Everyday Saints and the Art of Narrative in the South English Legendary.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Note on transcription and translation -- PART ONE: INTRODUCTION -- 1 Tales of the Saints -- Beginnings -- The legend of Saint Hilary -- Hagiography and its discontents -- The art of narrative and the influence of everyday life -- 2 Writing in English -- The poetry of popular instruction -- The Ormulum -- Cursor Mundi -- Handlyng Synne -- The South English Legendary -- PART TWO: THE ART OF NARRATIVE -- 3 Narrative Beginnings -- Narrative and repetition in the Ormulum -- Cursor Mundfs coherent biography -- The South English Legendary and the perils of originality -- 4 The Uses of Romance -- Romance as a generic influence -- Mary Magdalen and the prince of Marseille -- Isumbras and Eustace -- The Isumbras romance -- The Eustace legend -- 5 The Idea of a Collection -- Sources and authors -- The idea of a collection -- The triumph of narrative in All Souls -- The story of the buried miner -- PART THREE: THE INFLUENCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE -- 6 Escaping the Virgin Martyr Plot -- Prides wide of Oxford -- Ordinary wives -- The legend of Julian the Hospitaller -- The legend of Clement -- 7 Conclusion -- Telling stories about the world -- A world of people -- The natural world -- Letting the tale speak -- Appendix: The South English Legendary -- Bibliography -- Index.

Anne Thompson here gives the fullest account and explanation to date of the diversity of the more than sixty manuscripts of the South English Legendary, a late thirteenth-century collection of lively verse lives of saints, in a southern English dialect. The importance of the SEL to hagiographic and cultural studies has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years. Without denying the legendaries' religious purpose, this book looks at the way SEL narratives reflect and address the complex, interwined tapestry"political, social, religious"of Edward I's England, while retaining a strong emphasis on the craft of story-telling. Thompson shows the SEL to be a fresh and exciting early example of popular vernacular literature. Firmly grounded in rural and small town life of the 1270s to 1290s in the west of England, it is uniquely significant for any understanding of that culture.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.