Main description:

Through combinations of instructive prose and incantatory verse, liturgical rituals and herbal recipes, Latinate learning and oral tradition, the Old English remedies offer hope not only for bodily ailments but also for such dangers as solitary travel, swarming bees and stolen cattle. Hybrid healing works from the premise that the tremendous diversity of Old English medical texts requires an equally diverse range of interpretative methodologies. Through a case study approach, this exploration of early medicine offers a series of close readings tailored specifically to individual remedies, drawing from a range of fields including plant biology, classical rhetoric, archaeology, folkloristics and disability studies. Embracing the endless complexity of these Old English texts, Hybrid healing argues that the healing power of individual remedies ultimately derives from a dynamic and unpredictable process that is at once both deeply traditional and also ever-changing. -- .

Contents:

Introduction: an Old English poetics of health and healing
1 With hope and humility: hybridity as theoretical framework
2 Of swords and status: hybridity of metaphor in Ic me on thisse gyrde beluce
3 When healers are heroes: hybridity of battle in Wid faerstice
4 To persuade a plant: hybridity of rhetoric in Harley 585
5 Of mandrakes and manuscripts: hybridity of being in Harley 6258B
6 On health and hearing: hybridity of environment in Bald's Leechbook
7 From remedies to riddles: hybridity of genre in an Exeter Book riddle
Conclusion: With empathy and imagination: hybridity in the field
Index -- .