Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse: Becoming the Chosen People

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The Bible played a crucial role in shaping Anglo-Saxon national and cultural identity. However, access to Biblical texts was necessarily limited to very few individuals in Medieval England. In this book, Samantha Zacher explores how the very earliest English Biblical poetry creatively adapted, commented on and spread Biblical narratives and traditions to the wider population. Systematically surveying the manuscripts of surviving poems, the book shows how these vernacular poets commemorated the Hebrews as God's 'chosen people' and claimed the inheritance of that status for Anglo-Saxon England. Drawing on contemporary translation theory, the book undertakes close readings of the poems Exodus, Daniel and Judith in order to examine their methods of adaptation for their particular theologico-political circumstances and the way they portray and problematize Judaeo-Christian religious identities.

Reviews

In Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse, Samantha Zacher brilliantly reasserts the centrality and importance of retellings of ancient Jewish history in the Old English poetic tradition, and almost casually offers dramatic new insights into three poems, namely Exodus, Daniel, and Judith, that all deserve to be better read, and have never yet been read so well. This is a deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking book, well worthy of its wise and witty author: elegant, perceptive, savvy, and full of poise and grace; I only wish it were mine! * Andy Orchard, Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford, UK *
As deeply learned as it is readily accessible, Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse sheds significant new light on the large and important area of the Old English poetic corpus. Readers new to the period will find it an excellent introduction not only to the periods religious poetry but to the culture that produced it, and specialist readers will find their understanding of the texts Zacher examines deepened, and frequently challenged, by the fresh insights and new perspectives she offers throughout. * Mark C. Amodio, Professor of English, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, USA *
Insightful and accessible. Zacher should be congratulated for inviting an audience beyond the realm of specialists to a renewed literary, theoretical, and cultural engagement with Old English biblical poems. -- Miranda Wilcox, Brigham Young University * Speculum *
By taking a renewed look at the Old English poems Exodus, Daniel, and Judith, Zacher provides significant new ways of reading Anglo-Saxon literature contextually and theoretically. In each chapter, she reaches beyond direct Biblical sources to understand the conceptual apparatus that Anglo-Saxon poets had at their disposal in composing these adaptational translations. -- Brandon W. Hawk, Rhode Island College * Journal of English and Germanic Philology *

Author Bio

Samantha Zacher is Associate Professor of English at Cornell University, USA. She is the author of Preaching the Converted: the Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies (2009), and co-editor with Andy Orchard of New Readings in the Vercelli Book (2009).