Authority and Intertextuality in the Works of Ælfric

The lecture will demonstrate the compelling need to distinguish between immediate and ultimate sources and will show how such distinctions might systematically be established by modern scholars.

The tenth-century Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric saw his vernacular writings as standing within the patristic tradition of textual authority. Although modern source-study has increasingly demonstrated his use of Carolingian intermediaries. The lecture will demonstrate the compelling need to distinguish between immediate and ultimate sources and will show how such distinctions might systematically be established by modern scholars, who must necessarily engage with a multi-dimensional and richly intertextual body of source materials. The particular examples will be set within the larger framework of a discussion about the nature of textual authority in the early middle ages, which is the lecture’s principle purpose.

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