Anglo-Saxon Saints Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval England

Anglo-Saxon Saints Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval England

Author: Cynthia Turner Camp

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1843844028

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A groundbreaking assessment of the use medieval English history-writers made of saints' lives.


Book Synopsis Anglo-Saxon Saints Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval England by : Cynthia Turner Camp

Download or read book Anglo-Saxon Saints Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval England written by Cynthia Turner Camp and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2015 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking assessment of the use medieval English history-writers made of saints' lives.


New Legends of England

New Legends of England

Author: Catherine Sanok

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 081229470X

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In New Legends of England, Catherine Sanok examines a significant, albeit previously unrecognized, phenomenon of fifteenth-century literary culture in England: the sudden fascination with the Lives of British, Anglo-Saxon, and other native saints. Embodying a variety of literary forms—from elevated Latinate verse, to popular traditions such as the carol, to translations of earlier verse legends into the medium of prose—the Middle English Lives of England's saints are rarely discussed in relation to one another or seen as constituting a distinct literary genre. However, Sanok argues, these legends, when grouped together were an important narrative forum for exploring overlapping forms of secular and religious community at local, national, and supranational scales: the monastery, the city, and local cults; the nation and the realm; European Christendom and, at the end of the fifteenth century, a world that was suddenly expanding across the Atlantic. Reading texts such as the South English Legendary, The Life of St. Etheldrede, the Golden Legend, and poems about Saints Wenefrid and Ursula, Sanok focuses especially on the significance of their varied and often experimental forms. She shows how Middle English Lives of native saints revealed, through their literary forms, modes of affinity and difference that, in turn, reflected a diversity in the extent and structure of medieval communities. Taking up key questions about jurisdiction, temporality, and embodiment, New Legends of England presents some of the ways in which the Lives of England's saints theorized community and explored its constitutive paradox: the irresolvable tension between singular and collective forms of identity.


Book Synopsis New Legends of England by : Catherine Sanok

Download or read book New Legends of England written by Catherine Sanok and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In New Legends of England, Catherine Sanok examines a significant, albeit previously unrecognized, phenomenon of fifteenth-century literary culture in England: the sudden fascination with the Lives of British, Anglo-Saxon, and other native saints. Embodying a variety of literary forms—from elevated Latinate verse, to popular traditions such as the carol, to translations of earlier verse legends into the medium of prose—the Middle English Lives of England's saints are rarely discussed in relation to one another or seen as constituting a distinct literary genre. However, Sanok argues, these legends, when grouped together were an important narrative forum for exploring overlapping forms of secular and religious community at local, national, and supranational scales: the monastery, the city, and local cults; the nation and the realm; European Christendom and, at the end of the fifteenth century, a world that was suddenly expanding across the Atlantic. Reading texts such as the South English Legendary, The Life of St. Etheldrede, the Golden Legend, and poems about Saints Wenefrid and Ursula, Sanok focuses especially on the significance of their varied and often experimental forms. She shows how Middle English Lives of native saints revealed, through their literary forms, modes of affinity and difference that, in turn, reflected a diversity in the extent and structure of medieval communities. Taking up key questions about jurisdiction, temporality, and embodiment, New Legends of England presents some of the ways in which the Lives of England's saints theorized community and explored its constitutive paradox: the irresolvable tension between singular and collective forms of identity.


Tradition and Belief

Tradition and Belief

Author: Clare A. Lees

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published:

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781452903880

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In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English -- Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church -- its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such -- and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics -- the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.


Book Synopsis Tradition and Belief by : Clare A. Lees

Download or read book Tradition and Belief written by Clare A. Lees and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English -- Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church -- its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such -- and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics -- the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.


Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections

Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections

Author: Anne B Thompson

Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications

Published: 2005-04-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1580444075

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This volume is conceived as a complement to another Middle English Texts series text, Sherry Reames' Middle English Legends of Women Saints. This selection is intended to be broadly representative of saints' lives in Middle English and of the classic types of hagiographic legend as these were presented to the lay public and less-literate clergy of late medieval England.


Book Synopsis Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections by : Anne B Thompson

Download or read book Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections written by Anne B Thompson and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2005-04-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is conceived as a complement to another Middle English Texts series text, Sherry Reames' Middle English Legends of Women Saints. This selection is intended to be broadly representative of saints' lives in Middle English and of the classic types of hagiographic legend as these were presented to the lay public and less-literate clergy of late medieval England.


