This dissertation articulates a theory of adaptation for the Anglo-Saxon literature in which metaphors of embodiment mediate the reception of poetic works: when we read, our bodies get in the way. Central to my work is the understanding that the embodied situatedness of poets adapting materials from other sources informs the literature that they produce. I explore the material and textual conditions through which the writings of the period reveal themselves and seek to understand how these contexts shaped the reception of earlier writings. Poetic texts filled with sensory detail provide a framework for their own reception. My approach to textual phenomena is informed by reading in the phenomenological tradition of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as expressed by the work of philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jean-Luc Marion. Chapter One argues for a parallel relationship between the flesh of Christ and the medieval book in the reception of Prudentius. Their shared flesh allows the Word to appear in the world by taking on the animal nature of a life characterized by suffering. Chapter Two considers the suffering of the saints in Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate. This suffering constitutes a form of affective piety that provides a framework for the desirous reception of holy bodies and also of the textual corpora of early authors. Chapter Three argues that in Felix’s Vita Guthlaci, eating and reading reveal the body’s permeability. Guthlac’s ingestion of hallucinogenic mold and Felix’s reception of Aldhelm appear as a demonic attack that imbricates saint and hagiographer in the textualized landscape of the fen. Chapter Four analyzes the role of visual perception in the ekphrastic presentation of the phoenix as it appears in Lactantius’s Latin poem and its Old English translation. The interrelation of ekphrasis and translation as modes of perception grants the phoenix both literary and material forms. Chapter Five argues that crossing the Red Sea in Exodus embodies the theory of textual interpretation explicated by Moses in which the keys of the spirit reveal hidden truths. The crossing becomes a fusion of horizons, as the waters lower to reveal old foundations.

This dissertation articulates a theory of adaptation for the Anglo-Saxon literature in which metaphors of embodiment mediate the reception of poetic works: when we read, our bodies get in the way. Central to my work is the understanding that the embodied situatedness of poets adapting materials from other sources informs the literature that they produce. I explore the material and textual conditions through which the writings of the period reveal themselves and seek to understand how these contexts shaped the reception of earlier writings. Poetic texts filled with sensory detail provide a framework for their own reception. My approach to textual phenomena is informed by reading in the phenomenological tradition of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as expressed by the work of philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jean-Luc Marion. Chapter One argues for a parallel relationship between the flesh of Christ and the medieval book in the reception of Prudentius. Their shared flesh allows the Word to appear in the world by taking on the animal nature of a life characterized by suffering. Chapter Two considers the suffering of the saints in Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate. This suffering constitutes a form of affective piety that provides a framework for the desirous reception of holy bodies and also of the textual corpora of early authors. Chapter Three argues that in Felix’s Vita Guthlaci, eating and reading reveal the body’s permeability. Guthlac’s ingestion of hallucinogenic mold and Felix’s reception of Aldhelm appear as a demonic attack that imbricates saint and hagiographer in the textualized landscape of the fen. Chapter Four analyzes the role of visual perception in the ekphrastic presentation of the phoenix as it appears in Lactantius’s Latin poem and its Old English translation. The interrelation of ekphrasis and translation as modes of perception grants the phoenix both literary and material forms. Chapter Five argues that crossing the Red Sea in Exodus embodies the theory of textual interpretation explicated by Moses in which the keys of the spirit reveal hidden truths. The crossing becomes a fusion of horizons, as the waters lower to reveal old foundations.

No description available.

The mythology of migration is deeply integral to the medieval Germanic societies peopling Northern Europe and the island nations of the North Sea. Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic society construct their identities through a memory of migration that takes places within a frontier that is mythic and historical in scope. By surveying eco-critical components of Anglo-Saxon poems such as “The Wife’s Lament” and “The Husband’s Message” alongside the Icelandic sagas Egil’s saga and The Vinland sagas, a shared tradition of the frontier ideal is revealed.

