Rethinking and Recontextualizing Glosses

Glossing was a scribal practice in use since antiquity, but it was in the Middle Ages that it acquired a wider meaning and a different role, becoming one of the most widespread forms of literacy in the Germanic West, including the British Isles. Most of the essays collected in this0volume focus on the late Anglo-Saxon period, that is a well-identified timeframe spanning from the Benedictine Reform to the eleventh century. As recent scholarship has convincingly established, the second half of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh saw the blooming of Anglo-Saxon scholarship and a remarkable advance of educational practices. Within this cultural resurgence, glossing undoubtedly played no small role and was particularly vital in centres such as Abingdon, Canterbury and Winchester. In the contributions to the present volume, the relationship between the glosses and the text they accompany are always explored on the basis of their manuscript context.