Description
Book SynopsisOver six hundred years before John Milton’s
Paradise Lost, Anglo-Saxon authors told their own version of the fall of the angels. This book brings together various cultural moments, literary genres and relevant comparanda to recover that version, from the legal and social world to the world of popular spiritual ritual and belief. The story of the fall of the angels in Anglo-Saxon England is the story of a successfully transmitted exegetical teaching turned rich literary tradition. It can be traced through a range of genres – sermons, saints’ lives, royal charters, riddles, devotional and biblical poetry – each one offering a distinct window into the ancient myth’s place within the Anglo-Saxon literary and cultural imagination.
Trade Review'One comes away from this book with a new appreciation for the motif of the fallen angels, both in its frequency and in its flexibility for interpretation and application.'
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
'Rebel Angels is a fantastic resource collating stories of angelic rebellion in early medieval England.'
Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures
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Table of ContentsList of figures
Introduction
1 Lands idle and unused
2 The anxiety of inheritance
3 Rebel clerics, monastic replacements
4 The angels’ share
5 A homeland as a possession
6 A new praedestinati in Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
