The Anglo-Saxons

Description

The popular notion that sees the Anglo-Saxon era as “The Dark Ages” perhaps has tended to obscure for many people the creations and strengths of that time. This collection, in examining many aspects of pre-Norman Britain, helps to illuminate how Anglo-Saxon society contributed to the continuity of knowledge between the ancient world and the modern world. But as well, it posits a view of that society in its own distinctive terms to show how it developed as a synthesis of radically different cultures.

The Bayeux Tapestry is examined for its underlying political motivations; the study of Old English literature is extended to such works as laws, charters, apocryphal literature, saints’ lives and mythologies, and many of these are studied for the insight they provide into the social structures of the Anglo-Saxons. Other essays examine both the institution of slavery and the use of Germanic warrior terminology in Old Saxon as a contribution towards the descriptive analysis of that society’s social groupings. The book also presents a perspective on the Christian church that is usually overlooked by historians: that its existence was continuous and influential from Roman times, and that it was greatly affected by the Celtic Christian church long after the latter was thought to have disintegrated.

Sujets

• Religión
• Religion
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781554588244
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Anglo-Saxons Synthesis and Achievement
The Anglo-Saxons Synthesis and Achievement
Edited by J. Douglas Woods and David A.E. Pelteret
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The Anglo-Saxons : synthesis and achievement
Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88920-166-8
1. Civilization, Anglo-Saxon - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. England - Civilization - To 1066 -Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Woods, J. Douglas (Jon Douglas), 1942- II. Pelteret, David Anthony Edgell, 1944-
DA152.2.A53 1985 942.01 C85-098569-2
Copyright 1985
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
85 86 87 88 4 3 2 1
Cover design by David Antscherl
The cover illustration is reproduced from the Book of Durrow, fol. 192v, by courtesy of The Board of Trinity College, Dublin. (See chaps. 6 and 8.)
No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system, translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in Canada
This book is dedicated to the memory of Angus Cameron and Colin Chase weras
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction David A. E. Pelteret
1 The Bayeux Tapestry: History or Propaganda? Shirley A. Brown
2 The Boundaries of Old English Literature Angus Cameron
3 Beowulf, Bede, and St. Oswine: The Hero s Pride in Old English Hagiography Colin Chase
4 Domestic Peace and Public Order in Anglo-Saxon Law Rebecca V. Colman
5 Two Early Anglo-Saxon Holy Men: Oswald and Cuthbert John Corbett
6 The Celtic Church in Anglo-Saxon Times Claude Evans
7 Anglo-Saxon Use of the Apocryphal Gospel Antonette di Paolo Healey
8 The Image of the Worm: Some Literary Implications of Serpentine Decoration Andrew J. G. Patenall
9 Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England David A. E. Pelteret
10 Germanic Warrior Terms in Old Saxon J. Douglas Woods
Bibliographical Essay David A. E. Pelteret
Index
Preface
T he papers in this volume were originally delivered as lectures at a colloquium entitled The Anglo-Saxons and Their Neighbours held at Scarborough College in the University of Toronto in January and February of 1979. All the lectures have subsequently been revised for publication. Present at the colloquium were specialists in the period, other students and faculty of the University, and interested members of the non-university community. The editors hope that this volume will attract a similarly diverse audience. To assist those who have no special knowledge about the Anglo-Saxons, but who would like to be better informed about the topics covered in this book, a brief Bibliographical Essay has been provided.
The editors would like to thank Scarborough College, which sponsored the colloquium, and Professor Michael Gervers, who not merely initiated and organized the gathering, but also encouraged the contributors to turn their verbal presentations into written form. Thanks should also go to Mr. Paul Ellison and Ms. Migs Reynolds of the University of Exeter Computer Unit, to Mr. Bob Blackburn and Ms. Shirly Manimalethu of the University of Toronto Computer Service, and to Mrs. Elaine Nascimento and Mrs. Clara DeAbreu of New College, University of Toronto, for considerable help with the word processing of this text.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
J. Douglas Woods David A. E. Pelteret
