Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Culture ◽  
Old English ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Distinct Region ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica ◽  
The Impact

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England is the first study of the Anglo-Welsh border region in the period before the Norman arrival in England, from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Its conclusions significantly alter our current picture of Anglo/Welsh relations before the Norman Conquest by overturning the longstanding critical belief that relations between these two peoples during this period were predominately contentious. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates that the region which would later become the March of Wales was not a military frontier in Anglo-Saxon England, but a distinctively mixed Anglo-Welsh cultural zone which was depicted as a singular place in contemporary Welsh and Anglo-Saxon texts. This book studies how the region of the Welsh borderlands before 1066 was depicted in a group of texts from early medieval Britain which have traditionally been interpreted as reflecting a clear and adversarial Anglo/Welsh divide. Chapters focus on some of the most central literary and historical works from Anglo-Saxon England, including Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Latin and Old English Lives of St. Guthlac, the Old English Exeter Book Riddles, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. These texts depict the Welsh borderlands region differently than the rest of Wales — not as the site of Anglo/Welsh conflict, but as a distinct region with a mixed culture. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England alters our understanding of how the Anglo-Saxons and Welsh interacted with one another in the centuries before the Norman arrival. It demonstrates that the region of the Welsh borderlands was much more culturally coherent, and the impact of the Norman Conquest on it much greater, than has been previously realised.

Old English Ecotheology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Catherine Barajas
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Earth ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Impact

Old English Ecotheology examines the impact of environmental crises on early medieval English theology and poetry. Like their modern counterparts, theologians at the turn of the first millennium understood the interconnectedness of the Earth community, and affirmed the independent subjectivity of other-than-humans. The author argues for the existence of a specific Old English ecotheology, and demonstrates the influence of that theology on contemporaneous poetry. Taking the Exeter Book as a microcosm of the poetic corpus, she explores the impact of early medieval apocalypticism and environmental anxiety on Old English wisdom poems, riddles, elegies, and saints' lives.

Old English Ecotheology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Catherine Barajas
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Earth ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Impact

This book examines the impact of environmental crises on early medieval English theology and poetry. Like their modern counterparts, theologians at the turn of the first millennium understood the interconnectedness of the Earth community, and affirmed the independent subjectivity of other-than-humans. The author argues for the existence of a specific Old English ecotheology, and demonstrates the influence of that theology on contemporaneous poetry. Taking the Exeter Book as a microcosm of the poetic corpus, she explores the impact of early medieval apocalypticism and environmental anxiety on Old English wisdom poems, riddles, elegies, and saints' lives.

The ‘dark Welsh’ as slaves and slave raiders in Exeter Book riddles 52 and 721

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Social Division ◽  
Cattle Raiding ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Perception

Chapter three argues that a group of Old English riddles located in the borderlands between Anglo-Saxon England and Wales reflect a common regional culture by depicting shared values of a warrior elite across the ostensible Anglo-Welsh divide. These riddles, which link the ‘dark Welsh’ to agricultural labour, have long been understood to depict the Welsh as slaves and thus reflect Anglo-Saxon awareness of both ethnic and social division. Drawing upon understudied Welsh legal material, this chapter argues that these riddles have a multilayered solution in which the Welsh are both slaves and slave traders, complicating readings of negative Anglo/Welsh relations. This polysemic solution reveals that the Welsh, like the Anglo-Saxons, were stratified by class into the enslaved and a warrior elite with less distance from the Anglo-Saxons than has been understood. The location of these riddles on the mearc further characterises the Welsh borderlands in the early period as a distinctive region which was notorious for cattle raiding. These riddles counter the common perception that the Welsh borderlands were defined by Offa’s Dyke, suggesting that this region is better understood as a space which both Anglo-Saxons and Welsh permeated on raids.

Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066

After Alfred ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 268-296
Author(s):  
Pauline Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Church History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
New Situation ◽  
The Voice

This chapter considers the range of work on Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles at Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, including additions to Chronicles A and B, and the making of the bilingual Latin and Old English Chronicle F. The scribe of Chronicle F and his monastic house, Christ Church, connected to Canterbury’s archbishops, emerge as major players. The range, which included contact with Chronicle D, the use of Chronicle /E, and the making of a brief Chronicle I, suggests a conscious engagement with the tradition of vernacular chronicle writing and an awareness of what united it. The voice of F is more overtly monastic, with Christ Church history incorporated into the story. The bilingual F, including new Latin annals, some on Norman history, in both F and /E, addressed a new mixed audience and the new situation the Conquest had created. Additions on popes and their relations with archbishops address wider European changes.

