Educating King and Court: The Exeter Book and the Transmission of Poetic Anthologies in the (Post-)Alfredian Period

Taking as a starting point Asser’s De gestis Alfredi regis (XXIII)—which mentions that Alfred was given a book containing English verse—this article sets out to consider the existence of vernacular poetic anthologies as early as this period. If Asser’s episode is true, the book in question must have been a collection of Old English poetry, of which the Exeter Book may have been a later reflex, since it has been argued that this codex contains an anthology (Muir 1994). The design of the manuscript could then be in line with that of the Anthologia Latina, the most important model of the early Middle Ages. This compendium originated in Africa in the sixth century and eventually found its way to various European countries, including England. It may thus have become the prototype for autochthonous poetic collections of the kind mentioned in Asser’s history. In this light, this paper is the first to seriously consider the hypothesis that the Exeter Book may have been compiled during King Alfred’s period, or perhaps not much later (Sisam 1953). In doing so, it envisages the use of vernacular anthologies as educational tools for both the king and the courtiers in early medieval England.