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A fresh approach to the works and manuscripts of this influential monk, whose writings synthesised some of the finest minds of the period. A thousand years and more ago, with Vikings ravaging the coastlines and the millennium drawing nigh, a monk named Ælfric embarked on studies that would make him the most erudite, prolific, and influential author writing in English before Chaucer. What drove Ælfric was no desire to leave his mark on history, however, but the belief that he held a treasure on which the temporal and eternal welfare of his contemporaries depended: knowledge of the rich moral teachings of the early Christian church. What he produced was an astonishing synthesis of some of th...
Anglo-Saxon England is the only publication which consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 37 include: Record of the thirteenth conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, 30 July to 4 August 2007; The virtues of rhetoric: Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus; King Edgar's charter for Pershore (972); Lost voices from Anglo-Saxon Lichfield; The Old English Promissio Regis; 'lfric, the Vikings, and an anonymous preacher in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (162); Re-evaluating base-metal artifacts: an inscribed lead strap-end from Crewkerne, Somerset; Anglo-Saxon and related entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); Bibliography for 2007.
A consideration of the theme of demons as teachers in early English literature.
In Compelling God, Stephanie Clark examines the relationship between prayer, gift giving, the self, and community in Anglo-Saxon England.
Through close examination of ancient, medieval, and modern Lives of the saints, Ann W. Astell demonstrates how the historical transformation of hagiography as a genre correlates with similar changes in biblical studies. Christian hagiography flourished from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, illuminating the gospel through the overlapping forms of exempla and vita. Originally, the Lives of the saints were understood as hermeneutical extensions of the Bible—God authors the saint, just as God authors the divinely inspired scriptures. During the medieval period, a sense of dual authorship between God and the cooperating saint developed, paralleling the Scholastic impulse to assign greater agency to the human writers of scripture. Then, in the sixteenth century, powerful new anxieties about historical truth pushed hagiography aside for biography, its successor. Drawing on her expertise in the history of Christianity and biblical exegesis, Astell convincingly shows how this radical shift in hagiography’s status—the loss of the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses of the Lives—serves as a bellwether for modern biblical reception.
This book analyses the positions of external church doorways in England to investigate the significance that positioning had for the function and design of these buildings. The author proposes a link between the design and function of parochial churches and chapels with the number and attributes of their doorways.
Argues for a new understanding of Old English responses to materiality and historical change. Human communities have interacted with the material remains of earlier periods for millennia. Such "archaeological objects" - including bones, coins, weapons, building materials and architectural landmarks - were physically handled, reused, transformed and reinterpreted; they were also depicted in literature. This book examines how Old English texts imagine such human encounters with the remnants of the past. It explores Elene's perspective on the discovery of the True Cross as a narrative of political, spiritual and epistemic translatio and the multiple ways in which The Wanderer and The Ruin use i...
An examination of how emotions were practised and performed through Old English texts.Scholarship is increasingly interested in investigating concepts of emotion found in Old English literature. This study takes the next step, arguing that both heroic and religious texts were vehicles for emotional practice - that is, for doing things with emotion. Using case studies from heroic poetry (Beowulf, The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon), religious poetry (Christ I and Christ III) and homilies (selections from the Vercelli Book, Blickling Homilies and the works of Wulfstan), it shows via detailed close readings that texts could be used to act out emotional styles, manage the emotions...
Over the last twenty years, increasing attention has been given to the interpretation of St. Paul in the Middle Ages. This is one of the first scholarly volumes to look broadly at the understanding and use of Paul in medieval Europe. It focuses not only on the interpretation of the Apostle by patristic and medieval exegetes, but also on the use of his teachings by church reformers, canon lawyers, and spiritual teachers, and his portrayal in art and vernacular literature and culture. By bringing together both exegetical studies of Pauline interpretation with explorations of newer themes, this book provides a more complete view of the medieval Paul than has previously been available. Contributors include Csaba Nemeth, Ian Levy, Thomas Scheck, Joshua Papsdorf, Valerie Heuchan, Ann collins, Lisa Fagin Davis, James Morey, Ken Grant, Colt Anderson, Franklin Harkins, Steven Cartwright, and Aaron Canty.
This collection provides a new, authoritative and challenging study of the life and works of Ælfric of Eynsham, the most important vernacular religious writer in the history of Anglo-Saxon England. The contributors include almost all of the key Ælfric scholars working today and some important newer voices. Each of the chapters is a cutting-edge piece of work which addresses one aspect of Ælfric’s works or career. The chapters are organised topically, rather than by chronology, genre or biography, and between them cover the entire Ælfrician corpus and the major contextual issues; consideration of Ælfric’s Latin writings is carefully integrated with that of his Old English works. Ælfric studies are currently a central element of Anglo-Saxon studies, but while to date there has been a great deal of detailed work on some aspects of Ælfric, this collection provides the first overview. Contributors: Hugh Magennis, Joyce Hill, Christopher A. Jones, Mechthild Gretsch, M. R. Godden, Catherine Cubitt, Thomas N. Hall, Robert K. Upchurch, Mary Swan, Clare A. Lees, Gabriella Corona, Kathleen Davis, Jonathan Wilcox, Aaron J Kleist and Elaine Treharne.