Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal perspectives (Medieval Narratives in Transmission) 9782503590509, 2503590500

Table of contents :
Front Matter
S. C. Thomson. Introduction: Stories and their Tellers
Jane Coles, Theo Bryer, and Daniel Ferreira. Beowulf Goes to School
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso. ‘Retelling Old Stories for New Audiences’
Erin Michelle Goeres. Being Numerous
Evelyn Birge Vitz. Performance and Emotions in Four Epic Works about Roland
S. C. Thomson. Towards a Poetics of Storytelling, or, Why Could Early Medieval English Writers not Stop Telling the Story of Judith?
Meg Boulton. Mosaics, Marbles, and Medievalisms
Euan McCartney Robson. A Storied Cathedral
Christoph Witt. Dynamic Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel
Richard North. Iceland’s Alexander
Melissa Herman. Sensing Stories
James Plumtree. A Telling Tradition
Back Matter

Citation preview

Medieval Stories and Storytelling

MEDIEVAL NARRATIVES IN TRANSMISSION: CULTURAL AND MEDIAL TRANSLATION OF VERNACULAR TRADITIONS Volume 2

Editorial Board S. C. Thomson, Editor, Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf Matthew James Driscoll, Københavns Universitet Jane Hawkes, University of York Marion Uhlig, Université de Fribourg Evelyn Birge Vitz, New York University Jonathan Wilcox, University of Iowa

Medieval Stories and Storytelling Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives

Edited by

S. C. Thomson

F

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2021, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-2-503-59050-9 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59051-6 DOI: 10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.120836 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper. D/2021/0095/2

To Ben, Tom, and Erin Metayer

Table of Contents List of Illustrations

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Acknowledgements

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S. C. Thomson Introduction: Stories and their Tellers

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Jane Coles, Theo Bryer, and Daniel Ferreira Beowulf Goes to School: Adaptations and Transformations for the Secondary Classroom

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Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso ‘Retelling Old Stories for New Audiences’: Shaping and Visualizing Beowulf through Gareth Hinds’ Graphic Novels [The Collected Beowulf (2003) & Beowulf (2007)] 53 Erin Michelle Goeres Being Numerous: Communal Storytelling in Liðsmannaflokkr 71 Evelyn Birge Vitz Performance and Emotions in Four Epic Works about Roland

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S. C. Thomson Towards a Poetics of Storytelling, or, Why Could Early Medieval English Writers not Stop Telling the Story of Judith?

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Meg Boulton Mosaics, Marbles, and Medievalisms: Displaying the Foundation Narrative of the English Church in Westminster Cathedral

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Euan McCartney Robson A Storied Cathedral: Space and Audacious Women in Early Medieval Durham

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ta b l e of con ten ts

Christoph Witt Dynamic Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel 175 Richard North Iceland’s Alexander: Gunnarr and Pale Corn in Njáls saga

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Melissa Herman Sensing Stories: Iconography, Pattern, and Abstraction in Metalwork from Early Medieval England

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James Plumtree A Telling Tradition: Preliminary Comments on the Epic of Manas, 1856–2018

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Index 303

List of Illustrations Figure 2.1. Grendel’s mother waits. Still photograph at 00.08 of a 23-second video.

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Figure 2.2. Beowulf ’s men wait. Still photograph at 00.05 of a 44-second video.

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Figure 2.3. MissionMaker user interface (UI)

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Figure 2.4. Screen captures of two moments from Edward’s game. 45 Figure 3.1. Comic book versions of Beowulf by Uslan and Villamonte; Bingham; Anand and Carroll.

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Figure 3.2. Beowulf’s lettering from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 12; London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv, fol. 133r. 

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Figure 3.3. Beowulf’s lettering from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 12; Hinds, Beowulf, p. 14.

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Figure 3.4. Grendel and Beowulf from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 36 & 37 and Heaney, trans., ‘Beowulf’, p. 22.

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Figure 3.5. Grendel and Beowulf from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 38–39; Heaney, ‘Beowulf’, p. 22.

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Figure 3.6. Beowulf, Wiglaf, and the Dragon from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 98–101; Heaney, ‘Beowulf’, pp. 67–68.

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Figure 3.7. Hinds’ art from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 42.

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Figure 3.8. The style of the three parts. From Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 10, 42, & 99.

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Figure 7.1. Pillars at Westminster Cathedral.

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Figure 7.2. Mosaic depicting Pope Gregory sending Augustine on the conversion mission.

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Figure 7.3. Mosaic depicting Augustine meeting Æthelbert and Bertha.

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Figure 7.4. Mosaic depicting Augustine alongside John the Baptist.

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Figure 7.5. Vault mosaic depicting Oswald, Bede, and Edmund.

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Figure 7.6. Chapel ceiling with a golden sky.

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Figure 11.1. Gold and garnet cloisonné triangular dummy buckle from Sutton Hoo.

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Figure 11.2. Three-dimensional applique of a bird forming the masculine face of the Sutton Hoo helmet.

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Figure 11.3. Gilt-copper mount from Barham near Suffolk.

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Figure 11.4. Gilt bronze disc with geometric and animal decoration.

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Acknowledgements

This volume has been a long time in the making. Since a conference on Stories and Storytelling at University College London in April 2015, worlds have scooped their arcs; I am deeply grateful to the contributors for their patience and endurance. I am also very grateful to Emily Klimova and Francesca Brooks for their contributions and support in the process of working towards this volume and their coordination of the conference with me. The perspicacity and expertise of Brepols’ reviewers has been invaluable in shaping this collection; as both the editor and on behalf of the contributors, I am very grateful to them. The book would not have got over its final line without the brilliance and care of Moritz Draschner, and I am deeply grateful to him. I had initially anticipated this volume to be the first in the series on Medieval Narratives in Transmission, but it was beaten by some distance by Miriam Edlich-Muth’s fine collection on Medieval Romances Across European Borders. I am extremely grateful to Guy Carney for his initial conception of this series and support in establishing it, and to the members of the Board for their participation, contributions, and support; in particular, Jon Wilcox has provided immense support — often through productive criticism! — towards the development of this volume. Particular thanks need to be expressed to the endlessly patient, professional, and supportive team at Brepols, in particular Sarah Thomas and Martine Maguire-Weltecke. Funding from UCL’s Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies enabled the conference that started the ball rolling, and the conference itself was the ninth in the Northern and Early Medieval Interdisciplinary Conference Series, the collaborative and creative spirit of which I hope can be seen infusing this volume, and which I have found a support and a stimulus for all of my work. The conference itself was a productive and exciting weekend, and I am grateful to all of the contributors, in particular Clare Lees and Richard North for terrific keynote papers. It was preceded by an evening of Medieval Storytelling by Candlelight at Saint Etheldreda’s Church, and I am also grateful to all of those who told stories that evening and the sellout crowd for their support and enjoyment. My interest in storytelling and sense of it as a practice and a subject of study originated in an AHRC-funded workshop on Medieval Storytelling organized by Gareth Evans and Hannah Ryley and I am very grateful to them both as well as the other participants at that event, in particular Jenny Moon who taught me what it looks like to tell a story. Funding for some of the images in this volume, and for some of my work related to it, was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), and I am very grateful to them for their support. In the span of time since this volume’s initial conception, I have changed jobs three times. I am grateful to John Kay, Lilian Breakell, and Abimbola

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Osuntusa at Cambridge Education; to Luuk Houwen at Ruhr Universität Bochum; and to Miriam Edlich-Muth at Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf — for paying me to do things I enjoy, but specifically for supporting the development of this volume in different ways. I am grateful to all of my students whose creativity, enthusiasm, and general brilliance is a perpetually productive joy. And the deepest gratitude goes, as ever, to Jenny Fawson, who is my everything.

S. C. Thomson

Introduction: Stories and their Tellers Telling Old Tales In late-tenth-century York, a monk read a volume of letters from Alcuin, perhaps that city’s most famous son.1 Beneath one, he wrote a note: ‘hwæt ic eall feala ealde sæge’ (?Listen, I [have heard] very many ancient tales).2 As has been widely noted, this seems to recollect what the Beowulf poet has to say about a Danish oral poet: Hwilum cyninges þegn guma gilphlæden,        gidda gemyndig, se ðe ealfela        ealdgesegena word gemunde,        word oþer fand soðe gebunden.3 (ll. 867b–871a) [Sometimes a thane of the king, a man laden with boasts, with a memory of songs, who recalled the words of all kinds of ancient tales, found new words bound together truthfully.] The tenth-century reader of Alcuin seems to have added this half-quotation in response to the content of the letter. Alcuin is defending his monks against a charge of brawling; however, not being present, he was reliant on their oral testimony for his argument. This note, if read as a comment on the main text, can be interpreted as a cynical dismissal: the oral accounts have the same degree of reliability as ‘ancient tales’ (ealde sæge).4 ‘Telling stories’ — for I am grateful to Miriam Edlich-Muth, to James Plumtree, and to Brepols’ external reader for their critical and productive comments on this discussion.  1 The manuscript is now London, British Library, Harley MS 208, with the note on fol. 88r. For a recent reading, with references and discussion of earlier interpretations, see Thomson, Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, pp. 256–59.  2 The phrase is clear in intention but difficult to translate precisely; the translation here follows Andy Orchard’s in ‘Word Made Flesh’, at p. 309. The letter is § 249 in Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. by Dümmler, pp. 401–04.  3 Quotations from Beowulf are from Klaeber’s ‘Beowulf’. Translations from Old English are my own.  4 The note is in the same hand as an alphabet and Pater Noster on the same and earlier pages, which are evidently pen trials. On this basis, Peter Stokes regards it as a ‘scribble’ with no more meaning than the other pen trials, English Vernacular Minuscule, p. 180. Neil Ker *

S. C. Thomson, Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 13–30  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121599

FHG

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this reader, in this context — means the oral delivery of invented matter, and perhaps even the creative reshaping of the truth to support a position decided in advance. Should this, in turn, inflect our reading of Beowulf? Presumably this sharply critical reader of Alcuin would have regarded Hrothgar’s scop as being an equally unreliable manipulator of events in his use of narratives to shape their meaning. Inside the poem, the ancient story being told in a new form is that of the Norse heroes Sigmundr and his son Sinfjo̧tli (OE Sigemund and Fitela).5 Not only are the words bound together in new ways, but their narrative is bound to that of Beowulf, whose recent exploits thereby become the matter of story, drawn into the grander and timeless narrative of all heroic victories. As so often in forms of oral discourse, the performance is to some degree a product of multiple people (Beowulf, the scop, the Danes riding with them, and Grendel) and specific context, with Sigmundr’s victories explicitly sited in wild woods such as those they ride through, and rather unlike the splendid hall in which Beowulf in fact won his victory. Our northern reader may have lent credence to some form of historical reality for figures such as Sigmundr and Beowulf, but once their achievements have been shaped into sæge they assume a different order of significance: history no longer, for him they become ‘mere’ story, the product of specific people combining in a specific place and time, as reliable and productive as the laughter of a child. More than half a millennium later, similar tensions around the value and meaning of stories can be read in the conflict between Alison — the Wife of Bath — and Jankyn, her fifth husband who has a golden head and cold heart. She repeatedly rejects the principle that a particular meaning can be reliably identified in a story, refusing to accept the possibility of drawing a certain conclusion from a story about Christ (l. 20) before appearing to prefer the concrete certainties of non-narrative commandments (ll. 28–29) to the unreliability of stories. This general approach is crystallized into sedition when she rejects Jankyn’s use of stories to identify controls that should be set around women (ll. 659–60) and, crucially, claims that By God, if wommen hadde writen stories, As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse Than al the mark of Adam may redresse. (ll. 693–95)6 Alison regards the meaning of stories as malleable and inevitably bent to the ends of their tellers; the clerks’ stories by which Jankyn sets so much store

(A Catalogue of Manuscripts, § 229, p. 304), Malcolm Parkes (‘Rædan, areccan, smeagan’, p. 19), and Orchard (‘Word Made Flesh’, p. 309) read it as outlined here.  5 Sigmundr is the father of Sigurðr, famous as the killer of the dragon Fáfnir and best known through the twelfth-century German retelling of his story in the Nibelungenlied, in which he is called Sigfried. As discussed in Thomson, ‘Sigmnudr Fáfnisbani’, the version of the legend known to the Beowulf poet was an earlier iteration, in which Sigmundr was the dragon slayer.  6 References to The Canterbury Tales are to The Riverside Chaucer by text and line number.

