Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts. By John D. Niles. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 40. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Pp. xiv + 372. €80.

The heroic poems that figure in Niles's book are Beowulf (chap. 1), Widsith (chap. 2), Deor (chap. 4), and The Battle of Maldon (chaps. 5 and 6). There is also a chapter on Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf (chap. 9); one on Bede's story of Cædmon's miracle, in which it is argued that it is a reflex of the Irish tale-type 2412b (chap. 8); and two rather more wide-ranging chapters, one examining the imaginative geography of Old English heroic poetry (chap. 3), and the other showing how societies "tell truth" through myths or myth-like stories in ways which are socially valuable (chap. 7). There is an underlying argument that all stories are encoded narratives which are socially embedded, and that there is no story for which one cannot legitimately ask, "Who is telling this story, to what moral or intellectual end, and to whose profit or advantage?" (p. 281).