Exeter Book

The Exeter Book, Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, also known as the Codex Exoniensis, is a tenth-century book or codex which is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is one of the four major Anglo-Saxon literature codices. The book was donated to the library of Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter. It is believed originally to have contained 131 leaves, of which the first 8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 pages are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest known collection of Old English literature that exists today.

Historical context

Though the precise date of the Exeter Codex's inscription is unknown, it may generally be described as one of the great works of the English Benedictine revival of the tenth century, and proposed dates of authorship generally range from 960 to 990. This period saw a rise in monastic activity and productivity under the renewed influence of Benedictine principles and standards. At the opening of the period, Dunstan's importance to the Church and to the English kingdom was established, culminating in his appointment to the Archbishopric at Canterbury under Edgar and leading to the monastic reformation by which this era was characterised. Dunstan died in 998, and by the period's close, England under Æthelred faced an increasingly determined Scandinavian incursion, to which it would eventually succumb.

The Exeter Book's heritage becomes traceable as of 1050, when Leofric was made Bishop at Exeter. Among the treasures which he is recorded to have bestowed upon the then-impoverished monastery is one famously described "mycel englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoðwisan geworht" (i.e., "a large English book of poetic works"). This book has been widely assumed to be the Exeter Codex as it survives today.

Contents

• Christ I, II, III
• Guthlac A and B
• Azarias
• The Phoenix
• Juliana
• The Wanderer
• The Gifts of Men
• Precepts
• The Seafarer
• Vainglory
• Widsith
• The Fortunes of Men
• Maxims I
• The Order of the World
• The Rhyming Poem
• The Panther
• The Whale
• The Partridge
• Soul and Body II
• Deor
• Wulf and Eadwacer
• Riddles 1-59
• The Wife's Lament
• The Judgment Day I
• Resignation
• The Descent into Hell
• Alms-Giving
• Pharaoh
• The Lord’s Prayer I
• Homiletic Fragment II
• Riddle 30b
• Riddle 60
• The Husband's Message
• The Ruin
• Riddles 61-95

Editions

• Crossley-Holland, Kevin (2008). The Exeter Book Riddles. London: Enitharmon Press. ISBN 9781904634461. 

• Krapp, George Philip; Dobbie, Elliot Van Kirk (1936). The Exeter Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. III. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231087675. 

• Muir, Bernard J. (ed.) (2000). The Exeter anthology of Old English poetry: an edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2nd edn. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN 0859896307. 

See also

• Anglo-Saxon literature
• Old English language

External links

• The Exeter Book
• James Grout: Exeter Book of Riddles, part of the Encyclopædia Romana
• A series of lower quality images of the codex
• The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry