O’Donnell, Daniel Paul. 2005. Cædmon’s Hymn: A multimedia study, edition and archive. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. xxii + 261 pages + CD-ROM.

Abstract

Cædmon’s Hymn is the name given to a poem recorded in Old English in some manuscripts of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, an ecclesiastical history of the English people written in the early eighth century at Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria. It has long received the attention of Anglo-Saxonists for many reasons, but particularly because it is (perhaps) the oldest surviving record of poetry in Old English, it is one of the very few poetic texts from Anglo-Saxon England which survives in multiple copies, and its transmission is unusually complex even for an early medieval text. Despite this interest, however, O’Donnell’s is the most comprehensive study to date.

Keywords

• O'Donnell
• Daniel Paul
• Cædmon's Hymn
• digital editions
• critical editions
• review