Alfred of Wessex a study in accidental greatness.

This thesis examines the application of the epithet great to King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871--899). It sets a standard for greatness within the context of early medieval Christian kingship, applies it to Alfred, and then compares Alfred to Charlemagne and Charles the Bald. It traces the development of the cult of Alfred from his own lifetime to the early twentieth century. It examines the mythical achievements of Alfred and how they developed, then summarizes his actual accomplishments, and compares them to the standard for greatness developed in the thesis

Correspondences - Online Journal For The Academic Study of Western Esotericism, Volume 2.2

Welcome to Correspondences, an international, peer-reviewed online journal devoted to the academic study of Western esotericism. By providing a wider forum of debate regarding issues and currents in Western esotericism than has previously been possible, Correspondences is committed to publishing work of a high academic standard as determined by a peer-review process, but does not require academic credentials as prerequisite for publication. Students and non-affiliated academics are encouraged to join established scholars in submitting insightful, well-researched articles that offer new ideas, positions, or information to the field

Excavating Freytag's Pyramid: Narrative, identity and the museum visitor experience

In this thesis, I attempt to trace the threads that links the theoretical concept of narrative to the museum blockbuster exhibition. I adopt a qualitative dialogic approach, exploring the topic of narrative from the perspective of both exhibition makers and museum visitors. Semi-structured interviews with museum professionals provide an insight into the strategies and practices involved in the encoding of narrative in museum exhibitions. Interviews with members of the public reveal how visitors decode exhibition narratives, while also illustrating the role museums play in the stories people tell about themselves. Narrative is a term that is often used in reference to museums but is frequently under-theorised. My case studies – three blockbuster exhibitions held at the British Museum from 2013 to 2015 – each approach the question of how is narrative as a concept relevant in helping us understand the critical issue of the museum from different perspectives. Drawing on the work of the Roland Barthes and the Mikhail Bakhtin, I investigate how concepts taken from literary theory such as plot structure and narratorial perspective might manifests themselves in the space of a museum exhibition. Using the concept of cultural capital taken from the work of the French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I also explore the role a visitor’s social background and familiarity with museums plays in their decision to follow a narrative or reject it. Two threads run throughout my thesis. One is the use of the term narrative to describe the multimodal, multi-authored nature of museum-making. The other is the role museums play in the construction of narratives about the past. It is in the dialogue between the two narrative threads that this thesis seeks to explore and untangle

The Chronicle [November 3, 2005]

The Chronicle, November 3, 2005https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/chron/4650/thumbnail.jp

Traces of the Vikings : Saxo's Gesta Danorum and the warrior culture of the Vikings

In my master’s thesis, I have examined Saxo’s portrayal of the warrior culture of the Vikings in his work of history, Gesta Danorum. Even though the source value of Saxo’s work regarding the Viking past has been questioned by many scholars, I have argued for Gesta Danorum’s potential as a source of the warrior culture of the Vikings. In fact, the connection between Saxo’s accounts and the historical research made on the Viking past is quite striking. References to the Viking-age mentalities, practices and beliefs are both numerous and diverse. As I have sought to demonstrate in my work, the warrior culture of the Vikings emerges from various themes, covering the traits of the warriors along with their pagan ways, the notions of masculinity and the idea of warrior women, the conceptions of honour, revenge and death as well as the definitions of an honourable combat. The militarism of Saxo’s warriors mirrors the typical characterization of the Viking Age as a violent period. In Gesta, military activities, such as war campaigns, military training and warlike achievements are at the centre of the narrative. In fact, Saxo’s descriptions of the traits of the male warriors and their activities resonate with the current scholarly appreciation of the Viking communities. Interestingly, the pagan elements in the work are also clearly perceptible. Several of Saxo’s kings and warriors have associations with Odin and the pagan tradition. Furthermore, Saxo introduces more specialized groups of warriors, berserks and the wielders of magic, who have close connections to the Vikings’ pagan past. As to Gesta’s warrior women and women with masculine qualities, I argue that there may be more to read about their characters than it has previously been observed. In the light of the recent historical and archaeological research, it is possible to argue that Viking-age societies may have respected masculine qualities both in men and women, even though the more traditional female role was relevant and appreciated. Of this, Gesta serves as a versatile testimony, describing numerous women leading a warrior’s life and participating in masculine domains. In addition to these themes, there are many more Viking aspects in Gesta that have not received much attention, such as the conceptions of honour and rightful revenge. Gesta is filled with the examples of blood feuds as well as the reasons behind them and their severe aftermaths. The Viking views on death and the afterlife are also presented, including descriptions of the Viking funerary rites and the ideas related to them. In fact, Gesta serves as an illustrative source of the conceptions the Vikings had of an honourable, warrior’s death. Viking mentalities are further represented in Saxo’s definitions of an honourable combat, as he goes through different rules, battle tactics and types of combat, such as duelling

