Academic literature on the topic 'Christian literature, english (old) – history and criticism'
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Journal articles on the topic "Christian literature, english (old) – history and criticism"
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Williamson, H. G. M. "Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives." Journal of Jewish Studies 55, no. 2 (October 1, 2004): 361–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.18647/2560/jjs-2004.
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Anderson, Earl R. "The uncarpentered world of Old English poetry." Anglo-Saxon England 20 (December 1991): 65–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0263675100001757.
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Cultural archaism is often thought of as a natural concomitant of oral tradition, and by extension, of a literature that is influenced by oral tradition. In the case of Old English poetry, archaism might include residual pagan religious beliefs and practices, such as the funeral rites inBeowulfor the use of runes for sortilege, and certain outmoded aspects of social organization such as the idea of a state dependent upon thecomitatusfor military security. An example often cited is the adaptation of heroic terminology and detail to Christian topics. The compositional method in Cædmon's ‘Hymn’, for instance, is regarded by many scholars as an adaptation of panegyric epithets to the praise of God, although N. F. Blake has noted that heroic epithets in the poem could have derived their inspiration from the psalms. InThe Dream of the Rood, the image of Christ mounting the Cross as a warrior leaping to battle has been regarded variously as evidence of an artistic limitation imposed by oral tradition, or as a learned metaphor pointing to the divine and human nature of Christ and to the crucifixion as a conflict between Christ and the devil. The martyrdom of the apostles is represented as military conflict in Cynewulf'sFates of the Apostles, Christ and his apostles as king andcomitatusin Cynewulf'sAscension, and temptation by devils as a military attack inGuthlac A; these illustrate a point made by A.B. Lord concerning the nature of conservatism in oral tradition: ‘tradition is not a thing of the past but a living and dynamic process which began in the past [and] flourishes in the present’.
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Vershinina, Yulia. "Сonveying Love: Amor, Caritas, Affectus and Dilectio in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Its Old English Version." ISTORIYA 13, no. 11 (121) (2022): 0. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s207987840023181-8.
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This article is devoted to the analysis of the semantic and functional features of the words used by the Venerable Bede in Ecclesiastical history of the English people (as well as in his other historical and hagiographic works) to convey the emotional component of the relationship between its characters, namely the concept of love, and the specifics of its translation into Old English. We have identified and analyzed the Latin words used by the author of Ecclesiastical history to express the concept in question. We came to the conclusion that the main term conveying the concept of love in the most general sense was the word amor. It was used most often by the author of Ecclesiastical history and was a neutral word indicating the presence of a certain attitude / commitment / inclination of one person to another, or to an inanimate object. A positive or negative connotation was imparted to it by the object of love or the character love had. Caritas indicated charity as a Christian virtue, which consisted not in experiencing a special attachment to someone or something but in keeping the commandments. Bede used the word affectus to indicate a feeling of love that was experienced more strongly than was customary in a given situation or between certain categories of people. By dilectio, he apparently understood love for God, which was supposed to underlie relations between Christians, love as a Christian virtue. The translator, unlike the Venerable Bede, used only one word to convey the identified nuances of perception of love. He coped with this task by using linguistic and grammatical transformations. We have identified a certain similarity in their perception of the concept under consideration. At the same time, the translator, apparently, perceived love between secular people as existing not only at the level of feelings, but also at the level of actions. This is evidenced by his use of the combination of the Old English verb lufian and the noun lufu. The same feature, in his opinion, was also characteristic of the feeling described by Bede as affectus. He firmly linked caritas with love for Christ. In addition, the translator mentioned love where it was not used in the Latin text of Ecclesiastical history to mitigate Bede's criticism of the representatives of the Celtic Christianity, which was one of the tasks that he faced when creating the translation.
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Chase, Colin. "The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research. Martin Green." Speculum 60, no. 3 (July 1985): 680–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2848198.
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Hawk, Brandon W. "History of the Study of Apocrypha in Early Medieval England." Bulletin for the Study of Religion 48, no. 3-4 (June 4, 2020): 13–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/bsor.37171.
