Anglo-Saxon Archive
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Infant Burials and Christianization: The View from East Central Europe
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the second paper in the Early Medieval Europe I series given at KZOO and another fabulous archaeology paper. It contrasted infant grave sites in early converted medieval Poland and Anglo Saxon England. -
Human Monstrosity in Terminator II: Judgement Day, Beowulf and The Passion of St Christopher
Posted on May 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe idea of a humanoid monster that can be reluctantly empathized with can be traced back to various source texts. For example, Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is a bloodthirsty savage, however upon a close reading of the poem he appears more human. -
Book Review: Shadow on the Crown
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsA review of Patricia Bracewell's book: Shadow on the Crown. -
Acquiring, Flaunting and Destroying Silk In Late Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper will argue that vibrantly coloured silks and other elaborate textiles were ubiquitous in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. -
Bite Me: Rude Food and the Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition
Posted on May 3, 2013 | No CommentsAndy Orchard, one of the world's leading experts in Old English literature, presented on the tradition of early medieval riddles, and how the themes of food and sex can be found in these works. -
Bede’s Perspective and Purpose in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsI argue that Bede’s involvement in ecclesiastical affairs throughout his life both illuminates and clouds his perspective on the history of the English church. -
Maps Illustrating the Viking Invasions of England
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsThe accompanying maps, which were prepared for lecture-purposes, may perhaps be useful to others who want to illustrate a popular account of the Viking invasions of this country -
Lincolnshire and the Arthurian Legend
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsThis article is intended to rectify this, proceeding from the widely-held assumption of the existence of a genuinely ‘historical Arthur’, before going on to consider the even more fundamental question of whether we ought to believe in Arthur’s existence at all. -
Symbel: The Heathen Drinking Ritual?
Posted on April 19, 2013 | No CommentsExamination of symbel in Anglo-Saxon society from archaeological and literary evidence and its role in modern Heathen/Pagan societies -
The “Battle with the Monster”: Transformation of a Traditional Pattern in “The Dream of the Rood”
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThus, although I would not suggest that “The Dream of the Rood” was composed orally in performance, it is, I would contend, oral-derived, and it is that presumption upon which this analysis is founded. The poem, in other words, straddles both worlds, having ties to both textuality and orality. -
Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsWhat the Anglo-Saxons ‘‘knew’’ about Moslems and Jews, and about Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints’ lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these are quite varied in genre and in content. -
When the Dark Ages Were Lit Up: The Sutton Hoo discovery 70 years on
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsAlex Burghart looks back 70 years to the discovery of the fabulous Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo, and ponders how far we've come in our knowledge of the period since 1939. -
Dramatic ritual and preaching in late Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on April 8, 2013 | No CommentsMy thesis involves an examination of the dramatic liturgical ritual of the late Anglo-Saxon period and its relationship to other aspects of Christian worship, especially vernacular preaching. -
Æthelflæd: Warrior Queen of Mercia
Posted on April 5, 2013 | No CommentsHer deeds are largely forgotten, but as Alex Burghart explains, Æthelfæd turned a cornered kingdom into a powerhouse that defeated the Welsh and the Vikings -
Vikings – Review of Episode 5: Raid
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No Comments'Let the man who thinks that he is descended from the Gods learn that he is human after all' -
Heorot and the Plundered Hoard: A Study of Beowulf
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsTime and again the Beowulf poet's choice of words and details reveals that he practised his craft within a tradition in which his creativeness was bound and disciplined by the objectiveness of a particular structure of images. We perceive in all the rich variety of his work the unifying effect of the typological imagination. It is in the typological mode of Beowulf that the key to its meaning and artistry is to be found. -
The Sexual Riddles of the Exeter Book
Posted on March 26, 2013 | No CommentsAmong the Exeter Book riddle collection there is a group more or less explicitly of riddles which deals sex. -
A tale of Wade: The Anglo-Saxon origin myth in an East Saxon setting
Posted on March 23, 2013 | No CommentsIn the past Walter Map's tale of Gado, included in his De Nugis Curialium, written towards the end of the twelfth century, has been merely regarded as a Medieval Latin version of a pre-conquest lay concerning the exploits of the Germanic hero Wade. However, if we look past the fantastic elements which surround him we are left with what appears to be an East Saxon version of the English settlement myth most familiar in the Kentish form involving Hengist and Vortigern, which itself seems to have been adopted from a common Germanic theme. -
Aelfthryth, Queen of England
Posted on March 12, 2013 | No CommentsIn researching medieval queens, I came across the story of a queen having all the elements of a fairy tale. Her name is Aelfthryth, the wife of King Edgar the Peaceable -
Conquest, Contact, and Convention: Simulating the Norman Invasion’s Impact on Linguistic Usage
Posted on March 11, 2013 | No CommentsHow do conventions arise? Lewis adressed this in his work Convention via signaling games, a mathematical model of communication where a sender sends a message to a receiver who then interprets it. When we say conventions, we mean by that a system of coor- dinated behavior pairing information states with actions -
Contemplating the Evolution of Medieval Double-Entendre Literature
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe linguistic composition of the Exeter Book Riddles supports this, and in fact, the genre became a refuge for contemporary colloquial speech which was seen as coarse and lower class within the ideologies of Christianity and Germanic heroism. -
Narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis dissertation investigates narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the bodies of holy men and women were constructed through such narratives and read in local appropriations of emblematic vitae and passiones. -
The Liber Vitae of Durham (BL MS Cotton Domitian A. vii): a discussion of its possible context and use in the later middle ages
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe Durham Liber Vitae belonged in the later Middle Ages to Durham Cathedral Priory and, to understand its context, the history of the communities which produced it must be understood. -
Widows in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsOwing to a fairly large number of mainly vernacular codes of law that have survived, we are in a position to see at least how in legislation the position of women in general, but also of widows in particular, was defined. -
“The Wrath of the Northmen”: The Vikings and their Memory
Posted on March 2, 2013 | No CommentsThese raiding peoples emerge out of all three Scandinavian homelands--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--sending off their young men all over the known world in search of wealth and prestige.
