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  3. The Afterlife of St Cuthbert
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2020
Print publication year:
2020
Online ISBN:
9781108780766
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108780766
Subjects:
Literature, Anglo Saxon and Medieval Literature, Religion, Church History
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
Information

Book description

This ambitious book presents the first sustained analysis of the evolving representation of Cuthbert, the premier saint of northern England. The study spans both major and neglected texts across eight centuries, from his earliest depictions in anonymous and Bedan vitae, through twelfth-century ecclesiastical histories and miracle collections produced at Durham, to his late medieval appearances in Latin meditations, legendaries, and vernacular verse. Whitehead reveals the coherence of these texts as one tradition, exploring the way that ideologies and literary strategies persist across generations. An innovative addition to the literature of insular spirituality and hagiography, The Afterlife of St Cuthbert emphasises the related categories of place and asceticism. It charts Cuthbert's conceptual alignment with a range of institutional, masculine, northern, and national spaces, and examines the distinctive characteristics and changing value of his ascetic lifestyle and environment - frequently constituted as a nature sanctuary - interrogating its relation to his other jurisdictions.

Reviews

'[the book] is terrifically detailed and compelling, and offers scholars of medieval English literature, hagiography, and monastic and religious history a wealth of information and insightful perspectives on the evolution of this important saint across the centuries …'

Shannon Godlove Source: Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures

‘The Afterlife of St Cuthbert is an ambitious and generative book that rewards engagement. The methodology performed here demonstrates the value of thinking across the lines of literary and linguistic periodization. In addition to its rich exploration of the medieval cult of this saint, Christiania Whitehead’s study highlights saints’ lives as literary phenomena as well as the cultural work that literary texts perform.’

Heather Blurton Source: Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies

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