Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature

Abstract

How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.

Angels in Early Medieval England

“…82 That decision might have allowed the redactor to turn this into the tale of a saint winning his eternal reward and a man with no hope of future salvation, if he had so wished; but Ananya Kabir has drawn attention to the careful way that this abbreviated homily also distinguishes paradise, to which the soul is immediately led, from the eternal heaven, which the angels proclaim is still to come. 83 Whenever the exemplum was reworked, therefore, it was rewritten in such a way as to allow homilists to talk about things that awaited relatively ordinary, although undoubtedly meritorious, souls. Although a number of Anglo-Saxon homilists had clearly found problems with the theology of the Three Utterances exemplum, each had sought to rework its story rather than to relinquish it.…”

Death and Woman: Comparing the Meaning of the Deaths of the Female Main Characters in the Works of Toni Morrison and Alice Munro

“…From different points of view, Bevington (1989), Berry (1999) and McMullan (2008) have discussed the significance of death in the works of William Shakespeare. Kabir (2001) investigates the notion of heaven, death and afterlife in Anglo-Saxon literature, whereas Thompson (2004) discusses the issue of death in the Anglo-Saxon English tradition from later period. Representation of death and funeral in English society during the Victorian Age was very well written by Hotz (2009).…”

Diuiduntur in Quattuor: The Interim and Judgement in Anglo-Saxon England

“…He was apparently rather uneasy with the concept of the interim paradise, and in his translation of Dryhthelm"s vision seems to have tried to present a picture of this interim pleasant place which is much closer to the earthly paradise of Eden than to a paradise such as that described in the Visio S. Pauli. 88 In his other works, AElfric seems to have avoided the Old English word for paradise, neorxnawang, where possible, restricting its use to places sanctioned by Scripture, or in the context of the Garden of Eden. 89 Perhaps fortunately for AElfric, Bede"s account of Dryhthelm does not describe the pleasant interim place as paradisus, and thus there was no need to use the term neorxnawang.…”

“…88 In his other works, AElfric seems to have avoided the Old English word for paradise, neorxnawang, where possible, restricting its use to places sanctioned by Scripture, or in the context of the Garden of Eden. 89 Perhaps fortunately for AElfric, Bede"s account of Dryhthelm does not describe the pleasant interim place as paradisus, and thus there was no need to use the term neorxnawang.…”