Da Davide ad Alfredo. La traduzione del Salterio nell'Inghilterra anglosassone

The Old English Prose Psalter (Paris, B.N., lat. 8824, eleventh century) poses a variety of problems to the reader, one of which is its debated attribution to king Alfred the Great. After an overview of the diffusion of the Psalter in Anglo-Saxon England, of the king's tendency to appropriate scriptural voices and of the early development of the Alfredian myth, the present paper focuses on Psalm 43, which represents a classical example of a plea against the oppression of the enemies. The analysis of some key terms to be found in it and a comparison to other vernacular Psalm translations or glosses contribute to state the distinctive features of the prose Paris Psalter and to attribute the work to the difficult period of the Viking’s wars in Alfred's time rather than to the eleventh century manuscript context.