God’s Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry

A critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library popularly known as “The Exeter Book,” The Exeter Anthology is one of the acknowledged treasures of early English literature, well known for its constituent poems The Wanderer, The Seafarer, nearly one hundred riddles, and other remarkable poems composed in the vernacular. God’s Exiles and English Verse is the first integrative, book-length critical study of this unique collection. While offering new insights into many individual poems and problems of interpretation, Niles makes an argument for understanding the Exeter Anthology as a shaped miscellany, one that is expressive of the devout yet cosmopolitan culture of English monasticism during the period of the tenth-century Benedictine Reform.