Reading the Anglo-Saxon Self Through the Vercelli Book

Amity Reading (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

152 Seiten

2017 | New edition
Peter Lang Publishing Inc (Verlag)
9781433140549 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Reading the Anglo-Saxon Self Through the Vercelli Book explores conceptions of subjectivity in Anglo-Saxon England by analyzing the contents and sources of the Vercelli Book, a tenth-century compilation of Old English religious poetry and prose. The Vercelli Book’s selection and arrangement of texts has long perplexed scholars, but this book argues that its organizational logic lies in the relationship of its texts to the performance of selfhood. Many of the poems and homilies represent subjectivity through "soul-and-body," a popular medieval literary motif that describes the soul’s physical departure from the body at death and its subsequent addresses to the body. Vercelli’s soul-and-body texts, together with its exemplary narratives of apostles and saints, construct a model of selfhood that is embodied and performative, predicated upon an interdependent relationship between the soul and the body in which the body has the potential for salvific action. The book thus theorizes an Anglo-Saxon conception of the self that challenges modern assumptions of a rigid soul/body dualism in medieval religious and literary tradition. Its arguments will therefore be of interest to students and scholars of literature, history, philosophy, and religious studies and would be appropriate for upper-level courses on Old English literature, Anglo-Saxon history, sermons and preaching in medieval England, and medieval religious practice.

Amity Reading received her BA from the University of Chicago and her MA and her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at DePauw University and has previously published on Anglo-Saxon and later medieval religious poetry.

List of Tables – Acknowledgments – Abbreviations – Introduction: Bodies, Souls, and Selves in Anglo-Saxon England – Souls With Bodies: Parsing the Self in Vercelli Homilies IV, XXII, and Soul and Body I – Baptism, Conversion, and Selfhood in Andreas – The Self and the Community: Rogationtide and the Ascension in The Dream of the Rood and Vercelli Homilies X, XI, and XXI – Hagiography and the End(s) of the Vercelli Book: Models of Ideal Selfhood in Homilies XVII, XVIII, and XXIII – Index.

Erscheinungsdatum	01.11.2017
Reihe/Serie	Medieval Interventions ; 7
Mitarbeit	Herausgeber (Serie): Stephen G. Nichols
Zusatzinfo	3 Illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	150 x 225 mm
Gewicht	350 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
Schlagworte	Amity • Anglo • Book • Meagan • nichols • Reading • Saxon • self • simpson • Stephen • through • Vercelli
ISBN-13	9781433140549 / 9781433140549
Zustand	Neuware