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Literature written in England between about 500 and 1100 CE attests to a wide range of traditions, although it is clear that Christian sources were the most influential. Biblical apocrypha feature prominently across this corpus of literature, as early English authors clearly relied on a range of extra-biblical texts and traditions related to works under the umbrella of what have been called “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” and “New Testament/Christian Apocrypha." While scholars of pseudepigrapha and apocrypha have long trained their eyes upon literature from the first few centuries of early Judaism and early Christianity, the medieval period has much to offer. This article presents a survey of significant developments and key threads in the history of scholarship on apocrypha in early medieval England. My purpose is not to offer a comprehensive bibliography, but to highlight major studies that have focused on the transmission of specific apocrypha, contributed to knowledge about medieval uses of apocrypha, and shaped the field from the nineteenth century up to the present. Bringing together major publications on the subject presents a striking picture of the state of the field as well as future directions.
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AL-SADOON, Hadeel Salwan Sami. "THE STYLE OF THE SEPTUAGINT TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW TESTAMENT ) LITERATURE, CRITICISM AND TRANSLATION AXIS)." RIMAK International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 03, no. 02 (February 1, 2021): 152–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.47832/2717-8293.2-3.12.
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The Hebrew Torah of the Old Testament, is the first text sacred Known by history. Is the Septuagint translation for the Hebrew text of the oldest and most important translation was adopted by the Bible and the Religious language that borrowed directly to the Christian religion rituals and services. Also it considered later the main base for important translations in the old era , and still even now occupies a role important in the field of monetary, interpretive and historical studies. The original Hebrew contain more than one book, the septuagenarian translation, separated between them and made each book stand on its own. Our research deals with the Historical introduction to the Septuagint translation , The language of the Septuagint translation , The Septuagint Style ,The most important manuscripts of the Septuagint translation.The content and status of the Septuagint to the Jews and Christ, Difference and similarity with the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament in terms of the order , number and names of the books and we Shedding light on the most important translations of the Bible from the beginning of the Septuagint to the present day.
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Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith. "A School of Christian Hebraists in Thirteenth-Century England: A Unique Hebrew-Latin-French and English Dictionary and its Sources." European Journal of Jewish Studies 1, no. 2 (2007): 249–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187247107783876257.
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AbstractThis paper is a preliminary presentation of a unique Hebrew-Latin-Old French dictionary written by Christian scholars in 13th century England, to appear shortly in print. The authors of this exceptional work did not follow the patristic tradition of Christian Hebraism and did not focus on anti-Jewish polemics, but rather turned to Jewish Rabbinic and Medieval sources, such as commentaries of Rachi, the lexicon of Solomon ibn Parhon or Alpha Beta de-Ben Sira for their understanding of the Hebrew text of the Bible. Following the grammatical approach of the classical Spanish school of Hebrew grammar, this dictionary is a real 'philological' work. It stems from a Christian tradition of the use of the Hebrew Bible for correcting the Vulgate as represented by the bilingual Hebrew-Latin Bible manuscripts produced and studied in England in the late 12th and 13th centuries.
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Zartaloudis, Thanos. "The Experience of Peril in Secular Criticism." boundary 2 49, no. 2 (May 1, 2022): 153–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/01903659-9644562.
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Abstract This essay offers a reading of Stathis Gourgouris's The Perils of the One (2019). The peril of the One is primarily, Zartaloudis suggests, its poverty of experience. The impoverishment of experience is the purpose of transcendental foundations of the One, which, in Western traditions, is presupposed through a binary schema of power whereby potency is exhausted in actuality. This binary of power corresponds historically to the Christian Trinitarian oikonomia that predates the transcendental foundationalism of sovereign power/law and secular government. Hence, the age-old discourses that have been produced over many centuries over heteronomy and/or autonomy, across the theological, philosophical, juridical, and political spectrum, revolve around the same false paradox of how to form order in the world from a transcendental vantage point, without being able, by definition, to unfold it in the world. Determined to separate the false paradox (the “world” according to the One) from the true paradox (the cosmological abyss) within which it unfolds, humanity is thought to be destined to an inevitable state of war as if by nature. Secular criticism (in the manner of Edward Said and Gourgouris) as a tradition of thought offers an alternative to the polemic between traditions that are structured according to a false paradox (a world as the world) attempting to erase the unmappable cosmos. Such criticism, it is proposed, could become ever more creative and inviting if it reached out across traditions to compose an impassioned poietic thread that is premised on the negation neither of traditions nor of the irreparable cosmological abyss that marks our species.
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Burridge, Claire. "Healing Body and Soul in Early Medieval Europe: Medical Remedies with Christian Elements." Studies in Church History 58 (June 2022): 46–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/stc.2022.3.