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do not reflect women, or even their source materials, but their own age and impotence (ll. 707–10). Alison is, notably, not entirely clear on who is responsible for the misogyny of these narratives: the clerkly authors in their oratories, or Jankyn, who wields them like a club with which to beat her? Even in her clear and sharp dismissal, there is an uncertain recognition of plurality — a sense in which the easy and dismissive idea that a story being reshaped in retelling to a specific context and purpose has some form of life beyond that most immediate performance. Because she freely acknowledges that she, too, bends stories to her own ends (ll. 575–84), Alison’s own deployment of stories is not hypocritical here; what she is rejecting is not the potential of stories to be deployed in an argument, but the idea that a specific truth exists in them, to be uncovered by a careful reader and fired at precise rhetorical targets. Like the reader of Alcuin in Harley 208, Alison recognizes the cynical use of a story when she sees it. The scrap between the Summoner and the Friar towards the end of her Prologue, when each threatens to tell stories condemning the other (ll. 840–49), seems to function as an authorial endorsement of the narrator’s claim that stories are rhetorical devices, tools to be weaponized for their tellers’ objectives. Whatever their misgivings, these characters from Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales all regard old stories as powerful, as having the potential to shape the present world. Chaucer’s characters also clearly agree with the York scribe that any narration of events is shaped more by the teller’s perspective than by historical fact. It is clear that any telling of any story offers only a particular perspective on a particular situation. And yet the word ‘only’ hardly belongs in that sentence; as argued below, there is infinite value in being offered the opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Further, a story that insists on the existence of a particular perspective from which it can be told intrinsically also insists on the existence of other perspectives, on other ways of telling a single story, and on other stories that could be told.7 Regardless of whether a story may, like many medieval narratives with fictional (or fictionalized) narrators, call attention to its particularity, acknowledging a story to be fiction does not deprive it of its power. Similarly, rejecting the possibility of reducing a story down to a simple message, such as the idea that wives should submit to their husbands, does not impoverish stories; it releases them. Inherent in the Wife of Bath’s tirade is the sense that stories do matter, and they matter because their meanings are multiple and impossible to pin down. This starts to approach Ursula Le Guin’s pithy assessment that fantasy ‘isn’t factual, but it’s true’; indeed, ‘it is by such beautiful non-facts that we fantastic humans may arrive, in our peculiar fashion, at the truth’.8

 7 Cf. Midgley, Science and Poetry, who constantly emphasizes the value of an audience consciously reflecting on the fact that they are experiencing a story at e.g. pp. 6, 14, and 39.  8 Le Guin, ‘Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?’, pp. 44 and 45; cf. the reflections on the ‘reality’ of fictional characters in Eder, Jannidis, and Schneider, ‘Characters in Fictional

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This volume is about these tensions and interfaces. It is not produced in defence of stories and storytelling — no such defence is necessary when ‘storytelling’ has been elevated to a management-speak buzzword, been utilized in medical practice for the last twenty years, and is regarded as one of the fundamental bases of language and societal development.9 In the modern world, in fact, stories are increasingly placed at the very centre of our understanding of how to be human.10 It is by agreeing on common stories that communities are shaped, and our individual identities are founded upon the stories we tell about ourselves. Humanity developed language for and through storytelling, going on to use the same means to build social relationships and construct potent institutional myths, including those of nations. Lived experience is often messy; ‘just one damn thing after another’. This continual experience of chaos appears — feels — meaningless and relentless.11 It does not give us time to react, or a structure within which to shape our reactions. ‘Storying’ something allows us to invest it with meaning: to give it a recognizable shape and structure, and to set it apart from ourselves for examination and contemplation. It even allows us to stand outside ourselves, to cast our former self as character or performative narrator in order to re-examine and re-present past behaviour, to place incidents within different frames or at different points in a narrative arc, or to construct different outcomes from behaviours and words. The multiplicity and lack of fixity inherent to stories is therefore a key element of their power, and their truth-telling: the truth and the past are rarely simple, and human beings never are. Stories might seek to control our reactions in ways manipulative or generic, or they might simply call our attention to what is happening through their structured nature, inviting us to react and giving us the space to do so in a way the metalled ways of lived time do not. But they are vastly more complex, challenging, and significant than being simply ‘entertaining’ or ‘escapist’.12 Worlds’, at pp. 15–16 (though far from all of the pieces in their edited volume agree with this analysis).  9 There is a huge range of literature discussing or applying the ideas of storytelling in different disciplines and professions, but see for instance Morgan and Dennehy, ‘The Power of Organizational Storytelling’. Many studies have been written on storytelling in medicine, but see for instance Pennebaker, ‘Telling Stories: The Health Benefits of Narrative’, and, with a more specifically medieval focus, Marafioti, Storytelling as Plague Prevention in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. On language and social structures as built on storytelling, see e.g. von Heiseler, ‘Language Evolved for Storytelling’; Knight, ‘Ritual / Speech Coevolution’, who regards storytelling as the basis of law, religion, and all systems of authority including representational money, p. 79, and speech as evolved in order to tell stories p. 83; cf. also Vaneechoutte, ‘The Origin of Articulate Language Revisited’.  10 See most comprehensively Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal. With a specifically medieval focus, see Duys, Emery, and Postlewate, ‘Introduction’; Niles, Homo Narrans, throughout, but esp. pp. 3–4.  11 Cf. Midgley, Science and Poetry, p. 132.  12 Gotschall strongly emphasizes the role of stories as engaging with ‘horrorscapes’ rather than being escapist worlds, which he reads as illustrative of their role in addressing challenges, from

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The challenge, then, in producing a volume such as this is not in stimulating interest about diverse stories or storytelling methods, but in being precise about what is being investigated and why. Simultaneously fundamental and ephemeral, ‘stories’ are not an easy object to pin down for analysis. All human history, all lived experience, could, when told, be regarded as a story; can such a perspective be profitably studied? This volume has chosen to shrink this immense category to focus on how a story and its meanings are shifted or controlled through interactions between medium, teller, and reception: as the subtitle suggests, the contributions collectively present a range of perspectives on such interactions across different temporal and medial contexts. This makes the transformation in stories and their meanings when consciously re-presented in a new time or medium, or by a new teller, of particular interest. The world of medieval stories seems particularly apt to such explorations because a pre-print world is more aware of the flexibility of stories, of the way meaning can change when medium and context do, and of the complex relationship between oral delivery and aural reception of written texts, than is a post-Enlightenment culture formed by the experience of print which seeks certainty of fact and of form, often demanding to know ‘what really happened’ even in fictional universes.13

Stories, Storytellers, and Media The great significance of stories is their capacity to move beyond the here-andnow to the anywhere-and-anywhen. Stories insist on showing us something that we are not currently looking at. In a sense, then, when we engage with a story, we are surrendering control: allowing the narrative to tell us where to look and what we see there. As Siri Hustvedt has observed, this ‘movement into otherness requires openness to that other and a high degree of emotional risk’.14 This surrender of control is much stronger, of course, when a narrative experience is temporally fixed — such as when listening to a storyteller or watching a film — than when it is not — such as an individual making their own way through a novel, able to pause, or to flick backwards and forwards at will; or, more extremely, reading hypertext with links offering us the perpetual possibility of other elsewheres.15 Whatever the degree of control retained by the audience — a point to which we shall return below — the immediate

the banal to the existential, Storytelling Animal, esp. pp. 33–59; compare Midgley’s argu­ment against Peter Atkins’ view that poetry is limited to offering delight, Science and Poetry, p. 21.  13 See for instance the Game of Thrones forum page ‘How canon is the show?’, on A Forum of Ice and Fire, online at [accessed 24 April 2018].  14 Hustvedt, ‘Sontag on Smut’, p. 77.  15 Though compare Duys, Emery, and Schneider, who suggest that reading a manuscript page is just ‘like watching a performance unfold’, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.

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point is the other place to which the story invites us. This might be the next room, or a long ago in a galaxy far far away; the effect is (in this limited sense) the same: that where we are right now is not the only place, and what we are looking at is not the only thing to be seen. Every story shows us that alternatives exist; to paraphrase Mary Midgley, a story is a pair of spectacles through which one can see the world differently, or see a different world.16 This is not dissimilar from Emmanuel Levinas’ thinking about engaging with other people. When we see a stranger’s face, he argues, the first and immediate effect is that we recognize that they are not us.17 This pushes us, he suggests, towards recognizing two immense things: first, that others exist who are entirely different from ourselves, whose lives and thoughts and emotions we do not know; second, that we are contained and individual beings, living life from a set perspective. In Jonathan Gotschall’s terms, engaging with a story (in any form), softens and confuses our sense of self, opening up to other people, places, times, and ideas.18 The most unhappy form of existence of which Levinas can conceive is to be locked up in the self, trapped and alone in the echo-chamber of the mind.19 Stories, then, offer release from being so ‘cabined, cribbed, confined bound in’;20 in effect, they can be a shortcut to the same revelation, and thereby the same freedom, that Levinas finds in encountering a stranger’s face. That is, by unveiling an elsewhere, we can simultaneously recognize both the unique and valuable characteristics of our immediate ‘where’, and the fact that it is only one of infinite places to stand. By looking through another’s eyes, we can recognize the effects — not distortions, for each perspective is its own reality — that our own eyes have, and also discover that other eyes do not see the world as we do. But, for Levinas’ stranger’s face and for our stories, there is more. By recognizing that there is an inside (the self, where it is located, and how it functions) and an outside (other selves in their locations and with their own operating systems), the possibility is opened up of more and more extreme otherness and more radical elsewheres. Infinity becomes, not a possibility, but an inevitability. Time becomes a matter of perspective. For Levinas, looking at the face of the other is the start of a journey towards apprehension of God.21 The parallel argument here is that engaging with a story is the start of a journey towards the idea of timelessness.22 For a medieval hero like Beowulf, to become storied was to become timeless. This is more than becoming immortal, because immortality merely means existing for all time.

 16 Midgley, Science and Poetry, p. 26.  17 See his remarks in for instance, ‘Interview with François Poirié’.  18 Gottschall, Storytelling Animal, p. 152.  19 Levinas, ‘Interview with François Poirié’, p. 57.  20 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, III. iv.  21 Levinas, ‘Being-Toward-Death’, p. 135; Levinas, ‘In the Name of the Other’, p. 192.  22 Compare Gotschall’s brief discussion of how storytelling shapes perceptions of the past, Storytelling Animal, p. 169.

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Becoming timeless means stepping outside the confines of human perspectives altogether, moving into an entirely different plane. Mircea Eliade theorized that this is how religious ritual functions for believers, forming a connection between the usually sundered sacred and the secular, or profane, realities.23 Ritual enables those who exist in secular reality to access the sacred. That is, when a rite is performed, the sacred is not being imitated or recalled: it is being revealed, and participants are carried into its world. Eliade most famously described this as offering the possibility of a repeated Eternal Return to what LeGuin would regard as a ‘truer’ — if less factual — plane. It is not necessary to believe in the metaphysics of a religion to recognize that stories operate by this same dynamic. Nor is there any reason to think of the medieval experience of stories as fleeting or inconsequential: building on Mary Carruthers’ work on reading processes, Elise Louviot has recently argued that performances, even of works that we regard as secular, are likely to have been timed and repeated to allow an audience ‘to reflect on what they heard’ and to continually ‘deepen their understanding’ of narratives and what they might mean.24 By making its past or future into a story, a community accesses timelessness — steps outside the regular grind of season to season, or Monday to Friday. Stories abstract. They are not, ultimately, things happening behind our backs that we could see if we just looked in the right direction. They are taking place on an entirely different plane, where we may — if we wish — join them, for a moment. To tell a story is, thus, not simply to open a window onto another place, but to reach into that space and tie it together with something in the here-and-now. By so doing, that which we know to be concrete and everyday — or even sordid and dull — does not lose its muddied self, but acquires an additional shimmer from another place.25 A killer becomes a hero (or a monster). A leader becomes a king (or a rebel). A defined area of earth becomes a nation, and a stick in the garden becomes an ancient, spell-bound sword. This helps to explain the apparent sameness of many medieval stories, a tendency towards formal repetition that was once regarded as a weakness by scholars. When hagiographers describe their saints’ actions or sufferings in terms that sound remarkably like another saint’s actions or sufferings, they are not (or not just) cynically manipulating a tradition in order to elevate their chosen narrative to a position of significance. Nor are they mindlessly

 23 See most clearly Eliade, Myths Dreams, and Mysteries, e.g. p. 23; see also his Myth of the Eternal Return. I am very grateful to James Plumtree for pointing me towards Eliade, and observing this similarity between my thinking and his.  24 Louviot, Direct Speech in ‘Beowulf’, p. 70; cf., Jane Hawkes’ demonstration that objects and visual symbols demanded careful engagement and meditation to be properly read, ‘Symbolic Lives’, e.g. p. 332.  25 Cf. Mary Carruthers’ concept of the ‘perfecting’ of an individual’s life by being developed into a wider ‘civic being’ through learning, The Craft of Thought, e.g. p. 2. Much of the argu­ment here is indebted to Carruthers’ exploration of processes of thinking, reading, and remembering.

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believing that somehow things took place that no eye-witness saw. They are stitching a historical person into the fabric of metahistorical, or storied, time; recognizing that, as well as the visible facts that took place, events unfolded in a story-space as well.26 Whether King Edmund was, in fact, filled with many arrows is less relevant than the fact that he died — presumably by arrow — and was as holy as Saint Sebastian. In his account of the martyrdom, Abbo of Fleury’s use of imagery, describing Edmund as looking like ‘asper herecius aut spinis hirtus carduus’ (a prickly hedgehog or a thistle decorated with spines), is startling — even comically tasteless to modern eyes.27 But his intention is to abstract Edmund’s appearance, depersonalizing the king’s situation and turning him into an iconic image: another embodiment of Sebastian’s experience. This approach can present a difficulty in the modern world, where facts are more important than feelings.28 Refugees, for instance, who are still processing the events they have experienced, can give accounts that are not the same as what happened to them.29 This does not mean that they are lying; it often means that they have found a story which makes sense of their experiences and emotions and that has therefore become an expression of their own experience which is more real to them, in a particular moment, than what an impartial observer (should one be available in a war zone) has seen.30 If trauma has been dealt with, they may be able to revise the narrative of their experiences, or they may not; but stories serve the function of moving away from the concrete world and revealing, instead, what it feels like to experience the concrete world, and what all of it means. Saints — who are, after all, just a specific kind of hero — thus exist on two planes at the same time: they indisputably lived, eating real food and wearing real clothes and so on; they also lived and still live in a transhistorical, metaphysical plane of stories. Their lives mean more than a normal human’s life because they live more than one life, both in and out of time.31 This grants extraordinary power to the teller of stories.32 In part, a storyteller is a teacher, deciding which stories to tell in what circumstances for what end. In part, she is a priest, mediating between the immediate physicality of our concrete time and the timeless space that stories all live in. The anonymous  26 Cf. Knight, ‘Ritual / Speech Coevolution’, p. 76.  27 Abbo’s ‘Passio Eadmundi’, chap. x. Translation is mine, but based on that by Francis Hervey in The Garland of Saint Eadmund.  28 Cf. Midgley, Science and Poetry throughout, but see e.g. pp. 161, 178–79.  29 See for instance Nianias, ‘Verifying Refugees’ Stories’. For a fuller discussion of refugees’ stories in a similar context, see Plumtree, ‘Placing the Green Children of Woolpit’.  30 Cf. Hockley, ‘Therapy and Cinema’, p. 83.  31 Many of the suggestions here about hagiography and the function and status of saints ultimately derive from Thomas D. Hill’s ‘Imago Dei’. On the significance of storytelling as part of saints’ cults, see recently Räsänen, Hartmann, and Richards, eds, Relics, Identity, and Memory in Medieval Europe.  32 Compare Gotschall, Storytelling Animal, who sees storytellers as most frequently acting as fairly conservative preachers of societal norms, pp. 132–37.

