2013/07/01 by Levi Roach · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Medieval Literature and History #Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies #Historical Legal Studies and Society #Anglo saxon #Law #Legal norm #History #Political science #Sociology #Classics
paper · doi:10.1111/1468-2281.12001
openalex publication_date 2013/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
This article seeks to provide a fresh perspective on long-standing debates about the role of the written word in later Anglo-Saxon legal culture. Using the law codes of King AEthelstan's reign as a ‘case study’, it argues that many of the unusual features of early English law are not so much products of orality, as of a fundamentally different approach to legal norms than is prevalent in the modern Western world. It thus seeks to move beyond recent literacy-orality debates, suggesting that it is more profitable to investigate the attitudes shown towards legal norms (both written and oral) within Anglo-Saxon society.