The Interpretation of Old English Poems

(1972) is a challenging approach in the critical appreciation of Old English poems. Professor Greenfield argues in particular against two inhibiting orientations in criticism of Anglo-Saxon poetry: an insensitive and too-narrowly defined historicism, and a blinkered philological tradition. He suggests ways in which the practical criticism of Old English poetry and poems can be conducted, and provides the means for a student to form his own critical approach. The book is particularly challenging in that it brings literary criticism into a field which has hitherto belonged largely to historians and linguists.