Description
Book SynopsisFrom the eighth century to the turn of the millennium, East Anglia had a variety of identities thrust upon it by authors of the period who envisioned a unified England. Although they were not regional writers in the modern sense, Bede, Felix, the annalists of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Alfred of Wessex, Abbo of Fleury, and Ælfric of Eynsham took a keen interest in East Anglia, especially in its potential to undo English cultural cohesiveness as they imagined it.
Angles on a Kingdom argues that those authors treated East Anglia as both a hindrance and a stimulus to the development of early English national consciousness. Combining close textual reading with consideration of early medieval barrow burials, coinage, border delineation, and rivalries between monastic houses, Joseph Grossi examines various forms of cultural affirmation and manipulation. Angles on a Kingdom shows that, over the course of roughly two and a half centuries, the literary metamorphoses
Trade Review
"Grossi’s wide-ranging and at times whimsical book will encourage readers to revisit familiar texts in search of unsuspected meanings…Reading it prompts all manner of new questions." -- Richard Purkiss, Oxford * Early Medieval Europe *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm: Bede’s Mixed Views of East Anglian Imperium 2. Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 3. Solace for a Client-King: Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci 4. Made in Wessex: Danish East Anglia and the Alfredian Court 5. Edmund, East Anglia, England Conclusion Notes Bibliography
