The Poetic Art of Aldhelm

This is the first book-length study of the poetic style of Aldhelm of Malmesbury, "the first English man of letters." Aldhelm is one of the earliest Anglo-Saxons whose writings survive, and the first to attempt to compose Latin metrical verse. Andy Orchard traces the sources and models for his idiosyncratic style and the nature and extent of his influence on later Anglo-Latin verse. The book will not only interest Anglo-Saxonists, but more broadly those interested in the wider fields of Classics, medieval Latin, oral tradition and poetics.