Epic Lives and Monasticism in the Middle Ages, 800-1050

by Anna Lisa Taylor

Overview

This is the first book to focus on Latin epic verse saints' lives in their medieval historical contexts. Anna Taylor examines how these works promoted bonds of friendship and expressed rivalries among writers, monasteries, saints, earthly patrons, teachers, and students in Western Europe in the central middle ages. Using philological, codicological, and microhistorical approaches, Professor Taylor reveals new insights that will reshape our understanding of monasticism, patronage, and education. These texts give historians an unprecedented glimpse inside the early medieval classroom, provide a nuanced view of the complicated synthesis of the Christian and Classical heritages, and show the cultural importance and varied functions of poetic composition in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107030503
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/02/2013
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anna Lisa Taylor is Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Table of Contents

Introduction: saints, teachers, princes, and students; 1. Forging sanctity: Hilduin of Saint-Denis and the epic Passio Dionysii; 2. Glossing the imaginary: epic vitae in the classroom; 3. Classical nightmares: Christian poets and the pagan past; 4. Bishops, monks, and mother bees: an epic vita at the millennium; 5. Mothers and daughters, affiliation and conflict in the lives of Rictrude and Euseba; Conclusions: 'black seeds on a white field'; Appendix 1. St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. sang. 265; Appendix 2. Douai Bibliotheque municipale ms 849.

Editorial Reviews

'… this is an excellent book that brings to the fore one of the most obscure corners of early medieval literature. Taylor’s superb analysis demonstrates just how multifaceted verse Lives really were, and anybody interested in hagiography, education, poetry or classicism ought to read this and look much more closely at these hitherto neglected works.' Edward Roberts, Early Medieval Review

From the Publisher