The Politics of Language : Byrhtferth, Aelfric, and the Multilingual Identity of the Benedictine Reform (Toronto Anglo-saxon Series)

Stephenson, Rebecca

University of Toronto Press（2015/09発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 232 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781442650589
• DDC分類 829.09

Full Description

Old English literature thrived in late tenth-century England. Its success was the result of a concerted effort by the leaders of the Benedictine Reform movement to encourage both widespread literacy and a simple literary style. The manuscripts written in this era are the source for the majority of the Old English literature that survives today, including literary classics such as Beowulf. Yet the same monks who copied and compiled these important Old English texts themselves wrote in a rarified Latin, full of esoteric vocabulary and convoluted syntax and almost incomprehensible even to the well-educated.

Comparing works by the two most prolific authors of the era, Byrhtferth of Ramsey and Ælfric of Eynsham, Rebecca Stephenson explains the politics that encouraged the simultaneous development of a simple English style and an esoteric Latin style. By examining developments in Old English and Anglo-Latin side by side, The Politics of Language opens up a valuable new perspective on the Benedictine Reform and literacy in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

Contents

Introduction: The Literary Context of the Monastic Reform

Part One

1. Pedagogy of Enchiridion: Layout and Languages

2. Scapegoating the Secular Clergy: The Hermeneutic Style as a Form of Monastic Self-Definition

3. The Politics of English: Computus, Translation, and Monastic Self-Definition

Part Two

4. The Politics of Ælfric's Prefaces

5. Unraveling the Hermeneutic Style: Ælfric's Latin Epitomes and English Translations

Conclusion