The ideal of men dying with their lord in the Germania and in The Battle of Maldon

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Woolf
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Pure Chance ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Battle Of Maldon ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Total Lack

There is a well-known resemblance between the heroic behaviour described in the Germania and in The Battle of Maldon: in his account of the martial code of honour of the Germanic tribes Tacitus says, ‘ Iam vero infame in omnem vitam ac probrosum superstitem principi suo ex acie recessisse’, whilst in Maldon the poet has the followers of Byrhtnoth affirm one after the other that it would be a disgrace to leave the battlefield now that their lord lies dead. For a long time it was assumed that this resemblance reflected historical fact, ties of loyalty and heroic aspirations having remained unchanged over 900 years. A more plausible modification of this view has been that, whilst the society of the tribes in first-century Germany had to be firmly distinguished from that of the Anglo-Saxons in tenth-century England, Old English poetry archaically preserved some of the ideals of conduct that characterized a much earlier form of society. But more recently still the harking back to Tacitus by students of Anglo-Saxon history and literature has been shown to be fallacious, originating in the ethnic romanticism of German scholars in the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless the long-standing view that there is a particular resemblance between the Germania and The Battle of Maldon cannot be lightly abandoned. Indeed the more one becomes aware that there is no evidence that the obligation of a retainer to die with his lord was a pervasive ideal in Germanic society which could well have lived on into tenth-century English life or literature, the more striking and curious the resemblance becomes. My aims in the present article are first to demonstrate the apparently total lack of historical or literary–historical continuity between the Germania and Maldon and second, nevertheless, to seek an explanation for a resemblance which is too remarkable to be dismissed as pure chance.

scholarly journals La génesis ibérica del moderno poder naval

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-252
Author(s):  
Manuel Vila González
Keyword(s):  
Language Education ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Geographic Scale ◽  
New Era ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
15Th Century

At the end of the 15th century, a revolutionary approach to the use of the sea for its own benefit emerged from the two Atlantic Iberian peoples, characterized by having to face the challenge of ocean navigation and the exploration of new lands, something never even conceived previously. As happened in the previous historical stages with other protagonists, the main motivation to jump into the sea was economic. However, the geographic scale of the endeavor on this occasion ushered in a new era, characterized both by accelerated scientific development and by a globalization of commerce, politics, technology and culture (language, education and Christianity). Portugal conquered the oceans with the aim of establishing a network of commercial enclaves, creating the mold of what has since been considered the logical procedure for maritime powers in order to move freely through the seas that link the colonies with the metropolis. Accordingly, what for just over a century has been called sea (naval) power was nothing but the part of maritime power that was responsible for protecting its own trade from the ambition of others. Spain, however, undertook a similar epic with a more territorial (and patrimonial) mentality, due to which the oceans themselves came to be considered an integral part of the crown possessions as a link that united the different parts of the kingdom. That assumption created a new concept of naval power, by which in time of peace it complemented maritime power, which became at the same time a tributary of the former in the event of war. What the classic Anglo-Saxon writers (Alfred T. Mahan and Julian S. Corbett, in particular) described as maritime and sea power when studying the new history in British documentary sources is nothing more than the transposition of the principles that governed the constitution of Renaissance Portugal in a thalassocracy of planetary scope. The Spanish case is much more complex, since it was not only equally ignored in late-nineteenth-century and later historical-strategic studies (not only Anglo-Saxon, which is even more inexplicable), but it remains in the mist of the unexplored by not having had recognized historical continuity, which has contributed to preventing an adequate understanding of the historical dimension of the success (due to its resilience, durability, prosperity…) of the “empire” of the Hispanic Monarchy.

Historical Fact and Exegetical Fiction in the Carolingian Vita S. Sualonis

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynda L. Coon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Original Source ◽  
The Past ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Historical Fact

The nineteenth-century editor of Ermenrich of Ellwangen's (ca. 814–74) Vita Sualonis, Oswald Holder-Egger, dismissed the Carolingian hagiographer's sermon on the Anglo-Saxon hermit Sualo as historically unimportant because of its heavy reliance on oral traditions, its turgid prose style, and its clumsy Latin grammar. Holder-Egger found fault with the “ahistoricism” of Ermenrich's Vita—a scholarly stance no doubt influenced by the historicism of his day that privileged “the basic story as the primary object or goal of research.” For the late-nineteenth century, the recovery and reconstruction of an original source (an archetype or Urtext) from which all other derivative and secondary versions sprang was the ultimate task of historical inquiry. Such an Urtext, once unearthed, would then present the true, uncontaminated story of what had happened in the past, and the historian who successfully excavated an Urtype would assume the role of truth teller.

