![]() 871–899), can be constructively read in relation to developments in Anglo-Saxon political thought in the early tenth as well as in the late ninth centuries. This article argues that the Old English Orosius, a work traditionally viewed as a product of the educational reforms of King Alfred of Wessex (r. Examining the additions made (and not made) by these scribes from the perspective of genre and literary convention allows a view of the interaction of present and past rather different from, although not incompatible with, the common interpretation of this text as dynastic propaganda. We do, however, possess a text which has been augmented by various scribes, and their additions can be seen as responses to the material before them. The evidence for such readers’ responses is, of course, very limited: the manuscript does not contain exclamations of approval, disgust, or disbelief, much less commentary on literary technique, and we possess no account of who read it or what was thought of it. In the following discussion, I shall address some of the generic and literary conventions displayed in Manuscript A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and explore how Anglo-Saxon readers might have responded to these conventions. ![]() By their very nature, therefore, chronicles strikingly demonstrate ways in which past and present impinge on each other. In theory, at least, chronicles grow by accretion, and their account of the past is the product of many different presents. ![]()
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