Author: Rory Naismith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107160979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
This book brings together new research that represents current scholarship on the nexus between authority and written sources from Anglo-Saxon England. Ranging from the seventh to the eleventh century, the chapters in this volume offer fresh approaches to a wide range of linguistic, historical, legal, diplomatic and palaeographical evidence.
Writing, Kingship, and Power in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Rory Naismith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107160979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
This book brings together new research that represents current scholarship on the nexus between authority and written sources from Anglo-Saxon England. Ranging from the seventh to the eleventh century, the chapters in this volume offer fresh approaches to a wide range of linguistic, historical, legal, diplomatic and palaeographical evidence.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107160979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
This book brings together new research that represents current scholarship on the nexus between authority and written sources from Anglo-Saxon England. Ranging from the seventh to the eleventh century, the chapters in this volume offer fresh approaches to a wide range of linguistic, historical, legal, diplomatic and palaeographical evidence.
Writing Power in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Catherine A. M. Clarke
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 1843843196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
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.
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 1843843196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
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.
Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Annie Whitehead
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526748126
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
The little-known lives of women who ruled, schemed, and made peace and war, between the seventh and eleventh centuries: “Meticulously researched.” —Catherine Hanley, author of Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior Many Anglo-Saxon kings are familiar. Æthelred the Unready is one—but less is written about his wife, who was consort of two kings and championed one of her sons over the others, or about his mother, who was an anointed queen and powerful regent, but was also accused of witchcraft and regicide. A royal abbess educated five bishops and was instrumental in deciding the date of Easter; another took on the might of Canterbury and Rome and was accused by the monks of fratricide. Royal mothers wielded power: Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder, maintained a position of authority during the reigns of both her sons. Æthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, was a queen in all but name, while few have heard of Queen Seaxburh, who ruled Wessex, or Queen Cynethryth, who issued her own coinage. She, too, was accused of murder, and was also, like many of the royal women, literate and highly educated. Ranging from seventh-century Northumbria to eleventh-century Wessex and making extensive use of primary sources, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England examines the lives of individual women in a way that has often been done for the Anglo-Saxon men but not for their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters.
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526748126
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
The little-known lives of women who ruled, schemed, and made peace and war, between the seventh and eleventh centuries: “Meticulously researched.” —Catherine Hanley, author of Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior Many Anglo-Saxon kings are familiar. Æthelred the Unready is one—but less is written about his wife, who was consort of two kings and championed one of her sons over the others, or about his mother, who was an anointed queen and powerful regent, but was also accused of witchcraft and regicide. A royal abbess educated five bishops and was instrumental in deciding the date of Easter; another took on the might of Canterbury and Rome and was accused by the monks of fratricide. Royal mothers wielded power: Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder, maintained a position of authority during the reigns of both her sons. Æthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, was a queen in all but name, while few have heard of Queen Seaxburh, who ruled Wessex, or Queen Cynethryth, who issued her own coinage. She, too, was accused of murder, and was also, like many of the royal women, literate and highly educated. Ranging from seventh-century Northumbria to eleventh-century Wessex and making extensive use of primary sources, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England examines the lives of individual women in a way that has often been done for the Anglo-Saxon men but not for their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters.
Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature
Author: Seth Lerer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
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.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
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.
Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Rory Naismith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
This groundbreaking study of coinage in early medieval England is the first to take account of the very significant additions to the corpus of southern English coins discovered in recent years and to situate this evidence within the wider historical context of Anglo-Saxon England and its continental neighbours. Its nine chapters integrate historical and numismatic research to explore who made early medieval coinage, who used it and why. The currency emerges as a significant resource accessible across society and, through analysis of its production, circulation and use, the author shows that control over coinage could be a major asset. This control was guided as much by ideology as by economics and embraced several levels of power, from kings down to individual craftsmen. Thematic in approach, this innovative book offers an engaging, wide-ranging account of Anglo-Saxon coinage as a unique and revealing gauge for the interaction of society, economy and government.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
This groundbreaking study of coinage in early medieval England is the first to take account of the very significant additions to the corpus of southern English coins discovered in recent years and to situate this evidence within the wider historical context of Anglo-Saxon England and its continental neighbours. Its nine chapters integrate historical and numismatic research to explore who made early medieval coinage, who used it and why. The currency emerges as a significant resource accessible across society and, through analysis of its production, circulation and use, the author shows that control over coinage could be a major asset. This control was guided as much by ideology as by economics and embraced several levels of power, from kings down to individual craftsmen. Thematic in approach, this innovative book offers an engaging, wide-ranging account of Anglo-Saxon coinage as a unique and revealing gauge for the interaction of society, economy and government.
