<p>Old English literature thrived in late tenth-century England. Its success was the result of a concerted effort by the leaders of the Benedictine Reform movement to encourage both widespread literacy and a simple literary style. The manuscripts written in this era are the source for the majority of the Old English literature that survives today, including literary classics such as<em>Beowulf</em>. Yet the same monks who copied and compiled these important Old English texts themselves wrote in a rarified Latin, full of esoteric vocabulary and convoluted syntax and almost incomprehensible even to the well-educated.</p><p>Comparing works by the two most prolific authors of the era, Byrhtferth of Ramsey and Ælfric of Eynsham, Rebecca Stephenson explains the politics that encouraged the simultaneous development of a simple English style and an esoteric Latin style. By examining developments in Old English and Anglo-Latin side by side, <em>The Politics of Language</em> opens up a valuable new perspective on the Benedictine Reform and literacy in the late Anglo-Saxon period.</p>