شاه آلفرد بزرگ، هگیوگراف‌های او و پرستش او: کودکی به یاد مانده (هگیوگرافی فراتر از سنت)

This book situates Alfred the Great in his hagiographic context. For 150 years, the fables told in the ninth century about Alfred's childhood have posed interlocking disciplinary challenges to historians committed to evicting romance from history. Blending current Hagiography Studies with historical, literary, and biblical hermeneutics can help us forgo the anti-hagiographic commitments which motivated the scholars who purified the Victorian cult of Alfred by expunging his legends and salvaging his historicity. The book focusses on the typological functions of three Alfredian fables from the "Old English Chronicle", the "Old English Boethius", and Asser's "Vita Ælfredi", analyses the plot common to all three, critiques the psychological conjecture that Alfred's childhood memory was their common source, and shows that synoptically they can help us see how Alfred shaped the curve of his own life's destiny and how he engaged in the formation of his own cult to last a thousand years Cover 1 Table of Contents 7 Foreword 10 Acknowledgments 16 I. Cult and Canon: The Chronicle 18 1. Kiss the Reliquary 26 Victorian reliquarianism 28 The death of Alfred 32 The birth of Alfred 41 A relic of Alfred 51 2. Remember the Pope 70 Hagiography 71 Chronology 79 Psychology 83 3. Fix the Date 96 Harmony from dissonance 97 From Rome to Athelney 103 The Infidel vs The Believer 115 Stubbs’ Gambit 135 Plummer’s blind spot 142 II. Too Good to be True: The Life 160 4. Write the Life 162 Respect 163 Allusion 175 Plagiarism 181 Echoes 187 Clichés 191 Irony 194 5. Win the Book 200 Transcendental flotsam and jetsam 201 Redaction criticism 205 The Poem Itself. 209 Et legit 219 Appendix A Six translations of Race for the Book 226 III. The Curve of Destiny: The Works 230 6. Cross the Border 232 The Pope and the Book 233 Legere et interpretari simul 234 From Bonifatian to Alfredian biliteracy 246 A game of figures 247 Typologie interne 252 7. Win the Crown 258 Envoi 281 Scylla and Charybdis 278 When I was young 273 Race for the crown 263 Commentary 268 Bibliography 282