Guthlac Betwixt and Between: Literacy, Cross-Temporal Affiliation, and an Anglo-Saxon Anchorite

Guthlac's saintly “career” saw his transformation from aristocratic warrior to monastic visionary. It saw him move physically from a warrior's secular hall to a monastic community and then to an anchorite's cell. Beyond this, however, even the ways later generations came to know—and p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of medieval religious cultures
Main Author: Weston, Lisa M. C. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Penn State Univ. Press [2016]
In: Journal of medieval religious cultures
Year: 2016, Volume: 42, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-27
IxTheo Classification:CB Christian life; spirituality
CD Christianity and Culture
KAD Church history 500-900; early Middle Ages
KBF British Isles
KCA Monasticism; religious orders
KCD Hagiography; saints
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:Guthlac's saintly “career” saw his transformation from aristocratic warrior to monastic visionary. It saw him move physically from a warrior's secular hall to a monastic community and then to an anchorite's cell. Beyond this, however, even the ways later generations came to know—and perhaps be stimulated to emulate—Guthlac move betwixt and between. That is, they involve repeated translations, movements between languages, between genres, between reading contexts. Felix's original Anglo-Latin vita must itself be triangulated among a variety of previous textual models. That Latin text was variously re-created as it was translated from Latin into multiple Old English texts. The Old English prose translations, vita and sermon, situate and invoke a significantly different Guthlac from that readable in the two (or perhaps three) extant devotional poems. Multiply liminal, Guthlac—the man and the textual memory—offers his readers an exemplar through whom they engage in the reconstruction of monastic identity and literary subjectivity.
ISSN:2153-9650
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of medieval religious cultures
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.5325/jmedirelicult.42.1.0001