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monk in York and the Wife of Bath feel that this power is too easily abused to reshape reality in the teller’s preferred form. Medieval storytellers are, understandably, primarily interested in highly effective storytellers, but they also find space to reflect on those who are less admirable. Sometimes, like the figure of Chaucer himself in The Canterbury Tales, these ‘bad storytellers’ are simply inept at the art of narration, or hopelessly old-fashioned in their aesthetic sensibilities. But they are often those, like Jankyn, who seek to limit a story to particular meanings. In John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, for instance, this general intention to make use of stories for restricted ends is repeatedly ironized. The responsibility of narration shifts from the semi-fictionalized Gower figure to an even more fictionalized Amans, with the Confessor Genius narrating and explaining numerous tales. The relentlessly slippery nature of authority thereby attained allows Gower the author to present ideas which directly conflict with one another;33 to tell stories ostensibly for moral purposes but which Chaucer’s Man of Law, for instance, saw as simply ‘wikke’, ‘cursed’ and ‘horrible’;34 and to conclude vastly complex stories with wildly simplistic morals.35 Stories do not do this, and neither do audiences: like T. S. Eliot’s appraisal of words themselves, stories strain Crack and sometimes break under the burden Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.36 A storyteller — such as Jankyn or Gower’s Genius — who tells a story in order to narrow it down to a single point, has themselves missed the point. Stories are as rebellious and multifaceted as the humans who cannot do without them, and they will not stay still. Despite the wide-ranging and remarkable power storytellers wield, then, such satires of weaker performances point to strictly circumscribed limits to their power. First, just as, in modern classrooms, a teacher’s job is first and foremost to meet his students where they are, a storyteller has to comprehend  33 Simpson, ‘Ironic Incongruence’.  34 Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, ll. 78, 80, & 84, usually regarded as referring to Gower’s use of the stories of Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre, though see Patricia J. Eberle’s note to these lines, Riverside Chaucer, p. 856.  35 This arguably applies to all of the stories told by Genius to Amans, but see for instance the glib moral at the end of the horrific story of Albinus and Rosemund, I. 2647–61; the confusing attempt to clarify the purpose of telling the story of Socrates and Xanthippe, III. 699–713; or the unclear and unhelpful lesson from the lengthy tale of Apollonius, VIII. 2009–2011. References to Confessio Amantis are by book and line number to John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. by Peck.  36 Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, Four Quartets, ll. 152–55. On movement and ambiguity as an aesthetic form, see e.g. Keefer, ‘“Either / And” as “Style”’, esp. p. 180, as well as the chapters by Witt and Herman in this volume.

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the context to which they are performing: Chaucer’s tale of Sir Thopas is a deliberate example of a performer not understanding the aesthetic context.37 Second, a storyteller is not in control of the story, any more than a priest is in control of divine forces, just as any work of art moves beyond the control of the individual who created it. No matter what Genius says, no normal human can listen to a story about a warrior forcing his wife to drink from the skull of her father and eventually suffering her vengeance, and end the story thinking only that it tells us not to be boastful when we’re in love.38 By understanding the audience, and by knowledge of the world of stories, the teller connects the two; what happens next is up to their interactions, not to her: ‘The magic of words is the collusion of a ritual ingroup. Withdraw the collusion and nothing happens — the speaker’s words are empty sound’.39 A storyteller is a conduit and a catalyst, not a commander; a shaman, not a chieftain. Throughout this introduction, I have used ‘storytellers’ to refer to humans who articulate a narrative so that other humans can hear it. This is certainly the most straightforward and familiar structure within which storytelling takes place, especially for students of literature. But a person is only one, and perhaps not even the most common, of the liminal spaces through which a story can move between its own plane and that of everyday existence.40 Media — manuscripts, mosaics, architecture, decorated objects — offer other methods of shaping and presenting meaningful narrative; other frames through which the world of story can burst.41 Any storytelling is an interaction between story, medium of telling, audience, and context; in Derek G. Neal’s terms, ‘[t] he literary subject exists only when both audience and text are present and interacting, and it ceases to exist when their interaction ceases’;42 or, another way of putting the same idea, ‘[t]he interplay is the point’.43 In the chapters that follow, each briefly discussed below, scholars from a range of disciplines explore how medieval stories are told by different people, in different contexts, and using different media. It is our hope that readers of this volume will find much of value by viewing it, not simply as multi-disciplinary, but as inter-disciplinary; by engaging with something as fundamental as how stories are told in an unfamiliar time or medium, we can return to our own disciplines with more subtle awareness of how they function  37  38  39  40

Burrow, ‘“Sir Thopas”: An Agony in Three Fits’. ‘Albinus and Rosemund’, in Confessio Amantis, I. 2647–61. Knight, ‘Ritual / Speech Coevolution’, p. 78; see also pp. 78–83. Contrast Niles, Homo Narrans, who explicitly equates storytelling with the oral delivery of narratives at p. 1.  41 On the use of frames in manuscript art see e.g. Baker, ‘Engaging with the Divine’, esp. pp. 236–37; and on art objects pulling the viewer into the storied space, Boulton, ‘“The End of the World as We Know It”’, esp. p. 284.  42 Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England, p. 190; cf. Schwiechart and Flynn, ‘Introduction’, esp. pp. xiv–xvii; Flynn, ‘Gender and Reading’, esp. pp. 268–70; Hockley, ‘Therapy and Cinema’, esp. pp. 77 and 83.  43 Leyser, Medieval Women, p. 65, not in this context.

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to create meaning, and a clearer sense of our myriad connections with much wider worlds of stories and people. Each author has sought to tell the story of their own work in ways accessible to new audiences at the same time as analysing the storytelling relevant to their field. We therefore urge readers coming to this volume out of interest in one media, period, or idea to look to left and to right and read narratives they would not normally read to find the strange familiar and the familiar strange. The chapters speak to one another in ways we have found remarkably, excitingly productive. Below, we sketch out some of their ideas, and some of the ties that bind them. Opening the volume are two chapters which bring together much of what this collection seeks to explore. In ‘Beowulf Goes to School: Adaptations and Transformations for the Secondary Classroom’, Jane Coles, Theo Bryer, and Daniel Ferreira have written about the use of print media, moving image, and computer games in training secondary school teachers to work with their students. In the project on which they report, they are exploring multiple perspectives and media, taking the ancient text of Beowulf and providing their participants with opportunities to play with and retell it in new ways that took account and advantage of the completely fresh perspectives of those participants. The poem is both tool — enabling the exploration of pedagogical approaches and facilitating the teaching of different media — and subject — with its themes, characters, language, and iconic moments all explored in their own right. Beowulf remains in the spotlight for ‘“Retelling Old Stories for New Audiences”: Shaping and Visualizing Beowulf Through Gareth Hinds’ Graphic Novels [The Collected Beowulf (2003) & Beowulf (2007)]’, Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso’s discussion of the specific medium of graphic novels. Covering a number of different graphic treatments of the poem, Bueno Alonso looks most closely at Gareth Hinds’ retelling to consider how his skilful use of the comic book form and sympathetic engagement with the text of the poem result in new visions of the poem and the medium, as well of the interactions between text and audience, medieval and modern. Together, then, Coles, Bryer and Ferreira, and Bueno Alonso explore both specific modern contexts and how different media function within them, playing with the dynamics between visual, verbal, performative, and procedural aspects as well as returning continually to the poem, the poet, and the hero as the source and focus of both stories and the ways in which they are told. The context of telling remains sharply in focus for Erin Goeres’ exploration of communal storytelling in ‘Being Numerous: Communal Storytelling in Liðsmannaflokkr’, a study of some of the skaldic verses composed in praise of Cnut the Great (Knútr inn ríki), king of England 1016–1035. Showing that the verses present a fundamentally collective narrative, Goeres shows how the storytelling embodied in these texts functioned to create a community; by speaking with a collective voice of collective experiences, it creates the unity that it performs. Further, by performing that unity to an audience, it invites us to become one with it, using story to continuously expand the communal body and shaping the concept of a ‘plural self ’. Paying close attention to the

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humour, materiality, and concerns of the poetry offers a connection with the language and processes of storytelling, and with the human experiences that lie behind this representation. In ‘Performance and Emotions in Four Epic Works about Roland’, her discussion of French and Italian epics, Evelyn Vitz also explores how tellers and audiences interact through text. Showing the performance possibilities, and challenges, offered by these poems, with a particular focus on the variant emotions that storytellers had to be capable of embodying and the emotional responses thereby invited in the audience, Vitz demonstrates the vitality — the multi-sensory, emotional, embodied experience — that medieval storytelling could be. This offers a vivid reminder of both the dynamic and the mediated nature of stories, especially stories in performance, which, as discussed above, are easily elided when we approach printed texts in silent, solo spaces. Also focusing on different tellings of a particular story — that of the Jewish heroine Judith — is Simon Thomson’s chapter, which brings a different sort of attention to the motivations behind individual rewritings. Four different early medieval retellings of Judith’s story are explored in his ‘Towards a Poetics of Storytelling, or, Why Could Early Medieval English Writers not Stop Telling the Story of Judith?’, with a focus on the ways in which different tellers sought to resolve the elements of the story that they so clearly found uncomfortable. This leads into the broader question of why they chose to tell a story that they had to work so hard to control; of what makes a ‘good story’. The thesis ultimately presented is that the appeal of stories lies in their difficulty and their alterity, and the challenge they therefore present to us as audiences and tellers. Meg Boulton’s ‘Mosaics, Marbles and Medievalisms: Displaying the Foundation Narrative of the English Church in Westminster Cathedral’ moves from the content to the framing of narratives. As well as exploring details of the artistry and construction of the cathedral’s mosaics, Boulton shows how the space of an individual church building enables individual stories to be set into a broader meta-narrative, and how Bede’s specific story of the Augustinian mission was retold in different forms and with different focuses to construct the sense of an English spiritual community which has its part in the wider Catholic Church and the universal story of the divine, which narrative enfolds us all and takes us from a collective past and into a collective future. Euan McCartney Robson is also interested in the storytelling space of a building. In his ‘A Storied Cathedral: Space and Audacious Women in Early Medieval Durham’, he shows how the space of the cathedral was used over several centuries to generate and authenticate misogynistic storytelling. Both the specific examples used and the theoretical construct of the interactions between stories, their tellers, their audiences, and the contexts of production and reception in turn enable the cathedral itself and how its meaning is made through stories to become a subject of analysis. With Boulton’s sense of multiple stories drawn into a single narrative by the space within which they are contained, with Goeres’ interest in the capacity of a story to make

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us participants in its telling, and with Baker’s awareness of the continually developing, ever progressing nature of the divine narrative, Robson invites us to read spaces in time and to recognize the infinity of moments which comprise collective experience, narrative accounts, and corporate structures. Christoph Witt looks at a fictional instance of storytelling through a concrete object in ‘Dynamic Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel’. As with Robson’s and Boulton’s analyses of the interactions between different stories and media in the same space, exploring the story told by the jewelled collar of the dog Gardevîaz means looking in several directions at the same time: at the material composition of the collar; at the words inscribed upon it and the storied accounts of historical pain they contain; at the physical pain it causes those who seek to decode it; at the relevance of the accounts to the moment in her own story at which Sigune encounters them; and at the intertextual games that leash, dog, characters, and narrative play with Parzival. As shown by Bueno Alonso, and Coles, Bryer, and Ferreira at the opening of this volume, stories are shaped by the media that contain them and the moment in which they are received as well as by their authors and contents. And Wolfram’s presentation of stories calls attention to the fact that it is itself communicated to us as part of a fictional construct, insisting on a persistent dynamism in constant flux between form and content, author and audience, context and individual. Richard North explores a similar control of multivalency through intertextual resonance in ‘Iceland’s Alexander: Gunnarr and Pale Corn in Njáls saga’. Like Witt, North focuses on the authorial control visible in a single iconic narrative moment, arguing that the moment at which Gunnarr looks back at his farm before his death simultaneously glorifies the hero by associating him with — even transforming him into — the great literary hero Alexander while also calling attention to the feeble nature of Icelandic society, unworthy of such a hero. The moment is simultaneously celebratory and satirical; elevating and undermining; engaging with historical and literary models; nostalgic, mournful, damning, and humorous. The story of this instant splinters in multiple directions, its richness carrying the reader into other storied realms while anchored to the immediacy of Gunnarr’s experience. Developing this exploration of stories awaiting discovery by an active audience is ‘Sensing Stories: Iconography, Pattern, and Abstraction in Metalwork from Early Medieval England’, Melissa Herman’s analysis of the use of design and abstraction on objects from sixth- and seventh-century England. Herman shows how visual objects participate in the well-known Old English literary aesthetic of delighting in puzzle and play, in the play of ambiguity, and argues that they make use of convention — a form of visual grammar — to invite viewers to create meaning through the process of looking. How lines, shapes, and images on shining objects are resolved into stories changes based not only on who is viewing them, but also from what angle and in what light they are viewed; moving objects tell stories that are different from those recounted by the same object when static. Interest is,

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then, focused on process, on ambiguity and the pleasure of storied play rather than in resolving signs into a settled form. Finally, James Plumtree reminds us that ‘medieval’ forms of storytelling are far from a thing of the past in ‘A Telling Tradition: Preliminary Comments on the Epic of Manas, 1856–2018’. The Manas story is a living tradition of epic oral poetry, which plays a key role in shaping the Kygyrz idea of nationhood. Plumtree’s research is likewise live, a project in progress to identify and record variant versions of the narrative, and to thereby come to grips with some of the questions raised by this volume about the interactions between stories, tellers, audiences, and contexts both immediate and vast. This final chapter, then, is about not only an ever-changing story and the forces which continuously reshape it, but also the ongoing story of research and exploration in which we are all engaged.

