Scottish Legendary Towards a Poetics of Hagiographic Narration
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Eva von Contzen is Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Freiburg<p>‘This is an intensely exciting book due to the new methodologies it offers for understanding these texts, and the new possibilities it suggests within the study of medieval Scottish literature.’<br />Claire Harrill, University of Birmingham, <i>Medievalia et Humanistica</i>, New Series, Number 43</p>
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This is the first book-length study of the Scottish Legendary of the late fourteenth century. The only extant collection of saints' lives in the vernacular from medieval Scotland, the work scrutinises the dynamics of hagiographic narration, its implicit assumptions about literariness, and the functions of telling the lives of the saints.
The fifty saints' legends are remarkable for their narrative art: the enjoyment of reading the legends is heightened, while didactic and edifying content is toned down. Focusing on the role of the narrator, the depiction of the saintly characters, their interiority, as well as temporal and spatial parameters, it is demonstrated that the Scottish poet has adapted the traditional material to the needs of an audience versed in reading romance and other secular genres. This study scrutinises the implications of the Scottish poet's narrative strategies with respect to the Scottishness of the Legendary and its overall place in the hagiographic landscape of late medieval Britain.
Introduction: The Scottish Legendary and narrative art
1. Towards a narrative poetics of medieval saints' lives
2. Teacher and poet: the narrator in the Scottish Legendary
3. Words and deeds: character depiction and direct discourse
4. Putting the saint in perspective: ideology and hagiographic narration
5. Saintly interiority: narrating conscience and consciousness
6. The past, a foreign country: time, space and the Scottishness of the Scottish Legendary
Conclusion: A poetics of hagiographic narration
Appendix: The Scottish Legendary: authorship, dialect, and arrangement
Bibliography
Index
This is the first book-length study of the late-fourteenth-century Scottish Legendary, the only extant collection of saints' lives in the vernacular from medieval Scotland. The fifty saints' legends are remarkable for their narrative art: the enjoyment of reading the legends is heightened, while didactic and edifying content is toned down.
This study scrutinises the dynamics of hagiographic narration, its implicit assumptions about literariness and the functions of telling the lives of the saints. Focusing on the role of the narrator, the depiction of the saintly characters, their interiority, as well as temporal and spatial parameters, the author demonstrates that the Scottish poet has adapted the traditional material to the needs of an audience versed in reading romance and other secular genres. The legends of the saints are 'secularised' in their narrative design and the emphasis put on aspects such as familial conflict and interpersonal tensions. The Scottish compilation is placed within the hagiographic landscape of medieval Britain: while undoubtedly bearing similarities to other vernacular saints' legends such as the South English Legendary or Osbern Bokenham's legends, it ultimately follows its own agenda of popularising the hagiographic tales. The implications of the Scottish poet's narrative strategies are scrutinised also with respect to the Scottishness of the legendary.
This study will be of interest to students and academics interested in late medieval narrative, the legends of the saints, and the intersections of secular and religious literature in medieval Britain.