Brights Old English Grammar

by James Wilson Bright and F. J. Cassidy

Book by Cassidy, F. J., Ringler, R. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0030847133
• ISBN13: 9780030847134
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 494 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A good introduction to Old English

Old English grammar is explained in a staight-forward manner that is accessible to a amateur such as myself. The selection of readings and the associated glossary are appropriate.

A solid foundation

While I first learned Old English studying Robert Diamond's short 'Old English: Grammar and Reader', I would have to say that my real comfort with the language arrived when I went beyond Diamond's text into Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader. The copy I have is the second corrected printing of the third edition, edited by F. G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler. The grammar in Bright's is rather extensive, with good coverage of speech sounds, including specialised vowel constructions, phonological changes, and spelling issues. The grammar covers all of the traditional topics -- noun declensions of several types, verbs divided by classes (there are in Bright's grammar seven classes of strong verbs and three classes of weak verbs, not including anomalous and preterit-present verbs), adjectives and adverbs, pronouns, numerals, and syntax issues. At various points in the grammatical development, Bright's inserts discussion of phonological changes and sound changes. The reader includes a few pieces from the translation of Bede (not the best for pure Old English work, but still a good piece as a number of OE documents are in fact translations of works from other languages, including Latin). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Aelfric, and original Old English poetry also figure prominently. Major poems such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Dream of the Rood, and various riddles and maxims are included here. While the grammar section is 100 pages long, the reader is 250 pages long, so language work with original texts is emphasised heavily here. The readings are heavily annotated with notes to assist reading and translation. The glossary is also very extensive, being more than 100 pages long in Bright's. Cross-referenced extensively with grammar, the words are located by text and line number for easy facilitation of locating the words in context. This is a great one-volume text with which to learn Old English, both in poetry and prose. It does not include Beowulf, as the assumption on the part of this text is that it will be used as the prelude to a course in reading Beowulf. This is very good text; there are more recent readers and grammars, but this remains one of the better ones available.

Return of an Old Friend

To Old English scholars, Bright's 'Old English Grammar and Reader' is the one. Other, more up-to-date Old English grammars glut the market. Most of them are very adequate and very dull. Bright reminds us of the 'happy days', when 'our false love was true'. In short, it recapitulates the complicated excitement of our first learning of Anglo-Saxon and coming to love that incredible island-world before the ruthless William set about robbing us of more than half of our native vocabulary and giving us in its place a plethora of euphamisms and plug-ins to a more complicated culture than the French. douglas mitchell

Very good: readable although somewhat heavy

Bright's is a very good book for an amateur or more experienced linguist wishing to learn Old English. It begins with explanations of the basic component parts of language such as phonetics, which are not often taught as a part of other (particularly modern) language curricula. These rudiments, however, are none too basic, and each page is chock-full of information. The grammar section lasts perhaps 110 pages; then a well-annotated reader follows. Bright's is a useful and readable grammar book but somewhat heavy and I would recommend it only to language enthusiasts -- but after all, who else would want to study Old English?