Tradition And Belief

Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England

Clara A. Lees

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 1999
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816688418
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Looks at early religious texts and their influence on medieval literature and culture. In this major study of Anglo-Saxon religious texts-sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English-Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England. By placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of culture. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church-its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such-and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics-the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture. ISBN 0-8166-3002-X Cloth £34.50 $49.95xx ISBN 0-8166-3003-8 Paper £14.00 $19.95x 232 Pages 5 7/8 x 9 November Medieval Cultures Series, volume 19 Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Culture and Belief
• 1. Tradition, Literature, History
• 2. Aesthetics and Belief: Ælfric’s False Gods
• 3. Conventions of Time in the Old English Homiletic Corpus
• 4. Didacticism and the Christian Community: The Teachers and the Taught
• 5. Chastity and Charity: Ælfric, Women, and the Female Saints
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index