Land and Book – Literature and Land Tenure in Anglo–Saxon England Smith Hardback

Land and BookLiterature and Land Tenure in Anglo-Saxon England\nAuthor(s): Scott Thompson Smith\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Toronto Press, Canada\nImprint: University of Toronto Press\nISBN-13: 9781442644861, 978-1442644861\nSynopsis\nIn this original and innovative study, Scott T. Smith traces the intersections between land tenure and literature in Anglo-Saxon England. Smith aptly demonstrates that as land became property through the operations of writing, it came to assume a complex range of conceptual values that Anglo-Saxons could use to engage a number of vital cultural concerns beyond just the legal and practical such as political dominion, salvation, sanctity, status, and social and spiritual obligations.\n\n Land and Book places a variety of texts including charters, dispute records, heroic poetry, homilies, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in a dynamic conversation with the procedures and documents of land tenure, showing how its social practice led to innova.