ABSTRACT
The last twenty years has seen great advances in the study of Old English and Anglo-Saxon Latin glosses - or perhaps I should say glossing - some of it the work of contributors to this volume. I hope my knowledge and judgment are sound when I claim that emphasis has moved from glosses to glossing, as questions are asked, less about the equivalences of Latin and English words and their ranges of meaning, more about the nature and purpose of the apparently casual glossing of some manuscripts; with attempts to define what a manuscript or sometimes a group of manuscripts was intended for. What purposes did the glosses serve? What audiences are they suited to? What is the peculiar significance of dry-point glossing? What are the functions of glosses within a general manuscript context? Were glossed manuscripts attempts to provide teaching aids: primers or more advanced readers? What could be the implications, in late Old English terms, of a modern word like 'class-book'?
