The Politics of Language : : Byrhtferth, Aelfric, and the Multilingual Identity of the Benedictine Reform / / Rebecca Stephenson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter ACUP Complete eBook-Package 2015
• VerfasserIn: Stephenson, Rebecca,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.)

Old English literature thrived in late tenth-century England. Its success was the result of a concerted effort by the leaders of the Benedictine Reform movement to encourage both widespread literacy and a simple literary style. The manuscripts written in this era are the source for the majority of the Old English literature that survives today, including literary classics such as Beowulf. Yet the same monks who copied and compiled these important Old English texts themselves wrote in a rarified Latin, full of esoteric vocabulary and convoluted syntax and almost incomprehensible even to the well-educated.Comparing works by the two most prolific authors of the era, Byrhtferth of Ramsey and Ælfric of Eynsham, Rebecca Stephenson explains the politics that encouraged the simultaneous development of a simple English style and an esoteric Latin style. By examining developments in Old English and Anglo-Latin side by side, The Politics of Language opens up a valuable new perspective on the Benedictine Reform and literacy in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Literary Context of the Monastic Reform -- Part One -- Part Two -- Bibliography -- Index