Literature & Literary Studies
March 2020
Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Words, ideas, interactions
by Megan Cavell, Jennifer Neville, David Matthews
Capitalising on developments in the field over the past decade, Riddles at work provides an up-to-date microcosm of research on the Anglo-Saxon riddle tradition. The book presents a wide range of traditional and experimental methodologies. The contributors treat the riddles both as individual poems and as parts of a tradition, but, most importantly, they address Latin and Old English riddles side-by-side, bringing together texts that originally developed in conversation with each other but have often been separated by scholarship. Together, the chapters reveal that there is no single, right way to read these texts but rather a multitude of productive paths. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Anglo-Saxon and early medieval studies. It contains new as well as established voices, including Jonathan Wilcox, Mercedes Salvador-Bello and Jennifer Neville.
