The Anglo Saxon to Middle English Understanding of Death in Life
The Anglo Saxon to Middle English Understanding of Death in Life By Thomas Saxon The presence of the dead in Anglo-Saxon times was dealt with in a variety of ways. This has generated a degree of scholarship, mostly focusing on material goods, from archaeological excavations, such as weapon furnished inhumations. The secondary material for the subject has therefore been of some difficulty for this examination, as it has warranted a full investigation into the rationale behind these prior investigations into death. Whilst the investigation of the secondary material is by necessity a large proportion of this paper, the primary intention behind it was instead to trace the attitudes and beliefs of the late Anglo-Saxon period through to the ghost stories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, paying special attention to the formulation and development of ideas such as the location and proximity of the dead, but also the idea present in a body of scholarly work that hero or ancestral wors...