University of Cambridge
Vernacular Adaptations of Genesis in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century Ireland and England
Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis PhD considers how the Book of Genesis was adapted to the vernaculars of Ireland and England in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. This discussion will be divided into five chapters, examining different aspects of vernacular translations of Genesis. Chapter One will outline the historical context of early medieval Ireland and England. The influence of earlier social and intellectual developments will be examined to show that translations of Genesis are part of a long history of vernacular scholarship, not a response to a decline in learning, or uncharted territory in vernacular literary culture. The chapter will show how they reflect developments in learned culture and access to the liturgy, and must be understood as products of a developing intellectual tradition. In Chapter Two the attitudes and methods of medieval scholars around Scriptural translation will be interrogated. The language, motifs and context in which the Book of Genesis was translated will be explored in detail. Overarching trends in the context of the adaptations will be noted, with English adaptations found in exclusively religious contexts, while Irish adaptations are found alongside discussions of world history. It will be shown that the language used reflects contemporary scholarly and political interest. The relationship between Scriptural authority and adaptability will also be examined. This chapter will demonstrate that the very act of translation was understood as part of a Christian tradition which connected the Insular world to universal Christendom. Chapter Three will compare the Irish Sex Aetates Mundi to Ӕlfric’s homily De Initio Creaturae. Both of these texts discuss the origins of contemporary realities which are traced back to Genesis, and present Genesis as fundamental for understanding the world, both physical and spiritual. The texts contextualise subsequent items in their manuscript collections within the frame of Christian world history, and the ways in which the texts present a shared past will be examined. Trends can be noted in material omitted from both texts in service of cultivating a universal Christian identity. Two poetic accounts of Genesis, Saltair na Rann and the Old English poetic Genesis, will be compared in Chapter Four. The dangers of knowledge, specifically Biblical knowledge, without proper discernment are addressed in these poems, and this will be shown to reflect contemporary anxieties surrounding expanding access to Scripture. The projection of contemporary cultural practices and norms onto the Biblical past in an effort to convey Insular audiences’ inheritance from the Old Testament, and the symbiotic relationship between Biblical past and Insular present will also be explored. Chapter Five will focus on two Old English homilies in the Sunday Letter tradition, classified by Dorothy Haines as Sunday Letters E and F. These Letters contain an unusual account of Noah and the Flood, which will be shown to have been influenced by contemporary concerns and the vernacular literary landscape. Issues of clerical authority, universality and the necessity of learning are included in this account of Noah and the Flood. When contextualised within the Sunday Letter tradition this account of Noah might seem strange, but when understood alongside vernacular adaptations of Genesis it is shown to be in keeping with the trends shown throughout this thesis. Issues of universality, the transmission and reception of knowledge, and cultural inheritance are reflected across the texts. By placing Irish and English material side-by-side, similar interests and different approaches to exploring them in both regions can be seen. This comparative approach provides new insights into how two regions on Europe’s western edge saw themselves as inheritors of and participants in Biblical history stretching back to the time of Genesis.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2023
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- McCarthy, Joseph
- Advisors dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Ní Mhaonaigh, Máire
- Love, Rosalind
Subjects
dc:subject × 7Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111790
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/373281