When we think of Old English literature, the first thing that comes to mind is poetry: alliterating pairs of half-lines, compound words and kennings, bone-houses and treasure-givers, sea-birds bathing on ice-cold waves. The appeal of the poetry is at least in part due to its antiquity and strangeness. In the nineteenth century, during the era of ‘national philologies’, scholars gravitated towards the verse corpus, stripping Old English poems of their ‘Christian elements’ in an attempt to recover the lost songs of Germanic mythology. By the mid-twentieth century, the ‘search for paganism’ had been largely abandoned as a new appreciation of the artistry of Old English poetry as a product of early medieval Christian culture began to prevail.
By contrast with the vernacular poetry, the much larger corpus of Old English prose from this period remains relatively understudied and undertaught. My own current research project, funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2023–2024) and AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship (2024–2026), aims to redress this imbalance by placing vernacular prose at the centre of the story of Old English literature. Between the ninth and eleventh centuries, English writers produced a body of vernacular prose unparalleled in the literature of early medieval Europe, ranging from ambitious rewritings of late antique philosophy and patristic theology to confident biblical translations, homilies and sermons, from laws, charters and wills to scientific treatises, histories, travel narratives and romance.
My forthcoming book, Old English Biblical Prose: Translation, Adaptation, Interpretation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2026), dispels the notion that access to the Bible was restricted to the Latinate clergy in the early medieval period, demonstrating how key elements of Scripture were made meaningful both to laypeople and monastic readers. Through case studies of the Alfredian Prose Psalms and the Mosaic Prologue to the Domboc, the Wessex Gospels, Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies and Treatise on the Old and New Testaments, as well as various glosses and apocryphal works, it explores how English authors translated, adapted and interpreted the Bible, sometimes in creative and surprising ways. These case studies demonstrate the central role of vernacular biblical prose in the emergence of English national and spiritual identity before the Norman Conquest.
My next book will provide a more expansive treatment of the Old English prose corpus. While previous studies of this topic have tended to subscribe to the ‘great man’ view of literary history, focusing on the achievements of Alfred, Ælfric and Wulfstan, each chapter of my book will be arranged according to genre and theme rather than date, author or context. Hence, works which have been primarily read for their relevance to the Alfredian revival or the Benedictine Reform are resituated alongside related works from different periods. For example, the Old English Dialogues, a collection of Italian saints’ lives and miracle tales written by Gregory the Great and translated into the Mercian dialect by Bishop Werferth in the ninth century, is read alongside Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints and the prose Life of Guthlac, while the Alfredian Boethius and Soliloquies, two dialogic works, are brought into conversation with the prose Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, a wisdom debate between the biblical king and a pagan Chaldean prince. In providing a new literary history of Old English prose, the book will cast its net widely, taking into consideration writing often considered ‘non-literary’, including laws, charters, wills, letters and inscriptions as well as homilies, sermons and treatises.
The longstanding emphasis on poetry in Old English scholarship has been mirrored in the way the subject is taught at both undergraduate and graduate levels. In order to encourage the more widespread teaching of Old English prose, I am designing a website, ROEP: Resources for Old English Prose, with Dr Niamh Kehoe. This website includes short introductory essays on prose texts and authors, as well as extracts and translations, audio recordings, blogs and other teaching tools. A section of the website will provide resources for Primary and Secondary School teachers. In May 2025, we hosted a highly successful Old English Prose Training Day for 25 graduate students and ECRs in which three guest speakers shared their expertise in a series of workshops. You can read a blog about the event here. Next year I will organise a conference on New Directions in Old English Prose.
Alongside all these prosaic activities, I continue to work on and enjoy Old English poetry!
— Francis Leneghan
Francis Leneghan is Professor of Old English and a Fellow of St Cross College.
