Old English Semantic-Field Studies Book

This book describes and analyzes all published, unpublished and in-progress studies of Old English semantic fields. Thirty-seven fields - such as gloom, nobility, sea and weapon terms - are examined for anyone interested in Anglo-Saxon England from virtually any perspective. The work also describes historical patterns in this area of scholarship and correlates related activity in modern literary criticism and semantics. It helps established scholars and beginners alike to know what has been written about a particular semantic field or segment of the Old English vocabulary and where to find the studies. It shows attempts by scholars over the decades to discover both basic definitions and lost nuances of the Old English, especially poetic, vocabulary and to refine our understanding of how the Anglo-Saxons perceived the world around them. We get a glimpse of a very rich vocabulary and increasingly skillful attempts by scholars to appreciate the intricacy and depth of Anglo-Saxon expression.