Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England

by Peter Dendle

Overview

Anglo-Saxon England was a society governed by the competing discourses of illness, spirituality, power, and community. The concepts of demon possession and exorcism, introduced by Christian missionaries, provided a potential outlet for expressing the psychological, biological, and sociopolitical dysfunctions of a society that was at the center of multiple conflicting cultural dimensions.Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England is a reexamination of the available sources describing the possessed and a study of the currently recognized medical and psychiatric conditions that may be relevant to and resemble medieval possession.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580441698
Publisher:	Medieval Institute Publications
Publication date:	01/22/2015
Series:	Research in Medieval Culture , #12
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.17(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Peter Dendle is Associate Professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Preface Introduction 1. Backgrounds to Anglo-Saxon Exorcism 2. Medical and Liturgical Responses 3. Demon Possession in Narrative Portrayals 4. Neurological and Behavioral Pathologies in the Early Middle Ages Conclusions and Further Questions Works Cited Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a richly learned and highly readable book. It is seeded throughout with a wealth of comparative material from Carolingian, Merovingian, Late Antique, and contemporary sources. [...] Peter Dendle is to be congratulated on an admirably detailed study that complements the more literary and conceptual bent of his earlier book, Satan Unbound: The Devil in Old English Narrative Literature (2001)." Alice Jorgensen, Trinity College, Dublin; review in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology

From the Publisher