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Title: Judith (Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies) by Mark Griffith ISBN: 0-85989-568-8 Publisher: University of Exeter Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent, important edition
Comment: Reviewers have called this edition, the first true re-edition of the poem since 1953 (Dobbie's, in the ASPR) 'superb' and 'excellent,' and I agree.

'Judith' is a brief heroic fragment found in the same manuscript as 'Beowulf,' and shares some of its characteristics--a stress on heroism, an interest in the trappings of warfare, traditional Old English battle-motifs, as well as a thoroughly complicated position on the heroic woman. Its source is the no longer canonical Book of Judith, telling the story of Judith of Bethulia's victory, through deceit and seduction, over Assyrian general Holofernes, which culminates in his beheading (immortalized by many Renaissance artists, in sculpture by Donatelli, and in painting most famously by Caravaggio. You can admire Michelangelo's somewhat non-descript version in the Sistine Chapel; the sexiest, without a doubt, is Giorgone's portrayal of Judith with her foot on Holofernes' head, showing a beautiful leg).

The Old English version is an adaptation, not a translation--gone is Judith's deviousness, the uncomfortable (for a Christian readership) combination of holiness and seduction. Many details and almost all the names of the participants are not included by the poet; the focus now is Judith's submission to God in typically Anglo-Saxon heroic fashion.

What makes Griffith's edition so valuable is its sheer length: 223 pages for a fragment only 349 lines long. The introduction is indeed superb, presenting not only the manuscript and the linguistic, orthographic, and metrical features of the text, but also, at length, the poem's deviations from its source, and its literary import, a discussion sometimes missing from editions of Old English poems. The discussion includes extensive mention of and reference to earlier work on the poem, especially of the poet's Christianization of his source, and the position of the poem vis-a-vis Old English heroic and Christian (patristic) tradition; the bibliography is comprehensive and up to date. The text is followed by detailed commentary and useful appendices; for me, most handy is the line-by-line comparison of the Vulgate and the OE poem.

Accessibility of style, extensive material, and comprehensive discussion make this edition a must-have for students of Old English literature. I am very pleased with the book, and recommend it highly.