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The early medieval period has been traditionally cast as the nadir of medicine in the West. Such an image stemmed in part from the negative perceptions of ‘superstitious’ charms and incantations, in which medicine was seen to be detrimentally affected by Christian and pagan influences alike. This outdated view has been revised substantially, and the intersections between medicine and religion are now understood to reflect a complex, multivalent approach to healing. However, this re-evaluation of early medieval medicine, and especially of recipe literature, has concentrated primarily on Old English material. As a result, the substantial corpus of early medieval Latin continental recipes found outside the established canon of classical and late antique texts has largely been overlooked. This article seeks to redress this imbalance, offering the first systematic investigation into the ways in which Christian elements appear in these comparatively understudied pharmaceutical writings. The article's findings have significant implications for our understanding of Latin recipe literature and of the evolution of medical knowledge in early medieval Europe.
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Oberlin, Adam. "Dario Bullitta, Niðrstigningar saga: Sources, Transmission, and Theology of the Old Norse “Descent into Hell”. Toronto Old Norse and Icelandic Series, 11. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017, pp. XIX, 203." Mediaevistik 31, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 394–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/med012018_394.
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Alongside the source and contextual study promised by the title, this volume also delivers an edition and the first English translation of the two primary redactions of the Old Norse version of the Descensus Christi or Harrowing of Hell translated from the medieval tradition of the Evangelium Nicodemi or Acta Pilati (for a modern Norwegian translation and parallel normalized edition of the Old Icelandic text see Odd Einar Haugen, Norrøne tekster i utval, 2nd ed., Oslo: Gyldendal, 2001 [1st ed. 1994], pp. 250–65). While the texts themselves are short and have attracted relatively little attention compared to the immense consideration afforded saga literature or Norse poetic traditions, they are nevertheless of great philological significance in the history of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and provide a window into the transmission of Latin and Christian texts. Given the amount of material covered in such few pages while retaining the fullness of the textual tradition, this study, edition, and translation is both conceptually outstanding and strong in execution. The fields of Old Norse-Icelandic language and literature and Germanic philology in a wider sense are enriched by the publication of such multipurpose volumes, whose organization should increase interest in and coverage of otherwise minor or overlooked texts.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Christian literature, english (old) – history and criticism"
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Woeber, Catherine. "A study of Christ and his saints as representatives of the values of Christian heroism in Old English poetry." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21143.
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Bibliography: pages 71-72.This dissertation investigates the concept of Christian heroism as it appears in a number of Old English poems, through a study of the figure of the miles Christi. These poems present a specific Christian heroism which, though couched in terms culled from Germanic heroism, nevertheless exists in its own right and is quite different from it. Christ and his saints are seen as heroes in themselves (Christian servants obedient to the will of God) rather than as heroic warriors as they are usually regarded (Germanic heroes fighting for a Christian cause). They are leaders and heroes in the sense of servants, and not only like kings and warriors of the Germanic code. A study of some poems from the Cynewulf canon shows that the poets understood Christian heroism to mean more than brave battling for the cause of good; in essence, it is complete submission to the will of God.
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Brooks, Britton. "The restoration of Creation in the early Anglo-Saxon vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:17b5d20e-446e-4891-90a6-f02a196a7409.
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This thesis explores the relationship between Creation and the saints Cuthbert and Guthlac in their Anglo-Latin and Old English vitae. It argues that this relationship is best understood through received theological exegesis concerning Creation's present state in the postlapsarian world. The exegesis has its foundation in Augustine's interpretations of the Genesis narrative, though it enters the textual tradition of the vitae via an adapted portion of De Genesi contra Manichaeos in Bede's metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCM). Both Augustine and Bede argue, with slight differences, that fallen Creation can be restored into prelapsarian harmony with humanity by way of sanctity. Each individual vita engages with this understanding of the Fall in distinct, though ultimately interrelated, ways, and the chapters of this thesis will therefore explore each text individually. Chapter 1 argues that the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCA) unites Cuthbert's ability to restore Creation with the theme of monastic obedience, linking the ordering of a monastery to the restoration of prelapsarian harmony. The VCA also seeks to create sites for potential lay pilgrimage in the landscapes of Farne and Lindisfarne by highlighting the present efficacy of Cuthbert's miracles. Chapter 2 argues that Bede's VCM not only reveals his early attempt to fashion Cuthbert into the primary saint for Britain, via a focus on Cuthbert's obedience to the Divine Office, but also that the restoration of Creation functions as a ruminative tool. Chapter 3 argues that Bede transforms the nature of Cuthbert's sanctity in his prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCP) from static to developmental, influenced by the Evagrian Vita Antonii, and that Creation is adapted to function as the impetus for, and evidence of, Cuthbert's progression. Chapter 4 argues that Felix's Vita Sancti Guthlaci (VSG) unites the development of Guthlac with a physically delineated Creation, and that the restoration of Creation is elevated to an even greater degree here than in Bede's hagiography. Chapter 5 argues that the author of the Old English Prose Guthlac (OEPG) grounds his vita by utilizing a landscape lexis shared with contemporary boundary clauses, so that here the relationship between the saint and Creation has greater force; it further argues that Guthlac A uniquely connects Guthlac with the doctrine of replacement, consolidating links between his arrival to the eremitic space and the restoration of prelapsarian Eden.
