Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Abbreviations -- The Cultural Construction of Reading in Anglo-Saxon England -- Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word -- The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity Before the Norman Conquest -- Orality and the Developing Text of Caedmon's Hymn -- Reading Cædmon's "Hymn" with Someone Else's Glosses -- Birthing Bishops and Fathering Poets: Bede, Hild, and the Relations of Cultural Production -- Kinship and Lordship in Early Medieval England: The Story of Sigeberht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard -- The Thematic Structure of the Sermo Lupi -- Social Idealism in Ælfric's Colloquy -- The Hero in Christian Reception: Ælfric and Heroic Poetry -- Didacticism and the Christian Community: The Teachers and the Taught -- The Editing of Old English Poetic Texts: Questions of Style -- Anglo-Saxons on the Mind -- Sundor æt Rune: The Voluntary Exile of The Wanderer -- From Plaint to Praise: Language as Cure in "The Wanderer" -- The Form and Structure of The Seafarer -- En/closed Subjects: The Wife's Lament and the Culture of Early Medieval Female Monasticism -- The Devotional Context of the Cross Before A.D. 1000 -- Stylistic Disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood -- God, Death, and Loyalty in The Battle of Maldon -- Maldon and Mythopoesis -- Contributors -- Index.