Translating the Fate of the Soul in Late Anglo-Saxon England

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_1727
dc.contributor.author	Di Sciacca Claudia
dc.title	Translating the Fate of the Soul in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Ælfric of Eynsham and Two Post-Mortem Visions
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	it
dc.description.abstract	This essay discusses what is possibly the earliest translation from the Vitas Patrum corpus into a Western European vernacular, i.e. the Old English version of two visions of departing souls from the Verba Seniorum by Ælfric of Eynsham. Contrary to received notions, Ælfric favoured the narratives of the Desert Fathers as sources for paradigms of clerical celibacy and continence, two of the values that he was most anxious to teach and on which he took a strongly reformist stance. The two case studies presented aim to shed new light on the diffusion and appreciation of the Desert Fathers tales in Benedictine Reform England, in that they will show that, not unlike many anonymous homilists, Ælfric too drew on them as eschatological sources to conjure up two dramatic post-mortem scenes.
dc.relation.ispartof	Medieval and Modern Philologies
dc.relation.ispartof	Serie occidentale
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.issued	2018-05-24
dc.dateAccepted	2018-02-19
dc.dateSubmitted	2018-01-17
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-250-5/translating-the-fate-of-the-soul-in-late-anglo-sax/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-248-2/009
dc.identifier.issn	2610-945X
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9441
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-250-5
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-248-2
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Anglo-Saxon England
dc.subject	Anglo-Saxon England
dc.subject	Old English
dc.subject	Old English
dc.subject	Soul-and-body literature
dc.subject	Soul-and-body literature
dc.subject	Verba seniorum
dc.subject	Verba seniorum
dc.subject	Ælfric of Eynsham
dc.subject	Ælfric of Eynsham

Chapter
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Translating the Fate of the Soul in Late Anglo-Saxon England

Ælfric of Eynsham and Two Post-Mortem Visions

Claudia Di Sciacca Università degli Studi di Udine, Italia

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abstract

This essay discusses what is possibly the earliest translation from the Vitas Patrum corpus into a Western European vernacular, i.e. the Old English version of two visions of departing souls from the Verba Seniorum by Ælfric of Eynsham. Contrary to received notions, Ælfric favoured the narratives of the Desert Fathers as sources for paradigms of clerical celibacy and continence, two of the values that he was most anxious to teach and on which he took a strongly reformist stance. The two case studies presented aim to shed new light on the diffusion and appreciation of the Desert Fathers tales in Benedictine Reform England, in that they will show that, not unlike many anonymous homilists, Ælfric too drew on them as eschatological sources to conjure up two dramatic post-mortem scenes.

Published

May 24, 2018

Accepted

Feb. 19, 2018

Submitted

Jan. 17, 2018

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-250-5

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-248-2

Keywords: Verba seniorum • Old English • Soul-and-body literature • Ælfric of Eynsham • Anglo-Saxon England

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-248-2/009

Copyright: © 2018 Claudia Di Sciacca. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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