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Knight, Alison Elaine. "Pen of iron : scriptural text and the Book of Job in early modern English literature." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610695.
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Cavell, Megan Colleen. "Representations of weaving and binding in Old English poetry." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610453.
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Neidorf, Leonard. "The Origins of Beowulf: Studies in Textual Criticism and Literary History." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11366.
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Beowulf is preserved in a single manuscript written out around the year 1000, but there are many reasons to believe that the poem was composed several centuries before this particular act of manual reproduction. Most significantly, the meter of Beowulf reveals that the poet regularly observed distinctions of etymological length that became phonologically indistinct before 725 in Mercia. This dissertation gauges the explanatory power of the hypothesis that Beowulf was composed about three centuries before the production of the extant manuscript. The following studies test the hypothesis of archaic composition by determining whether it is able to accommodate independent forms of evidence drawn from the fields of linguistics, textual criticism, and literary history.
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Bailey, Hannah McKendrick. "Misinterpretation and the meaning of signs in Old English poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:880a2482-9573-4142-be27-ec8c87cfa3fb.
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This thesis investigates how Old English poets understood the processes of signification and interpretation through analysis of depictions of poor interpreters and the use of 'sign terms' such as tacen and beacen in the longer Old English poems. The first chapter deals with the Beowulf Manuscript, the second and third chapters consider Elene and Andreas within the network of related poems found in the Vercelli Book and the begin- ning of the Exeter Book, the fourth chapter is on the Junius Manuscript, and the conclusion looks at the use of the 'bright sign' motif across all four major poetic codices. I suggest that there is a 'heroic sign-bearing interpreter' character-type which several of the poems utilize or ironically invert, and that poor interpretation is nearly always asso- ciated with hesitation, which often resembles acedia. I also argue that there is greater nuance in the poems' depictions of modes of understanding than has previously been acknowledged: Eve in Genesis B does not stand for the senses which subvert the mind, but rather models the limits of rational thought as a means of understanding God, and Elene does not depict a simple opposition of letter and spirit, but a threefold mental pro- cess of learning about the Cross with analogues in exegesis and Augustine's Trinity of the Soul. Finally, I argue that there is a 'bright sign' motif which functions within a brightness-sign-covenant concept cluster, whose evocation as a traditional poetic unit is not identical to the denotation and connotation of its constituent parts. These strands of inquiry taken together demonstrate how Old English poems invest signs with significance by tapping into a specifically poetic network of allusion.
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Boettcher, Anna Margarete. "Through Women's Eyes: Contemporary Women's Fiction about the Old West." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4966.
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The myth of the West is still very much alive in contemporary America. Lately, there has been a resurgence of new Western movies, TV series, and fiction. Until recently the West has been the exclusive domain of the quintessential masculine man. Women characters have featured only in the margins of the Western hero's tale. Contemporary Western fiction by women, however, offers new perspectives. Women's writing about the Old and New West introduces strong female protagonists and gives voice to characters that are muted or ignored by traditional Western literature and history. Western scholarship has largely been polarized by two approaches. First, the myth and symbol school of Turner, Smith, and followers celebrated American exceptionalism and rugged male individualism on the Western frontier. Second, the reaction against these theories draws attention to the West's legacy of racism, sexism and violence. The purpose of the present study is to collapse these theoretical fences and open a dialogue between conflicting theoretical positions and contemporay Western fiction. Molly Gloss's 1989 The Jump-Off Creek and Karen Joy Fowler's 1991 Sarah Canary selfcritically re-write the Old West. This study has attempted to explore the following questions: How can one re-write history in the context of a postmodern culture? How can "woman," the quintessential "Other" escape a modernist history (and thus avoid charges of essentialism) when she has not been in this history to begin with? In this study I analyze how these two contemporary feminist authors, Molly Gloss, and Karen Joy Fowler, face the dual challenge of writing themselves into a history that has traditionally excluded them, while at the same time deconstructing this very historical concept of the West. Fowler's and Gloss's use of diverse narrative strategies to upset a monolithic concept of history-- emphasizing the importance of multiple stories of the Old West-- is discussed in detail.
