Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England

by Paul Szarmach

Overview

The twelve essays in this collection advance the contemporary study of the women saints of Anglo-Saxon England by challenging received wisdom and offering alternative methodologies. The work embraces a number of different scholarly approaches, from codicological study to feminist theory. While some contributions are dedicated to the description and reconstruction of female lives of saints and their cults, others explore the broader ideological and cultural investments of the literature.

The volume concentrates on four major areas: the female saint in the Old English Martyrology, genre including hagiography and homelitic writing, motherhood and chastity, and differing perspectives on lives of virgin martyrs. The essays reveal how saints’ lives that exist on the apparent margins of orthodoxy actually demonstrate a successful literary challenge extending the idea of a holy life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442664586
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/11/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Paul E. Szarmach is an emeritus professor of English and Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University and a visiting scholar at the University of California-Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Paul E. Szarmach 

Old English Martyrology

Female Hagiography in the Old English Martyrology - Christine Rauer (University of St. Andrews)

Bodies and Land: The Place of Gender in the Old English Martyrology - Jacqueline Stodnick (University of Texas)

Form and Genre

Why is Margaret’s the Only Life in London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A.iii? - Tracey Anne Cooper (St. John’s University)

Æthelgifu’s Will as Hagiography - Mary Louise Fellows (University of Minnesota Law School)

Assuming Virginity: Tradition and the Naked Narrative in Ælfric’s Homily on the Assumption of the Virgin - Rebecca Stephenson (University of Louisiana at Monroe)

Genre Trouble: Reading the Old English Vita of Saint Euphrosyne - Robin Norris (Carleton University)

More Genre Trouble: The Life of Mary of Egypt - Paul E. Szarmach (Western Michigan University) 

Mothers

‘Nutrix Pia’: The Flowering of the Cult of Æthelthryth in Anglo-Saxon England - John Black (Moravian College)  

The Kentish Queen as Omnium Mater: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Lections and the Emergence of the Cult of Saint Seaxburh - Virginia Blanton (University of Missouri, Kansas City)

Virgin Martyrs

Agnes Among the Angles: Patristic Influences in Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Saxon Versions of the Passio of Saint Agnes - Rhonda McDaniel (Middle Tennessee State University)

Heavenly Bodies: Paradoxes of Martyrdom in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints - Renée Trilling (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

‘Torture Me, Rend Me, Burn Me, Kill Me!’ Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the Depiction of Female Sanctity - Rosalind Love (University of Cambridge)

What People are Saying About This

Jane Roberts

“The collection is a state-of-the art exploration of the ‘saintly feminine’ in Old English prose. The essays range widely, positioning discussion of the topic within wider contexts.”

From the Publisher

“Edited by a most distinguished Anglo-Saxonist, this collection features many thoughtful emerging and established scholarly voices in the field.”

“The collection is a state-of-the art exploration of the ‘saintly feminine’ in Old English prose. The essays range widely, positioning discussion of the topic within wider contexts.”

Clare A. Lees

“Edited by a most distinguished Anglo-Saxonist, this collection features many thoughtful emerging and established scholarly voices in the field.”