Translating Europe in Ælfric's lives of Saints

• Verfasst von: Ostacchini, Luisa [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Translating Europe in Ælfric's lives of Saints
• Verf.angabe: Luisa Ostacchini
• Verlagsort: Oxford
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Jahr: 2024
• Umfang: xi, 254 Seiten
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford english monographs
• ISBN: 978-0-19-891373-3
• ISBN: 978-0-19-891376-4
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe: Ostacchini, Luisa: Translating Europe in Ælfric's lives of Saints. - Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2024. - 1 Online-Ressource (xii, 260 Seiten)
• RVK-Notation: HH 1405
• K10plus-PPN: 1883799406

Abstract

"This book argues that Ælfric of Eynsham (955-1010) deliberately adapted information from European Latin sources in order to emphasise ideals of community, co-operation and collective identity to English audiences in his Lives of Saints, the most stylistically and narratively accomplished collection of hagiography composed in Early Medieval England. Moreover, it examines, for the first time, the Lives as a unified collection whose individual items comprise one thematic and didactic whole. Although the Lives of Saints is composed in Old English and was intended to educate English audiences, its sanctorale consists primarily of Frankish, Italian and Spanish saints rather than English ones, thus providing unique insight into the ways that Europe was represented in late tenth-century English literature. Through close comparison between the items within the Lives and their Latin sources this book demonstrates that Ælfric's interest in community was both inward and outward looking: he sought on the one hand to situate England within the wider Christian world, and on the other hand to promote the internal unity of the English kingdom and the reformed monastic establishment. As such, it sheds new light on the ways that Ælfric wrote about the Christian world and England's place within it, and further illuminates of the didactic praxis and ideology of one of the most influential and significant authors of the early medieval period"--