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Abdalla, Laila. "The dialectical adversary : the satanic character and imagery in Anglo-Saxon poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59563.
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This thesis examines the positive role of evil in select Old English Poetry, namely The Junius Book, "Guthlac", "Vainglory", "The Whale", "Juliana", "Judith" and "Beowulf". Using a background of Augustan and Boethian thought, each adversarial character is discussed with regard to role and imagery, but specifically in relationship to the protagonist. Evil plays a surprisingly positive role when it offers the protagonist the opportunity to defeat it. The protagonists' honour at the poem's conclusion is necessarily defined by the extent of resisting the antagonists. The hero must fight evil on two levels: the temporal in humans and the metaphysical in Satan. The thesis examines the various levels of victory and indeed failure they achieve, and concludes that of all the heroes only Juliana is completely successful. Although evil itself cannot be defined as "good", this thesis discovers that in its relationship with the human hero, it can indeed give rise to goodness.
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Durkin, Philip. "A study of Oxford, Trinity College, MS 86, with editions of selected texts, and with special reference to late Middle English prose forms of confession." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f63833b4-b75f-48bb-b1db-892929806abc.
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The thesis consists of a detailed examination of the contents of Oxford, Trinity College, MS 86, (Trinity), with particular attention being given to several lengthy English confessional items which it contains. This is complemented by a more general consideration of late Middle English prose forms of confession and the manuscripts in which they occur. Part One consists of a survey of all surviving independent prose forms of confession preserved in late Middle English manuscripts. I divide the texts into groups according to their probable audience and readership, assessed from both internal and external evidence. This is preceded by a brief introductory section on the background to late Middle English guides to preparation for confession. In three appendices, I provide: a full description of London, British Library, MS Sloane 1584, with transcriptions of three confessional texts; a transcription of a form of confession from London, British Library, MS Harley 2383, with variants from all known manuscripts; a transcription of a form of confession from Yale, University Library, MS Beinecke 317. Part Two consists of a close study of Trinity: a full description of the manuscript, supplementing existing catalogues; editions of four confessional texts from the manuscript, accompanied by detailed discussions of their form and probable function; an analysis of a series of short devotional texts which, taken together, constitute an elementary manual of religious instruction. I include full critical editions, with variants from all known manuscripts, of two of these texts, The Sixteen Conditions of Charity and The Eight Blessings of God, both of which originate in passages extracted from the Wycliffite Bible, and which survive, in varying versions, in thirty-four and nine manuscripts respectively. The thesis concludes with a summary of the probable origin and function of this manuscript collection.
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Schubert, Layla A. Olin 1975. "Material literature in Anglo-Saxon poetry." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10909.
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x, 208 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.The scattered instances depicting material literature in Anglo-Saxon poetry should be regarded as a group. This phenomenon occurs in Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, and The Husband's Message. Comparative examples of material literature can be found on the Ruthwell Cross and the Franks Casket. This study examines material literature in these three poems, comparing their depictions of material literature to actual examples. Poems depicting material literature bring the relationship between man and object into dramatic play, using the object's point of view to bear witness to the truth of distant or intensely personal events. Material literature is depicted in a love poem, The Husband's Message, when a prosopopoeic runestick vouches for the sincerity of its master, in the heroic epic Beowulf when an ancient, inscribed sword is the impetus to give an account of the biblical flood, and is also implied in the devotional poem The Dream of the Rood, as two crosses both pre-and-post dating the poem bear texts similar to portions of the poem. The study concludes by examining the relationship between material anxiety and the character of Weland in Beowulf, Deor, Alfred's Consolation of Philosophy, and Waldere A & B. Concern with materiality in Anglo-Saxon poetry manifests in myriad ways: prosopopoeic riddles, both heroic and devotional passages directly assailing the value of the material, personification of objects, and in depictions of material literature. This concern manifests as a material anxiety. Weland tames the material and twists and shapes it, re-affirming the supremacy of mankind in a material world.
