Description: How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualise the interim between death and Doomsday? In Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature, Dr. Kabir presents the first investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the "interim paradise" or paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She determines the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory.
Brief description: Dr Ananya Jahanara Kabir is currently Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. She was the recipient of a Radhakrishnan Scholarship to Oxford, an External Research Studentship to Trinity College Cambridge, an Honorary Scholarship and Life Fellowship of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, the Turville Petre Prize for Old Norse (Oxford) and the Dorothy Whitelock Studentship (Cambridge). Several articles on medieval and postcolonial subjects (as well as on their theoretical intersections) are forthcoming in academic journals such as Studies in Philology, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen, The Upstart Crow, Interventions, and edited collections of essays.
Review Quotes: "[Kabir's] methodology (literary analysis and source study) compels her to come to terms with the tensions between popular and learned culture, orthodox, and heterodox belief, as well as oral and literary expression. It is an important book, and provides a richly developed answer to an ostensibly simple question." Catholic Historical Review