Scholars including Christine Fell, Pauline Stafford and Catherine Cubitt have tried to explain the status of women in Late Anglo-Saxon England in a variety of ways. Some, such as Fell, have framed the earlier Anglo-Saxon period as a golden Age which saw greater freedoms; others, like Stafford, Cubitt and Patricia Halpin, have argued for a more complicated reading, one that acknowledges the impact of the tenth-century monastic reform and the changes in types of religious life open to women. Occasionally studies draw on the art of the period to demonstrate their claims, but none foreground the visual evidence in the exploration of women's status in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Art historical studies, such as Catherine Karkov's examinations of Junius 11 and the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, which include discussion of the portrayal of women tend to examine the images in relation to various concepts ranging from the manuscript's audience to issues of female speech, as well as in isolation from the extant corpus of images of women known from Late Anglo-Saxon England. This study will focus on three distinct, yet related, case studies that typify the ways in which women are presented to different Late Anglo-Saxon audiences. These case studies emerge through a statistical analysis and survey of patterns of representation of over twenty illustrated manuscripts. The first focuses on the miniature of St Æthlthryth in the Benedictional of Æthelthryth, exploring how the image of Æthlthryth was utilised to communicate ideals, such as virginity, key to Æthelwold's view of reformed English monasticism. The second case study focuses on the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch and the ways in which women were utilised in demonstrating (un)righteous behaviours. The differences between the manuscripts while seeking to demonstrate how personifications, like the historical and biblical women of the first two case studies, can reveal the ways in which women were conceived in Late Anglo-Saxon society. Ultimately, this study will show that when women were portrayed in the art of the period, it is with specific ideals in mind that speak to acceptable behaviour, religious constructs, and the place and function of the woman in contemporary society.

It is a pity that Old English poetry is not more widely known, not only because it is beautiful and powerful but because to read it is to experience a different way of thinking. It is also a pity - or opportunity - that many first-year Old English students express a "love-hate" relationship with the language. Therefore, it is worth trying to discover what there is in the poetry to interest the general educated public and create enthusiasts among undergraduates. The multitudinous answers, found herein, have one over-riding answer: the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking. Old English poetry opens a door into a dim past by disclosing, in puzzle-piece hints, that epistemological world, which becomes more fascinating the more one pokes around in it. This dissertation seeks to give the beginning student and the reader from the general educated public a chance to wander in this landscape where, generally, only scholars tread.

Beowulf's contest with Grendel has universally been read as an assertion of heroic agency. Yet as I demonstrate, this purportedly neutral convention derives from the misreading of a riddle design that invites and then disrupts expectation in the accidental denouement of Grendel's self-destruction. As an alternative to heroic misprision, I locate Beowulf's salient analogues in the poetic hagiographies, Andreas and Juliana. Within these poems I demonstrate a distinctive Christian critique, which defines heroic order through its assertion of loyalty to insiders and enmity to outsiders, and aligns with René Girard's anthropology in marking enmity both as a source of social cohesion and instability. I also demonstrate a distinctive "crossover poetics" that switches godly and demonic attributes between the opposed communities. As this crossover design gives rise to tropes of heroic-hagiographic hybridity, it exposes a biblical prophetic distinction between the physical realm of objects, actions, and words, and the metaphysical realm of emotional, ethical, and relational principles--a distinction by which the poem locates the origin of enmity in the idolatrous gestalt of egoistic materialism and the origin of loyalty in the covenant ethos of transcendent affiliation. This crossover design, moreover, functions in rapprochement with heroic culture, to affirm the godliness of loyalty and reject demonic enmity, while also interrogating the idolatrous potentiality of Christian discourse. As an alternative to the instabilities marked within heroic social order, the hagiographies offer a new social order based in a two-fold conception: a Christological model that entails compassion for enemies and self-sacrificing obedience to the covenant ethos, and a prophetic model that resists violent contagion through egoistic effacement, entailed in acts of divine praise and benevolent prayer. Lacking these redemptive disciplines, Beowulf's pagan fictive world nevertheless incorporates the same hagiographic critique, but through dystopian patterns of demonic inversion. Thus, Beowulf synthesizes the cardinal hagiographic elements--the same narrative arcs, lexical patterns, and crossover poetics--in a drama that schools its audience in prophetic discernment: to see the essential, defining reality beneath the surface of human events and to recognize patterns of divine retribution as paradoxical enactments of demonic self- destruction.

