Overview

A Handbook of Animals in Old English Texts is the definitive handbook for students, scholars, and observers of the non-human in early medieval England. In this interdisciplinary compendium to the animal inhabitants of medieval Britain, Preston documents each creature mentioned in the Old English literary textual canon and correlates its standard literary interpretation with relevant historical, archaeological, and ecological studies. Beyond its usefulness as a reference work, Preston’s text challenges the reader to move beyond a literary analysis of the figural beast to one that leaves space for the actual animal.

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9781641893107

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The index of Old English names will prove very useful to scholars attempting to identify mysterious creatures in their texts. The introduction places the book within the context of the modern discipline of animal studies. No attempt is made at an overall synthesis, but this is a reference work and, in any case, such a synthesis would clearly be impossible. This is clearly a labour of love and a most impressive achievement. It will be an invaluable resource not only for scholars of Anglo-Saxon, but also for anyone interested in early medieval society, its functioning, its symbolism, and its relationship with nature. Although presented as a reference work, I found it a most enjoyable read. -- Lola Sharon Davidson * Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 19, no 2 (December 2023): 233-34 *

The index of Old English names will prove very useful to scholars attempting to identify mysterious creatures in their texts. The introduction places the book within the context of the modern discipline of animal studies. No attempt is made at an overall synthesis, but this is a reference work and, in any case, such a synthesis would clearly be impossible. This is clearly a labour of love and a most impressive achievement. It will be an invaluable resource not only for scholars of Anglo-Saxon, but also for anyone interested in early medieval society, its functioning, its symbolism, and its relationship with nature. Although presented as a reference work, I found it a most enjoyable read. -- Lola Sharon Davidson * Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 19, no 2 (December 2023): 233-34 * Todd Preston’s detailed, wide-ranging, and thoroughly researched handbook makes a significant contribution to the ongoing project of “finding the animal,” now an almost obligatory but nonetheless essential move to locate real animal existences alongside the traditionally privileged representational position of animals as symbols, allegories, and figures of human characteristics and aspirations. As he acknowledges, written sources necessarily provide only a partial spectrum of interactions between human and nonhuman animals, and indeed of knowable identities for animals themselves. [...] [The book's] single greatest contribution is the fact that it always starts with the material record, synthesizing and summarizing large amounts of archaeological data before engaging with the very different priorities of textual representation in economic, cultural, and literary terms. For this reason alone, the book is an essential companion to anyone working on the real lives, and the human representations, of animals in the early English period. -- Robert Stanton * Speculum 99, no. 4 (October 2024): 1336-38 *

Author Information

Todd Preston is an Associate Professor of English at Lycoming College, Pennsylvania.

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