This small book is about one of the great figures of history. Alfred the Great was king of Wessex—the southern part of present-day England—from 871 until his death in 899, during a period often called the “Dark Ages,” though per- haps better called the early Middle Ages. This foundational moment of European history is not famous for its contribu-tions to human development and is increasingly neglected in schools and universities. The period began with the col-lapse of Roman rule in the west in the fifth century. It was a difficult time, when people lived through rapid economic decline, falling living standards, social fragmentation, and an international order rooted in violence. Across the fol-lowing centuries a handful of rulers attempted to restore something like the old order, and others attempted to cre-ate something new. One of these was Alfred. Alfred fought against Vikings who wished to overrun his country, but his response was not only to fight back on the battlefield, but to surround himself with the greatest minds that he could find, at home and abroad. Alfred's cultural renewal inspired his contemporaries, and left a legacy in the area of law, literature, and education that underpins many of our global society's highest aspirations to this day. Alfred's Wessex was not Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid, or Italy in the Trecento; his resources were far more limited, but his vision was also great. This book tells Alfred's story, but does so in the awareness that he has been the object of historical study for more than a thousand years, and any book about him could easily be thousands of pages long. Furthermore, many of the historical sources for Alfred's reign are closely associated with his court or that of his successors, and historians have noted their polemical character. With what I hope is due caution, I have focused on these primary sources in the account that follows. In particular these are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (the Chronicle) and Asser's Life of King Alfred. I have aimed to be concise rather than omit details in offering a new reading of aspects of Alfred's life. The first chapter explores the genesis of the Alfredian legend and tries to understand his early life. The second chapter is concerned chiefly with his wars with the Vikings and his role in redefining England. The final chapter reconsiders Alfred's contribution to English literary history.

As Alfred is laid to rest, we can look back at his endeavours outside the theatre of war and the legend they have gen- erated. The troubled times in which Alfred ruled meant that he was always preparing for or fighting wars, but this doesn't mean that he only thought about violence. Alfred's love of learning is one of the most important aspects of the king's personality that Asser's biography presents to us. However, Asser was not writing for us, but to impress upon his Welsh contemporaries the qualities of the Saxon king to whom they had submitted. Undoubtedly such a man should also be schooled in the arts of peace.

Alfred's love of wisdom has become inseparable over the past eleven hundred years from a belief not only in the king's learning, but his authorship of translations from Latin into Old English. During the past century Alfred has lost some books once attributed to him, and recently the question has been asked whether the king made any trans - la tions at all. Alfred's education was neglected, but the story that Asser tells presents superficial incon sis tencies complicated by later preconceptions concerning the king's supposed literary achievements. Alfred's approach to his children's education in the 880s offers insights into the progress of his own learning. Five of Alfred and Ealh-swith's children survived beyond infancy. The eldest was Æthelflæd, who became the Lady of the Mercians; Edward succeeded his father; the next daughter Æthelgifu became a nun at Shaftesbury; her younger sister, Ælfthryth, married Baldwin II of Flanders; the youngest son, Æthelweard (d. ca. 922), was chosen to receive a full education from about age five, which implicitly his siblings didn't have. Asser describes Æthelweard's schooling (chap. 75):

Alfred the Great, king of Wessex from 871 until 899, is not the man he used to be. From the mid-nineteenth century until well into the twentieth, schoolchildren across the English-speaking world, and many in British colonies, knew the king as one of the great men of history, a founder of the English nation, and therefore ultimately of the British Empire itself. He was a warrior king whose intellect brought light to the “Dark Ages,” with his love of poetry, his Latin learning, his English translations, and the invention of the candle-clock. Alfred was a great soldier and statesman, who subdued the Viking threat that had engulfed the Anglo- Saxon kingdoms across Britain during the ninth century, and made peace. However, the twentieth century has robbed us of Alfred in various ways. Most fundamentally, he is falling out of cultural memory, largely as the result of new approaches to teaching history in schools. The rigours of academia have not helped—some literary scholars have disputed the assertion that Alfred ever translated anything from Latin into English, and despite some defence, doubts remain about his personal contribution to the history of English literature. There is no doubting Alfred's military suc cess—here his credentials are good—but Vikings exert a stronger influence over the historical imagination and modern taste than do the sober-minded Christian kings who halted their depredations and made deals with them. Alfred's recent characterization as untrustworthy and ambitious in the television series The Last Kingdom—adapting Bernard Cornwall's historical fiction—is unlikely to have won him new admirers. Alfred and his historical standing also find themselves up against monumental developments in western society, at a moment when European and North American cultural hegemony gives way to a global culture, often relegating formerly “central” historical narratives. Why should anyone care today about a mythologized founder of a defunct empire, born into royalty, and an unwitting hero of the white race? The Alfred bequeathed to us is in many ways the epitome of the “dead white male,” but such a view is only possible through the narrow lens of the moment in which we ourselves live.

