The first and one of the finest Latin poets of Anglo-Saxon England, the seventh-century bishop Saint Aldhelm can justly be called “Britain’s first man of letters.” Among his many influential poetic texts were the hundred riddles that made up his Aenigmata. In Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles, A.M. Juster offers the first verse translation of this text in almost a century, capturing the wit, warmth, and wonder of the first English riddle collection. One of today’s finest formalist poets, A.M. Juster brings the same exquisite care to this volume as to his translations of Horace (“The best edition available of the Satires in English” –Choice), Tibullus (“An excellent new translation” –The Guardian), and Petrarch. Juster’s translation is complemented by a newly edited version of the Latin text and by the first scholarly commentary on the Aenigmata, the result of exhaustive interdisciplinary research into the text’s historical, literary, and philological context. Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles will be essential for scholars and a treasure for lovers of Tolkien, Beowulf, and Harry Potter.

Perhaps the most enigmatic cultural artifacts that survive from the Anglo-Saxon period are the Old English riddle poems that were preserved in the tenth century Exeter Book manuscript. Clever, challenging, and notoriously obscure, the riddles have fascinated readers for centuries and provided crucial insight into the period. In Say What I Am Called, Dieter Bitterli takes a fresh look at the riddles by examining them in the context of earlier Anglo-Latin riddles. Bitterli argues that there is a vigorous common tradition between Anglo-Latin and Old English riddles and details how the contents of the Exeter Book emulate and reassess their Latin predecessors while also expanding their literary and formal conventions. The book also considers the ways in which convention and content relate to writing in a vernacular language. A rich and illuminating work that is as intriguing as the riddles themselves, Say What I Am Called is a rewarding study of some of the most interesting works from the Anglo-Saxon period.

The first collection devoted solely to early medieval riddles, Riddles at work showcases recent research in this popular, new field. It brings together studies of Old English and Latin riddles, authors at various stages of their careers and a range of approaches, aiming to map out both the state of the field now and its future directions.

This book explores the voices of nonhuman things in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture, making a valuable contribution to 'thing theory'.

In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.