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Works Cited Manuscript London, British Library, Harley MS 208 Primary Sources Abbo of Fleury, ‘Passio Sancti Eadmundi Regis et Martyris’, in Three Lives of English Saints, ed. by Michael Winterbottom (Toronto: Center for Pontifical Studies, 1972) Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. by Ernst Dümmler, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae Karolini aevi, (Hannover: Hahn, 1895), 4 (1895) Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, third edition, ed. by Larry D. Benson and others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, first published 1987) Eliot, T. S., ‘Burnt Norton’, in Four Quartets, in The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume 1: Collected and Uncollected Poems, ed. by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue (London: Faber & Faber, 2015), pp. 179–84 Gower, John, Confessio Amantis, ed. by Russell A. Peck, 3 vols (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000–2005) Hervey, Francis, The Garland of Saint Eadmund King and Martyr (New York: Dutton, 1907) Klaeber’s ‘Beowulf’ and the ‘Fight at Finnsburg’, ed. by Robert D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, 4th edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) Secondary Studies Baker, N. G., ‘Engaging with the Divine: Evangelist Images as Tools for Contemplation’, in Making Histories: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Insular Art, York 2011, ed. by Jane Hawkes (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), pp. 229–41 Boulton, Meg, ‘“The End of the World as We Know It”: Viewing Eschatology and Symbolic Space/s in Late Antique and Insular Art’, in Making Histories: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Insular Art, York 2011, ed. by Jane Hawkes (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), pp. 279–90 Burrow, J. A., ‘“Sir Thopas”: An Agony in Three Fits’, Review of English Studies, new series, 22 (1971), 54–58 Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Duys, Kathryn A., Elizabeth Emery, and Laurie Postlewate, ‘Introduction’, in Telling the Story in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Evelyn Birge Vitz, ed. by Kathryn A. Duys, Elizabeth Emery, and Laurie Postlewate, Gallica, 36 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2015), pp. 1–10

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Eder, Jens, Fotis Jannidis, and Ralf Schneider, ‘Characters in Fictional Worlds: An Introduction’, in Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media, ed. by Jens Eder, Fotis Jannidis, and Ralf Schneider, Revisionen, Grundbegriffe der Literaturtheorie, 3 (Berlin: Gruyter, 2010), pp. 3–64 Eliade, Mircea, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, trans. by Philip Mairet (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), first published as Mythes, rêves et mystères (Paris: Gallimard, 1957) —— , The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History, trans. by Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), first published as Le mythe de l’éternel retour: archétypes et répétition (Paris: Gallimard, 1949) Flynn, Elizabeth A., ‘Gender and Reading’, in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, ed. by Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweichart (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1992; first printed 1986), pp. 267–88 A Forum of Ice and Fire, ‘How canon is the show?’, online at [accessed 24 April 2018] Gottschall, Jonathan, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: First Mariner, 2012) Hawkes, Jane, ‘Symbolic Lives: The Visual Evidence’, in The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century, Second Conference on Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology, 27th to 31st August 1994, San Marino, ed. by John Hines, Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology 2. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), pp. 311–44 Hill, Thomas D., ‘Imago Dei: Genre, Symbolism, and Anglo-Saxon Hagiography’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. by Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 35–50 Hockley, Luke, ‘Therapy and Cinema: Making Images and Finding Meanings’, in Embodied Encounters: New Approaches to Psychoanalysis and Cinema, ed. by Agnieszka Piotrowska (New York: Routledge, 2015) pp. 77–90 Hustvedt, Siri, ‘Sontag on Smut: Fifty Years Later’, in Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind (London: Simon & Schuster, 2016), pp. 61–78 Keefer, Sarah Larratt, ‘“Either / And” as “Style”’, in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. by Catherine E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 179–20 Ker, Neil, A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) Knight, Chris, ‘Ritual / Speech Coevolution: A Solution to the Problem of Deception’, in Approaches to the Evolution of Language, ed. by James R Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, and Chris Knight (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 68–91

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Le Guin, Ursula, ‘Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?’, in Ursula Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood (New York: Putnam, 1979), pp. 39–45 Levinas, Emmanuel, Is It Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) —— , ‘Interview with François Poirié’, trans. by Jill Robbins and Marcus Coelen with Thomas Loebel, in Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous To Be?, ed. by Jill Robbins (2001), pp. 23–83 —— , ‘Being-Toward-Death’, trans. by Andrew Schmitz, in Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous To Be?, ed. by Jill Robbins (2001), pp. 130–39 —— , ‘In the Name of the Other’, trans. by Maureen V. Gedney, in Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous To Be?, ed. by Jill Robbins (2001), pp. 188–99 Leyser, Henrietta, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England, 450–1000 (London: Phoenix, 1995) Louviot, Elise, Direct Speech in ‘Beowulf’ and Other Old English Narrative Poems, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 30 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2016) Midgley, Mary, Science and Poetry (London and New York: Routledge, 2001) Neal, Derek G., The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) Nianias, Helen, ‘Verifying Refugees’ Stories: Why is it so Difficult’, Guardian 17/11/2016, online at [accessed 4 May 2018] Niles, John D., Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) Orchard, Andy, ‘Word Made Flesh: Christianity and Oral Culture in Anglo-Saxon Verse’, Oral Tradition, 24 (2009), 293–318 Marafioti, Martin, Storytelling as Plague Prevention in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: The Decameron Tradition (London: Routledge, 2018) Morgan, Sandra, and Robert F. Dennehy, ‘The Power of Organizational Storytelling: A Management Development Perspective’, Journal of Management Development, 16 (1997), 494–501 Parkes, Malcolm, ‘Rædan, areccan, smeagan: How the Anglo-Saxons Read’, AngloSaxon England, 26 (1997), 1–22 Pennebaker, J. W., ‘Telling Stories: The Health Benefits of Narrative’, Literature and Medicine, 19 (2000), 3–18 Plumtree, James, ‘Placing the Green Children of Woolpit’, in Strangers at the Gate! The (Un)Welcome Movement of People and Ideas in the Medieval West, ed. by S. C. Thomson (Leiden: Brill, in preparation) Räsänen, Marika, Gritje Hartmann, and Earl Jeffrey Richards, eds, Relics, Identity, and Memory in Medieval Europe, Europa Sacra, 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) Schwiechart, Patrocinio P., and Elizabeth A. Flynn, ‘Introduction’, in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, ed. by Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweichart (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1992; first printed 1986), pp. ix–xxx

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Simpson, James, ‘Ironic Incongruence in the Prologue and Book I of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, Neophilologus, 72 (1988), 617–32 Stokes, Peter, English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut c. 990 – c. 1035, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 14 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2014) Thomson, S. C., Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript: Towards a History of Reception for the Nowell Codex, Library of the Written Word 67 – The Manuscript World, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2018) —— , ‘Sigmundr Fáfnisbani in the Court of Cnut’, in The Siege of London, ed. by Richard North and Erin Goeres (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2020) Vaneechoutte, Mario, ‘The Origin of Articulate Language Revisited: The Potential of a Semi-Aquatic Past of Human Ancestors to Explain the Origin of Human Musicality and Articulate Language’, Human Evolution 29 (2014), 1–33 von Heiseler, Till Nikolaus, ‘Language Evolved for Storytelling in a Super-Fast Evolution’, in Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference. Vienna, Austria, 14–17 April 2014, ed. by Erica A. Cartmill, Seán Roberts, Heidi Lyn, and Hannah Cornish (London: World Scientific, 2014), pp. 114–21

Jane Coles, Theo Bryer, and Daniel Ferreira

Beowulf Goes to School Adaptations and Transformations for the Secondary Classroom This chapter is dedicated to the memory of our very dear colleague Morlette Lindsay (1958–2016): an inspiring and creative teacher/ teacher educator, whose extraordinary energy and commitment is sorely missed by all who have had the privilege of collaborating with her.

Introduction In this chapter we offer an account of a two-day workshop exploring multimodal approaches to teaching Beowulf with pre-service English and drama teachers1 at the Institute of Education, University College London. One of the aims of the project2 was to consider how different literacies connect across modes, specifically print media, drama, moving image, and computer games, in the expectation that exploring learners’ cross-media engagement might offer new insights into young people’s literacy practices.3

The authors are grateful to Simon Thomson for his enthusiastic participation in the original Beowulf workshop, including his wonderful storytelling and his many scholarly contributions throughout the process.  1 Graduates training to be secondary school teachers. They are enrolled on a one-year university course which combines academic study with two extended periods of schoolbased practice.  2 The 2014 workshop reported here formed part of an unfunded pilot for the following year’s broader-based Digital Transformations project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, ‘Playing Beowulf: Gaming the Library’. Led by Andrew Burn of the London Knowledge Lab, this latter project involved a number of research partners including the British Library, researchers from Sydney University, London school students and their teachers (see https://darecollaborative.net/2015/03/11/ playing-beowulf-gaming-the-library/).  3 A line of argument developed by Burn, see for instance his ‘Multi-text Magic’. We are here using the popular term ‘computer game’ rather than the more accurate (but less widely recognized) ‘digital game’. *

Jane Coles, Theo Bryer, and Daniel Ferreira, University College London Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 31–51  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121600

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Essentially, we wanted our student teachers to explore how stories are told and constructed, particularly paying attention to the diverse ways in which perspective or point of view (POV) is expressed to different effect in a range of media. The group of student teachers we worked with were all in the first term of their English or English with Drama PGCE course (Post-Graduate Certificate of Education), by which time they were partly based at the university and partly in secondary schools. Consequently, the workshop objectives operated on two levels: firstly, investigating how postgraduate students’ own reception of Beowulf was shaped by engaging with various textual transformations; and, secondly, developing student teachers’ pedagogical range and understanding, appropriate to secondary school teaching in London classrooms. In asking how digital media might transform literary and dramatic narratives, our research draws on a number of theoretical traditions, including socio-cultural understandings of literacy, social constructivist theories of learning, and adaptation studies.4 Playfulness and gaming in its broadest sense were both recurrent themes in this project. Underpinning our work with student teachers is a fundamental commitment to regarding learners, whether graduates or school pupils, as active participants in the business of meaning-making in the literature classroom. Our belief as teacher educators is that school literacy should extend far beyond the mere decoding of texts; instead, we propose that it should be conceived as a set of social and cultural processes which are potentially transformative, critical, and creative. Secondary teachers in England currently work in the policy context of an increased emphasis on pre-twentieth-century canonical literature.5 Perhaps not surprisingly, commonly expressed concerns amongst English teachers suggest that a test-driven, knowledge-based curriculum is in danger of resulting in a dry, transmission model of pedagogy.6 In presenting an alternative pedagogy, we wanted to encourage our student teachers to create the space in their classrooms within which young people would be able to bring their own cultural resources to bear on their collective interpretive encounters with literature such as Beowulf. Working multimodally also offered the opportunity to rebuild pedagogic connections between English,  4 On socio-cultural understandings of literacy, see e.g. Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies; Street, ‘The Implication of the “New Literacy Studies” for Literacy Education’. On social constructivist theories, see e.g. Vygotsky, Mind in Society. For adaptation studies, see e.g. Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation.  5 For example, the Key Stage 4 (14–16 year olds) curriculum for English specifies study of ‘high quality classic literature’, including works from the nineteenth century, Shakespeare, and romantic poetry. See Department for Education, The National Curriculum in England: Programmes of Study for English (updated, 2014).  6 A concern that is not limited to English educators. See, for example, Doecke and McClenaghan, Confronting Practice writing about the challenges of teaching English in Australia in the context of ‘standards-based reforms’ (p. 8); and, from the USA: Cimbricz and McConn, ‘Changing the English Classroom’.

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Drama, and Media. Within current classroom practice in England there is some dissonance in how these modes are used as platforms for learning according to conventional subject boundaries, a view that we were interested in challenging.7 For a number of reasons, Beowulf presented us with an ideal text. Perhaps contrary to expectations, aspects of the Beowulf narrative remain a relatively popular choice of topic in UK schools for 11–14 year olds, a popularity which predates the current National Curriculum in England.8 The structure of Beowulf, with its intricate interlacing of multiple stories and shifting narrative perspectives, lends itself to trans-media adaptation.9 Not only were we keen to exploit the textual ambiguities inherent in the Beowulf poem, we were also attracted by the opportunity to explore gender representation by focusing on the hero’s somewhat enigmatic encounter with an explicitly female monster. The Beowulf story has been translated and adapted in a range of media, including various film and graphic versions, children’s picture books and, more recently, a UK television series;10 all of which serve to open the Beowulf narrative up to different audiences, and invite productive comparisons. As pointed out by Chris Jones, the particular history of Beowulf as a poem has been one of re-performance and adaptation spanning three millennia, starting with the existing eleventh-century manuscript, itself ‘already an adaptation, a refraction […] An eleventh-century performance of narrative material from the first millennium, the poem is already in movement, transitory… and in transition’.11 The manuscript containing Beowulf also happens to be one of the first major digitization projects undertaken by the British Library.12 This offered rich potential for extending our research partnership in the second, funded stage of the project during the following year. Finally, the ludo-dramatic qualities of Beowulf inherent in its archaic-heroic tropes lent itself particularly well to a digital reinterpretation in the form of an interactive narrative or computer game.

