Purposes and patterns of the use of antique sources in old English religious texts by Ælfric and Wulfstan

Abstract

The article contains the results of the analysis of existing investigations into the ways how Latin religious sources were adopted and adapted in Anglo-Saxon homiletic literature. The present analysis may be of value when it is important to understand how religious contexts were borrowed and presented to a different culture, moreover the motives of adaptation of Latin texts may add to better understanding of the writer’s personalities and thus to a clearer insight into their works. Two eminent old English writers: Aelfric and Wulfstan worked closely with Latin texts following various strategies. While Aelfric in most cases translated the texts verbatim or slightly modified them, Wulfstan put much effort to give the text his own personality. Both writers still depended on the rhetoric traditions employed in Latin and their individual styles coincide in with usage of some stylistic features such as assonance, alliteration and repetition, but still were rather different. Aelfric himself considered the translation to be a separate rhetoric device as the text converted into a different language does not only carry the message to the target audience, but makes the process of communication easier. For Wulfstan the message itself is of importance, not the source, so he elaborated his unique style of communicating his ideas to the target audience. The practical and scientific value of the article is expressed in the need to structure the existing studies of the influence of the Latin language on Old English and opens up the perspective of further study in the field of rhetoric and pragmalinguistics.