Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Sarah Semple
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199683107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Represents an unparalleled exploration of the place of prehistoric monuments in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, and examines how Anglo-Saxon communities perceived and used these monuments during the period AD 400-1100.

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Sarah Semple
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199683107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Represents an unparalleled exploration of the place of prehistoric monuments in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, and examines how Anglo-Saxon communities perceived and used these monuments during the period AD 400-1100.

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Sarah Semple
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191505609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England represents an unparalleled exploration of the place of prehistoric monuments in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, and examines how Anglo-Saxon communities perceived and used these monuments during the period AD 400-1100. Sarah Semple employs archaeological, historical, art historical, and literary sources to study the variety of ways in which the early medieval population of England used the prehistoric legacy in the landscape, exploring it from temporal and geographic perspectives. Key to the arguments and ideas presented is the premise that populations used these remains, intentionally and knowingly, in the articulation and manipulation of their identities: local, regional, political, and religious. They recognized them as ancient features, as human creations from a distant past. They used them as landmarks, battle sites, and estate markers, giving them new Old English names. Before, and even during, the conversion to Christianity, communities buried their dead in and around these monuments. After the conversion, several churches were built in and on these monuments, great assemblies and meetings were held at them, and felons executed and buried within their surrounds. This volume covers the early to late Anglo-Saxon world, touching on funerary ritual, domestic and settlement evidence, ecclesiastical sites, place-names, written sources, and administrative and judicial geographies. Through a thematic and chronologically-structured examination of Anglo-Saxon uses and perceptions of the prehistoric, Semple demonstrates that populations were not only concerned with Romanitas (or Roman-ness), but that a similar curiosity and conscious reference to and use of the prehistoric existed within all strata of society.

Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England

Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Helena Hamerow
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199203253
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The first major synthesis of the evidence for Anglo-Saxon settlements from across England and throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and a study of what it reveals about the communities who built and lived in them.

Dealing With The Dead

Dealing With The Dead PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004358331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Death was a constant, visible presence in medieval and renaissance Europe. Yet, the acknowledgement of death did not necessarily amount to an acceptance of its finality. Whether they were commoners, clergy, aristocrats, or kings, the dead continued to function literally as integrated members of their communities long after they were laid to rest in their graves. From stories of revenants bringing pleas from Purgatory to the living, to the practical uses and regulation of burial space; from the tradition of the ars moriendi, to the depiction of death on the stage; and from the making of martyrs, to funerals for the rich and poor, this volume examines how communities dealt with their dead as continual, albeit non-living members. Contributors are Jill Clements, Libby Escobedo, Hilary Fox, Sonsoles Garcia, Stephen Gordon, Melissa Herman, Mary Leech, Nikki Malain, Kathryn Maud, Justin Noetzel, Anthony Perron, Martina Saltamacchia, Thea Tomaini, Wendy Turner, and Christina Welch

Remains of the Past in Old English Literature

Remains of the Past in Old English Literature PDF Author: Jan-Peer Hartmann
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843847361
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
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 images of ruins and the poetic formula "work of giants'" to construct an unknown and unrecoverable past; it also considers the engagements with 'untimely objects' in Beowulf and the Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers and how the Ruthwell Cross Poem and The Dream of the Rood play off "figural'" against 'literal' history. As this study demonstrates, Old English texts combined and creatively adapted a broad variety of ways of conceptualizing not merely history, but indeed the very processes by which historical thought operates. Its careful readings show that these texts not only display a deep and conflicted understanding of the philosophical implications of viewing history and temporality through the prism of material objects, but also exhibit a powerful capacity for expressing such an understanding through aesthetic strategies.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Medieval Age

A Cultural History of Objects in the Medieval Age PDF Author: Julie Lund
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350226629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
A Cultural History of Objects in the Medieval Age covers the period 500 to 1400, examining the creation, use and understanding of human-made objects and their consequences and impacts. The power and agency of objects significantly evolved over this time. Exploring objects and artefacts within art, technology, and everyday life, the volume challenges our understanding of both life worlds and object worlds in medieval society. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. Julie Lund is Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. Sarah Semple is Professor at Durham University, UK. Volume 2 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte

The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem

The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem PDF Author: Michael Hicks
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783270799
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Essays exploring the potential of the Inquisitions post mortem to shed important new light on the medieval world.

Sacred Heritage

Sacred Heritage PDF Author: Roberta Gilchrist
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496547
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.

Danes in Wessex

Danes in Wessex PDF Author: Ryan Lavelle
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782979328
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernible particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theater of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multidisciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.

Handbook of Arthurian Romance

Handbook of Arthurian Romance PDF Author: Leah Tether
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311043248X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
The renowned and illustrious tales of King Arthur, his knights and the Round Table pervade all European vernaculars, as well as the Latin tradition. Arthurian narrative material, which had originally been transmitted in oral culture, began to be inscribed regularly in the twelfth century, developing from (pseudo-)historical beginnings in the Latin chronicles of "historians" such as Geoffrey of Monmouth into masterful literary works like the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Evidently a big hit, Arthur found himself being swiftly translated, adapted and integrated into the literary traditions of almost every European vernacular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This Handbook seeks to showcase the European character of Arthurian romance both past and present. By working across national philological boundaries, which in the past have tended to segregate the study of Arthurian romance according to language, as well as by exploring primary texts from different vernaculars and the Latin tradition in conjunction with recent theoretical concepts and approaches, this Handbook brings together a pioneering and more complete view of the specifically European context of Arthurian romance, and promotes the more connected study of Arthurian literature across the entirety of its European context.