Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Wealth and the Material World in the Old English Alfredian Corpus

Wealth and the Material World in the Old English Alfredian Corpus

Faulkner, Amy

Hardcover

Series: Anglo-Saxon Studies, Book 46

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 1783277599
ISBN13: 9781783277599
Publisher: Boydell Press
Published: Jan 24 2023
Pages: 222
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
WINNER: 2025 Beatrice White Prize

A new, materialistic reading of the Alfredian corpus, drawing on diverse approaches from thing theory to Augustinian principles of use and enjoyment to uncover how these works explore the material world.

The Old English prose translations traditionally attributed to Alfred the Great (versions of Gregory's Regula pastoralis, Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, Augustine's Soliloquia and the first fifty Psalms) urge detachment from the material world; but despite this, its flotsam and jetsam, from costly treasures to everyday objects, abound within them.

This book reads these original and inventive translations from a materialist perspective, drawing on approaches as diverse as thing theory and Augustine's principles of use and enjoyment. By focussing on the material, it offers a fresh interpretation of this group of translations, bringing out their complex, often contradictory, relationship with the material world. It demonstrates that, as in the poetic tradition, wealth in Alfredian literature is not simply a tool to be used, or something to be enjoyed in excess; rather, in moving away from these two static binaries, it shows that wealth is a current, flowing both horizontally, as an exchange of gifts between humans, and vertically, as a salvific current between earth and heaven. The prose translations are situated in the context of Old English poetry, including Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles and The Dream of the Rood.

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