Echoes of Early Irish Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes

Download or read book Echoes of Early Irish Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes written by Albert Joseph McMullen and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study traces the cultural interplay between Irish and Old English literary landscapes. Combining an ecocritical approach to reading representations of the landscape with a comparatist perspective, each chapter shows that the landscape and the natural world were not only static motifs, but that they allow for the observation of literary influence. The first chapter investigates the political use of the landscape in Irish and Anglo-Saxon saints' Lives. I argue that the anonymous author of the Life of Cuthbert was following a common Irish hagiographic practice of using place-names to claim churches, monasteries, or lands for the writer's monastic foundation. Furthermore, Bede was aware of this agenda when he rewrote the Life of Cuthbert some twenty years later and consciously removed many of the place-names that localize Cuthbert's miracles and ministrations from the text.