Anonymous Interpolations in Aelfric's Lives of Saints

Anonymous Interpolations in Aelfric's Lives of Saints
Author: Robin Norris
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2011
Genre: Christian literature, English (Old)
ISBN: 9781580441636

This volume contains four essays: Life of Saint Euphrosyne, Saint Mary of Egypt, Seven sleepers, and Passion of Saint Eustace anonymously interpolated in Aelfric's Lives of Saints.

Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England

Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Paul Szarmach
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2013-12-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442664584

The twelve essays in this collection advance the contemporary study of the women saints of Anglo-Saxon England by challenging received wisdom and offering alternative methodologies. The work embraces a number of different scholarly approaches, from codicological study to feminist theory. While some contributions are dedicated to the description and reconstruction of female lives of saints and their cults, others explore the broader ideological and cultural investments of the literature. The volume concentrates on four major areas: the female saint in the Old English Martyrology, genre including hagiography and homelitic writing, motherhood and chastity, and differing perspectives on lives of virgin martyrs. The essays reveal how saints’ lives that exist on the apparent margins of orthodoxy actually demonstrate a successful literary challenge extending the idea of a holy life.

The Life of Saint Eufrosine

The Life of Saint Eufrosine
Author:
Publisher: Modern Language Association
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1603295062

As a young woman from a wealthy family, Eufrosine was expected to marry a nobleman. Instead, she wanted to serve God. So she cut her hair, dressed as a man, and traveled to a monastery, becoming a monk named Emerald. Adapted from a Latin source, this saint's life dates to about 1200 CE. Devout yet erotic, lyrical yet didactic, it blends hagiography with romance and epic in order to engage and inspire a broad audience. The tale invites readers to rethink preconceived notions of the Middle Ages, the relation between spiritual and secular values, and ideas about the history of sexuality, identity, and family. Only fragments of the poem have been previously translated. This edition includes the first full translation alongside the Old French original as well as a glossary and other supporting material.

Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England

Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England
Author: Andrew Rabin
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2023-02-21
Genre:
ISBN: 1783277602

Valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society. Pre-Conquest English law was among the most sophisticated in early medieval Europe. Composed largely in the vernacular, it played a crucial role in the evolution of early English identity and exercised a formative influence on the development of the Common Law. However, recent scholarship has also revealed the significant influence of these legal documents and ideas on other cultural domains, both modern and pre-modern. This collection explores the richness of pre-Conquest legal writing by looking beyond its traditional codified form. Drawing on methodologies ranging from traditional philology to legal and literary theory, and from a diverse selection of contributors offering a broad spectrum of disciplines, specialities and perspectives, the essays examine the intersection between traditional juridical texts - from law codes and charters to treatises and religious regulation - and a wide range of literary genres, including hagiography and heroic poetry. In doing so, they demonstrate that the boundary that has traditionally separated "law" from other modes of thought and writing is far more porous than hitherto realized. Overall, the volume yields valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society.

Epistolary Acts

Epistolary Acts
Author: Jordan Zweck
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2018-02-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1487512252

As challenging as it is to imagine how an educated cleric or wealthy lay person in the early Middle Ages would have understood a letter (especially one from God), it is even harder to understand why letters would have so captured the imagination of people who might never have produced, sent, or received letters themselves. In Epistolary Acts, Jordan Zweck examines the presentation of letters in early medieval vernacular literature, including hagiography, prose romance, poetry, and sermons on letters from heaven, moving beyond traditional genre study to offer a radically new way of conceptualizing Anglo-Saxon epistolarity. Zweck argues that what makes early medieval English epistolarity unique is the performance of what she calls “epistolary acts,” the moments when authors represent or embed letters within vernacular texts. The book contributes to a growing interest in the intersections between medieval studies and media studies, blending traditional book history and manuscript studies with affect theory, media studies, and archive studies.

A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages

A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2016-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004329641

The biblical book of Job is a timeless text that relates a story of intense human suffering, abandonment, and eventual redemption. It is a tale of profound theological, philosophical, and existential significance that has captured the imaginations of auditors, exegetes, artists, religious leaders, poets, preachers, and teachers throughout the centuries. This original volume provides an introduction to the wide range of interpretations and representations of Job—both the scriptural book and its righteous protagonist—produced in the medieval Christian West. The essays gathered here treat not only exegetical and theological works such as Gregory’s Moralia and the literal commentaries of Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Lyra, but also poetry and works of art that have Job as their subject.

Between earth and heaven

Between earth and heaven
Author: Johanna Kramer
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2016-05-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1526110601

Between earth and heaven examines the teaching of the theology of Christ’s ascension in Anglo-Saxon literature, offering the only comprehensive examination of how patristic ascension theology is transmitted, adapted and taught to Anglo-Saxon audiences. This book argues that Anglo-Saxon authors recognise the Ascension as fundamentally liminal in nature, as concerned with crossing boundaries and inhabiting dual states. In their teaching, authors convert abstract theology into concrete motifs reflecting this liminality, such as the gates of heaven and Christ’s footprints. By examining a range of liminal imagery, Between earth and heaven demonstrates the consistent sophistication and unity of Ascension theology in such diverse sources as Latin and Old English homilies, religious poetry, liturgical practices, and lay popular beliefs and rituals. This study not only refines our evaluation of Anglo-Saxon authors’ knowledge of patristic theology and their process of source adaptation, but also offers a new understanding of the methods of religious instruction and uses of religious texts in Anglo-Saxon England, capturing their lived significance to contemporary audiences.

Cross-dressing in the Middle Ages

Cross-dressing in the Middle Ages
Author: Marina Montesano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2024-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040153240

By encompassing the hagiographies of the first centuries, the most famous case of Joan of Arc, numerous chivalrous novels, and the overlooked accounts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this is the first study to consider cross-dressing for the entire medieval age. Cross-dressing is a thought-provoking practice in a world that, in theory, adheres to neat distinctions of the functions and attires of males and females in society; this volume demonstrates that only a long-term analysis can fully account for the phenomenon in its various facets. If dress is a gender marker, the argument that it also marks many other conditions beyond the man–woman binary cannot be ignored. There is a dress for the cleric and one for the layman; there is the dress of the rich and that of the poor. In some cases, these other binary distinctions are intertwined with that of sex and gender, and this intersectional perspective is developed through a wide range of sources read with philological rigour. The narrative style makes this book accessible to both students and general readers interested in the history of sexuality, gender history, and medieval studies.

The Medieval North and Its Afterlife

The Medieval North and Its Afterlife
Author: Siân Grønlie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2023-12-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501516590

This book showcases the variety and vitality of contemporary scholarship on Old Norse and related medieval literatures and their modern afterlives. The volume features original new work on Old Norse poetry and saga, other languages and literatures of medieval north-western Europe, and the afterlife of Old Norse in modern English literature. Demonstrating the lively state of contemporary research on Old Norse and related subjects, this collection celebrates Heather O’Donoghue’s extraordinary and enduring influence on the field, as manifested in the wide-ranging and innovative research of her former students and colleagues.

Grief, Gender, and Identity in the Middle Ages

Grief, Gender, and Identity in the Middle Ages
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004499695

Examines depictions of grief in the Middle Ages by exploring how grief relates to gender and identity, as well as how men and women perform grief within the various constructions of both gender and grief established by medieval culture.