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
Author: Claire Breay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780712352024
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Anglo-Saxon period stretches from the arrival of Germanic groups on British shores in the early 5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. During these centuries, the English language was used and written down for the first time, pagan populations were converted to Christianity, and the foundations of the kingdom of England were laid. This richly illustrated new book - which accompanies a landmark British Library exhibition - presents Anglo-Saxon England as the home of a highly sophisticated artistic and political culture, deeply connected with its continental neighbours. Leading specialists in early medieval history, literature and culture engage with the unique, original evidence from which we can piece together the story of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, examining outstanding and beautiful objects such as highlights from the Staffordshire hoard and the Sutton Hoo burial. At the heart of the book is the British Library's outstanding collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the richest source of evidence about Old English language and literature, including Beowulf and other poetry; the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of Britain's greatest artistic and religious treasures; the St Cuthbert Gospel, the earliest intact European book; and historical manuscripts such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. These national treasures are discussed alongside other, internationally important literary and historical manuscripts held in major collections in Britain and Europe. This book, and the exhibition it accompanies, chart a fascinating and dynamic period in early medieval history, and will bring to life our understanding of these formative centuries.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780712352024
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Anglo-Saxon period stretches from the arrival of Germanic groups on British shores in the early 5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. During these centuries, the English language was used and written down for the first time, pagan populations were converted to Christianity, and the foundations of the kingdom of England were laid. This richly illustrated new book - which accompanies a landmark British Library exhibition - presents Anglo-Saxon England as the home of a highly sophisticated artistic and political culture, deeply connected with its continental neighbours. Leading specialists in early medieval history, literature and culture engage with the unique, original evidence from which we can piece together the story of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, examining outstanding and beautiful objects such as highlights from the Staffordshire hoard and the Sutton Hoo burial. At the heart of the book is the British Library's outstanding collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the richest source of evidence about Old English language and literature, including Beowulf and other poetry; the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of Britain's greatest artistic and religious treasures; the St Cuthbert Gospel, the earliest intact European book; and historical manuscripts such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. These national treasures are discussed alongside other, internationally important literary and historical manuscripts held in major collections in Britain and Europe. This book, and the exhibition it accompanies, chart a fascinating and dynamic period in early medieval history, and will bring to life our understanding of these formative centuries.
Priests and Their Books in Late Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Gerald P. Dyson
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783273666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783273666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.
How, When and Why did Bede Write his Ecclesiastical History?
Author: Richard Shaw
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429663668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is our main source for early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, but how was it written? When? And why? Scholars have spent much of the last half century investigating the latter question – the ‘why’. This new study is the first to systematically consider the ‘how’ and the ‘when’. Richard Shaw shows that rather than producing the History at a single point in 731, Bede was working on it for as much as twenty years, from c. 715 to just before his death in 735. Unpacking and extending the period of composition of Bede’s best-known book makes sense of the complicated and contradictory evidence for its purposes. The work did not have one context, but several, each with its own distinct constructed audiences. Thus, the History was not written for a single purpose to the exclusion of all others. Nor was it simply written for a variety of reasons. It was written over time – quite a lot of time – and as the world changed during that time, so too did Bede’s reasons for writing, the intentions he sought to pursue – and the patrons he hoped to please or to placate.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429663668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is our main source for early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, but how was it written? When? And why? Scholars have spent much of the last half century investigating the latter question – the ‘why’. This new study is the first to systematically consider the ‘how’ and the ‘when’. Richard Shaw shows that rather than producing the History at a single point in 731, Bede was working on it for as much as twenty years, from c. 715 to just before his death in 735. Unpacking and extending the period of composition of Bede’s best-known book makes sense of the complicated and contradictory evidence for its purposes. The work did not have one context, but several, each with its own distinct constructed audiences. Thus, the History was not written for a single purpose to the exclusion of all others. Nor was it simply written for a variety of reasons. It was written over time – quite a lot of time – and as the world changed during that time, so too did Bede’s reasons for writing, the intentions he sought to pursue – and the patrons he hoped to please or to placate.
