Investigation of Alfred the Great's cultural policy in Anglo-Saxon England: An approach based on Translation Studies

This dissertation thesis analyses Alfred the Great’s cultural policy, a literary production that aimed at the diffusion of certain books, mostly Old English translations of Latin texts, which were pivotal for the education of the future leading classes, but also to men of a lower status. Alfred’s effort was also directed to a military and religious reform, aspects that are profoundly connected. The aim of my investigation is to unveil the underlying reasons that constitute the ideological foundations of a specific “Alfredian” translation, the "Old English Orosius", focusing on the account of the Second Punic War and on the figure of Hannibal. To do so, I compared the text in question to "Historiarum adversus paganos libri septem", its Latin source, adopting a specific methodological approach, that of Translation Studies. After analysing the modifications implemented in the translated text using Toury’s notion of norms, I drew some conclusions of a cultural nature exploiting Lefevere’s concept of patronage. My investigation concludes by arguing the productivity of this approach for the analysis of Germanic Medieval texts.