Scott T. Smith Land and Book: Literature and Land Tenure in Anglo-Saxon EnglandLand and Book: Literature and Land Tenure in Anglo-Saxon England. Scott T. Smith. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. xii+288.

<i>Renée R. Trilling</i>, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse<i>The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse</i>. Renée R. Trilling. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Pp. ix+296.

Author's Introduction The article provides an overview of the annals known collectively as The Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle , an extensive project of historical writing in English initiated in the late ninth century and continued for some two centuries and in eight manuscript versions. Because of the great complexity of its textual history, and the relative obscurity of its origins, much scholarship on the Chronicle has concentrated on its language – vocabulary and spelling – in an attempt to reconstruct both the relationships of the manuscripts to each other, as well as their putative originals and possible source materials. At the same time, the Chronicle has always been used as a source, in a raw sense, of historical data. This article considers the merits and limitations of both approaches, as well as advocating the value of more recent work that considers the Chronicle itself as a cultural product, which mediates and thereby shapes the perception of events by means of a deliberately restrictive and highly specific idiom. Summarizing the trends of past scholarship and attempting to predict the shape of future work, the article aims both to introduce students to the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle and to establish the centrality of this text to broader questions about the nature of historical writing. Author Recommends Michael Swanton's The Anglo‐Saxon Chronicles (London: Phoenix, 2000) is the best translation available for those who want to access the texts in Modern English. Following the practice of earlier Chronicle editors and translators such as Plummer and Garmonsway, Swanton provides concurrent annals from different manuscript versions, with A and E providing his main texts. He also includes black and white plates of various Anglo‐Saxon antiquities, as well as maps and genealogical tables. For those who can read Old English, the volumes of the magisterial series The Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition are essential, since they provide the texts of all the major Chronicle versions in a modern, scholarly format with full annotations and lengthy discussion of the manuscript background, textual relationships, and language: MS A , vol. 3, ed. Janet Bately (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986); MS B , vol. 4, ed. Simon Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983); MS C , vol. 5, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001); MS D , vol. 6, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996); MS E , vol. 7, ed. Susan Irvine (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004); MS F , vol. 8, ed. Peter S. Baker (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). Thomas Bredehoft's Textual Histories: Readings in the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001) was the first book‐length study devoted to this text, and is a thought‐provoking, well‐researched and enjoyable read for students and scholars alike, paying admirable attention to manuscript details such as pointing and layout. Alice Sheppard's Families of the King: Writing Identity in the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), another book‐length study, considers the Chronicle not just as a repository of historical detail, but as a nationalizing text containing shaped narratives of kin and lordship. No scholar has done more to advance our understanding of the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle , and particularly the relationships among the manuscript versions and the use of source material, than Janet Bately. Essential reading in order to understand the complex textual history of the Chronicle includes: Janet Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle, 60 BC to AD 890: Vocabulary as Evidence’, Proceedings of the British Academy 64 (1978): 93–129; ‘World History in the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle: Its Sources and its Separateness from the Old English Orosius’, Anglo‐Saxon England 8 (1979): 177–94; ‘Bede and the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle ’, in Saints, Scholars and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones (Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1979), 233–54; ‘The Compilation of the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle Once More’, Leeds Studies in English 16 (1985): 7–26; ‘Manuscript Layout and the Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle’, John Rylands University Library Bulletin 70 (1988): 21–43; The Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle: Texts and Textual Relationships (Reading: Reading Medieval Studies Monograph, 1991). Online Materials A manuscript image of annals 824–33 from the C‐text of the Chronicle may be viewed at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/themes/histtexts/angsaxchron.html . You can hear R. D. Fulk reading the poetic entry for annal 937 of the Chronicle at http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/noa/audio.htm . This poem, known as The Battle of Brunanburh , which employs heroic diction and a traditional verse form, commemorates Æþelstan of Wessex's victory against a combined force of Picts, Irish, and Norsemen. The Chronicle is not the only formulaic historical text in Anglo‐Saxon England, although it is arguably the most wide‐ranging in its focus, as well being the most self‐aware of its identity as a historical and national text. Charters are a related form, sharing with the Chronicle a highly formulaic diction (albeit generally in Latin), a focus on territorial tenure and exchange, and the function of recording details of persons and events. Translations of the charters are available at: http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/kemble/pelteret/2%20Index.htm . Sample Syllabus The Textuality of Medieval Culture Course Description This course will explore, in a broad and interdisciplinary manner, the various influences and aspects of textuality in medieval English culture both early and late. We will investigate the question of what constitutes a ‘text’ in a manuscript culture in which scribes customarily and substantively altered the texts they copied; in which the beginnings and ends of individual works were not graphically marked;

<i>Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon Literature</i>. Tristan Major. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Pp. xiii+289.

