Imagining the Pagan in Late Medieval England
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer, Limited
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 221
ISBN-13: 9781787445819
Description: Late medieval English culture was fascinated by the figure of the pagan, the ancestor whose religious difference must be negotiated, and by the pagan's idol, an animate artefact. In romances, histories and hagiographies medieval Christians told the story of the pagans, who built the cities that Christians appropriated and the idols that they destroyed and replaced. Encounters with traces of pagan culture in the present raised the question of whether paganity had been fully eliminated, or whether it was liable to recur.