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Rhetoric and Politics in Archbishop Wulfstan's Old English Homilies

  • Jonathan Davis-Secord
Published/Copyright: December 10, 2008
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From the journal Volume 126 Issue 1

Abstract

Most accounts of Wulfstan's bombastic homiletic style ground the archbishop's motivations in his pastoral duties, but it is also clear that his political and social thought had a great influence on the forms of his homilies. In order to understand better the methods and motivations of Wulfstan's homiletic style, this article explores a single, yet very important, element of that style: nominal compounds. Wulfstan's use of compounds comes in two varieties: first, compounds often tend to cluster in the long lists of sins in the ‘exhortatory’ homilies, and, second, rare or unique compounds occur singly in various homilies. In both cases, the compounds call attention to and promote Wulfstan's concern for social stability. The great instability in England in the early eleventh century, according to Wulfstan, required special addressing by the church, and, in response to this perceived need, he crafted his rhetoric and use of nominal compounds around the cause to engage his audience and advance his social vision.

Published Online: 2008-12-10
Published in Print: 2008-July

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  1. New Words in the Mind: Concept-formation and Entrenchment of Neologisms
  2. The familia in Anglo-Saxon Society: ‘household’, rather than ‘family, home life’ as now understood
  3. Rhetoric and Politics in Archbishop Wulfstan's Old English Homilies
  4. Zur Etymologie von ae. bāt m. ‘Boot, Schiff’
  5. The Meaning of Æschere's Name in Beowulf
  6. Paul Georg Meyer, Synchronic English Linguistics: An Introduction
  7. Claudia Caffi, Mitigation
  8. John Algeo, British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns
  9. Katie Wales, Northern English: A Social and Cultural History
  10. Adrian Pablé, The Construction of a Period Dialect: The Language of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Its Sources
  11. Don Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic: A Linguistic History of English, Vol. 1
  12. Klaus Dietz, Schreibung und Lautung im mittelalterlichen Englisch: Entwicklung und Funktion der englischen Schreibungen ch, gh, sh, th, wh und ihrer kontinentalen Entsprechungen
  13. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, vols. 9–13, ed. A. N. Doane, Phillip Pulsiano † and Matthew T. Hussey; Interim Index (Volumes 1–10), ed. A. N. Doane and Matthew T. Hussey
  14. Andrew P. Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England
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  22. Christopher R. Miller, The Invention of Evening. Perception and Time in Romantic Poetry
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  24. George Gissing's Scrapbook, ed. Bouwe Postmus
  25. Peter Robinson, Twentieth Century Poetry: Selves and Situations
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  31. Violence and Transgression in World Minority Literatures, ed. Rüdiger Ahrens, María Herrera-Sobek, Karin Ikas & Francisco A. Lomelí
  32. Leo Truchlar, Schwelle. Passage. Verandlung: Ein Interpretationsentwurf
  33. Funktionen von Literatur: Theoretische Grundlagen und Modellinterpretationen, ed. Marion Gymnich & Ansgar Nünning
  34. Monologues. Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity, ed. Clare Wallace
  35. On Verbal/Visual Representation, ed. Martin Heusser, Michèle Hannoosch, Eric Haskell, Leo Hoeck, David Scott & Peter de Voogd
  36. Alte Mythen - Neue Medien, ed. Yasmin Hoffmann, Walburga Hülk & Volker Roloff
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https://doi.org/10.1515/angl.2008.004

Articles in the same Issue

  1. New Words in the Mind: Concept-formation and Entrenchment of Neologisms
  2. The familia in Anglo-Saxon Society: ‘household’, rather than ‘family, home life’ as now understood
  3. Rhetoric and Politics in Archbishop Wulfstan's Old English Homilies
  4. Zur Etymologie von ae. bāt m. ‘Boot, Schiff’
  5. The Meaning of Æschere's Name in Beowulf
  6. Paul Georg Meyer, Synchronic English Linguistics: An Introduction
  7. Claudia Caffi, Mitigation
  8. John Algeo, British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns
  9. Katie Wales, Northern English: A Social and Cultural History
  10. Adrian Pablé, The Construction of a Period Dialect: The Language of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Its Sources
  11. Don Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic: A Linguistic History of English, Vol. 1
  12. Klaus Dietz, Schreibung und Lautung im mittelalterlichen Englisch: Entwicklung und Funktion der englischen Schreibungen ch, gh, sh, th, wh und ihrer kontinentalen Entsprechungen
  13. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, vols. 9–13, ed. A. N. Doane, Phillip Pulsiano † and Matthew T. Hussey; Interim Index (Volumes 1–10), ed. A. N. Doane and Matthew T. Hussey
  14. Andrew P. Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England
  15. Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe & Andy Orchard
  16. Rory McTurk, Chaucer and the Norse and Celtic Worlds; Ananya Jahanara Kabir & Deanne Williams, Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures
  17. Andrew Galloway, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Vol. 1; Stephen A. Barney, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Vol. 5
  18. Sharon Cadman Seelig, The Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature. Reading Women's Lives, 1600–1680
  19. Thomas Rommel, Das Selbstinteresse von Mandeville bis Smith: Ökonomisches Denken in ausgewählten Schriften des 18. Jahrhunderts
  20. Die Ordnung der Kulturen: Zur Konstruktion ethnischer, nationaler und zivilisatorischer Differenzen 1750–1850, ed. Hansjörg Bay & Kai Merten
  21. Martin Löschnigg, Die englische fiktionale Autobiographie. Erzähltheoretische Grundlagen und historische Prägnanzformen von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts
  22. Christopher R. Miller, The Invention of Evening. Perception and Time in Romantic Poetry
  23. Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Micheal Millgate, ed. Keith Wilson
  24. George Gissing's Scrapbook, ed. Bouwe Postmus
  25. Peter Robinson, Twentieth Century Poetry: Selves and Situations
  26. Michael Bell, Literature, Modernism and Myth. Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century
  27. Gerhard Hoffmann, From Modernism to Postmodernism. Concepts and Strategies of Postmodern American Fiction
  28. Cool Britannia. Literarische Selbstvergewisserung vor der Jahrtausendwende, ed. Norbert Greiner & Roland Weidle
  29. Religion in African-American Culture, ed. Winfried Herget & Alfred Hornung
  30. Carsten Schinko, Die Literatur der Kultur: Kommunikationstheoretische Perspektiven auf afroamerikanische Literatur- und Kulturdiskurse
  31. Violence and Transgression in World Minority Literatures, ed. Rüdiger Ahrens, María Herrera-Sobek, Karin Ikas & Francisco A. Lomelí
  32. Leo Truchlar, Schwelle. Passage. Verandlung: Ein Interpretationsentwurf
  33. Funktionen von Literatur: Theoretische Grundlagen und Modellinterpretationen, ed. Marion Gymnich & Ansgar Nünning
  34. Monologues. Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity, ed. Clare Wallace
  35. On Verbal/Visual Representation, ed. Martin Heusser, Michèle Hannoosch, Eric Haskell, Leo Hoeck, David Scott & Peter de Voogd
  36. Alte Mythen - Neue Medien, ed. Yasmin Hoffmann, Walburga Hülk & Volker Roloff
  37. Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies. Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism, ed. Catrin Gersdorf & Sylvia Mayer
  38. Eingegangene Schriften
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