Reviewed by: Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England Jonathan Wilcox Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England. By Aaron J. Kleist. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Pp. xvii + 420. $90. This is a book based on an appealing premise—to pursue a single important theological idea across the complexity of writings in Anglo-Saxon England—which is fulfilled with notable success. Teasing through the complexity of theological thought that has accrued on the distinction between striving and grace, Aaron Kleist lays out the thought of three patristic writers, Augustine, Gregory, and Bede, and four Anglo-Saxon authors they influenced. Kleist uses source study and manuscript evidence along with close reading to make a contribution to the history of ideas, uncovering the subtlety of thought of some of the most important named authors of Anglo-Saxon England—Alfred, perhaps Wulfstan, and Ælfric, as well as the lesser-known Lantfred of Winchester. The result is a deeply informed theological study that provides insight into the thought world of Anglo-Saxon England. The issue of merit vs. grace, or the role of human volition in distinction to the capacities given by the creator, is a hugely important one for Christian thought, leading quickly to consideration of the source of evil, the extent of human freedom [End Page 533] of will, and the conundrum of predetermination. Differences within the debate are often rather subtle, yet small distinctions mattered a lot with various unsuccessful views condemned as heresies. Manichean, Donatist, Pelagian, and Semi-Pelagian positions are sketched out with admirable clarity and economy by Kleist, who shows how underlying all the discussion is a delicate pas de deux between striving and grace, freedom of will and divine determinism. Kleist presents in a few pages Augustine’s evolving position, which was to become orthodoxy despite his perhaps surprising extreme emphasis on grace over merit. Gregory, Kleist shows, gives a bit more weight to human striving, while Bede, despite repeatedly stressing grace, provides yet more emphasis on human merit in striving. Kleist shows how the work of all three fathers circulated in Anglo-Saxon England and suggests they provide a range of orthodox options for subsequent writers to draw on. Bede plays a pivotal role as both a father of the church and a thinker within Anglo-Saxon England, and the remainder of this study focuses on theological positions in England. Kleist briefly moves away from explicitly Christian theological work to consider Boethius’ Neoplatonic Consolation of Philosophy, which includes prominent consideration of the source of evil and the nature of free will, a work that famously circulated in an Alfredian translation. Kleist considers how the work is Christianized through the commentary traditions, explaining in part its huge popularity in the Middle Ages, and considers anew the famous image of the axle and the idea of divine foreknowledge within the Old English translation, which turns out to present a largely Augustinian position on grace. Kleist then turns to an altogether less familiar work, Lantfred of Winchester’s Carmen de libero arbitrio, a poem on free will by a probably Frankish monk who visited Winchester in association with the Benedictine reform, which, Kleist shows, pulls away from Augustine’s emphasis on prevenient grace to embrace a Semi-Pelagian heresy in its emphasis on human volition. Kleist then considers a Latin sermon preserved in Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Gamle Kongelige Sammlung 1595, a work either composed by or strongly associated with Wulfstan the Homilist. Most of Wulfstan’s vernacular writings paint with too broad a brush to allow Kleist to position the archbishop in relation to the debates on free will, but this Latin sermon, Kleist shows, draws on a book of Cassian’s Collationes that was central to the Semi-Pelagian heresy and condemned on that account. Despite that source, the theology of the Wulfstanian sermon sounds mostly unexceptionable, apparently by simply avoiding those parts of the Collatio that had been condemned as heretical by Prosper of Aquitaine. Nevertheless, it perpetrates Semi-Pelagian thought in just the way a homilist might be expected to, by stressing the individual’s responsibility for repentance where, Kleist suggests, Augustine would have insisted...

Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan. By Milton McC. Gatch. Pp. xiv + 266. Toronto–Buffalo: University of Toronto Press; London: Books Canada, 1977. $15. - Volume 30 Issue 1

Previous article FreeBook ReviewLaura Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy. Laura Benedetti. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. viii+165.Rebecca WestRebecca WestUniversity of Chicago Search for more articles by this author University of ChicagoPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreItaly is now one of the many European nations with an extremely low birthrate—so low, in fact, as to suggest that motherhood may be becoming obsolete. Yet it is also a country imbued historically and currently with images and concepts emanating from the cherished figure of the mother, from the Holy Mother to the stereotypical Italian mamma, both of whom unceasingly adore their always unblamable sons. Laura Benedetti focuses her analysis of motherhood in Italian literature on texts written primarily by women authors ranging from the early years of the twentieth century to the late 1990s. Mapping out a trajectory of ever-changing representations of the maternal sphere, Benedetti plots an itinerary through a culture and a literature that, although always in transformation, nonetheless reveal certain constants in the perception and presentation of mothers, motherhood, and the maternal symbolic. The result is a fascinating and perceptive analysis of a theme that is a collective obsession in Italian culture, even in these times of an apparent refusal on the part of numerous individual women to assume the actual role of mother.Laura Benedetti begins her study by asserting that “the institution of motherhood has been the site of constant negotiation” (3). She therefore chooses to study literary texts from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of that century, thus encompassing a century of radical social as well as literary shifts in perceptions of and approaches to both actual motherhood and its representations. That mothers are rarely written about as subjects but often objectified is one of Benedetti's main points. Even though the majority of literary texts that highlight the maternal figure were written by women, there is nonetheless a tendency to embrace the “resilient and long-lasting construction” (5) of the objectification of the mother figure rather than to give her voice as an autonomous subject. Yet it is also the case that women writers taking on the theme of motherhood have tended to use it as a focal point for exploring questions such as what the notion of female self might be, what a woman's place in society is or could be, and how women relate to others.International gender criticism and theory provide the analytical tools for Benedetti's analyses; she mentions Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Marianne Hirsch, and Sara Ruddick's work as having played a large role in her elaboration of a critical approach, and the philosophical revisionist work on the maternal symbolic carried out by the Diotima group in Italy has been combined with Anglo-American theory to construct a highly articulated methodology that is also sensitive to specifically literary critical issues such as narrative style and intertextuality. One of the most appealing aspects of this study is precisely its employment of critical work from both sides of the Atlantic, which puts diverse feminist approaches into conversation with one another, showing either explicitly or implicitly the cultural specificity as well as the points of contact and overlap between and among them.The mysterious title of the book (The Tigress in the Snow) is explained in the final paragraph of Benedetti's introduction. It was inspired by Elsa Morante's novel, La storia (History), in which the image is used to describe the mother Ida Ramundo's desperate attempt to keep her little son Useppe alive. Recounted in the novel as lore (“si racconta” [it is said]), we read that in order to keep herself and her cubs alive a tigress in a frozen wasteland will lick the snow to sustain herself and will then tear off pieces of her own flesh to give as food to her little ones. This shocking image of self-sacrifice is, according to Benedetti, relatable to the pelican, the creature believed to sacrifice its own flesh to nourish its young; the pelican is, in turn, a symbol of Christ. So the mother morphs into her crucified son, whose death on the cross signifies both the ultimate act of self-annihilation and the highest divine power. Benedetti takes the image of the tigress as the “guiding metaphor” of her book because, for her, it “captures the risks and the rewards of motherhood” (11). I am not entirely convinced that an image of extreme self-sacrifice, even if based on tenacity, is quite right in representing motherhood as it is explored and “negotiated” through a century of literary texts. The essentialism of animal instinct portrayed in the figure of the tigress runs counter to Benedetti's claim of the historical and social constructedness of maternity; moreover, such an image endows self-sacrifice with a superhuman, transcendental meaning that negates the very human and immanent suffering of mothers, whether real or literary, whose identity as subjects is not advanced by the objectification implicit in divine transformation. Nonetheless, it may be true that, more often than not, in the past as well as currently, motherhood is inextricably linked to self-sacrifice, in spite of women's attempts to elaborate in art, as in life, more nuanced and positive definitions of this fundamental role.The analyses of diverse literary texts from the early twentieth century to its end are well done, especially in terms of how the works are contextualized and explored in relation to sociopolitical and broader cultural elements of the periods in question. As probing and intelligent as these readings are, it is the final short chapter, “Mothers without Children,” that I found to be most original and thought provoking. Here Benedetti introduces the concept of motherhood as a “disposition of the self ” (121) rather than the physical birthing of a child. In this category are included women who adopt children whom they raise as their own but also women who nurture children outside of