 7 See Franks, Durran, and Burn, ‘Stories of the Three-Legged Stool’. The authors challenge the current curricular hierarchy that privileges literary study within English over Media and Drama. They argue that, despite divergent pedagogic traditions, these three domains when combined offer fresh understandings of text, performance, signification, and literacy.  8 See references to teaching Beowulf in Caldwell Cook, The Play Way; O’Neill and Lambert, Drama Structures; Neelands, Making Sense of Drama.  9 See Leyerle, ‘The Interlace Structure of Beowulf’.  10 Films include Beowulf, dir. by Baker and Beowulf, dir. by Zemeckis. An example of a graphic novel is Hinds, Beowulf, discussed by Jorge Luis Bueno in the next chapter in this volume. The recent UK television series broadcast on ITV is Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, dir. by Dormer, Haines, and Newman.  11 Jones, ‘From Heorot to Hollywood’, p. 13.  12 London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv (second part).

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Research Methods Because our inquiry is essentially exploratory and focuses on human interaction and processes within a specific social setting, qualitative methods of collecting data best suited our purpose (including observation, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of creative outputs generated by the students). The group of twenty-six student teachers were volunteers drawn from across the PGCE English / English with Drama cohort of approximately one hundred and twenty. The main activities during the two-day workshop were filmed and transcribed by the team of three researchers. The students’ own writing, films, and computer game ‘walkthroughs’ were later viewed by members of the research team, and thematically analysed.13 The analysis of the games involved initial observation of the creative process during the workshop, an examination of the finalized projects (as well as their respective data files), and individual interviews with the creators. Games were selected for analysis according to how well they reflected their designer’s understanding of the tools and functions provided by the game-authoring software (MissionMaker), as well as the level of completion, regarding structure, functionality, and detail. Later in the academic year, a small focus group was invited to reflect on how the activities had informed their developing practice as teachers. These four volunteers had all subsequently taught a Beowulf unit of work14 with pupils in their teaching placement schools. All interviews were recorded and later transcribed for thematic analysis.15 For the purposes of this chapter we are focusing on three core workshop activities which span three key modes of production, all focused on ways of retelling the story: writing-in-role (that is, writing in the voice of an assumed character), filmmaking, and digital game design.

The Workshop The first day’s workshop involved storytelling, drama, filmmaking,16 creative writing, language-based activities, and analyses of visual images and issues of representation; the second day involved exploration of the possibilities offered by the game-authoring tool. Although the vast majority of our PGCE students are English and / or Drama graduates, very few had ever studied Beowulf before; we therefore worked with a number of translations and  13 See method developed by Miles and Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis.  14 Also known as ‘schemes of work’, these plans normally consist of teaching sequences covering approximately six weeks’ worth of lessons.  15 Ethical considerations adhered to current BERA Ethical Guidelines including obtaining informed consent in writing from each of the participants.  16 We were working with digital video but with reference to the cultural associations and conventions of filmmaking.

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retellings of the Beowulf narrative, with Heaney’s translation as our preferred base-text.17 At the same time, we felt it was important to introduce student teachers explicitly to the language and verse form of the Old English source text. Throughout, our emphasis was on creative and collaborative approaches such as code-breaking games and kenning creation alongside matching and sequencing activities, in the latter instance working simultaneously with Old English and the translation. Although it is generally accepted that contemporary textual transformation and adaptation is driven by new technologies,18 with this project we also drew on ancient textual modes, such as skaldic poetry, which is an Old Norse verse form composed for public performance.19 Like Old English poetry, it is rich in kennings, but also embraces a deliberate playfulness, revelling in irony, word-play, and ambiguity. Since skaldic verse often commemorates historical events and heroic deeds we offered it as a model for our students to use in collaborative writing and in performance-based activities celebrating Beowulf ’s defeat of Grendel’s mother. After preliminary contextualizations, the first day’s workshop commenced with a dramatic summary of the Beowulf narrative captured in ten preselected quotations, collectively enacted by the students in a series of still and moving tableaux. Then, through a combination of active storytelling, improvisation, and soundscape work, we retold the story, breaking the narrative flow at the point where Beowulf has dived into the fiend-filled mere, seeking revenge upon Grendel’s mother (ll. 1492–1590). It is at this juncture that the Beowulf poet (almost in the manner of a film) cuts to the scene at the surface of the mere, where Beowulf ’s ceorlas (followers)20 have been waiting so long at the mere’s edge that they assume Beowulf has perished, particularly when they notice ‘a heave-up and surge of waves | And blood in the backwash’.21

Workshop Activities Writing-in-Role

Taking up the poet’s invitation to view the action from this new perspective, we invited the students to write spontaneously in role as the ceorlas, who:

 17 Students looked at retellings by, for example, Kevin Crossley-Holland and Michael Morpurgo, and the dual language edition of Heaney’s translation.  18 For example, see Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation.  19 For an introduction of sorts to skaldic poetry, see Erin Goeres’ ‘Being Numerous: Communal Storytelling in Liðsmannaflokkr’ in this volume.  20 Translated by Heaney as ‘counsellors’ (l. 1591).  21 ll. 1593–94. Unless otherwise stated, all Modern English quotations are taken from Heaney’s verse translation.

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spoke in their sage, experienced way about the good warrior, how they never again expected to see that prince returning… …It was clear to many that the wolf of the deep had destroyed him forever. (ll. 1594–99) We asked what stories they wanted to tell at this point in the poet’s narrative. Three examples transcribed from video recordings of each student’s live delivery serve to underline the potency of writing-in-role as a pedagogic tool. Adopting markedly distinctive voices, Joseph, Gemma, and Edward22 approach the brief writing task in contrasting ways — differences that were reflected in their performed readings, too. So, while both Joseph and Edward elect to remember Beowulf ’s public displays of heroism and leadership, Gemma quietly reflects upon small acts of personal friendship. Here is Joseph’s piece; it is interesting for the way in which it conveys a strong sense of social and historical context with its reference to the importance of community and communal rituals: He used the greatest sword that was ever forged. A friend, a leader, wasted by the most cursed of all monsters. I remember when he returned from killing the fearsome monster that attacked us out of season, there he stood still dripping in blood and his only concern was for the revelry we had that night, and that we had enough oaks to cut down for the funeral boats for the men we had lost. A great man, as great as any that shall ever stride this earth. But in truth that is a lie: Beowulf was no man. No, when I shall talk of him again I shall say I have seen giants. The glimpse we have of Beowulf in Joseph’s account goes beyond the totemic ‘flat’ hero of cartoon legends: he is not only physically strong but has admirable leadership qualities in caring for his men, both the living and the dead. Meanwhile, approaching from an entirely different angle, Gemma’s memories of Beowulf reach back into an imagined childhood where the warmth of Beowulf ’s personal support appears to combat fear itself: We were young together and I would not go near the water. I never learnt to swim. Fearful, I was. It would come to me every night in my dreams and I would drown. Beowulf knew well of this. But he knew that one day soon I would need to go on board a ship and one day I would join his guard. First he told me stories of his strength: I trusted him then. He would not let me sink. He encouraged me to practise in a small crystal clear pool near our home in Geatland. There I learnt from him, about to lose my terror because of him. As I sit here now those terrors return to me. The water here is dark and full of pestilence. I am afeared again of it and I may now be for ever-more.  22 Names of students have been anonymised.

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In using the swimming motif, Gemma’s writing deftly makes links with the wider poem in ways that are reminiscent of the Geats’ journey by sea (ll. 209–28), Beowulf’s dive into the mere (ll. 1492–1512), and the variously recounted Breca incident (ll. 506–81). In complete contrast, Edward constructs a more formal, rather depersonalized obituary which focuses entirely on Beowulf ’s heroic qualities and his epoch-ending demise. Perhaps with a knowingly postmodern gesture, it is recounted in the manner of a fable, a story within a story: There once was a rare man, bold, full of boasting – yet as good as his word: the hero of Geatland who crossed the swan-road to do great deeds and to enter the songs of men. His arm was his own battle-light, stronger than sky-iron, his back stouter than war-ash. He was more a man than all men, a defeater of monsters, a hero of the north, a last descendant of the age of heroes. One of the few student teachers who had studied Old English poetry as part of his university degree, Edward’s writing-in-role is unique amongst the whole group of students for its conscious mimicry of Old English poetic features. Andy Orchard argues that the Beowulf poet employs a range of stylistic features that create a sense of heroic distance from the events described; this effect is echoed here by Edward’s use of kennings and alliteration.23 Indeed, Edward even adopted a slightly mannered style in his live delivery of the piece; he read it with an air of heightened formality. It is clear even from these rapidly composed, provisional drafts that each of these students has entered the imagined world of the source text, but done so in highly individualistic ways. To borrow Cecily O’Neill and Theresa Rogers’ phrase, students are ‘prying open the text’ through use of in-role and performance strategies.24 Our work with these student teachers is informed by classroom-based research which suggests that writing-in-role not only helps learners compose with a renewed sense of commitment, but leads to them adopting a strong ‘voice’ particularly when the writing ‘seizes the moment’ within the immediate imaginative context.25 Through this process the story becomes their own, and, as demonstrated by Sophie’s writing below, this way of working may help to develop critical understanding, too. It is worth adding that the second time we embarked on this project (the following year, as part of the AHRC funded research), our colleague Morlette Lindsay set up the writing-in-role in a slightly different way. After reminding the assembled ceorlas what might lie in store for their hero Beowulf, currently preparing to leap into the mere, she suddenly moved to the centre of the circle and crouched down in a position of vulnerability. Very briefly

 23 Orchard, ‘Is Violence what Old English Literature is About?’.  24 O’Neill and Rogers, ‘Drama and Literary Response’, p. 48.  25 Barrs, ‘Voice and Role in Reading and Writing’; Cremin, and others, ‘Connecting Drama and Writing’.

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she embodied the role of Grendel’s mother — offering, through her posture and expression, an indication of the monster’s perspective, as she waits for an attack by a man with the strength of thirty in each of his hands. Disrupting the narrative through this brief moment of role-play had the effect of unsettling the identification proposed in what had come before. In O’Neill and Rogers’ words, we were ‘encouraging a range of interpretations through re-framing, de-familiarising, and changing perspectives on the event’.26 The suggested shift in perspective was then taken up by some of the student teachers. For example, here is Sophie adopting the persona of Grendel’s mother: And he is coming to seek me out, even here – I sense him and I am afraid. Dark memories blacken the waters around me, stories that will never be sung in great halls and echo through time. When he takes my life I will fade into obscurity, a flicker in his memory, a footnote in his story. All these years I’ve had no one upon which to unburden my thoughts and so they linger here, polluting the mere that he now wades through. He is coming. What we found striking is the way that Sophie exploits gaps in the text, consciously giving sympathetic voice to a voiceless character. Where the Beowulf poet at times refers ambiguously to Beowulf and Grendel’s mother,27 Sophie makes use of these tensions to underline stark contrasts. Active storytelling has enabled Sophie to reassemble the Beowulf narrative in a dramatically fresh way. From her perspective, Beowulf is the monstrous intruder polluting her environment; her fear contrasts with his confident bravery. Whereas Beowulf’s name and reputation afford him celebrity status both in the world of the poem and beyond, Grendel’s mother has no name; Beowulf ’s deeds form the substantive narrative whilst she is reduced to a footnote — and, indeed, was famously ignored altogether by Tolkien in his seminal essay on the poem.28 It was at this point in the workshop that we shifted into working in a new medium; one which offered the students significant opportunities to develop these understandings and insights in fresh way Working with Still and Moving Images

We framed the video or filmmaking activities with a short image analysis activity, focusing on how Grendel’s mother is represented in various adaptations, including films, graphic novels, book illustrations, and even 3D models. Using tablets and an editing app, groups of students then made short sequences employing a mixture of still and moving images to represent Beowulf ’s fight with Grendel’s mother. Through this process they explicitly addressed  26 O’Neill and Rogers, ‘Drama and Literary Response’, p. 50.  27 For example, at different points in the narrative the Beowulf poet uses the same word, aglæca (monster, fierce combatant) to refer to both Beowulf (l. 2592) and Grendel’s mother (l. 1259). See Chance, ‘The Structural Unity of Beowulf’.  28 Tolkien, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’.

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Figure 2.1. Grendel’s mother waits. Still photograph at 00.08 of a 23-second video (IMG_0374.mov) shot and edited on an iPad by Amy, Alison, and Gemma. Photograph features Alison and Gemma, taken by Amy. Copyright waived.

questions of representation and identity raised in both the creative writing and media analysis activities. Some groups considered the possibilities of engendering a degree of sympathy for ‘the monstrous-feminine’.29 The Zemeckis film emphasizes the female monster’s reproductive powers, with a highly sexualized Angelina Jolie motion-captured in the role.30 This is not overtly a feature of Heaney’s translation, although it has been argued there are sexual overtones in the way the fight is described in Old English.31 With an approach that drew on a spontaneous and messy form of montage rather than continuity editing, the student teachers found ways to disrupt a version of the ‘male-gaze’ inscribed in the Zemeckis film.32 Through unexpected embodiments of the roles, particularly in the battle sequence, some of the students managed to represent Grendel’s mother’s experience in ways that gave her as powerful a presence as Sophie had voiced in her writing. Several of the film sequences are sympathetic to the creature in her watery lair — crouching near the sinks in the basement toilets (Figure 2.1) or at the bottom of a stairwell in the concrete building in which we were located. In Figure 2.1, Grendel’s mother’s perspective is foregrounded as she awaits Beowulf, protecting her ‘hellish turn-hole’ (l. 1513). This shot also features her son Grendel’s hand and arm, emblematic of Beowulf ’s victory over Grendel  29 Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine.  30 Beowulf, dir. by Zemeckis.  31 See Chance, ‘The Structural Unity of Beowulf’, pp. 161–62.  32 Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’.

