Epistolary Acts - Anglo-Saxon Letters and Early English Media

In Epistolary Acts, Jordan Zweck examines the presentation of letters in early medieval vernacular literature, including hagiography, prose romance, poetry, and sermons on letters from heaven, moving beyond traditional genre study to offer a radically new way of conceptualizing Anglo-Saxon epistolarity.

List of contents

Abbreviations
Introduction: Epistolary Acts and The Husband’s Message
Chapter One: Reconstructing the Anglo-Saxon ars dictaminis: Form, Vocabulary, and Immediacy
Chapter Two: Spreading the Word: the Sunday Letter, Mass Communication, and the Self-Replicating Document
Chapter Three: Messengers, Materiality, and Transmission in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre, Letter of Abgar, and Mary of Egypt
Chapter Four: Bodies of Record: Witnessing, Memory, and Erasure in Ælfric’s Life of Basil and the Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers
Epilogue: Epistolary Afterlives
Bibliography

About the author

Jordan Zweck is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Summary

In Epistolary Acts, Jordan Zweck examines the presentation of letters in early medieval vernacular literature, including hagiography, prose romance, poetry, and sermons on letters from heaven, moving beyond traditional genre study to offer a radically new way of conceptualizing Anglo-Saxon epistolarity.

Product details

• Authors: Jordan Zweck
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 16.02.2018
• EAN: 9781487501006
• ISBN: 978-1-4875-0100-6
• No. of pages: 240
• Series: Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series; Toronto Anglo-Saxon; Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series; Toronto Anglo-Saxon
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works