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

In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests 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 in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures.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.

Product details

• Authors: Clara A. Lees, Clare A. Lees
• Publisher: University Of Minnesota Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.11.1999
• EAN: 9780816630035
• ISBN: 978-0-8166-3003-5
• No. of pages: 216
• Dimensions: 229 mm x 152 mm x 11 mm
• Weight: 296 g
• Series: Medieval Cultures S.; Medieval Cultures (Paperback); Medieval Cultures; Medieval Cultures
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies