In the foreground

Professor E.G. Stanley is internationally famous amongst scholars of Old and Middle English for his formidable learning, incisive style and often sceptical views. The present book is an unusual, controversial and very learned attack on many past and present opinions held by scholars and critics about Old English poetry. He emphasises the limitations of our knowledge and of all readers' historical conditioning and expectations. He writes without jargon and with a crisp wit. Eric Stanley's concise survey of Beowulf scholarship and criticism is illuminating and appropriately humbling for all critics and scholars of any period; his detailed technical comments on metres and poetic diction lead to a new understanding; in particular his section on the centrality of Christian prayer, praise and thanksgiving in Old English poetry, especially Beowulf, will bring about a significant shift in the general understanding of the poem. To the end, Professor Stanley characteristically emphasises how vital are accuracy and doubt to scholarship and criticism. He exemplifies both in abundance in a book that can be read through and also frequently turned to as a reference book. This is a book that no scholar or critic of Old English poetry can afford to ignore.