The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages

Author: Karen A. Winstead

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-04-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0191016934

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The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages explores the richness and variety of life-writing from late Antiquity to the threshold of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages, writers from Bede to Chaucer were thinking about life and experimenting with ways to translate lives, their own and others', into literature. Their subjects included career religious, saints, celebrities, visionaries, pilgrims, princes, philosophers, poets, and even a few 'ordinary people.' They relay life stories not only in chronological narratives, but also in debates, dialogues, visions, and letters. Many medieval biographers relied on the reader's trust in their authority, but some espoused standards of evidence that seem distinctly modern, drawing on reliable written sources, interviewing eyewitnesses, and cross-checking their facts wherever possible. Others still professed allegiance to evidence but nonetheless freely embellished and invented not only events and dialogue but the sources to support them. The first book devoted to life-writing in medieval England, The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages covers major life stories in Old and Middle English, Latin, and French, along with such Continental classics as the letters of Abelard and Heloise and the autobiographical Vision of Christine de Pizan. In addition to the life stories of historical figures, it treats accounts of fictional heroes, from Beowulf to King Arthur to Queen Katherine of Alexandria, which show medieval authors experimenting with, adapting, and expanding the conventions of life writing. Though Medieval life writings can be challenging to read, we encounter in them the antecedents of many of our own diverse biographical forms-tabloid lives, literary lives, brief lives, revisionist lives; lives of political figures, memoirs, fictional lives, and psychologically-oriented accounts that register the inner lives of their subjects.


Book Synopsis The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages by : Karen A. Winstead

Download or read book The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages written by Karen A. Winstead and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages explores the richness and variety of life-writing from late Antiquity to the threshold of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages, writers from Bede to Chaucer were thinking about life and experimenting with ways to translate lives, their own and others', into literature. Their subjects included career religious, saints, celebrities, visionaries, pilgrims, princes, philosophers, poets, and even a few 'ordinary people.' They relay life stories not only in chronological narratives, but also in debates, dialogues, visions, and letters. Many medieval biographers relied on the reader's trust in their authority, but some espoused standards of evidence that seem distinctly modern, drawing on reliable written sources, interviewing eyewitnesses, and cross-checking their facts wherever possible. Others still professed allegiance to evidence but nonetheless freely embellished and invented not only events and dialogue but the sources to support them. The first book devoted to life-writing in medieval England, The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages covers major life stories in Old and Middle English, Latin, and French, along with such Continental classics as the letters of Abelard and Heloise and the autobiographical Vision of Christine de Pizan. In addition to the life stories of historical figures, it treats accounts of fictional heroes, from Beowulf to King Arthur to Queen Katherine of Alexandria, which show medieval authors experimenting with, adapting, and expanding the conventions of life writing. Though Medieval life writings can be challenging to read, we encounter in them the antecedents of many of our own diverse biographical forms-tabloid lives, literary lives, brief lives, revisionist lives; lives of political figures, memoirs, fictional lives, and psychologically-oriented accounts that register the inner lives of their subjects.


A Companion to Middle English Hagiography

A Companion to Middle English Hagiography

Author: Sarah Salih

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9781843840725

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The saints were the superheroes and the celebrities of medieval England, bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. A vast body of literature evolved during the middle ages to ensure that everyone, from kings to peasants, knew the stories of the lives, deaths and afterlives of the saints. However, despite its popularity and ubiquity, the genre of the Saint's Life has until recently been little studied. This collection introduces the canon of Middle English hagiography; places it in the context of the cults of saints; analyses key themes within hagiographic narrative, including gender, power, violence and history; and, finally, shows how hagiographic themes survived the Reformation. Overall it offers both information for those coming to the genre for the first time, and points forward to new trends in research. Dr SARAH SALIH is a Lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: SAMANTHA RICHES, MARY BETH LONG, CLAIRE M. WATERS, ROBERT MILLS, ANKE BERNAU, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, MATTHEW WOODCOCK


Book Synopsis A Companion to Middle English Hagiography by : Sarah Salih

Download or read book A Companion to Middle English Hagiography written by Sarah Salih and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2006 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The saints were the superheroes and the celebrities of medieval England, bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. A vast body of literature evolved during the middle ages to ensure that everyone, from kings to peasants, knew the stories of the lives, deaths and afterlives of the saints. However, despite its popularity and ubiquity, the genre of the Saint's Life has until recently been little studied. This collection introduces the canon of Middle English hagiography; places it in the context of the cults of saints; analyses key themes within hagiographic narrative, including gender, power, violence and history; and, finally, shows how hagiographic themes survived the Reformation. Overall it offers both information for those coming to the genre for the first time, and points forward to new trends in research. Dr SARAH SALIH is a Lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: SAMANTHA RICHES, MARY BETH LONG, CLAIRE M. WATERS, ROBERT MILLS, ANKE BERNAU, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, MATTHEW WOODCOCK


Women Saints Lives in Old English Prose

Women Saints Lives in Old English Prose

Author: Leslie A. Donovan

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9780859915687

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Translations of eight saints' lives, giving an insight into women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England. Devout, virtuous and independent, the heroines of Old English saints' lives (one of the most popular literary genres of the middle ages) provided exemplars of personal and public inspiration for medieval Christians. The eight lives translated here are the earliest known vernacular accounts of the biographies of Æthelthryth, Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia, Eugenia, Euphrosyne, Lucy, and Mary of Egypt. They depict women escaping unwanted marriages, communicating with male relatives, acquiring an education, living autonomously as hermits, and achieving positions of leadership; such lives document not only the importance of spiritual faith to early Christian women, but also testify to how these women (and their audience) employed faith as a tool for empowerment. Each life is preceded by a brief description of the saint's cult from its early Christian origins to its presence in Anglo-Saxon culture. The translationis accompanied by an introduction establishing the general background for the genre, the conventions of women saints' lives, and women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England; and an interpretive essay exploring the relationships between explicit presentations of the female body and the strength of spiritual authority as exhibited in these texts completes the volume. LESLIE A. DONOVAN is Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.


