Un rey para el olvido: la figura de Alfredo el Grande a través de la pantalla

Alfred the Great is, without a doubt, an important figure not only in English history, but also in that of the European Middle Ages. His policies for dealing with the Nordic invasion of England, as well as his cultural, educational and legal reforms, have made this king a revered figure in English intellectual circles, especially in the 19th century. It is striking that, in spite of his popularity, this monarch does not have a more prominent presence within audiovisual media, which is the artistic mass media par excellence of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The objective of the present work is to investigate the historical popularity and audiovisual trajectory of this king, as well as to analyze his representation in the cinema and television productions that have dealt with him. Alfredo el Grande es, sin duda, una figura importante no solo de la historia inglesa, sino de la propia Edad Media europea. Sus políticas para hacer frente a la invasión nórdica de Inglaterra, así como sus reformas culturales, educativas y jurídicas, han convertido a este rey en un personaje reverenciado en los círculos intelectuales ingleses, sobre todo en el siglo XIX. Resulta llamativo que aun así este monarca no tenga una presencia mucho más destacada dentro de los medios cinematográficos y audiovisuales, los medios artísticos de masas por antonomasia del siglo XX y XXI. Es justo el objetivo del presente trabajo trazar la trayectoria mediática y popular de este rey, así como analizar su representación y construcción en las producciones audiovisuales que han tratado su figura.

Language and style of international agreements of wessex

The article is concerned with a complex study of the specific features of international agreements in the aspect of functional stylistics and text linguistics. The linguistic evidence has been collected in the Old English texts of international agreements made in the late 9th century by the Wessex kings Alfred the Great, Eadward and the chief of Danes Guthrum as testified by the late 11th – early 12th century manuscript. The present article is intended to make some scientific contribution by trying to solve a number of functional style problems of a specific text type in diachrony, i. e. to consider linguostylistic features of international documents in the historical aspect. It has been found out that lexical, grammar, structural-syntactic and compositional features of the text type in question emerged at the early stage of its existence and are still functional now. The research also proceeds to various language levels, in particular the textual one, to reveal and describe the specific features of Old English international treaties which are no longer inherent in modern formal papers of the same type. As a result of analyzing the linguistic evidence, a conclusion is made that there has been effected some linguostylistic change in the course of formation of the given text type, which, however, can hardly be desribed as drastic.

The Mind in the Old English Prose Psalms

The Prose Psalms, an Old English translation of the first 50 psalms into prose, have often been overshadowed by the other translations attributed to Alfred the Great: the Old English Pastoral Care, with its famous preface, and the intellectually daring Old English translations of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Soliloquies. However, this article proposes that, regardless of who wrote them, the Prose Psalms should be read alongside the Old English Consolation and the Soliloquies: like the two more well-studied translations, the Prose Psalms are concerned with the mind and its search for true understanding. This psychological interest is indicated by the prevalence of the word mod (‘mind’) in the Old English text, which far exceeds references to the faculty of the intellect in the Romanum source. Through comparison with the Consolation and the Soliloquies, this article demonstrates that all three texts participate in a shared tradition of psychological imagery. The three translations may well, therefore, be the result of a single scholarly environment, perhaps enduring for several decades, in which multiple scholars read the same Latin, patristic writings on psychology, discussed these ideas among themselves, and thereby developed the vernacular discourse observable in these three translations. Whether this environment was identical with the scholarly circle which Alfred gathered at the West Saxon court remains a matter for debate.