Translating Europe in Ælfric's Lives of Saints

Translating Europe in Ælfric's 'Lives of Saints' is the first study of the representation of European peoples, places and geographies in the Lives of Saints, one of early medieval England's most famed works.

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Translating Europe in Ælfric's 'Lives of Saints' is the first study of the representation of European peoples, places, and geographies in the Lives of Saints, one of early medieval England's most famed works. It examines the Lives of Saints as a unified collection whose various items work cumulatively and concurrently to provide audiences with teachings far beyond the scope of an individual homily or saints' life. In doing so, it demonstrates that Ælfric's European characters and settings served not merely as a convenient skeleton on which to frame his hagiographical narratives, but rather lay at the heart of his didactic praxis and pedagogic aims.

Luisa Ostacchini systematically compares each of the 30 plus items that comprise Ælfric's Lives of Saints to their Latin sources and to one another to highlight previously unnoticed patterns and formulae within collection. In so doing, she demonstrates that Ælfric's interest in community was both inward and outward looking: he sought on the one hand to situate England within the wider Christian world, and on the other hand to promote the internal unity of the English kingdom and the reformed monastic establishment.

This book sheds new light on the ways that Ælfric wrote about the Christian world and England's place within it, and further illuminates of the didactic praxis and ideology of one of the most influential and significant authors of the early medieval period.

Luisa Ostacchini is a college lecturer at St John's College, Oxford, where she teaches Old and Middle English literature.