Saint Aldhelm's 'Riddles'

Aldhelm, Saint

ISBN 10: 1442628928 / ISBN 13: 9781442628922

Published by University of Toronto Press, 2015

About this Item

pp. 240.

Seller Inventory # 373650559

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Saint Aldhelm's 'Riddles'
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1442628928
• ISBN 13: 9781442628922
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Saint Aldhelm (640?-709), the Anglo-Saxon bishop of Sherborne, is best known for his extensive Latin prose and poetry works.
A.M. Juster is a poet and translator of classical and post-classical verse. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard University, his work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Criterion, and the North American Review.