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and thus a maternal justification for the monstrous anger that the ‘troll-dam’ (l. 1391) expresses — yet the actor’s gaze and the hunched angle of her body make her appear wary and vulnerable. Her location in what is recognizably the women’s toilets might be construed as a comment on her ambiguous presence in the poem. As we have indicated, both the drama and filmmaking had a clear orientation towards developing an understanding of the text, enriched by this process of generating new readings in different media. This playful approach to retelling the story is anticipated in some early readings of the text. Tolkien, indeed, compares the fragmented structure of the poem to a ‘sculpture or painting’ calling it ‘a composition not a tune’.33 Alain Renoir (a cameraman turned academic) uses the language of the cinematographer to describe ‘the visual evocation’ of the build-up to Beowulf ’s fight with Grendel.34 Nickolas Haydock develops this analogy with a focus on the poem’s ‘visual perspectives’ in his analysis of the fight with Grendel’s mother. Drawing on technical film terminology, he uses the metaphor of a ‘shot list’, with a particular emphasis on subjective camerawork (indicative of a point of view), to explain how the Beowulf poet conjures up the action.35 In our project we found that the disjointed narrative lent itself to a remaking that seemed very contemporary in its rendering of a fight sequence as experienced by those involved, at varying degrees of closeness to the action. The pace at which we pressed the students to shoot and edit may have been a factor in the ways the expressive withhold and reveal of the action (blurry shots and suggestions of movement), indicate confusion, shifting perspectives, and narrative foci.36 One group of students used translucent blue cloth and the familiar surroundings of the concrete stairwell, to suggest the watery depths. An image of a face glimpsed through the cloth appears fleetingly in a long transition — a crossfade that captures a sensation of movement downwards. There is an ambiguity in the actor’s dazed expression looming towards the viewer — as if we are glimpsing Beowulf from Grendel’s mother’s point of view as she, ‘sensed a human | observing her outlandish lair from above’ (ll. 1499–1500). One group of student teachers created a sequence showing the haunted mere in which the battle takes place, from both above and below (animated with coloured cloths) from the points of view of Beowulf, Grendel’s mother and Beowulf ’s men — the kind of sequence or structure that Renoir and Haydock argue helps us to recognize the patterns of storytelling in Beowulf. The reaction shot of the actors’ faces in Figure 2.2 follows a shot of red cloth

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Tolkien, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, p. 126. Renoir, ‘Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf’, p. 161. Haydock, ‘Film Theory, The Sister Arts, Tradition and the Cinematic Beowulf’, p. 37. Unfortunately, these moments from their video montages are ill-served by reproduction in print.

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Figure 2.2. Beowulf’s men wait. Still photograph at 00.05 of a 44-second video (IMG_0281.mov) shot and edited on an iPad by Freda, Sarah, and Stella. Photograph features Sarah and Stella, taken by Freda. Copyright waived.

shooting upwards, representing ‘a heave-up and surge of waves | and blood in the backwash’ (ll. 1593–94). Their gaze captures an after-shock of the fight happening in the mere — and their confusion about its outcome as expressed in the poem, as they wait, ‘sick at heart’ (ll. 1602–03). All of these short sequences include sound effects and music that hint at horror, adding to a sense of a subjective narrative that, in its transduction to a different medium, has assumed twenty-first-century, popular cultural associations. What emerges from this analysis of the actors’ embodiment of their roles, captured in the context of a familiar and surprisingly evocative institutional backdrop, is the distinctive ways in which these versions of the encounter between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother are invested with emotional content. The resulting sequences hint at some sympathy with all parties engaged in prolonged and bloody combat, dwelling particularly on the characters’ reactions to the build-up and after-effects of the fight. The students took inspiration from the ambiguities of characterization, action, and motivation that emerge from their readings of the text — but these are also interpretations that suit the dramatization of a violent moment in the medium of film. The sympathy and interest in the powerful female antagonist also reflects cultural associations that are suggestive of the way the poem has reverberated through time, including the terrifying and powerful female monster in Cameron’s film, Aliens, as well as the more typically gendered and sexualized Jolie incarnation.37  37 Aliens, dir. by Cameron; Beowulf, dir. by Zemeckis.

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Digital Game Design

Making digital games on the second day’s workshop challenged the students in different ways, offering fresh possibilities for exploring points of view. Making the choice to work independently or in pairs, students based their games on a particular section or moment from the poem. The objective was to explore game mechanics as a representational medium per se, through its own unique grammar and logic. Students found that it had been helpful to engage with the poem initially through media they were more familiar with such as film, illustration, and literature (or creative writing). This allowed them to first focus on the text and on developing their own perspective and thoughts about it, including the characters and story as well as the language and tone of the poem. That way, in the game design exercise, they were able to concentrate more on learning how to use the MissionMaker software and how game design might allow a unique engagement with the poem. MissionMaker (Figure 2.3) is a computer game authoring tool for creative learning, developed at the London Knowledge Lab (part of University College London’s Institute of Education). It allows the creation of games composed of different locations, objects, and characters, as well as rules (or instructions) that guide their actions and behaviours. This tool distinguishes itself from most game authoring software because of its particular workflow, which allows even new users to create a simple but fully playable environment almost immediately. This approach makes MissionMaker particularly suitable for educational purposes.38 The user can create, manipulate, and combine rooms, objects, character models, and media assets (images, text, or sound), which are described as ‘static resources’ in the context of this study. It is also possible to define rules that guide the actions and behaviours of those elements (as well as how they interact with each other, or react to user interaction), which are described here as ‘procedural resources’.39 In the broader context of digital media, procedurality refers to the computer’s fundamental ability to execute algorithms (which are essentially series of instructions) in an autonomous fashion. While static content consists of fixed or predetermined data, such as texts, images, 3D models, or videos, procedural content is dynamic, represented via algorithms or equations.40 For example, in MissionMaker the animation for a character’s walking cycle is stored in a static form, as a list of predetermined positions,

 38 Figure 2.3 is a composite of multiple states of the MissionMaker UI, representing most of the panels available (version 2.0 Build 5).  39 Rules in MissionMaker are analogous to the concept of conditional statements, which is fundamental in computer programming. Variables, another fundamental concept in computer science, are also present in MissionMaker. In the context of this application, they may be considered static or procedural resources, depending on their role in a particular game or system. See further Ferreira, ‘The Meaning Potential of Procedurality’.  40 Crawford, ‘Process Intensity’.

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Figure 2.3. MissionMaker user interface (UI)

even though it represents motion. In that sense, this has more in common with traditional animation or video, which represents movement via static frames organized linearly, than with digital media itself. What really makes a character ‘come alive’ as part of a digital simulation (or game) is how it behaves, reacts, and interacts dynamically with the environment, other characters and objects, as well as with the player. To many authors, the procedural aspect of digital media is what distinguishes it from other traditional media such as literature, cinema, and music. When a computer is used solely to display or manipulate static content, it acts as a ‘metamedium’, emulating existing traditional media and languages.41 Procedurality, on the other hand, allows unique expressive strategies and meanings, that could only exist in digital media, or through its use — according to Janet Murray, procedurality is ‘the most important element the new medium adds to our repertoire of representational powers’.42 It was particularly interesting to note connections between the previous day’s activities and the game design exercise. By considering the shared resources between them it is possible to better understand the particularities of procedural authorship in relation to other traditional media, languages, and forms. The participants had the opportunity to experience in a practical manner how the specificities of each medium may allow for different —

 41 Kay, ‘Computer Software’.  42 Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck.

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and sometimes unique — approaches to expression, representation, and meaning-making.43 Participants in the Beowulf workshop were exposed to a variety of media and encouraged to act creatively in using them. Significantly, many of these activities required two or more modes to be combined or integrated in some way, often within a very short time span. This called attention to the media themselves — to how the stories were told as much as to the story being told. As a result, after the workshop, many of the students offered opinions regarding the particularities and similarities between the different media and languages, both traditional and digital. One student found similarities between the game design activity and the improvisational drama exercise, noting that both forms are based on systems and behaviours, as opposed to fixed and linear scripts. Of course, in this case the shared resources between these two languages reside on a higher level of abstraction, since actors cannot be programmed like computers. It was also pointed out that in many of the activities from the first day of the workshop the participants were placed as active characters in the story world, or were at least encouraged to place themselves in this way. This helped them get into the mindset necessary for the game design activity. In digital games the player makes choices about actions and events which usually happen around a central character (controlled by the player). This is reinforced by the actual visual point of view that the player has of the virtual environment, which is usually a first-person perspective or some variation of it.44 Interestingly, very few of the workshop participants created games in which the player controlled characters other than Beowulf — perhaps due to their lack of familiarity with this medium, which might have led them to the more traditional solution: the player controlling the main character. Two games created in the workshop will serve as examples of the ways in which individual designers found specific solutions to inhabit particular perspectives and express particular ideas or meanings they found in the poem via game mechanics. Firstly, in Edward’s game (Figure 2.4) the player, in the role of Beowulf, meets the king, and receives the mission to kill Grendel’s mother and retrieve his crown from her lair. The monster attacks if the player picks up the crown, or if she is attacked. The rules in MissionMaker are as follows: If Crown becomes Owned by Player then Grendel’s Mother Seeks and Destroys Player If Grendel’s Mother is shot by Player then Grendel’s Mother Seeks and Destroys Player

 43 See Ferreira, ‘MissionMaker Conversations’; Ferreira, ‘A MissionMaker Case Study’.  44 This is also reflected, as well as reinforced, in a technical level. Most games are programmed in such a way that the world simulation is disabled or simplified in areas that are not near or visible to the player. This is done mostly for performance reasons, to avoid occupying the processor with calculations that will not be noticed by the player (at least not directly).

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Figure 2.4. Screen captures of two moments from Edward’s game.

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According to Edward, his intention with these rules was to represent two different levels of meaning. First, there is the straightforward reaction to the theft of the crown, as well as to an attack by the player. Second, the behaviour is also meant to reflect a broader sense of the poem’s lore. As previously mentioned, the Beowulf poet blurs the boundaries between hero and monsters. By making Grendel’s mother attack the player only if a certain boundary is crossed, Edward is representing the fact that this character is not inherently ‘evil’. This picks up the ambiguities which the students discovered in the poem when working with other media earlier in the workshop. Some students made this design choice for technical reasons: to make sure the enemies would remain in their original positions throughout the level, instead of automatically moving towards the player as soon as the game started (which is the default behaviour). This adaptation to the constraints of the medium offered the opportunity to interrogate the text further — a platform for further debate that has much educational potential in relation to the ways that technologies shape storytelling. In Maria’s game the player is also in the role of Beowulf, tasked with the mission of guarding the mead-hall from Grendel. There are other non-player characters in the game who represent the king’s warriors and can be spoken to by the player (this is done by clicking on the character). One of them, after being addressed, begins following the player around. The rule that describes this behaviour in MissionMaker is straightforward: If Warrior is clicked then Warrior starts following Player Maria explained that she implemented this rule as a way of representing the loyalty of the warrior towards Beowulf. By having the character follow the player, the intention is to express the fact that the warriors consider Beowulf as their leader in this context. Of course, this particular meaning — the concept of ‘loyalty’ — does not result solely from that specific rule. It also depends on the particular context in which this rule is implemented, and its relation to the other existing elements and resources. This includes both procedural resources — such as the actual pre-existing algorithm for the following behaviour — and static resources — the dialogue associated with that situation, in this case displayed to the player in the form of a text message which references the narrative: Beowulf, hall-warden, ward and guard it well. Beware of the enemy, Grendel

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Conclusions Our short project demonstrates how digital media can be used to produce meaning via procedural expressive strategies in a more general sense. Asking the students to read the text with a creative purpose in mind — to embody dramatic moments in role, to extend this through writing, to create film sequences and finally to develop a form of narrative from the rule based system and assets offered by the MissionMaker palette — involved expanding the active role of the reader. The discussion that emerged around the students’ choices brought the Heaney and the Old English texts into closer focus according to the game authors’ purposes — as they found some accommodation between the game-making software and the narrative possibilities and perspectives on offer. Above all, they discovered the ways in which their evolving stories were tempered by the constraints of the specific media that they transitioned between. While readily adapting to the shifting roles of audience, player, producer, and storyteller, our students were at the same time conscious of their own emergent identities as teachers and how their own students might respond to this invitation to transform the Beowulf narrative. This awareness played its part in shaping the stories they told us and each other. Our project introduced student teachers to some of the various ways that this most ancient of English literary texts has been retold, reheard, and remade, and invited them to retell it in their turn by exploring the narrative possibilities offered by contemporary media platforms. Writing about the place of creativity within secondary school English, Andrew McCallum argues that the value of this kind of ‘re-creative’ activity lies in helping students ‘take control of learning, refashioning texts in keeping with their own worlds and world views’, opening up a dialogic relationship between the ‘original’ text, the reader and the newly created piece.45 In interview, one of our PGCE students, Freda, came up with the term ‘embellishing’ to describe the processes that we engaged in, capturing something of the creative licence we took in the weaving and enacting of narratives around fragments of Old English and the Heaney text. We liked the way Freda’s term echoed Leyerle’s notion of literary interlacing.46 Yet, in retrospect, we were not sure it did justice to the deeper semiotic currents at work in the workshops, drawing as they did on various media frameworks and the diverse sets of cultural knowledge learners bring to the social space of the classroom. Significantly, the process of transforming verbal imagery into visual representations or enactments usually involved a shift from the individual reading experience to that of collaborative production. Each of the different modes prompted the students to make choices about narrative sequence, character, and point of view, in the various ways that we have commented on here. We would argue that this departure from

 45 McCallum, Creativity and Learning in Secondary English, p. 63.  46 Leyerle, ‘The Interlace Structure’.

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conventional critical ‘appreciation’ of a canonical text, as encouraged by the current National Curriculum in England, instead constructs learners as active producers of meaning and encourages engagement in equally critical, but more richly diverse interpretive processes.47 Being required to engage actively in storytelling rather than simply ‘receiving’ the Beowulf text, resulted in our students breathing new life into this Old English poem. The many adaptations we focused on from different media — graphic novels, films, and children’s story books — acted as a prompt to consider the ways in which school students might bring their insights into and knowledge of popular cultural forms to the creative process of generating their own collaborative readings. Several of the student teachers involved in the workshop reported that this was a compelling aspect of the lessons that they went on to teach in school. It is worth adding that our students’ responses seemed to us to be more open to experimentation than when we have undertaken drama and filmmaking projects based around other canonical texts — Shakespeare or gothic poetry, for example.48 Perhaps this was simply because the Beowulf text was less familiar to the students. Or, perhaps the students responded to the invitation of the text’s instability, a feature we drew attention to in our workshop introduction. John D. Niles concludes that the future of Beowulf studies may well lie in the hands of those who take pleasure in adapting it.49 Our experiences from this project suggest that Beowulf might successfully be recast in the digital age as a school text that is part of the canon and yet offers unusually rich possibilities for classroom explorations of storytelling that are both critical and creative.

