PUBLIC TALK: Can Bede Explain the Great Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial? Georgina Pitt / PMRG
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Can Bede Explain the Great Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial? Georgina Pitt / PMRG : |
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The sumptuous ship-burial at Sutton Hoo has long been associated with pagan cosmology and the heroic Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. Press coverage of the 1939 Sutton Hoo treasure trove inquest cited the burials described in Beowulf; scholarly works on Sutton Hoo continue to invoke Beowulf as an analogy. An alternative, perhaps unexpected, textual source suggests a different explanation for the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, an explanation centred upon the pragmatic realities of secular political power during the Anglo-Saxon conversion period. A careful study of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica demonstrates that in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, hungry æthelings and nervous new kings adopted specific conversion positions (baptism, syncretism, apostasy, or steadfast adherence to the old gods) as a strategy of affiliation and differentiation in the context of contestation for a throne. The Sutton Hoo ship-burial was a power-play. The evidence for that interpretation rests not on epic poetry declaimed in a smoky meadhall, but in an exemplar for Christian kings carefully crafted by a Northumbrian monk in the quiet of his monastery.
Speaker(s) |
Georgina Pitt
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Location |
Arts Lecture Room 8
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Contact |
Laura Collier
<[email protected]>
: 0419774983
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Start |
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 18:00
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End |
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 19:00
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Submitted by |
Laura Collier <[email protected]>
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Last Updated |
Fri, 22 Mar 2019 10:04
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