Help! There’s a Beowulf after my Mouse!

Abstract

Imagine teaching the Norman invasion of England of 1066 - and unrolling the Bayeux Tapestry for your students to have a look at. Now imagine that you are a literary scholar studying Piers Plowman and are unsatisfied with the editions available at your university’s library - and so you conduct your own comparative study of surviving manuscripts. Finally, imagine that while writing you vaguely recall the perfect quotation from Augustine’s Confessions. Although you have no idea where in the Confessions the quote is from, you quickly locate it without even getting up from your PC.