Ælfric's Grammar, A Single Witness Edition

Abstract

This thesis consists of a single-witness edition of the text of Ælfric of Eynsham’s (c. 955 × 1010–20) Grammar based on the 11th century manuscript London, British Library, Harley 3271, together with an introduction which both surveys the work’s historical context and discusses key features of the text itself. An overrarching theme of the introduction is the significance of the Grammar’s peculiar place in the history of textual transmission and of education in medieval England as it was the first translation of a Latin grammar into a vernacular European language. It thus provided its readers a more easily attainable access to Latin, the language of learning, for which reason Ælfric himself calls the text “the key that unlocks the meaning of books.”