their domestic spaces in relationships of mentoring, teaching, and protecting. The Diotima group at the University of Verona, made up primarily of women philosophers and led by Luisa Muraro, has done a great deal of work on the symbolic maternal sphere, reaching toward separating maternity from its biological component and concentrating instead on “its implications at the level of authority, power, nurturing, and emotion” (119). Psychoanalysis has opened a new field of inquiry also, as the work of Silvia Vegetti Finzi has probed women's generative potential, a psychic predisposition that she argues can be seen in the “child of the night” (119) or the imaginary child that preadolescent girls produce in their fantasies. Benedetti also refers to the work of Elaine Hansen, who has written about nonprocreative motherhood and about the now not so unimaginable time when a child may have a genetic mother, a gestational mother, and a custodial mother, each a different person. Lesbian motherhood is also considered in Hansen's work, as are women who choose to have abortions, women in prison, or women who simply refuse to bear children. This dizzying array of mothers (and nonmothers) brings us to our current moment in time, when options and choices unthinkable to women at the beginning of the twentieth century are now realities. Perhaps women will someday no longer have to tear off pieces of their own flesh in order to nurture and sustain their young. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 108, Number 4May 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659132 Views: 43Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected] Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reviewed by: Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England by Brandon W. Hawk Natalie Whitaker Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. By Brandon W. Hawk. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. In Preaching the Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England, Brandon W. Hawk disrupts traditional scholarship on Anglo-Saxon sermons, preaching, and religion by examining the use of apocryphal material in Anglo-Saxon media through a confluence of methodology that includes media studies and network theory. Early medieval scholars acknowledge the value of cross-linguistic transmissions between Latin and vernacular texts, but Hawk takes this a step further by building a methodological frame that can allow for developing a deeper understanding of not only these early medieval texts but also modern culture and media, “demonstrating how media across centuries are ineluctably connected and mutually help us to make sense of past and present” (21). Considering the current state of the early northern medieval field, and its problematic past, this scholarly intervention is valuable both as a change from traditional scholarship and as a way to become more politically aware of the effects of our studies. In this latter sense, its methodology can benefit not only those in early medieval studies but also scholars of other fields who study premodern texts, digital humanities, and media. In the introduction, Hawk asserts that this project “rests at the intersection of scholarship on Old English sermons, apocryphal sources, and transmission studies” (5) and importantly uses the term afterlife when referring to the texts, emphasizing the merit of this methodology not only for studying these particular texts within the limited field of early medieval English scholarship but also for transmission, translation, media, and network studies. He acknowledges from the beginning that there have been invaluable studies on Anglo-Saxon apocrypha and preaching, yet those look at the individual trees rather than the forest. This study takes a more outward look at the broader cultural intersections of these texts—how their use and adaptation reveal cultural contexts and implications. Hawk’s research follows the precedent laid by Samantha Zacher in Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse by focusing on the process of authorial reshaping of apocryphal texts and how this process of adaptation reveals important information about the culture beyond the text. Hawk lays out the first aspect of his disruption: that he is challenging the normative scholarly assumptions about apocrypha in Old English sermons. Previous scholarship has [End Page 158] taken an anachronistic perspective when it comes to apocrypha or has overgeneralized and inferred from Aelfric’s negative comments about them, assuming that Anglo-Saxons would all view apocrypha negatively. Hawk does not discount previous scholarship but synthesizes it within his study and with historical context. His approach makes this monograph not only valuable as an introductory text for those new to Anglo-Saxon religious and medieval apocrypha studies but also useful to those more versed in the field who are interested in reexamining these texts from a different perspective and innovative methodology. Following the introduction are five chapters that model Hawk’s methodology in varying ways, telescoping in and out from big data to the microcosm of specific texts while staying true to the organizational thread that the author has framed around the conceptualization of media networks and the transmission of apocrypha in sermons. In chapter 1, Hawk sets up his forest view of the study and examines the broader picture of networks and media in early medieval Europe. Rather than following previous scholarship focused on Irish influences, he takes the less traveled road of continental sources and transmissions of sermons. He explains further his methodology in the context of media and network theory, describing the multiple layers of media—in this case, sermons, preaching collections (homilaries), and manuscripts. These media are all interrelated yet hold different information that must be examined: a manuscript holds more information (its material information, marginalia, and so on) than does a collection of sermons or an individual sermon itself. With this perspective, the communication structure becomes just as rewarding to analyze as the content of the sermons is. The chapter also integrates work in digital humanities, drawing on the conceptualization of media networks for examining both Latin and...

