Bede's Latin Poetry

Although his historical and exegetical works are better known, Bede's small corpus of Latin poetry was widely read and imitated throughout the Middle Ages. Yet in spite of its importance as a keystone in medieval Latin literature, there has not previously been an attempt to collect and edit this corpus of verse in light of all the surviving manuscript evidence. Bede's Latin Poetry is the first edition of his poetic corpus based on all surviving manuscripts. It includes new editions of his two major poems, the 'Verses on Judgement Day' (Versus de die iudicii) and the metrical 'Life of St Cuthbert' (Vita metrica S. Cudbercti), and also includes reconstructions of his two other poetic collections - a book of epigrams and a book of hymns - which were not preserved intact during the Middle Ages and which have had to be assembled from various disparate sources. The editions of all these works are provided with translations and detailed notes, revealing Bede's debts to earlier poets,
and illustrating his remarkable skill in understanding the intricacies of Latin verse composition. A series of appendices discuss and print many other poems which have been erroneously attributed to Bede by earlier editors, and include the first edition of a hitherto unknown early draft of his metrical 'Life of St Cuthbert'.

Author: Michael Lapidge
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 10/20/2019
Pages: 624
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.00lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.60w x 1.80d
ISBN: 9780199242771

About the Author

Michael Lapidge is emeritus Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from the University of Cambridge. During his career, he also held positions at the Universities of Calgary, Toronto, and Notre Dame. Lapidge has written or edited some fifty books and published some 180 articles, on subjects
ranging from Greek cosmology and Classical Latin literature, to medieval palaeography and textual criticism, and especially the literature of Anglo-Saxon England, in both Latin and Old English. In 2009, he was awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize from the British Academy for his work as "a world
authority on Anglo-Saxon literature". He is a Corresponding Fellow both of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich) and the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome), and is Vice-President of the International Society for the Study of the Latin Middle Ages.