A Guide to Old English | Bruce Mitchell, Fred C. Robinson | Excellent Single-Volume Introduction...

A Guide to Old English | Bruce Mitchell, Fred C. Robinson | Useful, if the organization of the book is understood

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A Guide to Old Eng...

	A Guide to Old English Bruce Mitchell, Fred C. Robinson Wiley-Blackwell, 2007 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The seventh edition of this popular introduction to Old English language and literature retains the general structure and style of previous editions, but has been updated, and includes two new, much-requested texts: the Cotton Gnomes and Wulfstan?s Sermo Lupia ad Anglos ? and two new appendices: A List of Linguistic Terms Used in This Book and The Moods of Old English.

Provides a range of helpful pedagogical tools: a map of Anglo-Saxon England, notes, a glossary, indexes to Part I, and a general introduction to Anglo-Saxon studies.
Contains a special "How to Use this Guide" section, to aid both self-study and classroom use.

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Excellent Single-Volume Introduction to Old English

This is not the best reader, the best grammar, or the best primer, but if you're looking to use just *one* introductory book before tackling longer readings with a dictionary, Mitchell and Robinson have created a fantastic resource. Work through and memorise the basic inflections as outlined in the introduction, then read up on the basic syntax, and then jump into the eighteen readings while slowly working through the rest of the grammar. Some initiative is required: Lessons and vocab lists aren't prepared for you. However, combined with a modicum of diligence and industry, this is a great way to learn Old English.

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Useful, if the organization of the book is understood

This book was recommended to me as preparation for graduate studies in Medieval English literature. As some of the other reviewers have noted, the book's organization is somewhat difficult to understand at first, especially if you are used to books like Wheelock's Latin, which is organized in self-study lessons with grammar concepts, vocabulary, and texts presented in order of increasing difficulty. This book is NOT organized in that way, but is still helpful if properly used.

The book is organized in a more encyclopedic fashion, e.g. with all noun declensions (including a number of notes on excceptions and variations) presented together, followed by all strong verbs (with notes), etc. Syntax has its own chapter. Therefore, you cannot expect easily to work through the book in the order in which elements are presented. It is better to remember that the book is organized by topic, not by the order in which a the many aspects of a topic should be learned. I had much better success when I started by memorizing the basic noun paradigms (ignoring the variations and exceptions), the pronoun paradigms, and then starting with weak verbs. I was then able to begin translating the basic texts provided, with the help of the glossary, and by referring to the syntax portion of the book where necessary to decipher the uses of different cases. In the midst of this I read about, but did not try to entirely memorize, the rules of sound changes, which helps greatly when looking up words in the glossary.

In short, it is not difficult to use this book for self-study, as long as you put forth some effort and thought into organizing your own "lesson plans," pulling necessary material from the book in a sensible order. Having learned another inflected language will be of great help in giving you an idea of the order in which concepts should be learned, but the "How to Use This Guide" section does give some suggestions about how to approach the material.

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Accessible and Fluid

This is probably the best grammar of Old English in current circulation (unless you can somehow get your hands on a copy of Bright's). Don't waste your time trying to find another one. It clearly arranges each section and provides a preface/introduction to each element of grammar. My only complaint would be its limited dictionary, but Clark & Hall have published a decent student dictionary for Old English.

comprehensive but often lacks organization

If you only buy one book to learn Old English, this should be it. It's been the main text in both of the Old English classes I've taken. It's the most comprehensive offering available (as far as I know): it includes chapters on syntax and poetics and information on A-S culture. The introductions to the texts are often excellent, and--as someone else commented--the texts are organized by difficulty. The glossary is also everything a student could want: not only does it give the meaning of the term, but it lists all the places in all of the texts where the poem is used, and for each usage, it tells you number, gender, and case. Impressive.

However, much of this valuable information is presented as a hodgepodge of information. There is little rhyme or reason to the organization of the verb tables, for instance: the order of tenses often varies from table to table for no apparent reason. There are no section headings (unlike in Bright's grammar, where declensions are clearly labeled). In the chapter on Nouns, for instance, no explicit attempt is made to group the 18+ different paradigms into categories, although it would be easy enough to group these paradigms into declensions. The authors have also decided to include phonology and sound change information within their discussion of the grammar, but--again--they fail to include headings or signposts that could help the beginning student *understand* the connection between the phonology and the grammar. I found the organization of Bright's to be much more helpful. If you are using this text, you should plan on taking a lot of notes: much of the information in this book must be categorized and rearranged into more logical sequences in order to be used most fruitfully.

The best thing--in my experience--is to use this book alongside another grammar such as Bright's Old English Grammar or _An Old English Grammar_ by Quirk and Wrenn. These grammars will both help you understand the "big picture" of English grammar, which you can then use to reconstruct Michell and Robinson.

As of yet, there seems to be no strong, authoritative, highly accessible introductory textbook for Old English, comparable to Wheelock's in Latin. This book is the best of an uneven lot.

**Since I wrote the original review above, I found another textbook which I would recommend highly: Peter Baker's excellent Introduction to Old English. The material in Baker's text is presented in an extremely clear and sensible way. I strongly recommend it as a self-study book or as a supplement to anyone using Mitchell and Robinson in class. (Klinck's book of Old English Elegies plus Baker's Intro to OE would make a potent combination for an elementary course.)

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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