A Companion to Ælfric

A Companion to Ælfric
Author: Hugh Magennis
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2009
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004176810

This collection provides a new, authoritative and challenging study of the life and works of Ællfric of Eynsham, the most important vernacular religious writer in the history of Anglo-Saxon England.

Translating Europe in ?lfric's Lives of Saints

Translating Europe in ?lfric's Lives of Saints
Author: Luisa Ostacchini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024-07-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0198913753

Translating Europe in ?lfric's 'Lives of Saints' is the first study of the representation of European peoples, places, and geographies in the Lives of Saints, one of early medieval England's most famed works. It examines the Lives of Saints as a unified collection whose various items work cumulatively and concurrently to provide audiences with teachings far beyond the scope of an individual homily or saints' life. In doing so, it demonstrates that ?lfric's European characters and settings served not merely as a convenient skeleton on which to frame his hagiographical narratives, but rather lay at the heart of his didactic praxis and pedagogic aims. Luisa Ostacchini systematically compares each of the 30 plus items that comprise ?lfric's Lives of Saints to their Latin sources and to one another to highlight previously unnoticed patterns and formulae within collection. In so doing, she demonstrates that ?lfric's interest in community was both inward and outward looking: he sought on the one hand to situate England within the wider Christian world, and on the other hand to promote the internal unity of the English kingdom and the reformed monastic establishment. This book sheds new light on the ways that ?lfric wrote about the Christian world and England's place within it, and further illuminates of the didactic praxis and ideology of one of the most influential and significant authors of the early medieval period. Luisa Ostacchini is a college lecturer at St John's College, Oxford, where she teaches Old and Middle English literature.

The Third Gender and Aelfric's Lives of Saints

The Third Gender and Aelfric's Lives of Saints
Author: Rhonda L McDaniel
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580443109

In The Third Gender, McDaniel addresses the idea of the "third gender" in early hagiography and Latin treatises on virginity and then examines Aelfric's treatment of gender in his translations of Latin monastic Lives for his non-monastic audiences. She first investigates patristic ideas about a "third gender" by describing this concept within the theoretical frameworks of monasticism and then turns to creating a historical and theological cultural context within which to locate an interpretation of Aelfric's portrayals of male and female saints.

Aelfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England

Aelfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Mechthild Gretsch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2006-01-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113944865X

The cult of saints was one of the most important aspects of life in the Middle Ages, and it often formed the nucleus of developing group identities in a town, a province or a country. The literature of Anglo-Saxon England is unique among contemporary European literatures in that it features a vast amount of saints' Lives in the vernacular. Of these Lives, Ælfric is the most important author, and his saints' Lives have never previously been explored in their contemporary setting. In this study, Gretsch analyses Ælfric's Lives of five important saints in the light of their cults in Anglo-Saxon England. This gives the reader fascinating glimpses of 'Ælfric at work': he adapts the cults and rewrites the received Latin hagiography of the five saints, with the result that each of their English Lives conveys a distinct message to the contemporary political elite and to a lay audience at large.

The Displacement of the Body in Ælfric's Virgin Martyr Lives

The Displacement of the Body in Ælfric's Virgin Martyr Lives
Author: Alison Gulley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2016-03-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317035526

The Displacement of the Body in Ælfric's Virgin Martyr Lives addresses 10th-century Old English hagiographical translations, from Latin source material, by the abbot and grammarian Ælfric. The vitae of Agnes, Agatha, Lucy, and Eugenia, and the married saints Daria, Basilissa, and Cecilia, included in Ælfric's s Old English Lives of Saints, recount the lives, persecution, and martyrdom of young women who renounce sex and, in the first four stories, marriage, to devote their lives to Christian service. They purport to be about the primacy of virginity and the role of the body in attaining sanctity. However, a comparison of the Latin sources with Ælfric's versions suggests that his translation style, characterized by simplifying the most important meanings of the text, omits certain words or entire episodes that foreground suppressed female sexuality as key to sainthood. The Old English Lives de-emphasize the physical nature of faith and highlight the importance of spiritual purity. In this volume, Alison Gulley explores how the context of the Benedictine Reform in late Anglo-Saxon England and Ælfric's commitment to writing for a lay audience resulted in a set of stories depicting a spirituality distinct from physical intactness.