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The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination Robert Rix (Copenhagen University, Denmark)

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination By Robert Rix (Copenhagen University, Denmark)

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination by Robert Rix (Copenhagen University, Denmark)


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Summary

This book examines the 'out-of-Scandinavia' legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts, focusing on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Rix maps how these discourses informed 'national' legends of ancestral origins, showing how an 'out-of-Scandinavia' legend can be found in works by writers like Jordanes, Bede,

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination Summary

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination: Ethnicity, Legend, and Literature by Robert Rix (Copenhagen University, Denmark)

This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an 'out-of-Scandinavia' legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a focus on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The pagan North was an imaginative region, which attracted a number of conflicting interpretations. To Christian Europe, the pagan North was an abject Other, but it also symbolized a place from which ancestral strength and energy derived. Rix maps how these discourses informed 'national' legends of ancestral origins, showing how an 'out-of-Scandinavia' legend can be found in works by several familiar writers including Jordanes, Bede, 'Fredegar', Paul the Deacon, Freculph, and AEthelweard. The book investigates how legends of northern warriors were first created in classical texts and since re-calibrated to fit different medieval understandings of identity and ethnicity. Among other things, the 'out-of-Scandinavia' tale was exploited to promote a legacy of 'barbarian' vigor that could withstand the negative cultural effects of Roman civilization. This volume employs a variety of perspectives cutting across the disciplines of poetry, history, rhetoric, linguistics, and archaeology. After years of intense critical interest in medieval attitudes towards the classical world, Africa, and the East, this first book-length study of 'the North' will inspire new debates and repositionings in medieval studies.

The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination Reviews

Through sound, comprehensive research and analysis, Rix successfully unfolds plausible geographical, cultural, and political aspects of a topos that originates as an expression of alterity as much as a historical reality. Summing Up: Recommended. - A. P. Church, CHOICE

About Robert Rix (Copenhagen University, Denmark)

Robert W. Rix is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the author of the book William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity (2007) and is chief editor of Romantik - Journal for the Study of Romanticisms. In recent years, Rix has written a number of articles on the use of Norse mythology in British fiction, and he has published an anthology on Norse tradition in English poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Ethnogenesis and the 'Out-of-Scandinavia' Legend 2. The Goths and the Legend of Scandza 3. Ethnic History and the Origin of Nations 4. Ancestral Rhetoric in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People 5. Northumbrian Angels in Rome: Religion, Race and Politics in the Anecdote of St Gregory 6. Scandinavian Ancestors in Anglo-Saxon Texts 7. Danes and Geatas: Heroes of the Legendary North

Additional information

NLS9780367871130
9780367871130
0367871130
The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination: Ethnicity, Legend, and Literature by Robert Rix (Copenhagen University, Denmark)
New
Paperback
Taylor & Francis Ltd
2019-12-10
224
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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