Imagining the Pagan in Late Medieval England

Download or read book Imagining the Pagan in Late Medieval England written by Sarah Salih and published by D. S. Brewer. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.