Writing women saints in Anglo-Saxon England /edited by Paul E. Szarmach. - Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, (c)2013. - 1 online resource (x, 352 pages). - Toronto Anglo-Saxon series ; 14 .

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction / Female hagiography in the Old English Martyrology / Bodies and land : the place of gender in the Old English Martyrology / Why is Margaret's the only Life in London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A.iii? / Æthelgifu's Will as hagiography / Assuming virginity : tradition and the naked narrative in Ælfric's Homily on the Assumption of the Virgin / Genre trouble : reading the Old English Vita of Saint Euphrosyne / More genre trouble : the life of Mary of Egypt / "Nutrix pia" : the flowering of the cult of St Æthelthryth in Anglo-Saxon England / The Kentish Queen as Omnium Mater : Goscelin of Saint-Bertin's Lections and the emergence of the cult of Saint Seaxburh / Agnes among the Anglo-Saxons : patristic influences in Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Saxon versions of the Passio of Saint Agnes / Heavenly bodies : paradoxes of martyrdom in Ælfric's Lives of Saints / "Torture me, rend me, burn me, kill me!" Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the depiction of female sanctity / Paul E. Szarmach -- Christine Rauer -- Jacqueline Stodnick -- Tracey-Anne Cooper -- Mary Louise Fellows -- Rebecca Stephenson -- Robin Norris -- Paul E. Szarmach -- John Black -- Virginia Blanton -- Rhonda McDaniel -- Renée R. Trilling -- Rosalind Love.

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.--



9781442664579

2013902347X


Martyrologium (Anglo-Saxon)


Christian literature, English (Old)--History and criticism.
Christian literature, Latin (Medieval and modern)--History and criticism.
English literature--History and criticism.--Old English, ca. 450-1100
Women and literature--History--England--To 1500.
Christian hagiography--History--To 1500.
Women saints in literature.
Women in literature.
Mothers in literature.


Electronic Books.

PR179 / .W758 2013