Reviewed by: Joinings: Compound Words in Old English Literature by Jonathan Davis-Secord Greg Waite Davis-Secord, Jonathan, Joinings: Compound Words in Old English Literature ( Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series, 20), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016; cloth; pp. xi, 245, R.R.P. US $65.00; ISBN 978144263799. Old English compound words have long been the focus of both linguistic and literary-stylistic study, but in this book Davis-Secord brings to bear new and promising modes of analysis in a wide-ranging and provocative discussion. Key to the approach is the view that compounds are central to understanding the intersection of grammar, style, and culture in Anglo-Saxon literary tradition. 'As the joining of two words, each compound involves fundamental processes of grammar and semantics, while simultaneously forming an essential stylistic feature of Old English literature that produces meanings in culturally specific ways. No other Old English linguistic feature bridges the supposed divides between basic word formation, rhetorical traditions, and cultural practices' (p. 4). In his introductory chapter Davis-Secord confronts the problem that we have no direct expression of an Anglo-Saxon theory of vernacular language and literature. He suggests that we can compensate for this gap by examining the Latin grammatical tradition in Anglo-Saxon England, and — more problematically — the rather later Old Norse treatises on grammar and poetics, which, it is claimed, are rooted in earlier traditions transmitted to and known in tenth-century England. We move back to firmer ground with the introductory outline of psycholinguistic and cognitive approaches to the mental processing of compounds. The focus upward to stylistic and cultural issues which this cognitive process entails (of a kind specific to compounds, as opposed to monemes on the one hand and larger syntactic structures on the other) is then examined through the lenses of 'Oral Theory, historical inquiry, Jakobsonian theory of linguistic functions, theories of Old English metre, translation theory, Bakhtinian genre theory, modern rhetorical theories, and even film theory' (p. 29). Underpinning the psycholinguistic evidence is that to be derived from the metrical patterns of Old English poetry that indicates the distinct status of compound forms. [End Page 190] For some readers, it may be that Davis-Secord takes too much within his grasp, but if there are gaps and under-studied areas in the book, these are compensated for by fresh and insightful readings of the texts focused upon. Chapter 2 examines compounds as translation tools through usage in the Alfredian Boethius and the Cynewulfian poems Juliana and Elene. In the use of compounds like anweald for Latin potestas and potentia Alfred reveals his concern to adapt his source for his audience's expectations and world-view. Given Davis-Secord's focus on a small number of illustrative examples, one might probe the evidence further. On the one hand, the orthographically predominant form anwald in the text seems a deliberate marking of the word as one of the 'waldend' group (originally identified by E. G. Stanley), where the broken form — weald — is the expected one in West Saxon. Furthermore the spelling of the first element as an- seems to emphasize its full status as an initial-stressed compound, where scribal spellings as onwald/onweald in other texts of this widely-attested word suggest that the vowel of the first element was often shortened and nasalized, perhaps disqualifying it as a compound, were it not for Alfred's or his scribes' emphatic spelling. Davis-Secord interestingly continues, demonstrating how compounds in Cynewulf's Juliana are markedly prosaic, and underscore a very different approach to the authority and cultural capital of the underlying Latin source. These two texts are further explored in Chapter 4, where Bakhtinian speech genres and the registers of Oral Theory are the primary tools of analysis, supplemented by the methodologies developed by Michael Drout in his Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Chapter 3, 'Compound Interest', in the meantime provides stimulating discussion of compounding in Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer for the purposes of narrative retardation and foregrounding of key thematic concerns: respectively weapons, the enclosing mind, and the sea-journey. The use of this technique in Wulfstan's prose rounds off the discussion...

