'Something of a hagiography': Reading narrative in Anglo-Saxon saints' lives

I examine four eighth-century Anglo-Saxon saints' lives and miracle accounts and argue that these works, most frequently studied as cultural and religious documents, also can be read for their literary qualities. A literary study allows us to see the authors as mediating between the demands of culture, subject, and genre in writing their texts instead of viewing these authors as simply interpreters of historical or cultural information in the texts. This shift in viewpoint permits us to see these authors as part of the process of creation, rather than as agents who stand outside it and allows us to focus on the texts' literary aspects.;Chapter II explores the relationship between genre and landscape in Bede's Life of Cuthbert and Felix's Life of Guthlac. I argue that both texts are influenced by the fourth-century Egyptian vita, the Life of Antony. Bede seeks to emphasize Cuthbert's links to Antonian eremitism through landscape. Landscape also plays a role in the Life of Guthlac, I argue, through analogues to depictions of landscape in Old English poetry as threatening.;Chapter III explores the difficulty of composing a saint's life for a person whose life is not a good example of holiness. In this chapter, I argue that Stephen, author of the Life of Wilfrid, faces obstacles to writing Wilfrid's vita. I suggest that Stephen has narrative analogues for Wilfrid's behavior in the depictions of kings in Beowulf . I argue that Stephen ultimately overcomes his narrative problems by casting Wilfrid as a spiritual father. I show how Anglo-Saxon perceptions of the kinship ties created by baptism and child oblation make this spiritual fatherhood narrative possible.;Chapter IV explores how Bede interprets miracles in the Ecclesiastical History. I argue that Bede sets up a framework in which he can interpret these miracles for the audience. I also explore the impact of time on Bede's interpretation. As he moves closer to the end of the Ecclesiastical History and to salvation time, Bede must work to link secular history with salvation time in a way that makes abstract concepts like purgatory, heaven, and hell comprehensible to the reader.