The purpose of this edition is to produce a new interpretation of the Exeter Book poem currently entitled The Descent into Hell. It is a poem that has been both neglected and misinterpreted over the centuries, and hence a fresh reading of the poem is long overdue. My study focuses extensively on the poem's content, meaning and the methods by which the main theme is conveyed. At the heart of this edition is a change in the poem's current title that, in my view, better reflects its central theme. However, in order to interpret the poem it is essential to have as accurate an edition of the work as possible. For that reason I also present a critical edition of the poem.

As there are several types of editions, it is important to explain why I chose specifically to undertake a critical edition and include a number of editorial practices from other types of editions for the poem I have renamed John the Baptist's Prayer. L. Reynolds and N. Wilson argue that on its most basic level the goal of the critical editor is to reconstruct the authorial form of the text. Regarding editorial practice in general, Reynolds and Wilson claim that ‘the basic essential equipment is taste, judgment, common sense and the capacity to distinguish what is wrong in a given context: as these remain the perquisite of human wit’.