Proefschrift--Nijmegen. / Bibliography: p. 9.

Inaugural-dissertation, Göttingen. / Vita.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Freie Universität Berlin, 1999. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Freie Universität Berlin, 1999.

This paper consists of the translation and analysis of Chapters 1-15 of Book V of Historiarum adversus paganos libri VIII by Paulus Orosius. The analysis is based on a comprehensive commentary on linguistic and stylistic aspects of the texts examined, and on a thorough factual commentary. The linguistic commentary concentrates on the composition of the Fifth Book, on the construction of discourse by the means of particles and other discourse markers, as well as on the linguistic features and peculiarities distinctive for the author, his age and the genre of historiography (such as specifically Late Latin syntax, non-Classical vocabulary, rhetorical figures, tropes and other stylistic features). The factual commentary contains a detailed description of the events mentioned in the text and their historical context. Close attention is paid to the character of the author's narrative, his approach to the historical data, choice of the events that interest him most as well as the way in which the author portraits them as mutually connected. Among the questions important for the commentary are whether he follows the wider tradition of Roman historiography or if and in which way the author's own opinions and persuasions are reflected in his work. This section also comments on the relation between Orosius'...

"Communities in Translation: History and Identity in Medieval England" argues that moments of identity formation in translated texts of the Middle Ages are best understood if translation is viewed as a process. Expanding on Brian Stock's idea that texts organize and define real historical communities, I argue that medieval translations--broadly considered as textual artifacts which relate received narratives--create communities within their narratives based on religious, ethnic, and proto-nationalist identities. In my first chapter, I assert that the Old English Orosius--a translation of a fifth-century Latin history--creates an audience that is forced to assume a hybrid Roman-English identity that juxtaposes a past Rome with a present Anglo-Saxon England. In chapter two, I argue that the inclusion of English saints among traditional Latin ones in Ælfric of Eynsham's Lives of the Saints stakes a claim not only for the holiness of English Christians but for the holiness of the land itself, thus including England in a trans-temporal community of Christians that depended on English practice and belief for its continued success. In my third chapter, I turn to Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, and read it alongside its historical source by Nicholas Trevet in order to demonstrate Chaucer's investment in a multicultural English Christianity. These arguments inform my reading of Beowulf, a poem which, while not itself a translation, thematizes the issues of community raised by my first three chapters through its engagement with the problematic relationship between communities and narrative. When Beowulf's characters and narrator present an inherited narrative meant to bolster community, they more often reveal the connections to outside forces and longer histories that render its textual communities exceedingly fragile. Where previous studies of translation focus on the links of vernacular writings to their source texts and their Latin past, I suggest that these narratives envision alternative presents and futures for the communities that they create.