Millions of people live and work on land that they do not legally own in accordance with enforceable state law. The absence of state recognition for local property rights affects people's tenure security and impedes development. Efforts to legalise extra-legal land tenure have traditionally emphasised individual titling and registration. Disappointment with such approaches have led to a search for 'a third way' in land tenure regulation that will reconcile state perspectives with local land rights. This book contributes to the quest for a new pluralistic approach. It combines the description of land tenure regimes in Africa, Latin America and Asia with an analysis of designs, objectives, and actual implementation of specific legalisation programmes.

R E V I E W S Milton McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Aelfric and Wulfstan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). 266. $15.00 Professor Gatch has been for some time one of our prominent scholars and writers in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, particularly in the area of the homily. This book is fundamentally an analysis of certain aspects of the homilies of Aelfric and Wulfstan, coupled with an examination of the manner and use of the homily in Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon times. Let me say at once that this is a most learned book, thoroughly docu­ mented in both primary and secondary sources. The wide range of biblio­ graphical reference and the exhaustive notes supplementing every pronounce­ ment are a measure of the work that went into the making of this book. While it is not a book for the ordinary reader, no person seriously interested in Anglo-Saxon homilies is entitled to proceed without a careful reading of Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England. One of the most valuable parts of the work is the chapter on the manner of preaching and the construction and use of the homily in the early medieval Church, Professor Gatch is most emphatic in calling into question most of the accepted views about who preached, when, where, and how. His final word is on the excellence of the Anglo-Saxon achievement in this field: It is my hope that this chapter has demonstrated that we ought to speak more carefully and rather differently than has been our custom about the uses for which the Anglo-Saxon homilies were designed and to which they were put. It demonstrates also, I believe, that a very strict analysis of the source materials will increase our respect for the achievements of the English homilists. (P. 58) I must confess, however, that on one or two points of Professor Gatch’s settled views I am uneasy and unconvinced. For one thing, it seems here that everything that refers in any way to the good of the soul and the life here­ after is described as eschatological. One is accustomed to hear a good deal E n g l is h S tu d ies in C anada, vi, i , Spring 1980 about eschatology in connection with Anglo-Saxon homilies and poems, for there are lurid descriptions of the end of the world and the last judgment. But surely not all views on the transitory nature of this world (such as the ubi sunt motir in the Seafarer and the Wanderer) are eschatological (pp. 6263 ). Even Beowulf, with its many reflections on God’s providence, is subject to “perplexing” eschatological allusions: The poet resorts frequently to the reflections that God controls the destiny of all men, whether or not they are Christians, and that, although life in the world is transitory and unpredictable, there is a future and stable existence for those who meet the standards of the Ruler. (P. 63) There is little to be gained by taking this all-encompassing meaning of the term, for it would seem that it would be difficult to find any serious aspect of the Christian life which would not be eschatological, since “ My kingdom is not of this world.” The other point is perhaps more debatable and even personal on my part: Professor Gatch constantly praises Aelfric and Wulfstan at the expense of the “ anonymous” homilists — those, for example, who produced Blickling and Vercelli homilies. These latter works are described as lacking in order and inconsistent, particularly on the question of what happens to the human soul after death, as we wait Judgment Day. We are referred to Gatch’s article on “Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies,” (Traditio, 21 [1965], 117-65) for confirmation of this view. On p. 147 of this article, for example, he finds contradiction between a statement in Vercelli 1 that after the harrowing of hell, no just man needed to go to hell henceforth (Forster p. 23, lines 9-12) and another in Homily v that those rescued by Christ at the harrowing would have to suffer death again (Forster p. 123, lines 3...

