本文旨在通过对英语变体文本中的时间词、隐喻、文体和叙述模式的一系列分析，来研究古英语文学中的时间概念。本论文的研究对象。研究任何文化或文明中的时间概念都不是一件小事，然而对于古英语文学中的时间观念来说，这项任务更具挑战性。这一挑战部分是由于界定“旧英国文学”概念上的歧义。
Chapter 1 Introduction
This dissertation aims to study the concepts of time in Old English literature through aseries of analyses of time words, metaphors, styles, and narrative modes in variousOld English texts.^ The two key terms in the title, namely "Old English literature"and "concepts of time”，have defined the scope of the present dissertation. Studyingthe concepts of time in any culture or civilization is no small task, yet for the conceptsof time in Old English literature, the task is even more challenging. This challenge ispartly due to the conceptual ambiguity in defining "Old English literature". It isnecessary, before proceeding to the main business, for me to specify the contextswhere I use them. First, I use tiie term "literature" to include all manner of poetry andprose. It is very difficult to distinguish literature from non-literature in theAnglo-Saxon context since the notion of literature is a modem convention. The Old English texts to be discussed include Beowulf, HE, Chronicle, Dream^ etc. I use "OldEnglish literature" as a convenient category to cover different genres of Old Englishwritings. Then，with “Old English literature”，I emphasise the conversion context inAnglo-Saxon England. According to Bede's account in HE, in AD 592，the Romanpope Gregory sent Augustine to England who began to bodian Godes wordOngolpeode (“preach the God's words to the Angles”)，The conversion of theAnglo-Saxons is an essential context for the production and authorship of Old Englishliterature.5 Lastly, with "concepts of time", I stress the complexity of time in theAnglo-Saxon context. Time is a complex concept with many layers of meanings. Inthis dissertation, I only attempt to cover some aspects rather than all aspects of thecomplex meanings associated with time.The issue of time has received only limited treatment from studies that usuallyfocus on other topics. In the three major bibliographical tools of Anglo-Saxon studies-A Bibliography of Publications on Old English Literature to the End of 1972, theASE Bibliography, and the OEN Bibliography, time is only a sporadic topic，In thesection “Special Vocabulary and Semantic Field Studies’’ of A Bibliography ofPublications on Old English Literature to the End of 1912, only one entry is related totime/ The OEH Bibliography records 59 relevant entries from 1973 to 2006.8 The 83 entries ranging from 1971 to 2009 recorded in the ASE Bibliography overlap withthose in the OEN Bibliography，Considering the total number of literature available,the number of entries relevant to time only occupies a small percentage in theAnglo-Saxon scholarship.Though it has not received explicit critical attention in the previous Anglo-Saxonscholarship，the issue of time has a long critical tradition which could be dated back to1895 when Frederick Tupper published his dissertation "Anglo-Saxon Daeg-mael."^?In the dissertation, he discussed "the Anglo-Saxon day and the method of determiningits divisions，，，and examined "the Canonical Hours the basis of a detailed study of theAnglo-Saxon divisions of time...to show what these divisions meant to clerk andlayman.，，u While acknowledging what he had achieved in his studies, he recognizedhis own limitations: “I had in mind to discuss the Year, Seasons and Day inAnglo-Saxon poetry; but I reserve this treatment on account of the length of mypaper.，，i2 His study concerns primarily "the measurement sense" of time and hissupporting evidence come from Bede's Temporum. His contribution to the studies oftime lies in his reconsideration of Bede's notion of the measurement of time in theAnglo-Saxon context. In his study, the concepts of the day in Anglo-Saxon Englandare formulated in comparison with those in the Jewish，Greek and Roman civilizations.What he failed to notice is perhaps the two traditions - Germanic and Christiantraditions that c
