Anglo-Latin literature

Anglo-Latin literature is literature from originally written in Latin and produced in England or other English-speaking parts of Britain and Ireland. It was written in Medieval Latin, which differs from the earlier Classical Latin and Late Latin.

Authors and style

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Chroniclers such as Bede (672/3–735), with his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and Gildas (c. 500–570), with his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, were figures in the development of indigenous Latin literature, mostly ecclesiastical, in the centuries following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire around the year 410.

The Vita Sancti Cuthberti (c. 699–705) is the first piece of Northumbrian Latin writing and the earliest piece of English Latin hagiography.[1] The Historia Brittonum composed in the 9th century is traditionally ascribed to Nennius. It is the earliest source which presents King Arthur as a historical figure, and is the source of several stories which were repeated and amplified by later authors.

In the 10th century the hermeneutic style became dominant, but post-conquest writers such as William of Malmesbury condemned it as barbarous.

See also

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Early medieval

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Anglo-Norman era

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Plantagenet era

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Modern literature

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Love, R. C. (1999), "Hagiography", in Lapidge, Michael; Blair, John; Keynes, Simon; et al. (eds.), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 226, doi:10.1002/9781118316061.ch8, ISBN 978-0-631-22492-1

Further reading

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  • Carlson, David (2011). "Anglo-Latin literature in the later Middle Ages". In Andrew Galloway (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 195–216. doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521856898.010. ISBN 9780511975646.
  • Echard, Siân; Gernot R. Wieland, eds. (2001). Anglo-Latin and its heritage: essays in honour of A.G. Rigg on his 64th birthday. Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 4. Vol. 4. Turnhout: Brepols. doi:10.1484/M.PJML-EB.6.09070802050003050008030802. ISBN 2503508383.
  • Lapidge, Michael (1993). Anglo-Latin literature, 900–1066. London: Hambledon Press. ISBN 1852850124.
  • Lapidge, Michael (1996). Anglo-Latin literature, 600–899. London: Hambledon Press. ISBN 1852850116.
  • Rigg, A.G. (1992). A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066–1422. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521415942.
  • Rigg, A.G. (1996). "Anglo-Latin". In Timothy J. McGee (ed.). Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 46–61. ISBN 0253210267.
  • Sharpe, Richard (1997). A handlist of the Latin writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540. Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin. Turnhout: Brepols. ISBN 2503505759. Reprinted with a supplement in 2001.
  • Stephenson, Rebecca; Thornbury, Victoria, eds. (2016). Latinity and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442637580.
  • White, Carolinne (2002). "Medieval senses of classical words". Peritia. 16: 131–143. doi:10.1484/J.Peri.3.482.