Committee in charge: Martha Bayless, Chairperson, English; James Earl, Member, English; Daniel Wojcik, Member, English; Aletta Biersack, Outside Member, Anthropology
Books on the topic "Christian literature, english (old) – history and criticism"
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Fulk, R. D. A history of Old English literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
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G, Scragg D., and Western Michigan University. Medieval Institute., eds. The Old English life of Mary of Egypt. [Kalamazoo, MI]: Board of the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 2005.
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E, Szarmach Paul, and Oosterhouse Deborah A, eds. Old English prose: Basic readings. New York: Garland Pub., 2000.
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Garde, Judith N. Old English poetry in medieval Christian perspective: A doctrinal approach. Cambridge [England]: D.S. Brewer, 1991.
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T, Keenan Hugh, ed. Typology and English medieval literature. New York: AMS Press, 1992.
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E, Szarmach Paul, ed. Holy men and holy women: Old English prose saints' lives and their contexts. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996.
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G, Scragg D., and Western Michigan University. Medieval Institute., eds. Aelfric's lives of canonised popes. [Michigan]: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 2001.
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E, Cross James, Hall Thomas N, Hill Thomas D. 1940-, Wright Charles Darwin 1954-, and Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture in Honor of J.E. Cross (1996 : Kalamazoo, Mich.), eds. Via crucis: Essays on early medieval sources and ideas : in memory of J. E. Cross. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002.
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García, A. Bravo. Héroes y santos en la literatura anglosajona. [Asturias]: Universidad de Oviedo, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1994.
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Klaeber, Fr. The Christian elements in Beowulf: How to Deepthroat 11 Inches. [Kalamazoo, Mich.]: Published for the Old English Division of the Modern Language Association of American by the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University and its Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 1996.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Christian literature, english (old) – history and criticism"
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Sanders, Andrew. "Old English Literature." In The Short Oxford History of English Literature, 16–27. Oxford University PressOxford, 1996. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198711575.003.0002.
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Abstract The term ‘Old English’ was invented as a patriotic and philological convenience. The more familiar term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ has a far older pedigree. ‘Old English’ implied that there was a cultural continuity between the England of the sixth century and the England of the nineteenth century (when German, and later British, philologists determined that there had been phases in the development of the English language which they described as ‘Old’, ‘Middle’, and ‘Modern’). ‘Anglo-Saxon’ had, on the other hand, come to suggest a culture distinct from that of modern England, one which might be pejoratively linked to the overtones of’ Sassenach’ (Saxon), a word long thrown back by angry Celts at English invaders and English cultural imperialists. In 1871 Henry Sweet, the pioneer Oxford phonetician and Anglicist, insisted in his edition of one of King Alfred’s translations that he was going to use ‘Old English’ to denote ‘the unmixed, inflectional state of the English language, commonly known by the barbarous and unmeaning title of “Anglo-Saxon”‘. A thousand years earlier, King Alfred himself had referred to the tongue which he spoke and in which he wrote as ‘englisc’. It was the language of the people he ruled, the inhabitants of Wessex who formed part of a larger English nation. That nation, which occupied most of the fertile arable land in the southern part of the island of Britain, was united by its Christian religion, by its traditions, and by a form of speech which, despite wide regional varieties of dialect, was already distinct from the ‘Saxon’ of the continental Germans. From the thirteenth century onwards, however, Alfred’s ‘English’ gradually became incomprehensible to the vast majority of the English-speaking descendants of those same Anglo Saxons. Scholars and divines of the Renaissance period may have revived interest in the study of Old English texts in the hope of proving that England had traditions in Church and State which distinguished it from the rest of Europe.
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"CHAPTER 7. The Christian Saint as Hero." In A New Critical History of Old English Literature, 158–82. New York University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814738559.003.0013.
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Sanders, Andrew. "Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature 1880—1920." In The Short Oxford History of English Literature, 457–504. Oxford University PressOxford, 1996. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198711575.003.0009.
