Basic structure

The DOE Corpus comprises at least one copy of each text surviving in Old English, and sometimes multiple copies if of interest for dialect, date, etc. The body of surviving Old English texts encompasses a rich diversity of records written on parchment, carved in stone and inscribed on metal. These texts fall into several categories: prose, poetry, glosses to Latin texts and inscriptions. In the prose in particular, there is a wide range of texts: saints' lives, sermons, biblical translations, penitential writings, laws, charters and wills, records (of manumissions, land grants, land sales, land surveys), chronicles, a set of tables for computing the moveable feasts of the Church calendar and for astrological calculations, medical texts, prognostics (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the horoscope), charms (such as those for a toothache or for an easy labour), and even cryptograms.

Text types & word counts