| dc.description.abstract | The social fact of movement is a significant underlying feature of early medieval
Northumbria, as it is for other regions and other periods. The eighth-century Anglo-
Latin hagiographical tradition that centres on Bede (673-735) is not known for its
articulacy concerning travel, and what is expressed might well be overlooked for its
brevity. This thesis explores the relationship between allegories and symbolism, and
the underlying travel-culture in prose histories and hagiographies produced in
Northumbria in the early eighth century. It demonstrates the wide extent to which
travel was meaningful. The range of connotations applied to movement and travel
motifs demonstrate a multi-layered conceptualization of mobility, which is significant
beyond the study of travel itself.
In three sections, the thesis deals first with the mobility inherent in early medieval
monasticism and the related concepts that influence scholarly expectations concerning
this travel. The ideas of stabilitas and peregrinatio are explored in their textual
contexts. Together they highlight that monastic authors were concerned with the
impact of movement on discipline and order within monastic communities. However,
early medieval monasticism also provided opportunities for travel and benefitted from
that movement. Mobility itself could be praised as a labour for God. The second
section deals with how travel was narrated. The narrative role of sea, land, and long-distance
transport provide a range of stimuli for the inclusion and exclusion of travel
details. Whilst figurative allegory plays its part in explaining both the presence and
absence of sea travel, other, more mundane meanings are applied to land transport.
Through narratives, those who were unable to travel great distances were given the
opportunity to experience mobility and places outside of their homes. The third section
builds on this idea of the experience of movement, teasing out areas where a textual
embodiment of travel was significant, and those where the contrasting textual
experience of travel is illustrative of narrative techniques and expectations. This
section also looks at the hagiographical evidence for wider experiences of mobility,
outside of the travel of the hagiographical subjects themselves. It demonstrates the
transformation of the devotional landscape at Lindisfarne and its meaning for the social
reality of movement.
This wide-ranging exploration of the theme of mobility encourages the development
of scholarship into movement, and into the connections between travel and other
aspects of society. | en |
