Description: This Element Recovering Old English examines the philological activities of scholars involved in the recovery of Old English in the period between c. 1550 and 1830. This Element focuses on four philological pursuits that dominated this recovery: collecting documents, recording the lexicon editing texts and studying the grammar. This Element demonstrates that throughout the vicissitudes of history these four components of humanist philology have formed the backbone of Old English studies and constitute a thread that connects the efforts of early modern philologists with the global interest in Old English that we see today.
Review Quotes: 'A concise, yet in-depth and highly illustrative, history of the key practices that organized the lexicon, grammar, and textual materials of Old English and initiated the editorial and pedagogical approaches of the field of Old English studies.' Donna Beth Ellard, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies