Pratt David, David Pratt

The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Illuminating study of the political thought of ninth-century West Saxon king, Alfred the Great.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 436
• Erscheinungstermin: 31. Oktober 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 26mm
• Gewicht: 704g
• ISBN-13: 9780521126441
• ISBN-10: 0521126444
• Artikelnr.: 27840885

Autorenporträt

David Pratt is the author of the novels Todd Sweeney, the Fiend of Fleet High, (Hosta Press) Wallaçonia (Beautiful Dreamer Press), Looking After Joey (Lethe Press) and the Lambda Literary Award-winning Bob the Book (Chelsea Station Editions). David's story collection, My Movie (Chelsea Station) includes new work and short fiction published in Christopher Street, The James White Review, Velvet Mafia, Lodestar Quarterly and other periodicals. Recent anthology publications include Louis Flint Ceci's Not Just Another Pretty Face, Paul Alan Fahey's The Other Man, and Jameson Currier's With. David directed and performed his work for the theater in New York City at the Cornelia Street Café, HERE Arts Center and Dixon Place, and in the New York International Fringe Festival. More recently, he performed with Michigan artist Nicholas Williams at The Forge in Detroit, Michigan. In the 1980s, David was the first director of plays by acclaimed Canadian playwright John Mighton.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction
Part I. The West Saxon Political Order: 2. Resources and extraction
West Saxon resources and royal power
Military service and the common burdens
3. Royal lordship and secular office-holding
The king's thegns
The royal household
Gifts and gift-giving
4. Royal lordship and ecclesiastical office-holding
A new accommodation: royal monasteries and the council of Kingston (838)
The southumbrian episcopate and the state of ecclesiastical discipline
Bishops as the 'best king's thegns'
Royal priests in the royal household
Frankish ecclesiastical conditions and Carolingian kingship
5. The articulation of power under King Alfred's predecessors
Collective office-holding: West Saxon royal devotion
Royal office-holding: the first English coronation order
The uses of literacy?
Sources of textual culture (1) ecclesiastical communities
Sources of textual culture (2) the west Saxon royal household
6. The impact of the Vikings
Logistics of defence
Lordship and manpower
Land and landholding
Royal income and urban development
Collective security (1) 'king of the Anglo-Saxons'
Collective security (2) 'ruler of all the Christians of the island of Britain'
Part II. Alfredian Discourse and its Efficacy: 7. The field of Alfredian knowledge
Alfredian innovation: Alfredian wisdom and the shift to vernacular prose
Intended audiences and the shift to vernacular literacy
Textual dissemination and the field of Alfredian knowledge
8. The construction of Alfredian discourse
'Royal' production: Alfredian discourse and its distinctiveness
Languages of office-holding (1) Georgian language
Languages of office-holding (2) Solomon's dream
The implications of Alfredian discourse
9. Alfredian technology: books and aedificia
Books and book production
Candle-lantern, 'aestels' and the Fuller brooch
10. The Hierdeboc as a treatise of power
Language and context
The origin and purpose of power
The active and contemplative lives
The hierdeboc and the southumbrian episcopate
11. The Domboc as a Reorientation of royal law
Written law: authority and status
The construction of Alfredian judgement
The historical projection of secular law
The defence of lordship
The Domboc in practice
12. Tribulation and triumph in the first fifty psalms
Apparatus and voice
God, rihtwisnes and sinful enemies
Royal hardships and divine justice
Alfred's psalms and Alfredian theatre
13. The search for a satisfactory consolation
The consolatio philosophiae in context
Royal translation and Carolingian expertise
Alfredian adaption: mind, wisdom and the 'wordly blessings'
Craeft, tools and resources
Wyrd and divine justice
The Froferboc and Alfredian theatre
14. Seeing God as he is
The Soliloquia in context
Royal translation and Carolingian expertise
Alfredian adaption: wisdom and the sight of God
Lordship and authority
Alfred's soliloquies and Alfredian theatre
15. Conclusion
Appendix: West Frankish deployment of Solomon's dream
Bibliography
Index.