The first English monarch: Aethelstan, king of Wessex and England 924-939

这项研究将导致完成的生活盎格鲁撒克逊国王？他是阿尔弗雷德大帝的孙子，于924年继承了威塞克斯的王位（威塞克斯的势力随后扩展到中部地区，远至亨伯河）。他最伟大的成就是征服了独立的诺森比亚王国，从而成为第一位统治整个英格兰的国王。尽管受到撒克逊人和北欧人的反对，他仍然保留了这一权力，直到939年去世。?塞尔斯坦的统治标志着英国身份形成的一个重要时期，但从来没有人对他的生活进行过重大研究。由于目前有相当大的兴趣在英格兰的历史根源和地区和民族身份之间的关系，生活的第一个国王的英语是坚定的。学术界对他的统治和当代欧洲大陆的发展（萨克森人在萨克森的崛起、法国公爵家族的崛起和萨克森皇家的衰落）进行了研究，为全面研究提供了比较背景。?塞尔斯坦是欧洲舞台上的一个重要角色，他的王朝战略是，他的许多同父异母的姐妹嫁给了西法兰克王国（西法兰克王国）、萨克森公爵府、勃艮第和阿基坦的罗贝尔家族;他的宫廷为来自罗贝尔家族、皇家、布列塔尼、弗兰德斯和挪威的流亡者提供庇护。这些与欧洲人的接触为他的宫廷带来了关于皇家和帝国领导以及修道院改革的新思想。从更广泛的角度来看他的行为，会产生一个更全面的评估？Thelstan的意义我的目标是写第一本传记？在大众和学术界的想象中，他的名声已经被他祖父的名声所掩盖。其目的是通过将国王的成就置于更广泛的背景下来修改以前的判决：英国和欧洲，宗教和宗教，|文化、政治和军事。我打算从塑造统一的英格兰和加强“新生的英格兰身份观念”的角度来展示这一统治的重要性。写一个中世纪早期人物的传记，在传统的叙事来源代表性差，提出了自己的问题，这是不合理的希望揭示洞察？塞尔斯坦的个性。然而，这项研究的目的是追踪对他的行为的各种影响，并在对英国和西欧当代政治和文化发展的知情理解中了解他的行为。它利用了广泛的原始材料，从宪章（授予土地和特权的文件，其财产清单揭示了他的法院的组成），硬币？塞尔斯坦是第一个被描绘成戴着王冠的英国国王。它还使用了当代大陆材料，以及与国王有关的手稿。比德的《圣卡斯伯特传》的封面上？一幅为圣徒社区（当时在切斯特-勒-街道）委托制作的《塞尔斯坦》是一幅整版的肖像画，描绘了加冕的国王向圣卡斯伯特赠送礼物的情景。这本书的总体目标是证明？thelstan作为一个个体的意义，并将他的生活背景下，其年龄的背景。这本书将在著名的耶鲁大学出版社系列“英国君主”中出版。这些书在英国、美国和全世界的英语读者中广泛而有效地销售。在这一系列的出版确保了研究的局限性将传播到广泛的一般以及学术观众。?塞尔斯坦将不再被忽视。传播到广泛的，跨大西洋，读者对这位以前鲜为人知的征服前国王的知情和细致入微的理解将有助于重塑公众对英格兰起源及其中世纪早期在更广阔世界中的位置的理解。

This research will lead to the completion of a life of the Anglo-Saxon king ?thelstan He was the grandson of Alfred the Great and succeeded in 924 to the throne of Wessex (whose power then extended over the midlands as far as the Humber). His greatest achievement was to conquer the independent kingdom of Northumbria and thereby to become the first king to rule all of England. He retained that power despite opposition from Saxons and Norsemen until his death in 939. ?thelstan's reign marks an important period in the shaping of English identity, but there has never been a major study of his life. Since there is currently considerable interest in the historic roots of Englishness and the relationship between regional and national identities, a life of the first king of the English is firmly. Academic studies of aspects of his rule and of contemporary continental developments (the rise of the Ottonians in Saxony, of ducal families in France and the weakening of the Carolingian royal family) provide a comparative background for a full-scale study. ?thelstan was a major player on a European stage, with a dynastic strategy that saw his numerous half-sisters married into the Carolingian and Robertian families in West Frankia, the ducal house of Saxony, and into Burgundy and Aquitaine; his court offered refuge to exiles from the Carolingian royal house, from Brittany, Flanders and from Norway. These European contacts brought new ideas about royal and imperial leadership and about monastic reform to his court. Seeing his actions in wide perspective produces a more rounded assessment of ?thelstan's significance. My aim is to write the first biography of ?thelstan, whose reputation has been overshadowed in popular and professorial imaginations by that of his grandfather. The objective is to revise previous judgments by setting the king's achievements in wider contexts: British and European, religious and |cultural as well as political and military. I intend to show the significance of the reign in terms of the shaping of a unified England and the strengthening "of nascent ideas of English identity. Writing a biography of an early medieval figure poorly-represented in conventional narrative sources presents its own problems and it is not plausible to hope to reveal insights into ?thelstan's personality. The study does, aim, however, to trace the various influences on his actions and to situate his deeds in an informed understanding of contemporary political and cultural developments in Britain and Western Europe. It draws on a wide range of source-material ranging from charters (documents granting land and privileges, whose witness-lists reveal much about the composition of his court), coins ?thelstan was the first English king to be depicted wearing a crown) to law-codes. It makes use also of contemporary continental materials, together with manuscript-books associated with the king. At the front of a copy of Bede's Lives of St Cuthbert that ?thelstan commissioned for the saint's community (then in Chester-le-Street) is a full-page portrait of the crowned king making his gift to St Cuthbert. The book's overall objective is to demonstrate ?thelstan's significance as an individual and to contextualise his life against the backdrop of its age. The book will be published in the prestigious Yale University Press series, 'English Monarchs'. These volumes are widely and effectively marketed in Britain, the US and world-wide to Anglo-lexic audiences. Publishing in this series ensures that the limits of the research will be disseminated to a wide general as well as academic audience. ?thelstan's will no longer be neglected. Disseminating to a wide, trans-Atlantic, readership an informed and nuanced understanding of this previously little-known pre-Conquest king will help to recast popular understanding of the origins of England and its early medieval location within a wider world.