 47 See the Key Stage 4 Programme of Study for Reading which states that ‘Pupils should be taught to: read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage’ (Df E, 2014).  48 See, for example, Bryer, Lindsay, and Wilson, ‘A Take on a Gothic Poem’.  49 Niles, ‘Beowulf, Truth and Meaning’, p. 11.

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Works Cited Manuscripts London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv (second part) Primary Sources Aliens, dir. by James Cameron (20th Century Fox, 1986) Beowulf, dir. by Graham Baker (Dimension Films, 1999) Beowulf, dir. by Robert Zemeckis (Paramount, 2007) Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, dir. by James Dormer, Tim Haines and Katie Newman (ITV, 2016) Crossley-Holland, Kevin, with illustrations by Charles Keeping, Beowulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Heaney, Seamus, Beowulf: A Verse Translation, ed. by Daniel Donoghue (London: Norton, 2002) Hinds, Gareth, Beowulf (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2007) Morpurgo, Michael, with illustrations by Michael Foreman, Beowulf (London: Walker, 2006) Secondary Studies Barrs, Myra, ‘Voice and Role in Reading and Writing’, Language Arts, 64 (1987), 8–11 Bryer, Theo, Morlette Lindsay, and Rebecca Wilson, ‘A Take on a Gothic Poem: Tablet Film-Making and Literary Texts’, Changing English, 21 (2014), 235–51 Burn, Andrew, ‘Multi-Text Magic: Harry Potter in Book, Film and Videogame’, in Turning the Page: Children’s Literature in Performance and the Media, ed. by F. Collins and J. Ridgman (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 227–50 Caldwell Cook, Henry, The Play Way: An Essay in Educational Method (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1917) Chance, Jane, ‘The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel’s Mother’, in Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A Verse Translation, ed. by Daniel Donoghue (London: Norton, 2002; first published 1980), pp. 152–67 Cimbricz, Sandra K., and Matthew L. McConn, ‘Changing the English Classroom: When Large-Scale “Common” Testing meets Secondary Curriculum and Instruction in the United States’, Changing English, 22 (2015), 393–404 Crawford, Chris, ‘Process Intensity’, Journal of Computer Game Design, 1 (1987), np, online at [accessed 5 October 2020] Creed, Barbara, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1993) Cremin, Teresa, Kathy Goouch, Louise Blakemore, Emma Goff, and Roger Macdonald, ‘Connecting Drama and Writing: Seizing the moment to write’, Research in Drama Education, 11 (2006), 273–91

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Department for Education (Df E), The National Curriculum in England: Programmes of Study for English (London: Df E, updated 2014) Doecke, Brenton, and Douglas McClenaghan, Confronting Practice (Putney: Phoenix, 2011) Ferreira, Daniel P., ‘MissionMaker Conversations’, [accessed 5 October 2020] —— , ‘A MissionMaker Case Study’, [accessed 5 October 2020] —— , ‘The Meaning Potential of Procedurality: Initial Considerations on Procedural Semiotic Resources’, [accessed 5 October 2020] Franks, Anton, James Durran, and Andrew Burn, ‘Stories of the Three-Legged Stool: English, Media, Drama, from Critique to Production’, English in Education, 40 (2006), 64–69 Gee, James P., Social Linguistics and Literacies (London: Routledge, 2012) Haydock, Nickolas, ‘Film Theory, The Sister Arts, Tradition and the Cinematic Beowulf’, in ‘Beowulf’ on Film: Adaptations and Variations, ed. by Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden ( Jefferson: McFarland, 2013), pp. 27–65 Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Adaptation (London: Routledge, 2006) Jones, Chris, ‘From Heorot to Hollywood: Beowulf in its Third Millenium’, in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 13–30 Kay, Alan, ‘Computer Software’, Scientific American, 251 (1984), 52–59 Leyerle, John, ‘The Interlace Structure of Beowulf’, in Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A Verse Translation, ed. by Daniel Donoghue (London: Norton, 2002; first published 1967) McCallum, Andrew, Creativity and Learning in Secondary English (London: Routledge, 2012) Miles, Matthew B., and Michael A. Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook (London: SAGE, 1994) Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16 (1975), 6–18 Murray, Janet H., Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997) Neelands, Jonathan, Making Sense of Drama (Oxford: Heinemann, 1984) Niles, John D., ‘Beowulf, Truth and Meaning’, in A Beowulf Handbook, ed. by Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), pp. 1–12 O’Neill, Cecily, and Alan Lambert, Drama Structures: A Practical Handbook for Teachers (London: Nelson Thornes, 1982) O’Neill, Cecily, and Theresa Rogers, ‘Drama and Literary Response: Prying Open the Text’, English in Australia, 108 (1994), 47–51 Orchard, Andy, ‘Is Violence what Old English Literature is About?’, in ‘Beowulf’ and Other Stories: An Introduction to Old English, Old Icelandic and AngloNorman Literatures, ed. by Richard North and Joe Allard (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 63–94

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Renoir, Alan, ‘Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf’, in The ‘Beowulf’ Poet, ed. by Donald K. Fry (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1968), pp. 154–66 Street, Brian, ‘The Implication of the “New Literacy Studies” for Literacy Education’, in Language, Literacy and Education: A Reader, ed. by Sandra Goodman, Theresa Lillis, Janet Maybin, and Neil Mercer (Stoke-on Trent: Trentham, 2003), pp. 77–88 Tolkien, J. R. R., ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, in Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A Verse Translation, ed. by Daniel Donoghue (London: Norton, 2002; first published 1936), pp. 103–30 Vygotsky, Lev, Mind in Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978)

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‘Retelling Old Stories for New Audiences’ Shaping and Visualizing Beowulf through Gareth Hinds’ Graphic Novels [The Collected Beowulf (2003) & Beowulf (2007)]* Even the imaginary oral versions of Beowulf are only versions, and every version is provisional, a negotiated compromise between a past and a present situation, a retelling of an old story for a new audience.1 As Umberto Eco writes, our relationship with the products of our culture is being transformed by the new media through which they are transmitted in the twenty-first century.2 As he states new media formats such as electronic hypertexts and video art offer opportunities to reimagine literary texts, with such opportunities arguably being key to the transmission of medieval literature through popular culture. Richard K. Emmerson argues that medievalists should perform our duty as leading promoters of medieval literature and: become involved in such popular representations of things ‘medieval’ and make use of them to direct the interests of students and the general public towards a more complex and sophisticated understanding of the Middle Ages.3 That is, there is an opportunity to embrace new ways of telling medieval stories which could in turn tell a different story about the medieval itself, stepping away from a tired narrative of Dark Ages and pubescent fantasy. * The research which lies behind this chapter was funded by the Galician Autonomous Government (Plan de Axudas para a consolidación e estruturación de unidades de investi­ gación competitivas do Sistema Universitario Galego, grant number ED431C 2017/50). This grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. I also wish to give my thanks to Gareth Hinds and Melanie Blais from Candlewick Press for granting permission to reproduce the images taken from Hinds’ graphic novels in this chapter. I also thank Syd Allan for allowing me to include digital material taken from his webpage on Beowulf. I am also most grateful to the editors of the present volume for helpful revisions and suggestions for improvement.  1 Liuzza, ‘Beowulf in Translation’, p. 30.  2 Eco, On Literature, pp. 11–15.  3 Emmerson, ‘Medieval Studies at the Beginning of the New Millennium’, p. 27.

Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, Universidade de Vigo Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 53–70  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121601

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When first composed, Beowulf entertained the audience of the mead-hall. Given its probable reproduction in multiple iterations from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, it may have been a bestseller of its day; in its combination of narrative types and set-piece action scenes, it could be regarded as a pot-boiler movie of Anglo-Saxon England.4 Over the past forty years, its story of people and monsters has attracted the attention of many talented graphic and visual artists5 who want to put the Beowulf narrative back in an oral context, though in the twenty-first century that context belongs to the new visual orality of mass culture, as Eco has proposed.6 One of those artists, Gareth Hinds, faithfully follows the narrative content of Beowulf in his graphic novel The Collected Beowulf, a very interesting case of adaptation.7 This article seeks to make a case for the success and validity of his relatively little known adaptation, by analysing three key features: the text used in its narrative script, its narrative structure and plot development, and its conceptual design. Relating these features to the structure of Beowulf as a literary text shows how new media, with graphic novels constituting outstanding examples, can develop interest in old literary texts and serve as proper vehicles to carry out that ‘retelling of an old story for a new audience’.8

 4 These statements are part metaphor, part wishful thinking. We are well aware, as medievalists, that Beowulf does not appear as a hero in any other contemporaneous Germanic legend. Even though there is no textual historical evidence in support of such claims, the circulation of the oral story that came to be recorded in the Cotton Vitellius A xv might have been important, as Andy Orchard recently stated when describing the contents of the MS: ‘[Beowulf] is the only text that deals with the lore of Northern Europe […] There are indications that Beowulf was known and echoed in the Anglo-Saxon period’. Orchard, ‘86. Beowulf’, p. 230. Other poems, such as Andreas, display a very strong connection with Beowulf, both stylistically and thematically, as it has been duly noted by North and Bintley, Andreas: An Edition, pp. 62–81. Such indications clearly allow the possibility of the ‘bestseller’/ ‘pot-boiler movie’ metaphor I use in these lines.  5 Other media have engaged with the text, particularly filmmaking. This article is not making explicit reference to movies but it is obvious that the multiple cinematic versions — most of them certainly ‘pot-boilers’ — produced up to the present have contributed to enhance the way contemporary audiences gain access to Beowulf in visual form. Films develop that visualization in a different way but the influence of filmmaking on the way we read visual narrations cannot be denied. A very interesting analysis of filmic beowulfiana can be found in Haydock and Risden, ‘Beowulf’ on Film.  6 Since his classic volume, Apocalittici e integrati, originally published in 1965, Eco has been defending the ways in which the language of the image — through film, television or graphic novels and comic books — could lead us to a ‘new civilization of the vision similar to the one experienced by medieval people when contemplating the images at their cathedrals. As has already been suggested, we could gradually attach new symbolic functions to those new visual stimuli, establishing thus a new ideographic language’. Eco, Apocalípticos e Integrados, p. 332, my translation. In this respect, visual culture could be considered as the new orality of mass culture. A selection of the original volume, translated as Apocalypse Postponed, has been edited and translated by Robert Lumley.  7 Hinds, The Collected ‘Beowulf’.  8 Bredehoft, The Visible Text, pp. 131–32; Liuzza, ‘Beowulf in Translation’, p. 30.

