Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England

Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England
ISBN-10
1442664584
ISBN-13
9781442664586
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
368
Language
English
Published
2013-12-11
Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Author
Paul Szarmach

Description

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.

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