Abstract The Fuller Brooch is considered the earliest English representation of the five senses. The central character, representing sight, is thought to also hold one or more figurative meanings, linked to ideas and concepts that were current in King Alfred’s cultural context. These figurative meanings were presumably meant to be emphasised and clarified by the two objects this figure is holding. So far, however, these have not been satisfactorily interpreted, with most scholars tentatively identifying them as plants or cornucopias. This study makes a case for these objects to be torches, embodying the concept of light, so central in the theme of theoculi mentis‘eyes of the mind’ and in Alfred’s ideas of wisdom and learning. The relevance of divine light in the Alfredian cultural framework emerges clearly from the translations into English of theSoliloquia, of theConsolatio Philosophiaeand of theRegula pastoralis. Evidence also emerges from the iconography of theinluminatio‘illumination’ of theoculi mentisfor the acquisition of divine wisdom featuring in the Utrecht Psalter (and its later copies), and from the iconographical connection between torches, light and God that can be seen in the historiated initial of one of the hymns of the Durham Hymnal.

Article Juliane Braun. 2019. Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans. Writing the Early Americas 4. Charlottesville, VA/London: The University of Virginia Press, 280 pp., 12 illustr., $ 69.50. was published on December 1, 2022 in the journal Anglia (volume 140, issue 3-4).

The carceral, as Monika Fludernik had first observed in 1999, pervades our world, not only in the form of material sites of incarceration, but also in the metaphors we deploy in everyday conversation and in various text forms, including fictional and non-fictional narrative representations in different media and genres. In Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy (2019), the culmination of twenty years of work on the subject, Fludernik reiterates her 2005 definition of two main types of carceral metaphors: “prison is x” – describing and making sense of the prison and experiences of imprisonment; and “x is prison” – conceiving of other aspects of the social world in terms of incarceration (2019: 46).

Article Erin James and Eric Morel (eds.). 2020. Environment and Narrative: New Directions in Econarratology. Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 232 pp., $ 69.95. was published on June 1, 2022 in the journal Anglia (volume 140, issue 2).

Article Timo Müller. 2018. The African American Sonnet: A Literary History. Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, x + 172 pp., $ 99.00 was published on March 1, 2022 in the journal Anglia (volume 140, issue 1).

Abstract In the 1970 s and 1980s Graham Greene took up the habit of travelling around Spain to holiday in the company of his Spanish friend, the priest and professor Leopoldo Durán. The most outstanding fruit of these trips, almost always in summer, was the inspiration for Monsignor Quixote (1982), which Greene came to regard as his most accomplished novel (Cloetta 2004: 77). Centred around an idealistic, innocent, and somewhat foolish priest who establishes an intimate friendship with a communist ex-mayor, with whom he travels around Spain and talks about the divine and the human, the novel was initially conceived as a kind of friendly caricature of Father Durán, but it soon served as a vehicle to express various concerns that haunted the writer’s mind. The opening of the “Durán papers” collection at Georgetown University enables scholars to delve into unpublished material kept by Durán over the years, which may cast insights into the genesis of Monsignor Quixote from both textual and biographical perspectives. Taking as a major source Durán’s diaries, 16 notebooks recording his meetings and telephone conversations with Greene from 1976 to 1991, this paper aims to clarify some of the relevant background to the book’s inception, complementing the diaries with other accounts such as Greene’s letters to Durán and other friends, Durán’s letters to Greene, and testimonies by witnesses present at the events described.1

Article Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile. Ed. A. N. Doane, Matthew T. Hussey and †Phillip Pulsiano. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS). Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), single volumes: $ 120.00/£ 76.00 (institution), $ 90.00/£ 58.00 (individual); vol. 28: $ 150.00.Vol. 24: Manuscripts in Austria and Germany. Descriptions by Charles D. Wright. 2015. MRTS 469, xiv + 192 pp. and 42 microfiches in 9 sets (1,220 folios).Vol. 25: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge II. Descriptions by Peter J. Lucas. 2016. MRTS 497, xii + 168 pp. and 64 microfiches in 11 sets (2,144 folios).Vol. 26: Europe I. Descriptions by A. N. Doane. With Contributions by Peter J. Lucas, †Lisi Oliver, †Phillip Pulsiano, and Charles D. Wright. 2018. MRTS 532, xiv + 181 pp. and DVD (1,192 folios).Vol. 27: Manuscripts in Italy. Descriptions by Peter J. Lucas. 2018. MRTS 533, x + 120 pp. and DVD (1,011 folios).Vol. 28: Bede Manuscripts. Descriptions by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe. 2020. MRTS 559, xii + 57 pp. and DVD (932 folios). was published on November 1, 2021 in the journal Anglia (volume 139, issue 4).

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.

Article Peter Petré, Hubert Cuyckens and Frauke D’hoedt (eds.). 2018. Sociocultural Dimensions of Lexis and Text in the History of English. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 343. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, viii + 258 pp., € 99.00/$ 149.00. was published on June 1, 2021 in the journal Anglia (volume 139, issue 2).

Article Robert McColl Millar. 2020. A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, xiii + 252 pp., 6 maps, £ 75.00. was published on June 1, 2021 in the journal Anglia (volume 139, issue 2).