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At the close of the ninth century Alfred the Great lamented the decay of teaming in England and proposed a program of official translations and scholarly study to set his country back on the path of intellectual inquiry. In his Preface to Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, Alfred equated a knowledge of texts with the right governance of self and state. That document, rich in the history of Anglo-Saxon England and suggestive of the uses of literacy, has long been a canonical text in the teaching of the Old English language, and it begins Seth Lerer's study of the place of texts in the construction of the Anglo-Saxon literary imagination. Beowulf, the Old English Daniel, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Exeter Book Riddles--all contain scenes of reading and writing, moments of self-conscious inscription and decipherment that have the power to alter the reader's conception of the mythical and historical, the commonplace and the fantastic. Lerer analyzes these scenes, which, taken in sequence, contribute to a reassessment of Old English literature, its nature and social function. He seeks to understand the workings of the lit-erate imagination in the history and fiction of the Anglo-Saxons. In the course of the book he addresses questions about how a Christian literature evokes its pagan past; about the nature of authority in Anglo-Saxon history, politics, and literature; and he considers how scholarly approaches to these questions--whether by medieval or by modern readers--create canons of literary history. Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature is the first book-length study to consider the construction of an early English cultural mythology of writing. Lerer's philological and historical explication of the texts provides new approaches for assessing representations of reading and writing in pre-Conquest literature. His book is a timely and provocative addition to medieval studies.
Reveals the rich emotional experience of teaching and learning as revealed in Anglo-Saxon literature.
The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook presents an accessible introduction to the surviving works of prose and poetry produced in Anglo-Saxon England, from AD 410-1066. Makes Anglo-Saxon literature accessible to modern readers Helps readers to overcome the linguistic, aesthetic and cultural barriers to understanding and appreciating Anglo-Saxon verse and prose Introduces readers to the language, politics, and religion of the Anglo-Saxon literary world Presents original readings of such works as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Childhood & Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture counters the generally received wisdom that early medieval childhood and adolescence were an unremittingly bleak experience. The contributors analyse representations of children and their education in Old English, Old Norse and Anglo-Latin writings, including hagiography, heroic poetry, riddles, legal documents, philosophical prose and elegies. Within and across these linguistic and generic boundaries some key themes emerge: the habits and expectations of name-giving, expressions of childhood nostalgia, the role of uneducated parents, and the religious zeal and rebelliousness of youth. After decades of study dominated by adult gender studies, Childhood & Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture rebalances our understanding of family life in the Anglo-Saxon era by reconstructing the lives of medieval children and adolescents through their literary representation.
Explores how power is shaped and negotiated in later Anglo-Saxon texts, focusing on how hierarchical, vertical structures are presented alongside patterns of reciprocity and economies of mutual obligation, especially within the context of secular, spiritual, literal or symbolic patronage relationships.
Most Old English literature was translated or adapted from Latin: what was translated, and when, reflects cultural development and the increasing respectability of English. Translation was central to Old English literature as we know it. Most Old English literature, in fact, was either translated or adapted from Latin sources, and this is the first full-length study of Anglo-Saxon translation as a cultural practice. This 'culture of translation' was characterised by changing attitudes towards English: at first a necessary evil, it can be seen developing increasing authority and sophistication. Translation's pedagogical function (already visible in Latin and Old English glosses) flourished in the centralizing translation programme of the ninth-century translator-king Alfred, and English translations of the Bible further confirmed the respectability ofEnglish, while Ælfric's late tenth-century translation theory transformed principles of Latin composition into a new and vigorous language for English preaching and teaching texts. The book will integrate the Anglo-Saxon period more fully into the longer history of English translation.ROBERT STANTON is Assistant Professor of English, Boston College, Massachusetts.
This collection of twenty-nine papers is in honour of E. G. Stanley, Rawlinson and Bosworth Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Written by scholars he has supervised, examined or otherwise served as mentor for within the last twenty years, the contributors illustrate the advantages of following John Donne's axiom to 'doubt wisely'. Professor Stanley's own published work has shown the utility of wise scepticism as a critical stance; these papers presented to him apply similar approaches to a wide variety of texts, most of them in the field of Old or Middle English literature. The primary focus of the collection is on the close reading of words in their immediate context, which commonly entails a reconsideration of accepted assumptions. Consequently, new links are created here among the disciplines in medieval studies, based on various combinations of these scholarly applications. Contributors provide new analyses of such difficult but rewarding fields as Old English metre and syntax, Beowulf, the origins and development of standard English, the definitions of Old English words and their connotations, the styles and themes of Old English poems, Middle English poetry and prose, the post-medieval reception of medieval works and the styles, themes and sources of Old English poetry and prose. M.J. Toswell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.E.M. Tyler is Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York.
First published in 2001, Double Agents was the first book-length study of women in Anglo-Saxon written culture that took on the insights provided by contemporary critical and feminist theory, and it quickly established itself as a standard. Now available again, it complicates the exclusion of women from the historical record of Anglo-Saxon England by tackling the deeper questions behind how the feminine is modeled, used, and made metaphoric in Anglo-Saxon texts, even when the women themselves are absent.
This volume compares characteristics of Old English literature to ‘Matter of England’ romances to determine whether key aspects of the poetry of the former continued in these stories on into the Middle English period. First, the book demonstrates the contemplative tone, respect for nature, and communal mindset present via monastic and hagiographic traditions in Old English poetry, before arguing that the midland romances, King Horn and Athelston, also possess these characteristics. Ultimately, it reveals important aspects of the afterlife of Old English literature and culture in England. Some intriguing discoveries are detailed, including unexpected points of contact between the English and Arabs in both the pre- and post-Conquest periods, as shown by the etymology of Saracen diction in King Horn. Furthermore, comparisons with the dreamer in The Dream of the Rood and an examination of the Old English verb “þencan” used by the Saracen reveal a complicated characterization, which goes deeper than what may be expected for the stock pagan enemy in Middle English romance. The book also investigates the possibility that, in Athelston, there is a reference to the Viking Guthrum, revealing the complex associations that late medieval English culture might have had with its Viking/Anglo-Saxon past. Finally, while looking at Athelston through the lens of the Anglo-Saxon natural world, this study probes what feels like a very Old English sense of kenotic love (via St. Edmund). This is manifested in the promise of grace at the outset of the romance, one that oversees not only a chain of events leading to King Athelston’s final submission and repentance, but also the unification of disparate cultures and a leveling of hierarchies. These romances seem to imbue the stories with a spiritual component, a “concrete universal,” and signify metonymy similar to the elegiac hopeful longing and the communal in the Old English poetry.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture uncovers the voice and agency possessed by nonhuman things across Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture. It makes a new contribution to ‘thing theory’ and rethinks conventional divisions between animate human subjects and inanimate nonhuman objects in the early Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon writers and craftsmen describe artefacts and animals through riddling forms or enigmatic language, balancing an attempt to speak and listen to things with an understanding that these nonhumans often elude, defy and withdraw from us. But the active role that things have in the early medieval world is also linked to the Germanic origins of the word, where a þing is a kind of assembly, with the ability to draw together other elements, creating assemblages in which human and nonhuman forces combine.