Symbolic Reproduction in Early Medieval England
Author: Katharine Sykes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019265912X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
In the early Middle Ages, the conversion of the early English kingdoms acted as a catalyst for significant social and cultural change. One of the most visible of these changes was the introduction of a new type of household: the monastic household. These reproduced through education and training, rather than biological means; their inhabitants practised celibacy as a lifelong state, rather than as a stage in the life course. Because monastic households depended on secular households to produce the next generation of recruits, previous studies have tended to view them as more mutable than their secular counterparts, which are implicitly regarded as natural and ahistorical. Katharine Sykes charts some of the significant changes to the structure of households between the seventh to eleventh centuries, as ideas of spiritual, non-biological reproduction first fostered in monastic households were adopted in royal households in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and as ideas about kinship that were generated in secular households, such as the relationship between genealogy and inheritance, were picked up and applied by their monastic counterparts. In place of binary divisions between secular and monastic, biological and spiritual, real and imagined, Sykes demonstrates that different forms of kinship and reproduction in this period were intimately linked.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019265912X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
In the early Middle Ages, the conversion of the early English kingdoms acted as a catalyst for significant social and cultural change. One of the most visible of these changes was the introduction of a new type of household: the monastic household. These reproduced through education and training, rather than biological means; their inhabitants practised celibacy as a lifelong state, rather than as a stage in the life course. Because monastic households depended on secular households to produce the next generation of recruits, previous studies have tended to view them as more mutable than their secular counterparts, which are implicitly regarded as natural and ahistorical. Katharine Sykes charts some of the significant changes to the structure of households between the seventh to eleventh centuries, as ideas of spiritual, non-biological reproduction first fostered in monastic households were adopted in royal households in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and as ideas about kinship that were generated in secular households, such as the relationship between genealogy and inheritance, were picked up and applied by their monastic counterparts. In place of binary divisions between secular and monastic, biological and spiritual, real and imagined, Sykes demonstrates that different forms of kinship and reproduction in this period were intimately linked.
The Languages of Early Medieval Charters
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004432337
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 564
Book Description
This is the first major study of the interplay between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in early medieval records. Building on previous work on the uses of the written word in the early Middle Ages, which has dispelled the myth that this was an age of ‘orality’, the contributions in this volume bring to the fore the crucial question of language choice in the documentary cultures of early medieval societies. Specifically, they examine the interactions between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in the Anglo-Saxon and eastern Frankish worlds and in neighbouring areas. The chapters are underpinned by an important comparative dimension on account of the two regions’ shared linguistic heritage and numerous cross-Channel links. Contributors are: Stefan Esders, Albert Fenton, Robert Gallagher, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Charles Insley, Kathryn A. Lowe, Rosamond McKitterick, Rory Naismith, Janet L. Nelson, Edward Roberts, Annina Seiler, Marco Stoffella, Francesca Tinti, Kate Wiles, Bernhard Zeller. See inside the book.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004432337
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 564
Book Description
This is the first major study of the interplay between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in early medieval records. Building on previous work on the uses of the written word in the early Middle Ages, which has dispelled the myth that this was an age of ‘orality’, the contributions in this volume bring to the fore the crucial question of language choice in the documentary cultures of early medieval societies. Specifically, they examine the interactions between Latin and Germanic vernaculars in the Anglo-Saxon and eastern Frankish worlds and in neighbouring areas. The chapters are underpinned by an important comparative dimension on account of the two regions’ shared linguistic heritage and numerous cross-Channel links. Contributors are: Stefan Esders, Albert Fenton, Robert Gallagher, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Charles Insley, Kathryn A. Lowe, Rosamond McKitterick, Rory Naismith, Janet L. Nelson, Edward Roberts, Annina Seiler, Marco Stoffella, Francesca Tinti, Kate Wiles, Bernhard Zeller. See inside the book.