Reviewed by: Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain Barbara H. Traister (bio) Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain. By Hilaire Kallendorf. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. xxi + 327 pp. $65.00. Hilaire Kallendorf has written a surprising study of early modern exorcism; it surprises by its definition and choice of exorcism texts, by its rigorous exclusion of exorcism associated with witchcraft, and by the structuralist model of analysis Kallendorf has chosen. Due in large part to these surprises, her book offers a refreshing—if often unorthodox—approach to a subject [End Page 356] that is currently under discussion by literary and historical scholars such as Nancy Caciola, Sarah Ferber, and Philip C. Almond. Because she writes about only literary texts from early modern England and Spain, Kallendorf does not deal with historical exorcism narratives. Neither does she treat literary texts in which witches incite or summon demons to pursue their enemies; Kallendorf considers these to be witchcraft rather than exorcism stories. She does, however, draw on a wide range of literary genres: dramatic comedy, satire, romance, saints' plays, dramatic tragedy, and the novel (i.e., Don Quixote). Thus, most of the texts she discusses are not those ordinarily treated in studies of exorcism. In fact, the texts might be called possession texts rather than exorcism texts because in some, particularly the tragedies, exorcism appears only in its failure or absence: "Most commonly, exorcism is absent from tragedy; when it does appear there, it fails. . . . Demonic possession resonates through the genre of tragedy, but the hope for an ultimate exorcism is forever raised and then dashed to pieces. It is the nature of the tragic experience that exorcism cannot succeed" (14–15). Working from a model derived from Lévi-Strauss, Kallendorf isolates a number of theologemes ("constitutive units of myths bearing theological content" (9)) found in a representative group of literary texts about demonic possession and exorcism. She explains that "which aspects of the exorcism experience are highlighted or emphasized usually depends on which genre the writer is working within" (9). Using this structuralist approach she charts the frequency of occurrence of eleven theologemes (for example, "the demon's entrance into the body" and "relics, holy water, and other props") in twenty-seven literary texts (xxi). This method allows Kallendorf to demonstrate (as scholars like Walter Cohen have done in other contexts) the close affinities between the literatures of England and Spain in the early modern period. Particularly notable is her conclusion that exorcism in many of the tragic texts provides an explanation for otherwise inexplicable evil. The demon becomes a scapegoat for the villain's evil, for only one possessed by an evil spirit could perform such cruelties as, for example, the husband in A Yorkshire Tragedy. In other genres, Kallendorf argues, the exorcism ritual is humanized as exorcists use rhetoric and logic to battle indwelling demons, and their appeal as texts stems largely from the struggle and ultimate victory of the exorcists. In all Kallendorf's analyses, genre is the most important variable, and her conclusions are nearly all genre specific. Perhaps the volume's most important point arises from one of the theologemes: Kallendorf argues, too sporadically given the broad presence she claims for this theologeme, that in more than two-thirds of the texts she [End Page 357] cites exorcism is a synedoche for purifying and curing the body politic. If true, this suggests a more integral relationship between church and state in the literature of both England and Spain than we are used to granting. Indeed, Kallendorf defends the presence of the "Christian legitimate marvelous" in this period, arguing that "exorcism and its texts, be they of whatever genre, are powerful testaments to the beliefs of some early modern writers in the existence of angels and demons" (198). In places, Kallendorf's analyses of her proof texts remind the reader of the mid-twentieth-century textual exegesis of scholars like Irving Ribner, Joseph Summers and Roy Battenhouse. But Kallendorf assembles her arguments from different materials than the religious allusions and analogues traced by these earlier scholars. Broadly informed by literary...

