Faraway, So Close: Liminal Thinking and the Use of Geography in Old English Orosius
Mateusz Fafiński
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlinhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1637-8174
Abstract
This article investigates the role of the periphery in the Old English Orosius with a particular focus on the use of geography as a device for writing history in the Early Middle Ages. By analyzing the sources and curatorial practices employed in the adaptation of the text a crucial role of its liminal character is stressed, as well as a composite nature of its authorship. Finally, the excursus on the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan is shown as a practical employment of the analyzed practices.
Keywords:
Early Middle Ages, narratology, Old English, periphery, universal historyReferences
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Discenza, Nicole Guenther, 2017. Inhabited Spaces: Anglo-Saxon Constructions of Place. University of Toronto Press.
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Moore, Michael E. Hoenicke, 2012. Bede’s Devotion to Rome: The Periphery Defining the Center, in: Lebecq, Stéphane., Perrin, Michel, Szerwiniak, Olivier (Eds.), Bède Le Vénérable : Entre Tradition et Postérité, Histoire et Littérature Du Septentrion (IRHiS). Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, Lille, pp. 199–208.
Nuffelen, Peter van, 2012. Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, Oxford early Christian studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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OEO = Godden, Malcolm R. (Tran.), 2016. The Old English History of the World. An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts. (throughout: OEO)
Orosius, Paulus, 2010. Seven books of history against the Pagans, Translated texts for historians. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool.
Reimitz, H., 2014. The Historian as Cultural Broker in the Late and Post-Roman West, in: Wood, Ian, Fischer, A. (Eds.), Western Perspectives on the Mediterranean: Cultural Transfer in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 400-800 AD. Bloomsbury, London, 41–54.
Todorov, Tzvetan, 2010. The fear of barbarians: beyond the clash of civilizations. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago; London.
Valtonen, I., 2008. The North in the Old English Orosius: a geographical narrative in context, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki. Société Néophilologique, Helsinki.
Woodworth, Richard B., 1891. Wendelsæ̂. Modern Language Notes 6, 135–136.
Bately, Janet M., 1972. The relationship between geographical information in the Old English Orosius and Latin texts other than Orosius. Anglo-Saxon England 1, 45–62.
Bately, Janet M. 2014. “The Old English Orosius”. In: Discenza, Nicole Guenther and Paul E. Szarmach (Eds.). 2014. A Companion to Alfred the Great. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58. Leiden: Brill, 313–343
Bruce, Scott G., 2018. The Dark Age of Herodotus: Shards of a Fugitive History in Early Medieval Europe. Speculum 94, 47–67.
Cuesta, Julia F., Silva, Inmaculada S., 2000. Ohthere and Wulfstan: One or Two Voyagers at the Court of King Alfred? Studia Neophilologica 72, 18–23.
Discenza, Nicole Guenther, 2017. Inhabited Spaces: Anglo-Saxon Constructions of Place. University of Toronto Press.
Discenza, Nicole Guenther, 2002. The Old English Bede and the Construction of Anglo-Saxon Authority. Anglo-Saxon England 31, 69–80.
Godden, Malcolm R., 2012. The Old English Orosius and its Context: who wrote it, for whom, and why? Quaestio Insularis 12, 1–30.
Godden, Malcolm R., 2011. The Old English Orosius and its Sources. Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 129, 297–320.
Harris, Stephen, 2004. Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Routledge.
Howe, Nicolas, 2008. Englalond and the postcolonial void, in: Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Cultural Geography. Yale University Press, New Haven, pp. 75–100.
Hurley, Mary K., 2013. Alfredian Temporalities: Time and Translation in the Old English Orosius, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, 405–432.
Kuhn, Hans, 1975. Dies und das zum Hildebrandslied. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 104, 21–31.
Lapidge, Michael, 2015. St Gallen and the “Leiden Glossary” Anglia 133, 624–655.
Lapidge, Michael, 2008. The Anglo-Saxon library. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford.
Leneghan, Francis, 2015. Translatio Imperii: The Old English Orosius and the Rise of Wessex. Anglia 133, 656–705.
Linderski, Jerzy, 1964. Alfred the Great and the Tradition of Ancient Geography. Speculum 39, 434–439.
Lozovsky, Natalia, 2006. Roman Geography and Ethnography in the Carolingian Empire. Speculum 81, 325–364.
Merrills, A.H., 2005. History and geography in late antiquity. Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Mhaonaigh, Mhaire N., 2017. The Peripheral Centre: Writing History on the Western “Fringe.” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 59–84.
Moore, Michael E. Hoenicke, 2012. Bede’s Devotion to Rome: The Periphery Defining the Center, in: Lebecq, Stéphane., Perrin, Michel, Szerwiniak, Olivier (Eds.), Bède Le Vénérable : Entre Tradition et Postérité, Histoire et Littérature Du Septentrion (IRHiS). Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, Lille, pp. 199–208.
Nuffelen, Peter van, 2012. Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, Oxford early Christian studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
O’Brien O’Keeffe, K., 1998. Reading the C-Text: the after-lives of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. i, in: Pulsiano, P., Treharne, E.M. (Eds.), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Their Heritage. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 137–160.
OEO = Godden, Malcolm R. (Tran.), 2016. The Old English History of the World. An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts. (throughout: OEO)
Orosius, Paulus, 2010. Seven books of history against the Pagans, Translated texts for historians. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool.
Reimitz, H., 2014. The Historian as Cultural Broker in the Late and Post-Roman West, in: Wood, Ian, Fischer, A. (Eds.), Western Perspectives on the Mediterranean: Cultural Transfer in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 400-800 AD. Bloomsbury, London, 41–54.
Todorov, Tzvetan, 2010. The fear of barbarians: beyond the clash of civilizations. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago; London.
Valtonen, I., 2008. The North in the Old English Orosius: a geographical narrative in context, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki. Société Néophilologique, Helsinki.
Woodworth, Richard B., 1891. Wendelsæ̂. Modern Language Notes 6, 135–136.
Fafiński, M. (2019). Faraway, So Close: Liminal Thinking and the Use of Geography in Old English Orosius. Studia Warmińskie, 56, 423–437. https://doi.org/10.31648/sw.3252
Mateusz Fafiński
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1637-8174
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1637-8174