The various surviving disc and composite brooches provide proof of the skill and craftsmanship of Anglo-Saxon metalsmiths. Surprisingly, no one has conducted a full geometrical analysis of these brooches to discover the design process preceding the casting and decoration. This thesis endeavors to rectify this through a geometrical investigation of the sophisticated geometrical planning principles used by Anglo-Saxon craftsmen in the creation of these elaborate brooches. Through the use of simple geometrical constructions, smiths were able to create works of great beauty and sophistication. Closer inspection reveals that Anglo-Saxon smiths produced all the composite disc brooches in this study using similar processes of planning. In order to plan out the compositions of each brooch, master smiths would only need a compass, a straightedge, and some material on which to write. Each brooch reveals the same kind of coherent geometry, sharing traits and patterns; with proportions tend to be governed by a series of modular association. Although the master smiths or designers of the composite brooches used simple tools to create the composition, the figures in this thesis were created using the Vectorworks CAD program. This significantly expedited the analytical process and allowed for exact measurements. Despite using the computer program to replicate the planning process, all the figures can be recreated with just a compass and straightedge. While a complete geometric study of all the composite disc brooches needs to be done, this study examines five of the best preserved and well-crafted of that type, ranging from some of the simplest to the most elaborate, as an introduction to the subject.

The first decades following a country’s conversion to Christianity are sometimes marked by experimentation with native expressions of piety. Out of the multicultural environment of early Christian Northumbria such experiments created an insular Germanic version of sanctity. In the mid-seventh century, Oswiu of Northumbria (642-670), the younger brother and successor to King Oswald, constructed an elaborate narrative of God’s plan for England (without consent or guidance from the Roman Church). His narrative would weave his family into the sacred fabric of his nascent, Christian kingdom. Through skillful manipulation of oral tradition, material culture and sacri loci he crafted a unique interpretation of his brother’s death, an interpretation that Bede later canonizes in his Ecclesiastical History. King Oswiu, developed a novel form of the sacred by fusing certain established topoi of Christian sanctity with cultural elements from the Germans, Irish, Britons and Picts. Oswiu created the first Germanic holy warrior. Oswald with his dual nature as martyred warrior-king and humble saint represented a uniquely hybrid model of Germanic Christian sanctity as an imitatio for his people. It is this same cultural and intellectual environment, that gave birth to the Anglo-Saxon poetic masterpiece, The Dream of the Rood, which I suggest was written during the reign of King Aldfrith (685-705). Whereas Oswiu wished to consolidate political power through aligning his family with the newly introduced religion, the poet of the Dream of the Rood focused on exploring a related issue, the dual nature of Christ. The poem draws inspiration from the same font of political, cultural, and spiritual ideas that Oswiu used when he created his martyr-king. The inversions of traditional roles — Christ as warrior in The Dream of the Rood and warrior-king Oswald as martyr and humble servant of God — represent an outgrowth of the spiritual milieu that existed in seventh century Northumbria. The Dream of the Rood and the narrative of St. Oswald’s martyrdom reflect not merely Germanic ideals but a unique worldview stemming from the cultural and ethnic diversity of Northumbria. Both also reflect a desire by the Northumbrians to include themselves in the narrative of the Christian faith.

This thesis analyses the relationship between identity and language by evaluating Poland&rsquo / s accession to the European Union. It suggests that at the national level, language is a constructer and transporter of identity, which is created and recreated as part of a political programme. Thus, it questions the role of language as an identity transporter/ marker at the EU level. Within this framework, arguing that the European identity is created by the European elites, establishment of the European identity in Poland will be discussed and the role of language in the European identity formation process in Poland will be examined. The thesis will also evaluate the results of the language policies and multilingualism that aim to establish the European identity in Poland, and will draw attention to the results such as the dominance of Anglo-Saxon culture and English. Finally, by making use of Poland&rsquo / s EU accession, the thesis will point out the limits of language as an identity transporter/ marker at the EU level.

No description available.

“Hostages in Old English Literature” examines the various roles that hostages have played in Anglo-Saxon texts, specifically focusing on the characterization of Æscferth in The Battle of Maldon. Historical context is considered in order to contextualize behavioral expectations that a 10th century Anglo-Saxon audience might have held. Since the poem was composed during the reign of Æthelred the Unready, an examination of hostages and incidents recorded in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle during his rule helps ground a socio-cultural approach. Furthermore, since Æscferth is among only a handful of named hostages in Old English literature, these other hostages have been analyzed and compared with him in order to further contextualize the hostage character. These hostages have been identified based on a broadened concept of the term “hostage” to include the social expectations of a medieval stranger. Through a consideration of these other hostages, a continuum for changing hostage loyalty emerges and reflects the evolving warrior ethics at the end of the 10th century. Based on the presented evidence, this thesis concludes that Æscferth, as a hostage, best symbolizes The Battle of Maldon’s call for English unity at the end of the 10th century.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/07/24). Includes bibliographical references.