English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday

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English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday
English and Medieval Studies.jpg
AuthorEdited by Norman Davis and C.L. Wrenn
PublisherLondon: George Allen & Unwin
Released1962
Pages340

English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday is a 1962 collection of essays, published in tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien. The volume includes the poem "A Short Ode to a Philologist", written by W.H. Auden.

In May 2011, HarperCollins reprinted the collection as a print-on-demand book.[1]

Contents[edit | edit source]

This book includes the following essays:

  • The Old English Epic Style by A. Campbell
  • The Appreciation of Old English Metre by A. J. Bliss
  • King Alfred's Last War by M. E. Griffiths
  • Six Questions of Old and Middle English Morphology by C. E. Bazell
  • Studies in Late West Saxon Labialization and Delabialization by Pamela Gradon
  • The Bodmer Fragment of Ælfic's Homily for Septuagesima Sunday by N. R. Ker
  • A Neglected Manuscript of British History by S. R. T. O. d'Ardenne
  • ormulum: Words copied by Jan van Vliet from parts now lost by R. W. Burchfield
  • Norse Alliterative Phrases in the Ormulum by E. S. Olszewska
  • The Affiliations of the manuscripts of Ancrene Wisse by E. J. Dobson
  • God and Man in Troilus and Criseyde by T. P. Dunning
  • Chaucer's Translation of the Bible by W. Meredith Thompson
  • God's Wenches and the Light that Spoke (a note on Langland's kind of poetry) by Nevill Coghill
  • The Anthropological Approach by C. S. Lewis;

From the publisher[edit | edit source]

Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, with dedicatory verses by W. H. Auden, this book was originally released in 1962 by Allen & Unwin. I believe it is wonderful to see that now after 50 years HarperCollins honors this moment by reprinting this wonderful book. The most amazing thing is that the book actually carries "George Allen and Unwin Ltd" on the front of the jacket, and I don't see any mention of HarperCollins on the front - so we can probably expect a perfect reproduction of the original first edition. Since it is now long out of print it is nice to see that HarperCollins reprints this book and making it available to a wider public. Professor J. R. R. Tolkien retired in 1959 from the Merton Professorship of English language and Literature in the University of Oxford, which he had held since 1945. Before that he had been Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford and Professor of the English Language in the University of Leeds.In recognition of the great contributions to English philology and medieval literature that he made over this long period, twenty-two former pupils, friends and colleagues from this county and abroad have combined to offer him a volume of studies in honour of his seventieth birthday in 1962. The essays mainly deal with subjects close to his own interests – the character and the metre of Old English poetry, the Ancrene Riwle, Piers Plowman, Chaucer, various more general aspects of medieval literature, and some of the links between Old Norse and English.


References