Alcuin and the Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition
Andy Orchard

• Wednesday 7 June 2017, 7.40PM to 8.30pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
• K/133, King's Manor, Exhibition Square (map)
• No wheelchair access

Event details

Alcuin of York (who died in 804) was among the most towering and impressive figures in the European Middle Ages, and made an astonishing number of serious and lasting contributions to many aspects of the intellectual life of the period.

Yet throughout his copious writings, Alcuin’s softer, more humorous, and more humane side emerges often, especially in several riddles composed both as individual texts and embedded in other contexts. His riddles, which were written on the Continent, also connect Alcuin very firmly with others composed by generations of Anglo-Saxons throughout the period.

In this talk, illustrated with various readings in several languages (all with translations into Modern English!), Andy Orchard of the University of Oxford will consider Alcuin and his riddles as part of a much wider Anglo-Saxon tradition of around 700 riddles in both Latin and Old English, in prose and in verse, spanning some four centuries, and including material both learned and lewd. Through the quirky lens of this riddling tradition, various aspects both of the Anglo-Saxon world-view and of Alcuin’s individual personality and perspective will be explored and explained.

About the speaker

Professor Andy Orchard is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford, a Chair once held by J.R.R. Tolkien. He has taught, researched, and lectured widely on many aspects of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic literature, and is both a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His latest multi-volume work, The Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition, will be published later this year.

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