ABSTRACT
This excerpt contains the account of creation given in lElfric's De Temporibus Anni, a work completed around 993 when he was at Cerne Abbas, and which survives in eight manuscripts. The earliest, CUL MS Gg. 3. 28, on which the present text is based, is nearly contemporary with the work's composition. The major sources used are the scriptural account given in Genesis and two Latin works of Bede, De temporum ratione and De natura rerum. Knowledge of cosmology was introductory to an understanding of astronomy, and this was of importance in medieval monasteries since the computation of the calendar was based upon it, which in turn made possible the certain identification of religious feast days. Characteristically, lElfric appends an allegorical and moral interpretation to the natural science he recounts. This piece of scientific writing illustrates quite well some of the features of lElfric's earlier prose style: a simple and non-Latinate vocabulary, phrasal repetition and sequences, and phrases syntactically and semantically balanced and contrasted. Balance may depend on a simple opposition of semantics within a similar structural pattern (on d~3 bufon eoroan and on niht under oysse eoroan); or semantic opposition within a formal correlative syntactic structure (L£lc oin3 swa hit oe fyrr bio swa hit oa hesse oinco); or the semantic opposition may be constructed around the alliteration of a common word-pair (Seo is weaxende purh acennedum cildum and wani3ende purh fordfarendum). lElfric's artistry, in keeping with his concern to write in the simple style which he thought appropriate for instruction, seeks to be unobtrusive. His work is none the less constructed with considerable skill (Godden 1992).