The Old English Epic of Redemption: The Theological Unity of MS Junius 11

Traditio ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Junius 11 ◽  
Vercelli Book

Anglo-Saxon scribes were compilers and organizers as well as copyists. Each major Old English literary manuscript gives evidence of editorial planning. The Beowulf codex was apparently designed as a collection of marvelous tales; the Vercelli Book as a collection of legendary and homiletic matter; and the first three poems of the Exeter Book (Christ I, II, and III) were arranged in proper chronological sequence.

Edgar the Ætheling: Anglo-Saxon prince, rebel and crusader

1985 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 197-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Large Contribution ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

In the years which followed the Norman Conquest, the Old English aristocracy was largely deprived of its lands and offices, both lay and ecclesiastical. The resistance of the English nobility to the Norman Conquest made a large contribution to its own eclipse, but it is rarely that we are afforded a glimpse of the fortunes of an individual. The historian may, however, dwell in some detail on the career of one man, Edgar the Ætheling. Episodes from his life are preserved in a variety of works composed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains several entries relating to his activities after 1066, and the D version shows a special interest in Edgar and his family. Among Latin histories, those of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis follow his activities, although none of these authors was well informed about his life. Edgar appears not to have made a strongly favourable impression upon any of them: to the anonymous compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he was the rightful heir to the throne of England, but to both William and Orderic he was indolent. There is little difficulty involved in bringing together the known episodes of his life, and although his royal blood makes him a far from typical example the picture that emerges gives a useful insight into how one Englishman fared in the unstable political climate of the years immediately preceding the Norman Conquest, and in its aftermath. It is intended here to assemble the evidence for the life of Edgar and to treat him not as a footnote to history, which is how he has often fared at the hands of historians, but as a character of no small importance in the history of the Norman Conquest of England.

After Alfred

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Vernacular History ◽  
King Alfred

This book traces the development of a group of anonymous, vernacular, annalistic chronicles—‘the Anglo-Saxon chronicles’—from their genesis at the court of King Alfred to their end at the Fenland monastery of Peterborough. It reconsiders them in the light of wider European scholarship on the politics of history-writing. It covers all surviving manuscript chronicles, with detailed attention being paid to palaeography, layout, and content, and identifies key lost texts. It is concerned with production, scribe-authors, patrons, and audiences. The centuries these chronicles cover were critical to the making of England and saw its conquest by Scandinavians and Normans. They have long been part of the English national story. The book considers the impact of this on their study and editing. It stresses their multiplicity, whilst identifying a tradition of writing vernacular history. It sees that tradition as an expression of the ideology of a southern elite engaged in the conquest and assimilation of old kingdoms north of the Thames, Trent, and Humber. The book connects many chronicles to bishops and especially to archbishops of York and Canterbury. Vernacular chronicling is seen, not as propaganda, but as engaged history-writing closely connected to the court, whose networks and personnel were central to the production of chronicles and their continuation. The disappearance of the English-speaking elite after the Norman Conquest had profound impacts on them, repositioning their authors in relation to the court and royal power, and ultimately resulting in the end of the tradition of vernacular chronicling.

Introduction: Early Medieval Earth Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Catherine Barajas
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Religious Lyrics ◽  
Broad Audience ◽  
Aelfric Of Eynsham

The existential threat of environmental collapse loomed large in the early medieval English imagination. In particular, the work of Wulfstan, Archbishop of York and Ælfric of Eynsham pointed to the imminence of the apocalypse. Wulfstan explicitly attributed environmental collapse to human sin, while Ælfric urged the faithful to look hopefully to the post-apocalyptic establishment of a new Earth. The broad audience and didactic intent of these prolific and well-connected theologians makes their work a useful representation of English theology at the turn of the millennium. Similarly, the 10th-century manuscript called the Exeter Book—the largest, most diverse extant collection of Old English poetry, including religious lyrics, obscene riddles, and elegies—may serve as a representative of the contemporaneous poetic corpus.

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