This thesis examines attitudes and approaches towards death, as well as aesthetic representations of death, in Anglo-Saxon hagiography. The thesis contributes to the discussion of the historical and intellectual contexts of hagiography and considers how saintly death-scenes are represented to form commentaries on exemplary behaviour. A comprehensive survey of death-scenes in Anglo-Saxon hagiography has been undertaken, charting typical and atypical motifs used in literary manifestations of both martyrdom and non-violent death. The clusters of literary motifs found in these texts and what their use suggests about attitudes to exemplary death is analysed in an exploration of whether Anglo-Saxon hagiography presents a consistent aesthetic of death. The thesis also considers how modern scholarly fields such as thanatology can provide fresh discourses on the attitudes to and depictions of ‘good' and ‘bad' deaths. Moreover, the thesis addresses the intersection of the hagiographic inheritance with discernibly Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards death and dying, and investigates whether or not the deaths of native Anglo-Saxon saints are presented differently compared with the deaths of universal saints. The thesis explores continuities and discontinuities in the presentations of physical and spiritual death, and assesses whether or not differences exist in the depiction of death-scenes based on an author's personal agenda, choice of terminology, approaches towards the body–soul dichotomy, or the gender of his or her subject, for example. Furthermore, the thesis investigates how hagiographic representations of death compare with portrayals in other literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, and whether any non-hagiographic paradigms provide alternative exemplars of the ‘good death'. The thesis also assesses gendered portrayals of death, the portrayal of last words in saints' lives, and the various motifs relating to the soul at the moment of death. The thesis contains a Motif Index of saintly death-scenes as Appendix I.

L'écriture créative est aujourd'hui une composante importante du systèrl1e littéraire angle-saxon. Reconnue en tant qu'activité artistique, elle l'est également, dans une certaine mesure, en tant que discipline universitaire, que des diplômes sanctionnent. En moyenne aujourd'hui, on recense environ deux cents programmes de Masters (M.F.A.) dans le monde, dont pas moins de quatre-vingt-quinze pour cent aux États-Unis. Cependant, quel est le statut de l'écriture créative ? Qu'est-ce que l'écriture créative en tant que discipline ? Si l'écriture est un vrai travail sur l'imaginaire, la langue, la pensée, elle est surtout le résultat d'un processus. Ainsi, pour refléter ce processus et dénouer les questionnements annoncés, cette recherche s'articule autour de trois axes principaux : penser l'identité du texte, la dialectique travail/plaisir et l'enseignabilité du processus de création littéraire. / Creative writing has become an important component of the Angle-Saxon literary system. Not only is it acknowledged as an artistic activity, but it is also recognized as a program in higher education. There are about two hundred creative writing Master of Fine Arts programs around the world, ninety-five per cent of which are concentrated in the United States of America. However, a lot of questions around the status of creative writing. as a subject remain unanswered-indeed, what is creative writing as a subject? While writing involves a great deal of imagination, a certain proficiency in language and some thinking kills, it is mainly a process: Thus, to reflect this inquiry, this research first explores the ontological reality of the text, before investigating the articulation of pleasure and work in the process of writing. The final focus is on creative writing in the Anglo-Saxon educational system, from high school to university.

This doctoral dissertation analyses depictions of hell in sanctions, i.e. threats of punishments in Anglo-Saxon charters. I am arguing that an innovative use of sanctions as pastoral and ideological instruments effected the peak of infernal imagery in the sanctions of tenth-century royal diplomas. Belonging to the genre of ritual curses, Anglo-Saxon sanctions contain the three standard ecclesiastical curses (excommunication, anathema and damnation). It cannot be established if other requirements of ritual cursing (authoritative personnel, setting and gestures) were fulfilled. A lack of evidence, together with indications of more secular punishments, suggests that sanctions were not used as legal instruments. Their pastoral function is proposed by frightening depictions of hell and the devil, as fear is an important means of achieving salvation in biblical, homiletic and theological writings available or produced in Anglo-Saxon England. The use of the infernal motifs of Hell as a Kitchen, Satan as the Mouth of Hell and winged demons in sanctions are discussed in detail. Sanctions frequently contain the overtly didactic and pastoral device of the exemplum. Notorious sinners believed to be damned in hell (e.g. Judas) are presented as negative exempla in sanctions to deter people from transgressing against charters. The repeated use of terms from classical mythology for depicting hell in Anglo-Saxon sanctions appears to correlate with the preference for hermeneutic Latin by tenth-century monastic reformers. The reasons for employing classical mythological terminology seem to agree with those suggested for the use of hermeneutic Latin (intellectual snobbery and raising the stylistic register), and glossaries constitute the main source of both types of Latinity. The sanctions of the Refoundation Charter of New Minster, Winchester, which is known to display the ‘ruler theology’ propagated by the monastic reform, are examined in their textual contexts with regard to the observations made in the earlier parts of this dissertation.