Quick Review of The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great

This is coming from someone who is very interested in Anglo-Saxon material and much more familiar with it than the average person but not at all an expert. I got an undergrad degree in English lit and took a year of graduate courses in it. If you know what “burghal hidage” means off the top of your head, you should have no problems getting into this book.

• Pros

  • It exists at all

  • It gives a bibliography that could be used for further reading of personal interest

  • I learned about interesting figures (e.g., Judith of Flanders) and facts (e.g., hers is the first recorded coronation ordo in England)

  • The discussion on literacy in chapter 5 was interesting and well documented

• Cons

  • Hostile to subject (not bad objectively, just annoying personally)

  • Curiously dwelling on details that need not be remarked upon (perhaps author is not religious?)

  • Reads too much like a paper for school in which one is attempting to elucidate certain conceptions by means of diverse and historically conditioned techniques of loquation amid the intertextuality of the historico-academic landscape embodied in and perhaps adumbrated by an Alfredian corpus the various “meanings” of which have as of yet not been and may not fully ever be and may not be even capable of being grasped (Author, Work, pp. 4-7).