Early Medieval English Life Courses

Thijs Porck, Ph.D. (2016), Leiden University, is Assistant Professor of Medieval English at that university. He has published on Old English textual criticism, Beowulf, medievalism, and old age, including Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History (Boydell Press, 2019).Harriet Soper, Ph.D. (2018), University of Cambridge, is Simon and June Li Fellow in English at Lincoln College, Oxford. She has published on various aspects of Old English poetry, and her research focuses especially on its representation of the life course.

"Every so often an edited volume comes along where the essays are significant in themselves, but taken together are field-defining. This is such a volume." Christina Lee, University of Nottingham"Early Medieval English Life Courses presents evidence that supports - and in many cases, corrects - our assumptions about how lives were lived in early medieval England. The volume is valuable both as a reference and as foundational knowledge for scholars at all stages of their careers. These essays build upon one another well, but are also all able to stand alone as items of immense interest that enhance our understanding of the experience of living a life from beginning to end in early medieval England." Leah Pope Parker, University of Southern Mississippi, in The Medieval Review, 22.10.18. Read the full review here.

• AcknowledgementsList of Illustrations and TablesAbbreviationsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Conceptualizing the Life Course in Early Medieval EnglandThijs Porck and Harriet SoperPart 1: Defining and Dividing the Life Course1 The Ages of Man and the Ages of Woman in Early Medieval England: From Bede to Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Tractatus de quaternarioThijs Porck2 Weapon-Boys and Once-Maidens: A Study of Old English Vocabulary for Stages of LifeDaria Izdebska3 Alcuin and the Student Life CycleDarren Barberpart 2: The Life Course and the Human Body4 Treating Age in Medical Texts from Early Medieval EnglandJacqueline Fay5 ‘Lazarus, Come Forth’: Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Life Course of Early Medieval English WomenCaroline R. Batten6 The Theology of Puberty in Early Medieval EnglandElaine FlowersPart 3: Intergenerational Dynamics7 Naming and Renaming: Names and the Life Course in Early Medieval EnglandJames Chetwood8 Moving On from ‘the Milk of Simpler Teaching’: Weaning and Religious Education in Early Medieval EnglandKatherine Cross9 Treasure and the Life Course in Genesis A and BeowulfAmy Faulknerpart 4: Life Beyond the Human10 The Life Course of ArtefactsGale R. Owen-Crocker11 From Field to Feast: The Life (and Afterlife) Course of Cereal Crops in Early Medieval EnglandDebby Banham12 Afterword: History, Archaeology and Osteology in ConversationJo ApplebyBibliographyIndex