Abbreviations AASS Joannes Bollandus and Godefridus Henscherius (eds.). Acta Sanctorum .... New ed. Ed. by Joannes Carnandet.69 vols. Paris, Brussels, and Rome, 1863. ASE Anglo-Saxon England. ASPR Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. BAR British Archaeological Reports. Bede, HE Bertram Colgrave and Roger A. B. Mynors (eds. andtrans.). Bede s Ecclesiastical History of the EnglishPeople. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford, 1969. BL British Library. EETS, OS Early English Text Society, Original Series. EETS, SS Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series EHD I Dorothy Whitelock (ed. and trans.). English HistoricalDocuments ca. 550-1042 . English Historical Documents1. 2nd ed. London and New York, 1979. EHD II David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway (eds. andtrans.). English Historical Documents 1042-1189. EnglishHistorical Documents 2. 2nd ed. London and NewYork, 1981. EHR English Historical Review . Haddan and Stubbs, Councils Arthur Haddan and William Stubbs (eds.). Councilsand Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britainand Ireland, Edited after Spelman and Wilkins . 3 vols.Oxford, 1869-78. Liebermann, Gesetze Felix Liebermann (ed.). Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen .3 vols. Halle, 1903-16. MGH Monumenta Germaniae historica. PBA Proceedings of the British Academy . PRIA Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy . PRSAI Proceedings of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland . Stenton, ASE Frank M. Stenton. Anglo-Saxon England . Oxford Historyof England 2. 3rd ed. Oxford, 1971. TOES Toronto Old English Series.
Introduction David A. E. Pelteret
M odern Western culture is deeply indebted to the Anglo-Saxons, for they preserved much learning from the Ancient world and helped disseminate it through Europe. 1 In the process, they developed a rich and complex culture. Yet many today perceive theirs as a barbarous age, a few brief centuries when nothing happened. The scholarly world is in some measure at fault here. There has been a tendency to concentrate on the reign of King Alfred, a few poetic literary works such as Beowulf, and the dramatic metallurgical artistry of the Sutton Hoo treasure. We are all, of course, to some degree in thrall to the culture of our age, and it is natural to respond most sympathetically to aspects of another culture that are nearest to our own. Yet we devalue the past if we do not seek to break these cultural shackles by perceiving another era on its own terms. In the papers that follow, all the authors have attempted to do just this so as to deepen our understanding of the Anglo-Saxons and their accomplishments.
In the first paper in this collection, Shirley Brown examines the Bayeux Tapestry, a work of art that records the end of the Anglo-Saxon era. We have long been aware, particularly through the work of Marxist art critics, that works of art should not be taken at their face value; consciously or unconsciously, art frequently embodies an ideology. 2 The Bayeux Tapestry is ostensibly a valuable primary source of information on the events surrounding the momentous year 1066, though it is clear from the borders of the Tapestry with their Aesopian references that it has an ideational structure more complex than the simple depiction of historical events. 3 Professor Brown brings to the Tapestry both the eye of the art critic, notably in her observations on the spatial dimensions of the work, and of the historian, in her elucidation of the relationships between place and person (e.g., Harold and Bosham, Harold and Stigand). Her analysis prevents us from seeing the Tapestry as a neutral record of historical facts. Instead, we are forced to read it in a different way; the surface events portrayed retreat in importance in the face of a political case that is being argued. This perspective is frustrating for the historian of v nements, yet I sense we are thereby moving closer to the intention of the artist(s) who produced this still enigmatic, but fascinating, work of art.
Students of literature have been drawn to the Anglo-Saxons because of their writings in the vernacular, unique both in scope and volume for their time in Western Europe. But as E. G. Stanley recently wrote of the Anglo-Saxons, They did not design their writings to be read as literature; they lacked the concept literature and so they could not know that what they wrote might be read as literature by later ages, even when they themselves may have known that some of their writings were well written. 4 It is modern scholarship that has given birth to the corpus of Old English literature. An examination of the scholarship, however, shows that a rather deformed and stunted body has been created. 5 What Angus Cameron essentially argues in his article is that we need to transform our aesthetic. Too long have we limited our studies to a few, mainly poetic, works, which we have then proceeded to assess in terms of contemporary canons of taste. Professor Cameron suggests that we need to give serious attention to such works as the laws and charters, which customarily have been considered to be outside the purview of the literary critic. When one reflects on his arguments, one recognizes that the willingness to view as literature what has hitherto been regarded as devoid of literary merit carries with it several concomitants. These include being prepared to discard, if necessary, certain aesthetic demands (e.g., the requirement for organic unity), 6 and more particularly, being willing to steep oneself in the writings deemed important to that age, such as patristic and apocryphal literature, saints lives, and poetry written in the Hiberno-Latin tradition. The process implies re-education, for even classicists tend to be poorly read in these fields. Anglo-Saxon scholars have started to undertake this sometimes arduous task, and in the process have discovered that Anglo-Saxon writings can be richly allusive. 7
Colin Chase s article exemplifies the advantages that are to be gained from enlarging our literary horizons. He has examined the Vita Oswini, a work that has been overlooked by literary critics and has been generally shunned by historians, dubious of the reliability of such a late compilation,