Popular Religion in Late Saxon England

Karen Louise Jolly is associate professor of history and a member of the associate graduate faculty at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa.

For more information about Karen Louise Jolly, visit the Author Page.

"Jolly's erudite and lively explication of the charms of elves provides unique and valuable insights into popular culture in late Saxon England."--Speculum

"This interesting work convincingly challenges previous treatments of the subject."--Times Literary Supplement

"Karen Jolly has written a book that succeeds in being both focused and wide-ranging. With the Anglo-Saxon 'elf charms' as her chief point of reference, she manages to integrate with confidence and ease a diversity of materials, including not only the literary sources in Old English and Latin, but also the archaeological evidence and the ecclesiastical and political records. She shows a firm command of the time and place that she writes about and demonstrates the rootedness of religion magic within a particular culture. The result is a broad and fascinating panorama of Anglo-Saxon religious culture. While Jolly speaks of 'popular' religion, she makes no facile distinction between this and clerical Christianity; the book marks a noteworthy advance in our study of this culture in all its complexities."--Richard Kieckhefer, Northwestern University