Book Synopsis Women Saints Lives in Old English Prose by : Leslie A. Donovan

Download or read book Women Saints Lives in Old English Prose written by Leslie A. Donovan and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1999 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translations of eight saints' lives, giving an insight into women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England. Devout, virtuous and independent, the heroines of Old English saints' lives (one of the most popular literary genres of the middle ages) provided exemplars of personal and public inspiration for medieval Christians. The eight lives translated here are the earliest known vernacular accounts of the biographies of Æthelthryth, Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia, Eugenia, Euphrosyne, Lucy, and Mary of Egypt. They depict women escaping unwanted marriages, communicating with male relatives, acquiring an education, living autonomously as hermits, and achieving positions of leadership; such lives document not only the importance of spiritual faith to early Christian women, but also testify to how these women (and their audience) employed faith as a tool for empowerment. Each life is preceded by a brief description of the saint's cult from its early Christian origins to its presence in Anglo-Saxon culture. The translationis accompanied by an introduction establishing the general background for the genre, the conventions of women saints' lives, and women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England; and an interpretive essay exploring the relationships between explicit presentations of the female body and the strength of spiritual authority as exhibited in these texts completes the volume. LESLIE A. DONOVAN is Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.


Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100

Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100

Author: Diane Watt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1474270646

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Women's literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male 'overwriting', to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of 'destruction', 'preservation', 'control' and 'suppression'. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy. Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women's writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women's writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women's literary history more broadly.


Book Synopsis Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 by : Diane Watt

Download or read book Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 written by Diane Watt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women's literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male 'overwriting', to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of 'destruction', 'preservation', 'control' and 'suppression'. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy. Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women's writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women's writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women's literary history more broadly.


Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England

Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England

Author: Alison Hudson

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1783276851

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An exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform.


Book Synopsis Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England by : Alison Hudson

Download or read book Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England written by Alison Hudson and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform.


Vera Lex Historiae?

Vera Lex Historiae?

Author: Catalin Taranu

Publisher: punctum books

Published: 2022-08-18

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1685710301

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Writing circa 731 CE, Bede professes in the introduction to his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum that he will write his account of the past of the English following only vera lex historiae. Whether explicitly or (most often) implicitly, historians narrate the past according to a conception of what constitutes historical truth that emerges in the use of narrative strategies, of certain formulae or textual forms, in establishing one's own ideological authority or that of one's informants, in faithfulness to a cultural, narrative, or poetic tradition. If we extend the scope of what we understand by history (especially in a pre-modern setting) to include not just the writings of historians legitimated by their belonging to the Latinate matrix of christianized classical history writing, but also collective narratives, practices, rituals, oral poetry, liturgy, artistic representations, and acts of identity - all re-enacting the past as, or as representation of, the present, we find a plethora of modes of constructions of historical truth, narrative authority, and reliability. Vera Lex Historiae? will be constituted by contributions that reveal the variety of evental strategies by which historical truth was constructed in late antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages, and the range of procedures by which such narratives were established first as being historical and then as "true" histories. This is not only a matter of narrative strategies, but also habitus, ways of living and acting in the world that feed on and back into the commemoration and re-enactment of the past by communities and by individuals. In doing this, we hope to recover something of the plurality of modes of preserving and reenacting the past available in late antiquity and the earlier middle ages which we pass by because of preconceived notions of what constitutes history writing.


Book Synopsis Vera Lex Historiae? by : Catalin Taranu

Download or read book Vera Lex Historiae? written by Catalin Taranu and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing circa 731 CE, Bede professes in the introduction to his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum that he will write his account of the past of the English following only vera lex historiae. Whether explicitly or (most often) implicitly, historians narrate the past according to a conception of what constitutes historical truth that emerges in the use of narrative strategies, of certain formulae or textual forms, in establishing one's own ideological authority or that of one's informants, in faithfulness to a cultural, narrative, or poetic tradition. If we extend the scope of what we understand by history (especially in a pre-modern setting) to include not just the writings of historians legitimated by their belonging to the Latinate matrix of christianized classical history writing, but also collective narratives, practices, rituals, oral poetry, liturgy, artistic representations, and acts of identity - all re-enacting the past as, or as representation of, the present, we find a plethora of modes of constructions of historical truth, narrative authority, and reliability. Vera Lex Historiae? will be constituted by contributions that reveal the variety of evental strategies by which historical truth was constructed in late antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages, and the range of procedures by which such narratives were established first as being historical and then as "true" histories. This is not only a matter of narrative strategies, but also habitus, ways of living and acting in the world that feed on and back into the commemoration and re-enactment of the past by communities and by individuals. In doing this, we hope to recover something of the plurality of modes of preserving and reenacting the past available in late antiquity and the earlier middle ages which we pass by because of preconceived notions of what constitutes history writing.