1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455931303321

Autore

Bredehoft Thomas A.

Titolo

Textual Histories : readings in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle / / Thomas A. Bredehoft

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2001

©2001

ISBN

1-282-03382-4

9786612033827

1-4426-8046-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (250 p.)

Disciplina

942.01

Soggetti

English prose literature - Old English, ca. 450-1100 - Criticism, Textual

Transmission of texts - England - History - To 1500

Anglo-Saxons - Historiography

Electronic books.

Great Britain History Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066 Historiography

Great Britain History Norman period, 1066-1154 Historiography

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Plates -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 The Common Stock Genealogies -- 2 Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the Context of the Common Stock -- 3 The Post-Alfredian Annals -- 4 The Chronicle Poems -- 6 Conclusions -- APPENDIX: The Texts of Annal 755 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Annals and Manuscripts -- Subject Index

Sommario/riassunto

Any scholar determined to provide the academic community with a comprehensive reading of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles has set themselves a Herculean task. The Chronicles are a recording of historical events in England from the beginning of the Christian Era to 1154. The inspiration to compile and often translate to the vernacular brief entries from church annals, and then progressively longer historical accounts, poems and genealogies, is thought to come from



Alfred, King of West Saxons (848-99) as part of his drive to revive learning and literature in England. After Alfred's death, scribes carried on amassing prose narratives, poems and genealogies, as well as transcribing the existing entries. Such a massive historical project leaves us now with a set of documents so complex that a planned edition is likely to consist of over 20 volumes.In this remarkable study Thomas Bredehoft asks: what was the cultural force of such a singular document? Who might have been reading it, who was steering its formation at various periods, and to what end? What modern scholars have been too willing to dismiss as a scattershot collection of unrelated annals, is, Bredehoft convincingly argues, a powerful and consciously driven tool to forge, through linking literature and history, a patriotic Anglo Saxon national identity.