Rectifying a Chronicle of Contradictions: The Political Context of Abraham Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-107
Author(s):  
Patrick V. Day
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Advisory Body ◽  
Historical Importance ◽  
Divine Kingship

Abraham Wheelock’s first edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appeared at the height of the First English Civil War in 1643, and it is often treated by modern critics as an appendix to the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica to which it is attached. This paper argues that the Chronicle participated in a larger royalist campaign to establish the West Saxons as the institutional forbears of the first two Stuart kings. The West Saxon genealogies authorize a seventeenth-century conception of patriarchal, divine kingship when they trace Alfred to the biblical Adam. Alternatively, the medieval Chronicle presents the advisory body of the Anglo-Saxons, the witan, as a potentially restrictive force upon the monarchy—an image incompatible with a royalist agenda. Wheelock mediates the contradictory presence of the powerful witan by diminishing its historical importance through excision, substitution, and inconsistent translation so that the Chronicle may more easily conform to early modern perceptions of absolutist kingship.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-166
Author(s):  
John-Mark Philo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The conclusion draws together the main themes and concerns of the book: namely how the translation and application of Livy in Tudor England was intricately connected to the most pressing political and cultural concerns of the day. So too it reflects on Livy’s impact on the vernacular literatures of the period, including William Painter’s novellas and Shakespeare’s poetry and prose. It also underlines the fact that, rather than a diminishing interest in Livy, the seventeenth century saw the historian at the heart of the constitutional debates underpinning the English Civil War. The translation of Livy in the early-modern period, as the conclusion underlines, functioned not only as a reflection of the political concerns of the moment, but also as an active attempt to reshape, refashion, and urge forward those concerns. Though Livy’s part in the Classical Reception of the early-modern era is sometimes underplayed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Livy’s contribution to the culture and politics of sixteenth-, and indeed seventeenth-, century England.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

The Metrical Epilogue to the Alfredian Pastoral Care: a postscript from Junius

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 43-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Germanic Studies

When Old English studies were in their infancy in the seventeenth century, scholars such as Franciscus junius (1591–1677) had very little to study in print. With no grammar and no dictionary (until Somner's in 1659) they had to teach themselves the language from original sources. Junius, whose interest in Germanic studies became active in the early 1650s, was so proficient, not only at Old English, but also at the cognate languages that he became virtually the founding-father of Germanic philology. Over the years Junius made transcripts in his own distinctive imitation-Anglo-Saxon minuscule script of many Old English texts, transcripts that have subsequently proved invaluable, especially where the original manuscripts have been damaged or lost.

WILLIAM CAMDEN, SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ATLASES OF THE BRITISH ISLES AND THE PRINTING OF ANGLO-SAXON

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 219-244
Author(s):  
Peter J Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Text ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Sixth Edition

The sixth edition of Camden’s Britannia was published in 1607 with over fifty county maps printed from engraved plates. It was a pioneering work. In 1611, John Speed published his Theatre of The Empire of Great Britaine, again with over fifty county maps, many of them engraved by Jodocus Hondius from Amsterdam, and with an abridged version of Camden’s text. These books established a model that was followed later in Amsterdam itself in the great atlases of Blaeu and Janssonius. One of the ways Camden sought to augment the authority of his work was by using Anglo-Saxon types in his text for county names and the occasional passage in Anglo-Saxon (Old English). As the practice persisted, the progress of these type-designs is examined in relation to the development of the atlases. While Hondius’ map-making skills were imported to add to the English text, when the English text was brought to Amsterdam to add to the Dutch maps, the Dutch printers had to use their own skills to reproduce the Anglo-Saxon characters.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Todd Butler
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cognitive Perspective ◽  
Shared Attention ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
To Come

This chapter explains how the political changes of early Stuart England can be usefully examined from a cognitive perspective, with questions of authority and sovereignty being determined not just by what individuals or institutions do but also by how they are understood and expected to think, and in particular how they were expected to come to decisions. In doing so, it links early modern and contemporary understandings of state formation in seventeenth-century England to processes of decision-making and counsel, as well as the management of personal and public opinion, thereby explicating the mental mechanics of early modern governance. More than being simply a form of political thought or doctrine, intellection is presented as a shared attention to cognitive processes amidst historical moments in which we can see particular patterns of thinking—and attention to them as politics—begin to emerge.

Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? and the Politics of the Thirty Years War

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-408
Author(s):  
Derek Stauff
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Devotional Writings

For early modern Lutherans Heinrich Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? would have evoked fears of religious persecution. Its text, from the narrative of Paul's conversion in Acts 9, appears in seventeenth-century devotional writings and confessional polemics about persecution. Moreover, recently uncovered archival evidence shows that Schütz performed his concerto in 1632 at a state-sponsored political festival marking the first anniversary of the Battle of Breitenfeld, a major Protestant victory in the Thirty Years War. Here Schütz's concerto clearly stoked fears of persecution, because the celebrations touted the battle as a victory over Catholic oppression. The political context in 1632 might also explain some of the piece's most notable features. Its unusually brief text and vivid music do not illustrate the whole story of Saul's conversion but solely the moment at which Christ intervened to put a stop to persecution. Schütz's listeners would have heard in Saul's example a parallel to the victory they were celebrating in 1632 and the persecution they feared from their Catholic and imperial adversaries. This performance of Saul, the only one known from Schütz's lifetime, shows how his music partook in a broader campaign of Protestant propaganda designed to reinforce the confessional and political divisions that fueled this phase of the war.

Celtic influence on Old English: phonological and phonetic evidence

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SCHRIJVER
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Old Irish ◽  
Sound System ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Plausible Model ◽  
Phonological System ◽  
The Way

It has generally been assumed that Celtic linguistic influence on Old English is limited to a few marginal loanwords. If a language shift had taken place from Celtic to Old English, however, one would expect to find traces of that in Old English phonology and (morpho)syntax. In this article I argue that (1) the way in which the West Germanic sound system was reshaped in Old English strongly suggests the operation of a hitherto unrecognized substratum; (2) that phonetic substratum is strongly reminiscent of Irish rather than British Celtic; (3) the Old Irish phonetic−phonological system provides a more plausible model for reconstructing the phonetics of pre-Roman Celtic in Britain than the British Celtic system. The conclusion is that there is phonetic continuity between pre-Roman British Celtic and Old English, which suggests the presence of a pre-Anglo-Saxon population shifting to Old English.

Ritual under Change: Mongolian Influences on Horse Races and Mountain Divinity Worship in Tibet

Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Horse Race ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.

Body and Soul

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Ezell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Classical Philosophy ◽  
The Relationship

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the soul, its nature, and its relationship with the body became focal points for religious, medical, political, and ethical debates, and the choice of vocabulary itself had profound implications in how human and divine nature were represented in early modern English writings. The perceived complexities of the relationship between the body and the soul as delineated in competing schools of classical philosophy provided English writers a fertile ground for analysing the human experience in general and the nature of individual identity. Debates over what happens to the body and the soul at death and at resurrection permeate the writings of the period. During the English Civil War years they were markers of both political and religious affiliations, and this chapter demonstrates how the medical turn in the late seventeenth century focused increasing attention on the separation of soul and mind.

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