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Abstract ON the title-page of his Past and Present of 1843 Thomas Carlyle had quoted Schiller’s strident sentiment ‘Ernstistdasleben’ (‘Life is earnest’). Some seven years later, in chapter 42 of David Coppetfield, Dickens’s hero expresses the opinion that ‘there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness’. By the closing years of the nineteenth century such mid-Victorian moral confidence had begun to sound oppressively, even comically, outmoded. Oscar Wilde, for one, mocked at the very idea in the title of his ‘Trivial Comedy for Serious People’, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and it was scarcely casually that Samuel Butler selected Ernest as the Christian name of the intellectually and morally flabby hero of his The Way of All Flesh (HJ03). By the 1880s, when Butler was working on his novel, the virtues of old-fashioned earnestness-which entailed moral probity, religious orthodoxy, sexual reserve, hard work, and a confident belief in personal and historical progress were open to question or had been supplanted by a new and more probing seriousness. In retrospect, the mid-Victorians looked both wrong, and, when their influence could be escaped, funny.
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Yatsenko, Maria V. "Old English Poem Exodus: Ways of Reflecting the Senses of Scripture in the Poetics of the Christian Epic." In Translation, Interpretation, Commentary in the Eastern and Western Literature, 293–336. A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.22455/978-5-9208-0710-6-293-336.
Full textAbstract:
The article deals with the principles of creating the Anglo-Saxon Christian epic and is based on the Old English poem Exodus. Consecutive analysis of the history of reception and interpretation of the biblical text allows to reproduce the tradition of commenting and studying the text of the Scripture, known to the Anglo-Saxons. The poetics of Christian epic is viewed on the main components of the epic text (beginning of the text, epic variation, retardation, description of the battle, composition of the text as a whole). These constituent parts of the text are analysed from the point of view of their semantics and the associations with the tradition of the interpretation of the biblical plots. Preserving the multiple senses inherent to the epic text, the Christian epic gains additional senses, connected with the tradition of allegorical interpretation of the Bible. The orientation of the basic stylistic devices to allegoreza i. e. urging the reader to use the main types of allegorical interpretation (typological, anagogic, allegorical) is significant for the text. Most of the analysed passages would remain unclear without it. The stylistic devices have enlarged their functions: the beginning of the text attracted the attention to understanding the Old Testament in the context of the New one, epic variation served not only the repetitive nomination of the object but also to show their allegorical meanings, digression allowed to include typological parallels.
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Wight, Martin, and DAVID S. YOST. "Review of Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951)." In History and International Relations, 359–60. Oxford University PressOxford, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192867476.003.0030.
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Abstract Wight reports that this book has “two central themes”: “Human history is ultimately tragic in character, not melodramatic; compassion, not censure, is the right attitude towards it.” Wight points out that “Butterfield distinguishes two kinds of historiography: ‘heroic’ history—polemical, partisan, engagé—and ‘technical’ history. The latter term is misleading, since the real difference does not lie in techniques of documentary criticism so much as in moral purpose. Technical history unravels with compassionate comprehension the whole system of necessity within which past actions were framed, and seeks a reconciling synthesis. Technical history in this sense presupposes Christian conceptions of truth and personality, and general freedom of research; and consequently it is in considerable danger today from the erosion of beliefs and from subtle threats to the historian’s independence. Any historian who does not enjoy the seductions of Government patronage will like Butterfield’s urbane onslaught on ‘official history.’” Butterfield “gently asks” whether being “animated by hatred of Germany” can be “conducive to a comprehensive and durable historical interpretation.” In Wight’s view, Butterfield’s “chapter on history as a branch of literature is an admirably original and detached contribution to an old controversy.… The reader is left wishing that in due course Butterfield would illustrate his own principles in the grand manner, redeem technical history from his own reproaches, and reunite it with literature, by undertaking a large-scale history of, let us say, the Reformation, for which this rich, judicious and sensitive book will be the programme notes.”
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North, Richard. "Meet the pagans: on the misuse of Beowulf in Andreas." In Aspects of knowledge, 185–209. Manchester University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9780719097843.003.0009.
Full textAbstract:
Richard North’s chapter argues that the Old English verse saint’s life Andreas (on the apostle St Andrew) appropriates the secular epic poem Beowulf for mock-epic purposes, turning knowledge of Beowulf, a poem which by implication must have been famous in Anglo-Saxon England, to a new Christian purpose. Andreas is seen to offer through its mock-epic style a satirical commentary on the heathen nostalgia of Beowulf. In Andreas knowledge of secular literature and its version of the past is astutely re-appropriated for religious purposes, being absorbed into and transcended by a Christian celebration of the true heroism of the saint. This chapter adds a new dimension to the understanding of Anglo-Saxon literary history and the place of secular tradition within it.