Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric

400 Pages·2021·2.087 MB·English

by  Joseph Grossi

ANGLES ON A KINGDOM
East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric
Map of East Anglia.
Angles on a Kingdom
East Anglian Identities
from Bede to Ælfric
JOSEPH GROSSI
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2021
Toronto Buffalo London
utorontopress.com
Printed in the U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-4875-0573-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4875-3257-4 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-1-4875-3256-7 (PDF)
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Angles on a kingdom : East Anglian identities from Bede to Ælfric /
Joseph Grossi.
Names: Grossi, Joseph L., 1968– author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210145897 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210146052
| ISBN 9781487505738 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487532574 (EPUB) | ISBN
9781487532567 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: English literature – Old English, ca. 450–1100 – History
and criticism. | LCSH: East Anglia (England) – In literature.
Classification: LCC PR173 .G78 2021 | DDC 829/.09 – dc23
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly
Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
To my family: Marina Bettaglio, Anna Grossi, and Thomas Grossi,
and in memory of my parents, Joseph Grossi (1932–2003) and
Norma Quirk Grossi (1936–2019)
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 3
1 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm: Bede’s Mixed Views
of East Anglian Imperium 35
2 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 69
3 Solace for a Client-King: Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci 102
4 Made in Wessex: Danish East Anglia and the Alfredian Court 127
5 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 171
Conclusion 210
Notes 219
Bibliography 325
Index 375
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
In an ideal world, the path from first idea to published monograph
would be as straight and as straightforward as one of the ancient Roman
roads that neatly slice their way through eastern England. In reality, the
path is often tortuous, and the present book’s journey has seemed to me
like a slog through the labyrinthine Fens of the eighth-century monk
Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci: the project has by turns dragged, stumbled,
slipped, lurched, staggered, and finally waded (if not waddled) its way
towards a clearing, now losing itself in false methodological turns,
now struggling in the mire of grant applications, now sinking neck-
deep after the collapse of ill-conceived and ramshackle causeways of
argumentation. I am grateful for the frequent encouragement I have
received, whether in the form of tips about conferences (or articles or
books, sometimes gifted), patient and generous readings, astute ques-
tions posed at key moments, or wishes of good luck or at least “good
luck with that.”
With a view to capaciousness, then, I warmly thank, in alphabetical
order, the following persons: John Archibald, Meredith Bacola, Nina
Belmonte, John Black, Virginia Blanton, Adrienne Williams Boyarin,
Shamma Boyarin, Andrew Breeze, Tom Bredehoft, Julio Burgo, Christa
Canitz, Hélène Cazes, Alison Chapman, Catherine A.R. Clarke, Fran
Cudlipp and Trevor Hancock, Misao Dean, Siân Echard, Gordon Fulton,
Jay Paul Gates, Jeanne and Ted St. Michel, Alison Gulley, Joel Hawkes,
Melanie Hibi, Iain McLeod Higgins, Lloyd Howard, Matt Huculak,
Giovanni Iamartino, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Erik Kwakkel, Stephanie La-
hey, Rodrigo Pérez Lorido, Kathryn Lowe, Robert Miles, Marcus Mil-
wright and Evanthia Baboula, J. Allan Mitchell, Ruben Valdés Miyares,
Lynnea Ness, Michael Nowlin, Emma Nuding, Brian O’Camb, Rich-
ard van Oort, Merridy Peters, Kevin Rea and Jennifer Rhoads, Michael
Reed, Jane Roberts, Robert Rouse, Stephen Ross, Connie Rousseau, Bob
x Acknowledgments
Shepherd and Lori Mathis, Matt Simeone, Monica Rydygier Smith, Ken
Streutker, Alan Thacker, John Tucker, Christine Voth, Andrew Ware-
ham, Carl Watson, Sarah and Scott White, and Gernot Wieland. They
have my sincere thanks, and I apologize to anyone whose name I may
have forgotten. Any errors, oversights, or absurdities are mine alone.
I also express my profound gratitude to Suzanne Rancourt, Terry
Teskey, Leah Connor, Stephanie Mazza, Breanna Muir, and their col-
leagues at the University of Toronto Press, and to a number of anony-
mous readers who have guided this project along at various stages over
the years and signalled the many reasons it was not yet sea-worthy.
Although I have delved relatively little into palaeography and codicol-
ogy, I would have learned a great deal less about the manuscript envi-
ronments of literary texts if not for the generous assistance of librarians
at the University of Victoria, the British Library, the Bodleian Library of
the University of Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the University
of Glasgow Library, and the Widener Library of Harvard University; I
am grateful to them all, and to the University of Victoria again for pro-
viding funding in the form of travel and research grants. I also thank
Eva Oledzka, Chris Fletcher, and Colin Walker for permission to quote
from manuscripts held in the Bodleian, and Sandra Powlette for per-
mission to quote from manuscripts held in the British Library.
Special acknowledgment is reserved for the medievalists who pa-
tiently taught and mentored me: the late Rodney Delasanta, of Prov-
idence College; Lisa Kiser, of Ohio State University; and the late
Christian Zacher and Nicholas Howe, also of Ohio State. My efforts to
reinvent myself as a student of pre-Conquest English literature began
too late for me to seek Nick’s advice about sense of place, regional iden-
tities, and much else, but I continue to learn much from his writings. Fi-
nally, my deepest thanks go to my wife, friend, soulmate, and colleague
Marina Bettaglio, Italo-Hispanist scholar straordinaria, who remains
for me a model of erudition whose regional sensibilities have deeply
informed my own; and to our two children, apprentice culture critics
Anna Grossi and Thomas Grossi, who may yet glimpse the connection
between their love of British cult comedies and the anecdotes they’ve
heard far too many times about the exploits of Rædwald, Æthelthryth,
Guthlac, Edmund, and many another glorious champion of early East
Anglian lore.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Fed-
eration for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to
Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. An early ver-
sion of chapter 1 was published as “A Place of ‘Long-Lasting Evil and