Description

Now available in paperback, Winters in the World is a beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs and traditions linked to the different seasons. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including poetry, histories and religious literature, Eleanor Parker investigates how Anglo-Saxons felt about the annual passing of the seasons and the profound relationship they saw between human life and the rhythms of nature.
Many of the festivals we celebrate in Britain today have their roots in the Anglo-Saxon period, and this book traces their surprising history, as well as unearthing traditions now long forgotten. It celebrates some of the finest treasures of medieval literature and provides an imaginative connection to the Anglo-Saxon world.

Publisher Review

'[Parker's] prose is as lyrical as the poetry that she so deftly translates . . . Parker's larger point is to show how older ways of experiencing the seasons continue to run steadily through our lives, even if we don't quite register the tug. This lovely book acts as a portal back to an older time, using the poetry of medieval England to unlock a world where the seasons, and the changing weather, are a subject of deep pleasure and renewing wonder.' - The Guardian; 'Eleanor Parker in her fascinating and authoritative new book Winters in the World explains that the original division of the seasons in England before the Conquest was into winter and summer. Even today, we are not quite sure, I think, about how long spring and autumn last . . . Dr Parker, a lecturer at Brasenose College, Oxford, rejoices in two advantages. She has read and understood the original texts and she is superb in explaining them and the world from which they sprang.' - Daily Telegraph; 'Parker takes us through the rhythms of the Anglo-Saxon year, charting its seasons and traditions: its weather and agricultural patterns, its festivals and religious customs . . . Her lyrical, insightful book is being published in a year in which heat records have been broken across the world, and Weland's winter-cold misery has ceded to a summer-hot equivalent. If heat is now the invading warrior, then it is one we have invited. As the crisis deepens, the texts that survive from Anglo-Saxon England "speak truths that we still need to hear" about the rhythms of nature and our dependency on the bounty of the earth.' - Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Times Literary Supplement; 'In this wonderfully poetic journey through the Anglo-Saxon year, Eleanor Parker offers a profound meditation on time and the world, nature and its seasons. Plunging the reader into the glorious cadences of Old English poetry with her supple translations, Parker brings to vivid life the terrors of winter, spring's promise, the joyful warmth of summer and the melancholy of autumn, powerfully connecting us with a rich and vital past that we have not quite lost.' - Carolyne Larrington, Professor of Medieval European Literature, University of Oxford; 'A fascinating, informative and hauntingly authentic account of the Anglo-Saxon experience of time; Eleanor Parker shows that understanding the early English calendar is a crucial point of access to Anglo-Saxon spirituality, learning, science, poetry and much more besides.' - Francis Young, author of Magic in Merlin's Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain; 'This book is a treasure and a delight, full of beautiful poetry and prose from the treasure-house of Anglo-Saxon culture. Lucid translations, accessible introductions and explanation, all combine to lead us through the cycle of the seasons . . . Eleanor Parker offers us a vision of time itself made sacred, each month hallowed, and full of unexpected beauty and wisdom.' - Malcolm Guite, poet and life fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge; 'Eleanor Parker's Winters in the World is a lyrical journey through the Anglo-Saxon year, witnessing the major festivals and the turning of the seasons through the eyes of the poets . . . we approach an appreciation of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors as we dive into the rhythms of their lives and language, their turns of phrase, and the force of their habits. It is a beautiful, charming, and evocative voyage into what, to many of us, seems a very distant past . . . Parker shows herself to be a master of her subject. Her knowledge is superb; her writing a form of poetry itself . . . Through her enchanting prose, her analogies, her eloquence, Parker convinces her audience of the intelligence, imagination and immense beauty of her subject. No-one can come away from this book still believing the Anglo-Saxons to have lived through the "Dark Ages".' - Get History; 'Both an accessible introduction to the Anglo-Saxon age and an evocative celebration of its seasonal rhythms and links with nature, this book guides readers through the year as captured by the writers of the era.' - History Revealed; 'Anglo-Saxons experienced the turning of the year differently: with most wealth derived from agriculture, and over 90 per cent of the population in the fields, it was the rhythms of sowing, growing and reaping that dominated. That is the focus of Eleanor Parker's delightful and informative book, in which she introduces the workings of an Anglo-Saxon year with verve. Expertly drawing on the Old English poetic corpus, Parker gives a keen sense of how the four seasons were experienced . . . Throughout the book, Parker writes with great empathy, evoking the lost world of pre-Conquest England.' - BBC History magazine; 'With a compendium of textual period sources, Winters in the World offers a unique window into the rhythms of Anglo-Saxon England, which continue in part to this day. Parker eloquently captures the cultural vibrancy of the time with her analysis of the effect of the rhythms of nature on religious, social, and labor patterns . . . Parker illuminates the inner workings of the Anglo-Saxon mind' - The New Criterion; 'a guided tour through the Anglo-Saxon perception and measurement of time - a reckoning that was more closely linked to the rhythms of the natural world than our own today yet from which we still retain aspects of which we may not be aware . . .this book should now be taken up for reading as both edification and entertainment during the long, dark evenings to come.' - The Well-read Naturalist