Download or read book Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature written by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.