TY - BOOK AU - Kalmar,Tomás Mario AU - Prescott,Andrew AU - Spencer-Hall,Alicia TI - King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult: A Childhood Remembered T2 - Hagiography Beyond Tradition SN - 9789048544998 U1 - 942.01/64092 23//eng/20230511eng PY - 2023///] CY - Amsterdam PB - Amsterdam University Press KW - Hagiography KW - Political leadership KW - Cultural Studies KW - History, Art History, and Archaeology KW - Literary Theory, Criticism, and History KW - Medieval Studies KW - HISTORY / Historiography KW - bisacsh KW - Alfred the Great, autohagiography, childhood memory, historicity, medieval biliteracy N1 - Frontmatter --; Table of Contents --; Foreword --; Acknowledgments --; I Cult and Canon: The Chronicle --; Some Key Dates: 1849–1904 --; 1 Kiss the Reliquary --; 2 Remember the Pope --; 3 Fix the Date --; II Too Good to be True: The Life --; 4 Write the Life --; 5 Win the Book --; III The Curve of Destiny: The Works --; 6 Cross the Border --; 7 Win the Crown --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - This book situates Alfred the Great in his hagiographic context. For 150 years, the fables told in the ninth century about Alfred’s childhood have posed interlocking disciplinary challenges to historians committed to evicting romance from history. Blending current Hagiography Studies with historical, literary, and biblical hermeneutics can help us forgo the anti-hagiographic commitments which motivated the scholars who purified the Victorian cult of Alfred by expunging his legends and salvaging his historicity. The book focusses on the typological functions of three Alfredian fables from the Old English Chronicle, the Old English Boethius, and Asser’s Vita Ælfredi, analyses the plot common to all three, critiques the psychological conjecture that Alfred’s childhood memory was their common source, and shows that synoptically they can help us see how Alfred shaped the curve of his own life’s destiny and how he engaged in the formation of his own cult to last a thousand years UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048544998?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9789048544998 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9789048544998/original ER -