SOURCE: Bayless, Martha. “Alcuin's Disputatio Pippini and the Early Medieval Riddle Tradition.” In Humour, History, and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Guy Halsall, pp. 157-78. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

In the following essay, Bayless examines Alcuin's collection of riddles.

The early medieval period saw a flowring of riddles and riddle collections, both religious and secular, both earnest and light-hearted. To date the greater part of scholarly attention has been focussed on the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book, on the grounds both of literary merit and of mystery—the text does not include the answers, an omission that has provided happy occupation for decades of scholars. These two features—literary merit and mystery—also appear in what is perhaps a yet more remarkable riddle collection, the Disputatio regalis et nobilissimi iuvenis Pippini cum Albino scholastico of Alcuin.¹ The Disputatio is...