Tradition and Belief: Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England - Softcover

Lees, Clara A.; Lees, Clare A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816630038 ISBN 13: 9780816630035

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1999

Synopsis

Looks at early religious texts and their influence on medieval literature and culture.

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

About this title

About the Author

Clare A. Lees is associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Oregon and the editor of Medieval Masculinities (Minnesota, 1994).

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816630038
• ISBN 13: 9780816630035
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216