Stealing Obedience

Narratives of monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England depict individuals as responsible agents in the assumption and performance of religious identities. To modern eyes, however, many of the ‘choices’ they make would actually appear to be compulsory. Stealing Obedience explores how a Christian notion of agent action – where freedom incurs responsibility – was a component of identity in the last hundred years of Anglo-Saxon England, and investigates where agency (in the modern sense) might be sought in these narratives. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe looks at Benedictine monasticism through the writings of Ælfric, Anselm, Osbern of Canterbury, and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, as well as liturgy, canon and civil law, chronicle, dialogue, and hagiography, to analyse the practice of obedience in the monastic context. Stealing Obedience brings a highly original approach to the study of Anglo-Saxon narratives of obedience in the adoption of religious identity.

Explores how a Christian notion of freedom incurring responsibility was a component of identity, examining secular writings, liturgy, canon and civil law, chronicle, dialogue, and hagiography to analyze the practice of obedience in the monastic context.

During the tenth century England began to emerge as a distinct country with an identity that was both part of yet separate from 'Christendom'. The reigns of Athelstan, Edgar and Ethelred witnessed the emergence of many key institutions: the formation of towns on modern street plans; an efficient administration; and a serviceable system of tax. Mark Atherton here shows how the stories, legends, biographies and chronicles of Anglo-Saxon England reflected both this exciting time of innovation as well as the myriad lives, loves and hates of the people who wrote them. He demonstrates, too, that this was a nation coming of age, ahead of its time in its use not of the Book-Latin used elsewhere in Europe, but of a narrative Old English prose devised for law and practical governance of the nation-state, for prayer and preaching, and above all for exploring a rich and daring new literature. This prose was unique, but until now it has been neglected for the poetry. Bringing a volatile age to vivid and muscular life, Atherton argues that it was the vernacular of Alfred the Great, as much as Viking war, that truly forged the nation.

Research into the emotions is beginning to gain momentum in Anglo-Saxon studies. In order to integrate early medieval Britain into the wider scholarly research into the history of emotions (a major theme in other fields and a key field in interdisciplinary studies), this volume brings together established scholars, who have already made significant contributions to the study of Anglo-Saxon mental and emotional life, with younger scholars. The volume presents a tight focus - on emotion (rather than psychological life more generally), on Anglo-Saxon England and on language and literature - with contrasting approaches that will open up debate. The volume considers a range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives, examines the interplay of emotion and textuality, explores how emotion is conveyed through gesture, interrogates emotions in religious devotional literature, and considers the place of emotion in heroic culture. Each chapter asks questions about what is culturally distinctive about emotion in Anglo-Saxon England and what interpretative moves have to be made to read emotion in Old English texts, as well as considering how ideas about and representations of emotion might relate to lived experience. Taken together the essays in this collection indicate the current state of the field and preview important work to come. By exploring methodologies and materials for the study of Anglo-Saxon emotions, particularly focusing on Old English language and literature, it will both stimulate further study within the discipline and make a distinctive contribution to the wider interdisciplinary conversation about emotions.

Austin was an towering presence in 19th-century English jurisprudence, and many of his ideas remain viable today. They include his conception of analytical jurisprudence, his sharp distinction between law and morality, and his utilitarian theory of resistance to government. Yet he has always had his critics and they have become ever shriller in the last 50 years. If it is not a requirement of political correctness to belittle his ideas, the tendency to do so is widespread. Critics often dismiss Austin with a wave of the hand, or reduce his jurisprudence to a few of his ideas, such as his conception of law as a command or his notion of a legally unlimited sovereign. Whatever approach is taken, Austin's doctrines tend to be abstracted from their historical context and vastly oversimplified. For example, the utilitarian ethical theories that he expounded in three of the six chapters of the only book that he published in his lifetime are usually ignored. Accordingly, there has been a failure to recognize the complexity and inner tensions of his legal philosophy. There is not one John Austin, but at least half-a-dozen. Nothing makes this clearer than the diverse responses to his work in the 19th century. Wilfrid E. Rumble's study thus fills a large gap in the literature about this important figure. It will be of substantial interest not only to historians of ideas, law, and the 19th century, but also to jurists, legal philosophers, and political theorists.

Firmly establishes the importance of early affective devotion in the hybrid poetics of the earliest English poetry.

Awarded 2019 Best Edition or Translation of an Anglo-Saxon (or Anglo-Latin) Text by the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists St. Æthelwold (904/9 –984), abbot of Abingdon and bishop of Winchester, made the first translation of the Rule of Saint Benedict into English (or, indeed, into any vernacular language) as part of the tenth-century English Benedictine Reform. This movement dramatically affected the trajectory of religious life in early medieval England and influenced the ways in which secular power was conceived and wielded in the kingdom. Æthelwold's translation into Old English reworks Benedict’s Latin text through numerous silent additions, omissions, and instances of explanatory material, revealing an Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical and political reformer intent on making this foundational Latin text more readily accessible to the new monks and nuns of the Reform and to the laity. Presented with related texts composed in Old English, this volume makes Æthelwold’s transformation of Benedict’s Rule available in Modern English translation for the first time.