Despite the ‘linguistic turn’ in history, the conscious promotion of interdisciplinarity and the increasing willingness of literature scholars to turn to ‘non-literary’ texts (for example, Tom Bredehoft and Alice Sheppard in their books on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), it is a rare scholar of Old English literature who is happy reading charters. Scott Smith is such a scholar, also notable for his willingness to move between Old English and Latin. The book under review relates clearly on the one hand to a growing body of work on the construction of ideas of land and landscape (Nicholas Howe has been a leading figure) and on the other to a long and honourable tradition of diplomatics. However, in its specific focus on property, in the stimulating way it relates literary and documentary sources, and in its detailed readings of individual texts, it offers a worthwhile new contribution. The topic of the book is the discourse of land tenure and the way that discourse not only transformed a resource (land) into a cultural artefact (property) but served to engage a range of other questions about identity, power and the human condition in the world. In an introduction, five chapters and conclusion, the book first examines various kinds of charters, in which questions of the history, ownership and transfer of land are obviously central, and then moves on to look at the role of tenurial discourse in other settings such as homily and poetry. The first chapter focuses on royal diplomas, which account for rather less than 1000 of the roughly 1600 surviving documents from pre-Conquest England. This chapter introduces an anxiety over permanent possession, which is a persistent theme through the book: couched in insistently religious language, diplomas ostensibly confer eternal possession of the land granted, and yet at the same time frequently refer to the impermanence of any earthly inheritance—one should grant temporal property (typically, to ecclesiastical foundations) to gain eternal reward. Both ceremonies such as placing of sods on an altar and elements of display in the texts themselves, such as the flamboyant style of the Athelstan A charters, are strategies designed to suppress such tensions and reaffirm the power and the efficacy of the diploma. However, in close readings of selected diplomas, Smith shows how rhetorical elaboration can introduce further doubts, for example over the possibility of dispute or the shifting of royal favour. The topic of dispute is further explored in Chapter 2, which focuses chiefly on one lengthy dispute charter, S1447. Smith examines the narrative strategies of the charter, noting the way local, familial history is enfolded into larger political dynamics: the progress of a dispute between brothers is aligned with the replacement of King Eadwig by King Edgar. Such narratives function to ‘overwrite’ possible alternative accounts—a point already well-made by Sarah Foot in her 2006 essay ‘Reading Anglo-Saxon Charters’, but here allied to much more detailed literary analysis.

Book Review| October 01 2010 Finding the Right Words: Isidore’s “Synonyma” in Anglo-Saxon England Finding the Right Words: Isidore’s “Synonyma” in Anglo-Saxon England. By Claudia Di Sciacca. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Pp. xvi + 326. $85. Frederick M. Biggs Frederick M. Biggs University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2010) 109 (4): 530–531. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.109.4.0530 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Frederick M. Biggs; Finding the Right Words: Isidore’s “Synonyma” in Anglo-Saxon England. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 October 2010; 109 (4): 530–531. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.109.4.0530 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Journal of English and Germanic Philology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2010 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This chapter examines literature from the perspective of written media in the ancient Roman world: material, format, and circulation. More specifically, it proposes a taxonomy of writing based on a consideration of written media that does not correspond precisely to the modern distinction between literary and documentary texts. The discussion is predicated on two oppositions: the unique versus the reproduced and the enduring versus the disposable. In exploring the various forms taken by ancient writing, the article highlights the symbolic or textual value of a written text that is correlated with the text’s uniqueness and reproduction, transience or permanence. It describes four categories of texts: monumental text, literary text, instrumental text, and communicative text. Finally, it considers institutions that enshrine social classifications of writing, namely, libraries and archives: the former contain literature, the latter documents.

The events of the late 1980s-early 1990s played a key role in the history of Georgia. April 9, 1989, was one of the most important events in this respect. It defined the shared identity and memory for a long time and determined future developments in the country. April 9 proved to be a paradigmatic event in the recent history of Georgia. The narrative of trauma and triumph was formed, being reflected in historical, literary and documentary texts, as well as in different sites of memory. Two years later, at the very place of the tragedy, the restoration of independence of Georgia was declared. The paper deals with the process of the crystallization of April 9 as a paradigmatic event. Cultural patterns that played a crucial role in the establishment of the traumatic-triumphal narrative of April 9, 1989, and in the thirty-year dynamics of the attitudes towards this event are explored. The study presents how April 9 and its resonance influenced the perception of the past, as well as further developments. Theories of collective memory and cultural trauma serve as the theoretical framework for the research, while official documents, memoirs, literary texts and various types of media sources form its empirical basis