The Persuasive Agency of Objects and Practices in Alfred the Great's Reform Program

Georgina Pitt's study of the literature, material culture, and military reforms connected to Alfred the Great offers a multifaceted interpretation of learning and politics in Wessex and its neighbors in the late ninth century. This clearly written and engaging book will be of great use to historians and literary scholars alike.At the heart of Pitt's book is the idea of persuasion, indicated in the “Persuasive Agency” of the title. Alfredian persuasiveness, Pitt suggests, is made up of the qualities of friendliness, informality, and accessibility. This friendliness, a recurring theme throughout Pitt's book, is closely linked to loyalty, which is at the core of Alfredian ideology, as Pitt sees it. Through the ideology that she identifies, Pitt draws together all aspects of what she views as Alfred's reform program: his military reforms, the educational program, his law-code (known as the domboc), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), the translations attributed to or commissioned by the king, and the conceptualization of his subjects as the Angelcynn. The coherent unification of all these different aspects of Alfred's reign is facilitated by Pitt's use of assemblage theory, which supports the identification of different actants in an assemblage.The book opens with a prelude on the Alfred Jewel, and an eloquent call to reconsider this artifact from a phenomenological perspective, complemented by three color illustrations of a replica of the Alfred Jewel. In the following chapter, the introduction, Pitt introduces the theoretical approaches around which the book is structured: assemblage theory and social practice theory. Both theories support the materialist approach with which the book opens in their acknowledgement of “object agency” but, as Pitt explains, social practice theory differs “in its insistence on human exceptionalism as an actant” (p. 24). In this way, Pitt establishes the interplay between human, material, and immaterial actants to which she returns throughout the book.Chapter 2, which treats Alfredian military innovation, articulates the core Alfredian ideology which Pitt identifies in all aspects of Alfredian production. Pitt argues that, in order to defeat the Vikings, sent by God as a punishment, Alfred's subjects must “reorient themselves” (p. 31), through wisdom, back to good Christian practice: this practice depends upon the loyal and obedient service of the king who, sanctioned by God, is responsible for loyally guiding and defending them. Loyalty, therefore, is required on the part of both ruler and subjects. Pitt offers the implementation of the burhs as an example of the obedience required by Alfred's subjects; indeed, the burhs, and the whole military reform process, are imagined by Pitt as an assemblage. This chapter establishes the very real need for a loyal and obedient community in late ninth-century Wessex.Chapter 3 fleshes out the Alfredian ideology introduced in the previous chapter, using as evidence the translations traditionally attributed to Alfred the Great (the Old English Pastoral Care, Boethius, Soliloquies, and Prose Psalms), their paratexts, the domboc, and the ASC. The major themes of Alfredian literature are traced through the texts that Pitt discusses, including, for example, education, wealth, and power. The themes of friendship and loyalty come to the fore here, especially in Pitt's perceptive analysis of the Old English Soliloquies; for example, the master-servant paradigm in this translation is considered in terms of the differing values of Germanic and Latin traditions.One of the many significant contributions in this chapter is Pitt's suggestion that translations such as the Old English Boethius may have been read selectively, with certain passages acting as starting points or “anchors” for discussion. This idea offers an important new way of thinking about the social role of Alfredian translations in the immediate context of their production. Pitt develops the idea further in chapter 4, arguing that Alfredian translations might have been understood as “repositories of wisdom” (p. 97), sparking discussion, rather than as texts to be read alone all the way through. She bases this argument on what we know of Alfred's own learning environment, which, according to the Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care and Asser's biography, seems to have been discussion-based rather than solitary. The argument chimes with existing interpretations of Alfredian literary culture: the substantial glossing tradition of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae meant that manuscripts acted almost as encyclopaedias; the Preface to the Soliloquies has been read by some as giving the impression that the text that follows is a compendium, or florilegium; and Asser refers to Alfred's practice of compiling passages in his Enchiridion. While it could be argued that the philosophical translations, in particular, demand private, even meditative reading, Pitt's argument for the social use of Alfredian literature is compelling, and in line with her attention to the friendliness of Alfredian persuasive strategies.Chapter 5 views the Alfredian translations as text-bodies, continuing the materialist thread that has been running throughout the book. This chapter is informed by a recognition of the power of books as objects in the early medieval period, and Pitt astutely draws on Hans Gumbrecht's theory of “presence culture” (as opposed to “meaning culture”) to support her case (p. 118). Pitt makes the case for the relationality and usability of the books and objects connected to Alfred. The chapter contributes to existing scholarship on the speaking-book prefaces in its argument that the book and text in these poems cannot be separated from one another; the speakers are viewed rather as text-bodies (pp. 131–32).Chapter 6 interprets the social practices related to Alfred's reforms. The Prose Preface to the Pastoral Care is a central text here, in addition to the domboc, the ASC, and the Fonthill Letter. Pitt makes the point that what matters to a community of practice is shared practice, rather than physical proximity (p. 153); in applying this idea to the Alfredian circle, she returns to one of the key points from chapter 4, namely that, once Alfredian ideology had been set in motion by the Pastoral Care, other translators could have produced their own translations, possibly without royal supervision. Chapter 6 also develops the case for the Alfredian translations being used as teaching texts in the classroom.Chapter 7 returns to the Alfred Jewel and the phenomenological qualities apparent in its use. Indeed, Pitt's focus on the use of the Alfred Jewel and Alfredian text-bodies is fitting, in light of the insistence on usefulness found throughout the Alfredian corpus. This chapter develops the important point that Alfredian ideology is emergent and not static; Pitt argues that even if the staring figure on the Alfred Jewel had been designed to represent Wisdom or Sight, any viewer who had yet to be immersed in the Alfredian value of pursuing wisdom with the mind's eye would most likely interpret the figure as either Alfred or Christ (p. 175). This consciousness of the varied and changing reception of Alfredian reform is one of the real strengths of Pitt's study. The coda, in a similar vein, considers how Alfredian reform continued and developed after his death.Pitt's theory of a unified Alfredian reform is clearly argued and impressively imagined. In the wake of Malcolm Godden's article “Did King Alfred Write Anything?” (Medium Ævum, 76 [2007]), with many scholars now doubting Alfred's personal authorship of any of the translations attributed to him, the idea of a deliberate and coherent translation program carried out by Alfred and integrated into wider educational reform is increasingly a matter for debate. Pitt addresses the doubt hanging over Alfred's personal authorship by distinguishing between Alfred the individual (referred to as Alfred) and the corporate body which includes not only Alfred but also the members of his circle (referred to as “Alfred”). Pitt states that she will use “‘Alfred’ as a convenient shorthand for a collaboration between members of King Alfred's circle, without trying to delineate which individuals did what, or to calibrate the degree to which the king was personally involved in the minutiae of reform” (p. 18). These questions of who did what, and the degree to which the king himself was involved, are nonetheless intriguing ones, and in this sense Pitt's study productively invites future work on the constitution of Alfred's scholarly circle. The excellent contribution of her study is a lucid analysis of the effect of the persuasive strategies that emanated from Alfred's court.This study offers a phenomenological approach to Alfred's reign integrated with assemblage and social practice theory. With this book, Pitt demonstrates how these theories can be used productively for the study of a particular moment in medieval history. The great success of this theoretical approach is the drawing together of the seemingly quite disparate elements of Alfred's reign into what can be seen as a coherent and organized reform program. Pitt's book represents an important contribution to Alfredian studies, and, in its effective use of assemblage and social practice theory, to the fields of medieval history and literature more broadly.