In 871 the great Viking army that had been in England since 866 turned its attention towards Wessex. During the intervening five years the army had conquered Northum- bria and East Anglia, and had begun incursions into Mer-cia. The next eight years would involve the last survivor of King Æthelwulf's five sons in ceaseless warfare, at times with little hope of victory, and facing national anni hilation. In his exile at Athelney in the Somerset Marshes, Alfred would have to confront the genuine possibility that like King Edmund of East Anglia, he might be the last ruler of a kingdom won by his ancestors from the Britons centu- ries earlier. Alfred was almost caught by his enemies at Chippenham in 878, but this major setback was quickly reversed, and by the middle of the year Alfred found him-self back in control of Wessex, though the active threat of Viking armies continued across his lifetime. One sig-nificant moment would be Alfred's conquest in 886 of the Mercian town of London, which had become a Viking stronghold. The people of England also understood this strategic moment as signalling Alfred's ascendency to real rather than notional power, not only in his contest with the Vikings, but also over English territory outside the old bor-ders of Wessex. This turning point would give Alfred time to breathe, so that his consolidation of power could involve the reimagination and renewal of a redefined English people. Where there had been four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, now there was effectively one, with many English people living in the territory of the Danelaw. Alfred could never hope to reconquer the lost kingdoms through military force—it was enough of a struggle to hold Wessex and what remained of Mercia. However, the title soon to be taken up by Alfred, king of the Angles and the Saxons, or the “Anglo-Saxons,” hints at claiming jurisdiction over all English people, no matter where they found themselves in the wake of the Viking storm. Alfred's consolidation of England as an ideological conviction to be adhered to, as well as a geographical and political reality to be lived in, embraces church and legal reform, the writing of history, the renewal of education, town planning, and military engineering

This volume explores the diverse ways in which the Book of Psalms profoundly influenced medieval English literature and culture, through a series of connected overviews and special case studies. A number of recent studies have highlighted the Psalter's reception in Early Modern English (and wider European culture), while three monographs by contributors to this volume offer focused studies of the Psalter in individual periods of medieval English literature: Jane Toswell's The Anglo-Saxon Psalter, Annie Sutherland's English Psalms in the Middle Ages: 1300–1450and Michael P. Kuczynski's Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England. But as yet no single study has sought to offer a comprehensive survey of English responses to the Book of Psalms from the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the cusp of the Reformation. By bringing work by experts on both Old and Middle English literature into dialogue, this volume breaks down the traditional disciplinary binaries of pre- and post-Conquest English, late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. In order to encourage the reader to make connections both across and within these various periods and languages, the book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, with three sections designed to offer a variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature.

Section I (Translation) focuses on the development of English psalm translation from its beginnings in Old English interlinear glosses in Latin psalters through the multilingual psalters of the Anglo-Norman era to the stand-alone vernacular psalters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Concentrating on the Psalter as a book, this section charts the emergence of English as a scriptural language in the medieval period.

Section II (Adaptation) considers how medieval English prose and verse writers draw on the Psalms as a source of literary inspiration. Demonstrating how the Psalter could be adapted and redeployed within the context of medieval worship and prayer, it begins with a discussion of the first adaptation of the entire Psalter into English verse, before turning to a consideration of the development of the abbreviated psalter tradition. This section also addresses the wider influence of psalmic language and imagery on Old English praise and lament poetry, and on Middle English alliterative verse.