The Many Faces of Socioeconomic Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Toye
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Face ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
The Many ◽  
Century Development

This book provides a survey of different ways in which economic sociocultural and political aspects of human progress have been studied since the time of Adam Smith. Inevitably, over such a long time span, it has been necessary to concentrate on highlighting the most significant contributions, rather than attempting an exhaustive treatment. The aim has been to bring into focus an outline of the main long-term changes in the way that socioeconomic development has been envisaged. The argument presented is that the idea of socioeconomic development emerged with the creation of grand evolutionary sequences of social progress that were the products of Enlightenment and mid-Victorian thinkers. By the middle of the twentieth century, when interest in the accelerating development gave the topic a new impetus, its scope narrowed to a set of economically based strategies. After 1960, however, faith in such strategies began to wane, in the face of indifferent results and general faltering of confidence in economists’ boasts of scientific expertise. In the twenty-first century, development research is being pursued using a research method that generates disconnected results. As a result, it seems unlikely that any grand narrative will be created in the future and that neo-liberalism will be the last of this particular kind of socioeconomic theory.

Rethinking Mahler

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Temporal Experience ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Literature History ◽  
Historical Past

Gustav Mahler’s anniversary years (2010–11) have provided an opportunity to rethink the composer’s position within the musical, cultural and multi-disciplinary landscapes of the twenty-first century, as well as to reassess his relationship with the historical traditions of his own time. Comprising a collection of essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field, Rethinking Mahler in part counterbalances common scholarly assumptions and preferences which predominantly configure Mahler as proto-modernist, with hitherto somewhat neglected consideration of his debt to, and his re-imagining of, the legacies of his own historical past. It reassesses his engagement both with the immediate creative and cultural present of the late nineteenth century, and with the weight of a creative and cultural past that was the inheritance of artists living and working at that time. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives the contributors pursue ideas of nostalgia, historicism and ‘pastness’ in relation to an emergent pluralist modernity and subsequent musical-cultural developments. Mahler’s relationship with music, media and ideas past, present, and future is explored in three themed sections, addressing among them issues in structural analysis; cultural contexts; aesthetics; reception; performance, genres of stage, screen and literature; history/historiography; and temporal experience.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

scholarly journals Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Semple
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Divine Punishment

‘Many tribulations and hardships shall arise in this world before its end, and they are heralds of the eternal perdition to evil men, who shall afterwards suffer eternally in the black hell for their sins.’ These words, composed by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century, reflect a preoccupation in the late Anglo-Saxon Church with perdition and the infernal punishments that awaited sinners and heathens. Perhaps stimulated in part by anxiety at the approach of the millennium, both Ælfric and Wulfstan (archbishop of York, 1002–23) show an overt concern with the continuation of paganism and the evil deeds of mankind in their sermons and homilies. Their works stress the terrible judgement that awaited sinners and heathens and the infernal torment to follow. The Viking raids and incursions, during the late eighth to ninth and late tenth centuries, partially inspired the great anxiety apparent in the late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical leadership. Not only were these events perceived as divine punishment for a lack of religious devotion and fervour in the English people, but the arrival of Scandinavian settlers in the late ninth century may have reintroduced pagan practice and belief into England.

The Old English Benedictine Rule: writing for women and men

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 147-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Jayatilaka
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
Linguistic Level

The Regula S. Benedicti was known and used in early Anglo-Saxon England, but it was not until the mid-tenth-century Benedictine reform that the RSB became established as the supreme and exclusive rule governing the monasteries of England. The tenth-century monastic reform movement, undertaken by Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald during the reign of Edgar (959–75), sought to revitalize monasticism in England which, according to the standards of these reformers, had ceased to exist during the ninth century. They took as a basis for restoring monastic life the RSB, which was regarded by them as the main embodiment of the essential principles of western monasticism, and in this capacity it was established as the primary document governing English monastic life. By elevating the status of the RSB as the central text of monastic practice in England and the basis of a uniform way of life the reformers raised for themselves the problem of ensuring that the RSB would be understood in detail by all monks, nuns and novices, whatever their background. Evidence of various attempts to make the text accessible, both at the linguistic level and at the level of substance, survives in manuscripts dating from the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries; the most important of these attempts is a vernacular translation of the RSB.

Oswald of Worcester and the Lost Ideologies of Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Monastic Reform

2021 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 407-427
Author(s):  
Thomas Kearns
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Monastic Reform

The future of musical theatre: An animation of a video call between collaborators, 30 September 2020

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy Brooke Fairfield ◽  
Krista Knight ◽  
Barry Brinegar
Keyword(s):  
Musical Theatre ◽  
First Century ◽  
Us South ◽  
Social Justice Movements ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Justice Movements

In the first autumn of the COVID-19 pandemic, long-time theatre collaborators in two different cities in the US South discuss the future of an art form that has currently gone dark. Influenced by punk culture, twenty-first-century internet aesthetics, social justice movements and their pets, this decade-strong creative team reflects in a multimedia format on their past work and enumerates their priorities for the future of musical theatre: cheap, remote, inexperienced, local, radical and full of women and sexual/gender minorities.

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