The contextual control of meaning: Saint Christopher in late Anglo-Saxon England

• Applicant: Dr. Simon Thomson
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; Medieval History
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 320970742

I intend to explore evidence for the processes of reading and of interpretation in late Anglo-Saxon England, taking as a test-case the different versions of the passion of Saint Christopher available there. The Christopher narrative is ideal for this kind of work: the saint seems to have gathered popularity quickly in the mid- to late-tenth century, with multiple versions of his story extant in English, Irish, and Continental manuscripts in Latin, English, and other vernacular languages. Past research by a range of scholars has started to develop an understanding of the relationships between different witnesses to the Old English text, and my contribution will be to clarify these relationships. Moreover, I intend to go significantly further than this past work. My aim is not just to establish the development of particular textual traditions but to consider reasons for the variation in the representations of a single figure and how these variations map out across time and place in early medieval Europe. In particular, I will seek to identify how interpretations or uses of the legend may have varied through the use of different narrative details, intertextual setting within manuscripts, and scribal presentation. Data gathered about the life and its variants, in Latin and Old English, will be made available for other scholars to use on projects about orthography, hagiography, linguistics, and manuscript production. I will use the data to analyse the narrative and descriptive variations in connection with place and date of origin and with communities and production and use. This research will contribute to a growing body of understanding about contextual and communal uses to which narratives were put, and about how scribes and compilers of manuscripts worked to shape such narratives. It will also contribute to a current growth of interest in saints' lives as the most popular and widespread narrative form in the medieval period.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants