Paradise, death, and doomsday in Anglo-Saxon literature / Ananya Jahanara Kabir.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kabir, Ananya Jahanara, 1970- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England ; 32.

Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England ; 32

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Old English, ca. 450-1100--History and criticism.

English literature.

Paradise in literature.

Christianity and literature--England--History--To 1500.

Christianity and literature.

Christian literature, English (Old)--History and criticism.

Christian literature, English (Old).

Judgment Day in literature.

Anglo-Saxons--Religion.

Anglo-Saxons.

Death in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 210 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Paradise, Death & Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.

Contents:

Preface

List of abbreviations

1. Between Eden and Jerusalem, death and Doomsday : locating the interim paradise

2. Assertions and denials : paradise and the interim, from the Visio Sancti Pauli to Ælfric

3. Old hierarchies in new guise : vernacular reinterpretations of the interim paradise

4. Description and compromise : Bede, Boniface and the interim paradise

5. Private hopes, public claims? paradisus and sinus Abrahae in prayer and liturgy

6. Doctrinal work, descriptive play : the interim paradise and Old English poetry

7. From a heavenly to an earthly interim paradise : toward a tripartite otherworld

Select bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 190-202) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-12390-9

0-521-03060-9

0-511-32885-0

0-511-15566-2

0-511-48333-3

0-511-04406-2

0-511-11969-0

1-280-15489-6

OCLC:

475916634