Anglo-Saxon Prognostics

<p>Winner of the Beatrice White Prize 2013. Medieval prognostic texts - a survival from the classical world - are the ancestors of modern almanacs; a means of predicting future events they offer guidance on matters of everyday life such as illness childbirth weather agriculture and the interpretation of dreams. They give fascinating insights into monastic life medicine pastoral care the transformations of classical learning in the middle ages and the complex interconnections between orthodox religion popular belief science and magic. This volume provides the first full critical edition with a facing-page translation of a diverse and peculiar group of prognostic guides and calendars in Latin and Old English found in an eleventh-century manuscript from Christ Church Canterbury; they are collated with related versions in both Anglo-Saxon and continental manuscripts. A lengthy introduction and commentary examine the transmission and translation of these texts and shed light on their origins and uses in late Anglo-Saxon monastic culture. Roy Liuzza is Professor of English at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.</p>