Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Manuscripts and Editions of the OEHE
- 2 Backgrounds, Contexts and the History of Scholarship
- 3 Gentes Names and the Question of ‘National’ Identity in the OEHE
- 4 Rewriting Salvation History
- 5 Who Read Æthelbert's Letter? Translation, Mediation and Authority in the OEHE
- 6 Queen Takes Bishop: Marriage, Conversion and Papal Authority in the OEHE
- 7 Visions of the Otherworld: Endings, Emplacement and Mutability in History
- 8 Anglo-Saxon Signs of Use in Manuscripts O, C and B
- 9 Later-Medieval Signs of Use in Manuscripts Ca and T
- Conclusion
- Appendix I Summary of the Chapters and Chapter-Breaks
- Appendix II Forms of ‘Ongolþeode’ and ‘Angelcyn’ in the OEHE
- Appendix III Glosses in T
- Appendix IV Table of Glosses in T
- Bibliography
- Index
- ANGLO-SAXON STUDIES
2 - Backgrounds, Contexts and the History of Scholarship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Manuscripts and Editions of the OEHE
- 2 Backgrounds, Contexts and the History of Scholarship
- 3 Gentes Names and the Question of ‘National’ Identity in the OEHE
- 4 Rewriting Salvation History
- 5 Who Read Æthelbert's Letter? Translation, Mediation and Authority in the OEHE
- 6 Queen Takes Bishop: Marriage, Conversion and Papal Authority in the OEHE
- 7 Visions of the Otherworld: Endings, Emplacement and Mutability in History
- 8 Anglo-Saxon Signs of Use in Manuscripts O, C and B
- 9 Later-Medieval Signs of Use in Manuscripts Ca and T
- Conclusion
- Appendix I Summary of the Chapters and Chapter-Breaks
- Appendix II Forms of ‘Ongolþeode’ and ‘Angelcyn’ in the OEHE
- Appendix III Glosses in T
- Appendix IV Table of Glosses in T
- Bibliography
- Index
- ANGLO-SAXON STUDIES
Summary
The organization of English society had undergone few material changes in the period between Bede and Alfred, and there are many passages in which Bede's indications of rank or office become clearer through a rendering into ninth-century English. But intrinsically, the translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica is the least interesting of the works which can be attributed to Alfred. In substance, it is simply a close rendering of the Latin text, and it contains little, if any, extraneous matter of the kind which in other works illustrates the character of Alfred's thought. … That the version was produced under Alfred's influence need not be doubted, but its right to a place in the Alfredian canon is by no means secure.
Frank Stenton's summary assessment of Anglo-Saxon England and the OEHE, first published in 1943, reflects the scholarly consensus of the mid-twentieth century. In the intervening years, however, the grand narrative of migration and conversion that Bede presents in his Historia Ecclesiastica itself has come into question, as has the assumption of material and social continuity between earlier and later Anglo-Saxon England. Patrick Wormald's introductory essay to The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature reflects this change in thought and provides one of the key reasons for it.
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- Information
- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011