better, given the readership of the book, a different example should have been chosen. Later in the text, OE h•old ‘held’ is presented as part of a list of past verbal forms which can be identified as such by the presence of <d>; however, in this case, the final <d> is not a marker of tense, but rather part of the root, the past tense being marked, instead, by ablaut variation in the root (the infinitive is healdan) (78).
Despite this, Hough and Corbett have offered both undergraduate students and members of the general public who are interested in learning Old English an engaging, encouraging and enjoyable stepping stone into what will hopefully be a long-lasting interest in the Old English language and literature.
Sara Pons-Sanz
University of Nottingham