Viking Nobility in Anglo-Saxon England: The Expansion of Royal Authority Through the Use of Scandinavian Accommodation and Integration

This project seeks to understand the transformative period in Anglo-Saxon England between the ninth to eleventh centuries. During these centuries, Anglo-Saxon kings extended their royal power through the manipulation of Scandinavian ethnicity by using the mechanisms of accommodation, integration and appeasement as well as the incorporation of female royal power. Anglo-Saxon kings such as Alfred the Great, Æthelræd the Unræd, and Cnut were challenged by various hindrances from expressing their full royal authority, including the rise of an independent nobility, economic difficulties and invasions. Despite intrinsic limitations on their rule, kings such as Alfred, Æthelræd and Cnut sought to expand their royal authority through carefully crafted political, religious and economic accommodations with Scandinavians as well as the incorporation of female royal power. Through the legal manipulation of identity constructed in law codes such as the Alfred-Guthrum Treaty and the Wantage Code, Anglo-Saxon kings integrated Scandinavian elites into the political structure of England, thereby increasing their own royal authority

The Sword, October 2009

Volume 45, Issue 2, published October 2009. This issue of The Sword is from the 2009-2010 academic year

Colonialism, Continuity and Change: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Relationship between Colonialism and Iron Age and Medieval Settlement in the North Channel

This dissertation investigates the relationship between colonialism and settlement. It examines three episodes of colonialism in two case-study regions facing each other across the North Channel, corresponding to eastern Northern Ireland (‘Ulidia’), and mid-western Scotland (‘Ergadia’). By comparing different forms of colonial activity across several time periods and between two regions, the dissertation improves our understanding of colonialism and migration across time and space. The first episode involved the purported elite migration of the Dál Riata from northeast Ireland to western Scotland c.AD500. The second involved the arrival in both regions and beyond of raiders and settlers from Scandinavia c.AD790–850. The third involved a group of settlers mainly from England and Wales, who established the earldom of Ulster as part of a wider expansion into Ireland c.AD1167–1200. The analysis of the continuities and discontinuities in both case studies was based on a series of chronological syntheses drawing together the archaeological, architectural and documentary evidence for settlement in each region c.800BC–AD1400. It was further augmented by employing burial and toponymic evidence as proxies for settlement. Combined with the textual narrative, the archaeological syntheses enabled an examination of, firstly, whether colonial activity actually occurred, and, secondly, the form of colonialism that took place and the processes that lay behind it. To structure the interpretation, each colonial episode was broken down into contact, expansion, consolidation and domination phases, with further phases based on their socio-political and transcultural outcomes. The Dál Riata episode was probably not an example of colonialism. The documentary evidence was found to be unreliable and related to a late reshaping of a usable past. Moreover, there was no visible shift in settlement practices identifiable with incoming colonists. The Scandinavian episode differed on either side of the North Channel. There is no evidence that settlers got beyond a consolidation phase in Ulidia, with very little impact on traditional burial practices, settlement, and language use. Conversely, in Ergadia a major shift was apparent in secular settlement and burial practices. The appearance of a large number of Old Norse placenames also indicates settlement involving several social orders. This heavily influenced the socio-political makeup of the region to at least the fourteenth century. In the third episode, a domination phase was also reached in Ulidia. It involved the establishment of a new extractive elite, with shifts in settlement and toponymic, but not burial, practice.St John's College Benefactors' Scholarshi

Patterns of Nationalist Discourse in the Early Reception of the Icelandic Sagas in Britain

The unprecedented production of English translations of the Icelandic sagas in the 1860s occurred alongside widespread cultural discussion concerning ethnic-nationalism and the developing science of comparative philology. Although the relationship between these phenomena has been examined, there has been no scholarly consensus on the reality, extent, or direction of any influence between them. This thesis reports on the seminal texts which gave context to and informed the late-nineteenth-century translations of Old Norse Íslendingasögur into English, their cultural stimuli and progeny. Firstly, the thesis examines the influence of and contextual philosophies behind J. A. Blackwell’s revised edition of Northern Antiquities, and in particular its depiction of Old Norse literature as key to understanding British ancestry. The thesis then considers the impact of Blackwell’s inclusion of Walter Scott’s Eyrbyggja saga ‘Abstract’, and the extent to which this partial translation characterised subsequent attitudes to nationality. Finally, the thesis examines the wide nationalist implications of the European interest in Friðþjófs saga, and the nature of the scholarship of George Stephens, its first English translator. The results of this study demonstrate that far from following a simplistic model of cause and effect, one needs to view the development of the reception of Old Norse literature as being intricately bound with contemporary political and national interests. Previous studies have often emphasised the unconventionality of the pioneering translators; this study underlines both their reliance on wider academic discussion and the wide-spread acceptability of their ideas within Georgian and early-Victorian Britain. The study complements previous research in providing a detailed assessment of ethnic-nationalist discourse within British Old Norse scholarship and eschewing the common view that the discussion was merely a product of foreign philosophy