Das altenglische Heiligenleben by Irmgard Lensing (review)

At the core of this substantial monograph is a detailed and sustained narratological analysis of several of Ælfric’s saints’ lives (pp. 141–303), namely those of St. George, St. Alban, SS Abdon and Sennen, St. Maurice, St. Agatha, St. Lucy, and St. Agnes. Following the model used in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale for the structural analyses of fairy tales, Lensing charts the typical structures of Ælfric’s hagiographical accounts, outlining and classifying recognized motifs (“Motiveme”) and comparing their concatenation (“Motivemfolge”). From her review of previous research on hagiographical structures, such as that of Raymon Farrar, James Hurt, Thomas Heffernan, and Alison Elliott (pp. 34–35, 134–38, and 155–58), it becomes clear that Lensing’s study is more extensive in its scope; she rightly points out (esp. pp. 129–34) that martyrological accounts lend themselves particularly to this kind of narratological analysis, as this genre presents the right combination of generic stereotypes and individual variety. Lensing’s examination of motif sequences presents interesting new insights not only into Ælfric’s more general structural preferences but also into his choices of particular traditions and differences between individual saints’ lives (see particularly her section on questions that remain open, pp. 305–12). To what extent structural characteristics may already have been present in Ælfric’s source material is, by contrast, not examined here; Lensing shows herself aware of some of Patrick Zettel’s work and recent sourcing projects such as Fontes Anglo-Saxonici and Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literature (pp. 35 and 90), without, however, making any use of them. Her suggestion (p. 35) that Ælfric’s hagiographical source texts can be identified with the help of Helmut Gneuss’s Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts seems puzzling.

The main section of the monograph is preceded by some 140 pages of introductory material, including outlines of translation theory, oral-formulaic modes of composition, some seventy pages of background material on Ælfric, and the history, form, and function of Old English hagiography (complemented by another general section on Anglo-Saxon saints’ cults on pp. 275–303). The book ends with some thirty pages of Appendices (with materials on further Ælfrician texts) and fifty pages of Bibliography, indicating how much careful effort Lensing invested in shoring up her wide-ranging discussions. The monograph represents an updated version of Lensing’s doctoral dissertation (University of Münster, 1998), and the author seems to have made a heroic effort to update her discussion in terms of Ælfric scholarship and other relevant literature published in the intervening twelve years. A Companion to Ælfric, ed. Hugh Magennis and Mary Swan (2009) presumably came too late for inclusion here and is one of the few publications missing from Lensing’s discussion (although its forthcoming publication could perhaps have been announced). Two other important omissions from the Bibliography are Luke Reinsma, Ælfric: An Annotated Bibliography (1987) and Gordon Whatley, “Acta Sanctorum,” Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: Volume One, ed. F. M. Biggs (2001); both of these items would have been appreciated, particularly by less experienced readers.

The title of this monograph may raise expectations that remain unfulfilled: the book does not make systematic reference to a wide range of Old English saints’ lives; the focus of this monograph is very much on Ælfric’s work. Anonymous Old English saints’ lives are barely mentioned here; texts that are clearly hagiographical but have traditionally not been referred to as “lives,” such as the Old English Martyrology, are to a similar degree sidelined, although the author’s understanding of what constitutes a “Heiligenleben” is on occasion very elastic, extending to the individual sections of Aldhelm’s De Virginitate, which is said to contain some fifty of them (p. 90). A more specific title—for example, one highlighting the narratology of Ælfric’s saints’ lives as the main focus—could have alerted Lensing’s potential readers more effectively to her precise aim. It could be said that the monograph is out of touch with its main...