Beginnings continued: a decade of studies of Old English prose

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Abstract
When this article appears, a decade will have passed since the publication ofContinuations and Beginnings, edited by E. G. Stanley, a collection of studies in Old English literature, three of which deal with aspects of Old English prose. Each of these essays is a superb and expert summary of recent scholarship by someone who has made major contributions in this field; and they may, therefore, serve as an approximateterminus a quofor main sections of the present survey of theétat des questionswhich are of current concern in the study of Old English prose. One hears from time to time more-or-less facetious attempts at explication of the titleContinuations and Beginningsand I hope not to have compounded an issue by playing on that heading myself. I take Stanley to have meant that the essays he edited are intended both as summaries of the achievements of English philologists who studied the prose of the Anglo-Saxons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and as pointers to newer trends. By my title I mean to convey that I am concerned here primarily with current trends.