CUP has published a new book on Alfred
the Great's domboc ('book of laws'), including a new translation.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Alfred the Great's domboc ('book
of laws') is the longest and most ambitious legal text of the Anglo-Saxon
period. Alfred places his own laws, dealing with everything from sanctuary to
feuding to the theft of bees, between a lengthy translation of legal passages
from the Bible and the legislation of the West-Saxon King Ine (r. 688–726),
which rival his own in length and scope. This book is the first critical
edition of the domboc published in over a century, as well as a new
translation. Five introductory chapters offer fresh insights into the laws of
Alfred and Ine, considering their backgrounds, their relationship to early
medieval legal culture, their manuscript evidence and their reception in later
centuries. Rather than a haphazard accumulation of ordinances, the domboc is
shown to issue from deep reflection on the nature of law itself, whose effects
would permanently alter the development of early English legislation.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Stefan Jurasinski, State
University College, Brockport, New York
Stefan Jurasinski is Professor of English at State University College,
Brockport, New York. He is the author of The Old English Penitentials and Anglo-Saxon
Law (Cambridge, 2015) and, with R. D. Fulk, The Old English Canons of Theodore
(2012). With Andrew Rabin, he edited Languages of the Law in Early Medieval
England: Essays in Memory of Lisi Oliver.
Lisi Oliver, Louisiana
State University
Lisi Oliver, author of The Beginnings of English Law (2013) and The Body Legal
and Barbarian Law (2011), was Houston Alumni Professor of English and
Distinguished Research Master at Louisiana State University. With Andrew Rabin
and Stefan Jurasinski, she edited English Law Before Magna Carta.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I.:
1. The emergence of written law
in early England
2. Legal erudition in seventh-
and ninth-century Wessex
3. Reshaping tradition: oaths,
ordeals, and the 'innovations' of the domboc
4. The transmission of the
domboc: old English manuscripts and other early witnesses
5. Reception, editorial history,
and interpretative legacies
Part II. Editions:
6. Rubrics in Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College MSS 173 and 383
7. Alfred's prologue
8. The laws of Alfred
9. The laws of Ine
Appendix I: handlist of prior
editions
Bibliography
Index.
More info here
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