SOURCE: George Hardin Brown, "Homilies, Hagiography, Poems, Letters," in Bede the Venerable, Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 62-80.

In the following excerpt, Brown examines stylistic differences among the four different genres in which Bede composed: homilies, hagiography, poems, and letters.

These popular medieval genres, once dismissed as dull or derivative, have peculiar qualities that have elicited a good deal of interest and study in recent years. But, despite Bede's important contributions and fame in each of these categories, his own creations have received little theological, historical, or literary attention. Bede's writing was often praised in his age and is esteemed in ours for its clarity, cleanness, straightforwardness, and force.¹ Yet there has not yet been any comprehensive investigation into the sources of his style or any extensive study of the style itself.² Similarly, the other literary qualities the work possess have with few exceptions only been alluded to. At present...