In reality, medieval outlaws were dangerous, desperate individuals. In the fiction of the Middle Ages, however, the possibilities afforded by their position on societies’ margins granted them the ability to fill a number of transitory, transgressive roles: young adventurer, freedom fighter, and even saint. Outlawry, Liminality, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic examines the development of the literary outlaw in the early Middle Ages, when traditions drawn from Anglo-Saxon England, early Christian Ireland, and Viking Age Iceland informed a generous view of itinerant criminality and facilitated the application of outlaw tropes to moral questions of conduct in both secular and religious life. Taken together, the traditions of the North Atlantic archipelago reveal a world of interconnected cultures with an expansive view of movement across boundaries both literal and conceptual, capable of finding value in unlikely places and countenancing the challenges presented by such discoveries.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Defining Outlawry
- Outlawry, Mobility, and the Middle Ages
- Transgression and Conduct
- The North Atlantic Sea of Islands
- Texts and Dates
- 1. Outlawry and Liminality in the North Atlantic
- The Meaning of Wrecca
- Itinerancy, Capital, and Power
- The Role of the Outlaw
- Outlawry in North Atlantic Literature and Practice
- The Rite de Passage and Liminality
- The Potential and Threat of the Liminal
- 2. Imitating Exile in Early Medieval Ireland
- Ailithre, Penance, and Punishment
- The Desert Sea
- The Concept of Conduct
- The Immram, a Genre of Conduct
- Conduct and Obedience
- 3. Lessons of Conduct in Anglo-Saxon England
- Irish Conduct in Anglo-Saxon England?
- Cynewulf and the Life as Journey
- The Old English Physiologus and the Problem of Conduct
- Discretio Spirituum
- Pride and Hazardous Conduct
- Discerning the Meaning of the Old English Physiologus
- 4. The Transgressive Hero
- Holy Wreccan
- Guthlac of Crowland, Outlaw of God
- The Intersection of Outlaw and Ascetic
- Doxa and Transgression
- Transgression and Aglæcan
- Conduct and the Outlaw
- 5. Cultural Exchange at the Boundaries of the Far North
- Outlaws and Transculturalism
- Encountering Others in Norse Saga and Belief
- The Finnar, the Norse, and those in Between
- Cultural Conduct among the Gods
- Conduct in the Far North
- 6. Transgression in Transition after the Norman Conquest
- A New Outlaw for a New Time
- Hereward the Wake
- The Fens as Transgressive Environment
- The Abbey of Ely as Transgressive Space
- Altering the Outlaw’s Environment
- Move Forward
- Bibliography
- Index
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