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Beowulf and Graphic Novels: (Sub)versions The story of Beowulf’s connections with graphic novels is a long one; the most comprehensive overview is provided on Syd Allan’s excellent website, which records all of the graphic novels that have used Beowulf’s text as the pretext for their storyline from 1975 to 2004.9 In these graphic versions we notice a trend: Beowulf is used as an excuse to create a graphic novel of the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre, an adventure story whose plot takes place in far-off times, is filled with dragons and monsters galore, and is almost nothing to do with the original story.10 As we can see just by having a quick look at some sample covers as shown in Figure 3.1, these (sub)versions present the interests and limitations of their genre quite transparently.11 Beowulf: Dragon Slayer by Michael Uslan and Ricardo Villamonte, Beowulf by Jerry Bingham, and Beowulf by Astrid Anand and Bill Carroll share a similar layout, though they also present some remarkable differences in their aims. Bingham’s text tries to adapt Beowulf’s content in a single graphic narrative, whereas Uslan and Villamonte’s series is a kind of mythic adventure with ultimately only the loosest connection to the original Beowulf narrative. At the beginning of the series, the connection with the source material was relatively strong — the first issue mentioned Grendel and was titled ‘The curse of Castle Hrothgar’. But the next issues took a sharp turn away from the world of the poem, with titles such as ‘The slave maid of Satan’, ‘The serpent of Satan’, ‘The  9 Beowulf Translations, online. Syd Allan’s original website was permanently deleted on December 31, 2011; the contents are still available for consultation and download in different formats at [accessed 17 July 2017].  10 Bearing in mind the context of production of these comic books, it could be said that the examples below seem to go further than far-off adventures, being in most cases fairly unreflective promotions of hegemonic masculinity designed for (white) teenage boys and with highly objectifying versions of all others, be they sexualized women or deformed monsters. Tackling this in depth would be the issue of a chapter different from the present one, but it does need to be noted here, especially since the authors themselves did not seem to be very aware of the problematic nature of their adaptations. In an editorial page, as a commentary on the reason why he and Villamonte invented a female companion — called Nan-Zee — to their Beowulf, Uslan states: ‘[Nan-Zee was invented] as a necessity of 1975. The poem showed a general disdain for women, giving the only female role of importance to Hrothgar’s Queen Wealhtheow. Even the Queen’s role as a peace-maker was only a minor one. It was agreed that such a concept was outmoded for today’s audience. And so was born Nan-Zee, a beautiful female warrior [named after the author’s wife, Nancy], who could wield a sword as well as her compatriot, BEOWULF. She is also equally quick to parry his rapid-fire verbal put-downs’ (Uslan and Asherman, ‘The Source of the Saga’). Despite this pro-woman philosophy, Nan-Zee is ultimately depicted as a highly objectified and sexualized woman, as the two sample covers in Figure 3.1 show; in both, Nan-Zee adopts a damsel-indistress pose waiting to be rescued by the almighty muscled male hero. Catherine A. M. Clarke has thoroughly analysed this issue in ‘Re-placing Masculinity’.  11 Images are from Uslan and Villamonte, Beowulf: Dragon Slayer; Bingham, Beowulf; Anand and Carroll, Beowulf.

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Figure 3.1. Comic book versions of Beowulf by Uslan and Villamonte (top two images); Bingham; Anand and Carroll.

man-apes and magic’, and presented fantastical stories in which our hero fought with Dracula or the aliens: ‘Beowulf meets Dracula’ and ‘Chariots of the Stars’. Be that as it may, Uslan, Villamonte and their almighty publisher DC Comics cheated no one. In the first two issues of the series, two explanatory pages were included. Under the headings ‘Beowulf: An epic comes home’ and ‘The Source of the Saga’, DC Comics editor Allan Asherman and writer Michael Uslan — Villamonte was the artist — explained that their intention was to: try our best to produce a book that you’ll be proud to bring into your classroom and show to your teacher. While we’ll be doing what we can to capture the flavour and spirit of the poem […] we caution not to try writing those book reports after reading the comic book version. We’ll be diverging enough from the original so that you’ll have a hard time telling

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what is straight from the poem and what is not. Don’t deprive yourself, anyway. Read the poem, it is GREAT.12 An experienced reader of the poem has no difficulties in identifying what is taken from Beowulf and what is not, and this engagement with the source material is not unusual. Indeed, the final words of this explanatory page can be seen to resonate through the many versions of Beowulf published since 1975: they aspire to be high quality entertainment stories that lead young readers, sooner or later, to the original text. For Uslan and Villamonte, at least, this objective seems to have been realized. The final pages of every issue of Uslan and Villamonte’s series included a weekly section of letters sent to the editor. From the fan’s questions, it is abundantly clear that many were reading the poem alongside the graphic novel: they make suggestions for further issues and ask frequently witty questions on sources, authorship or secondary characters that did not appear in the comic. It is easy to dismiss this retelling of Beowulf with aliens, ape-men, and Dracula. Yet these letters make it clear that one telling of a story can enable an audience to access that same story in what is often regarded as a less accessible media. Graphic novels, then, can play an effective role in the ongoing transmission of the story of Beowulf. Despite these numerous reworkings of the text from the 1970s on, it is only in the twenty-first century that a graphic novel has been produced that, as well as being an excuse to get hooked on the original poem, also aims to faithfully follow the narrative of Beowulf. Originally published between 1999 and 2001 in three parts, Gareth Hinds published The Collected Beowulf in one single volume in 2003. Three key elements make this particularly interesting for medievalists: the text used in its narrative script, its narrative structure and plot development, and its conceptual design.

The Collected Beowulf (2003) and Beowulf (2007): The Narrative Script Although in graphic novels visual aspects such as framing and perspective, along with representation of characters’ non-verbal behaviour through gesture, expression, and kinetic symbols, are vital for the development of narrative discourse, we should not forget that, in the vast majority of graphic novels, the written text constitutes a fundamental element of the successful development of the narrative structure. The semiotic code of graphic novels is traditionally divided13 into three major sections: iconography, literary

 12 Uslan and Asherman, ‘Beowulf: An Epic Comes Home’.  13 There is a wide number of bibliographical references to be used as starting guides to introduce newcomers to the form and basic intricacies of the language and symbols of graphic novels. Just to mention two classic references in the field, Harvey, The Art of the Comic Book and Varnum and Gibbons, eds, The Language of Comics are very adequate

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expression, and narrative technique. Comics scholars tend to identify three main forms of literary expression, which include: narrative boxes, defined as ‘capsules whose inserted text serves to explain or clarify the content of the image or the action that takes place, to make the development of the narration easier, or to reproduce the comments of the visual narrator’;14 speech balloons or bubbles, which constitute ‘the symbolic containers of the speech of the talking characters, whose origin is pointed out by a tail or a reversed delta aimed at the producer of the inscribed utterance’;15 and lettering, defined as ‘the graphic treatment of the literary text, which can add decisive meaning to the text. It is a very effective creative and expressive feature for the comic artist, as it is able to melt organically within the complexity of the lexical pictogram’.16 Several authors have linked the use of speech bubbles and balloons with the kind of very common manuscript illustrations in which scribes wrote sentences above figures in scrolls.17 These and other aspects of comic iconography could certainly be ‘analysed from an iconological point of view, just like the saint of an illuminated text, with his canonical features and a fixed kind of beard or halo’.18 In Hinds’ Beowulf it is the content of the narrative box that constitutes the primary element of its discourse, this being a style marker closely connected with the literary tradition he is adapting. Hinds exclusively uses text in narrative boxes; speech balloons are never present. This feature gives the graphic novel a strongly antique look, reinforced by the use of Francis Gummere’s 1910 translation rather than a modernized version of the story by a scriptwriter. Gummere’s translation being a public-domain text — the copyright expired many years ago — Hinds was free to reproduce it as he chooses. Practicalities aside, Hinds explains that he selected this translation

volumes to start with. One of the most impressive accounts of how comic books work and construct meaning (in Spanish) is Gasca and Gubern, El discurso del comic. For those interested in a thematic overview of graphic novels as a full-fledged art form, Tabachnick, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel is the most recent and up-to-date reference in the field.  14 Gasca and Gubern, El discurso del comic, p. 273. This is my translation from their Spanish: ‘cápsulas […] cuyo texto inscrito cumple las funciones de aclarar o explicar el contenido de la imagen o de la acción, facilitar o completar su continuidad narrativa, o reproducir el comentario del narrador visual’.  15 Gasca and Gubern, El discurso del comic, p. 279: ‘los recipientes simbólicos o contenedores que encapsulan los dialogos de los personajes parlantes, cuya procedencia se indica mediante un rabo o delta invertido dirigido al emisor de la locución inscrita’.  16 Gasca and Gubern, El discurso del comic, p. 319: ‘El tratamiento gráfico de los textos literarios […] puede aportar decisivas connotaciones al sentido del texto. [es] un eficaz medio creativo y expresivo al servicio del autor de comics, capaz de integrarse orgánicamente en el complejo sígnico del lexipictograma’.  17 The Medieval Comic project led by Hana Videen and Karrie Fransman is worth mentioning here as it offers strong examples of the similarities between modern comics and medieval storytelling: https://medievalcomicsblog.wordpress.com/.  18 Eco, Apocalípticos e Integrados, p. 147. My translation.

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Figure 3.2. Beowulf’s lettering. Reproduced with permission from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 12; London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv, fol. 133r.

because ‘it preserves the essential feeling of Old English verse, particularly in its meter and alliteration’.19 Gummere’s text is quite archaic — Hinds includes a glossary to explain certain obscure words — but this archaism is in tune with the graphic novel’s aspirations. His comic has to look magic, epic, and archaic. The lettering, made by Leslie Siddeley, reinforces this archaization and fits the work’s narrative structure; as illustrated in Figure 3.2, Siddeley uses a kind of lettering intended to reflect scribal calligraphy in a wide sense; although it is true that there are not many close ties between the Nowell Scribe A (as shown in Figure 3.2)20 and Siddeley’s letterforms, the adaptation of modern allographs to produce more descenders is a nice echo of insular scripts, and the left-pointing wedge at the top of ascenders does echo Scribe A’s hand. Some letters (w, s) are different in modern script while others (h) are recognizably archaized without being particularly close to Square or English Vernacular minuscule forms; others (g, t) are obviously imitative and the overall impression the reader has is by no means archaic in the sense stated above. In 2007, Hinds’ Beowulf was republished, this time by Candlewick Press.21 Narrative boxes are kept but with a substantial change, as Hinds notes at the beginning of this new edition: For this edition, the author and editors have prepared a new text, based on the translation by A. J. Church published by Seeley & Co in 1904.  19 Hinds, The Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 1.  20 Excerpts from Beowulf, Copyright © 2007 and The Collected Beowulf, Copyright © 2000 by Gareth Hinds. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Sommerville, MA, and the author. A more sophisticated tool for working with the manuscript is Kiernan, ed., Electronic ‘Beowulf’.  21 Hinds, Beowulf.

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Figure 3.3. Beowulf’s lettering. Reproduced with permission from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 12; Hinds, Beowulf, p. 14.

This is a colloquial translation, and we have attempted to strike a balance between easy readability and the poetic drama found in our favourite verse translations (particularly that of Francis Gummere, which appeared in the original, self-published edition of this book).22 The translation by Church is equally suitable from a pragmatic perspective, as it is also a public-domain text; stylistically speaking, it is not as connected with the Old English poetic tradition as Gummere’s. It is not easy to understand the motivation behind the change, given that Hinds suggests his preference is for Gummere’s text.23 Presumably the editors at Candlewick Press, whose books aim at larger audiences than those that are self-published, insisted on such a change for readability, but Hinds does take joint responsibility, implying his participation in the decision. As illustrated by Figure 3.3, this more modern translation is presented with a different visual array, less connected with Anglo-Saxon scribal culture. Siddeley’s quasi-scribal lettering is replaced by printed text; it is true that the style of the font used tries to imitate old-fashioned book printing, but it eliminates the scribal connection of the 2003 publication.24 Be that as it may, the 2007 edition retains the principle of providing an antique look for modern readers.

 22 Hinds, The Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 1.  23 Hinds, The Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 1.  24 Three fonts are used throughout the volume, all of them with an equally old-fashioned feel: Yuletide Log, Humana Serif, and ATQuill.

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The Collected Beowulf (2003) and Beowulf (2007): Narrative Structure and Plot Development As it seems to have been perceived by the scribes, who seem to have placed Beowulf in a compilation about ‘monsters and men’, the interactions between these two worlds — human and monstrous, earthly and supernatural, man and the unknown — are fundamental to the structure of Beowulf.25 The plot of the poem is complex, covering many characters and alluding to or partially telling numerous narratives. Fundamentally, though, it comprises two stories: in Denmark, the young Beowulf faces and defeats Grendel and then his mother; fifty years later, at home in Geatland, Beowulf dies in facing the Dragon. All digressions and compressed dashes through heroic history aside, it is, in the end, a story of men and monsters. As shown by the impressive array of scholarship on the subject, the poem can be read in multiple ways by allowing different episodes more or less emphasis. But it is clear that one of the clearest ways to tell the story is as a classic narrative of the two ages of the hero.26 In Joycean terms, the poem presents the portrait of the hero as a young and then as an old man, clashing with his ancestors as former heroes and with those who will succeed him when he has fulfilled his heroic fate. Thus, the poem has a kind of mirror structure in which Beowulf confronts different projections of his heroic self. As a young hero he meets an old Hrothgar, anticipating his own old age. As an old king he perceives in Wiglaf the young hero he once was. This heavily summarized view of the hero in the poem has a structural parallel in the three periods into which adventure stories are traditionally subdivided: those of victory, peace-keeping, and defeat. These three parts usually coincide in traditional folk tales with the three ages of the heroes: youth, middle age, and old age.27 Beowulf also follows this classic distribution of heroic adventures in its structure. Structural complexity combined with the plot of classic folk tales produces a richly productive poem. Adaptation of the Beowulfian tale into new media must engage with both plot and structure if it is to successfully represent the poem.

 25 Beowulf’s place (and its connection with the monsters / men topic) in the manuscript together with St Christopher, Wonders of the East, Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle, and Judith has always been a problematic issue. For an overview, see Orchard, Pride and Prodigies; Thomson, Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, esp. chap. 1.  26 Although perhaps it is the clearest way, it is not the only one. It should be noted that this Tolkien-esque view of the plot has been critiqued as eliding Grendel’s Mother, and a tripartite (each monster in turn) idea of the plot is now widespread, along with others — such as a ‘Four Funerals’ structure defended by Owen-Crocker, The Four Funerals in ‘Beowulf’.  27 When referring to these traditional divisions I have in mind classic anthropological writings such as Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Sebeok, Myth: A Symposium.

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Figure 3.4. Grendel and Beowulf. Reproduced with permission from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 36–37 and Heaney, trans., ‘Beowulf’, p. 22.

Hinds’ Beowulf retains the narrative structure of the poem by making his own interpretative choices. From the possibilities at hand the plot structure of his graphic novel is fully justified by the poem itself. As mentioned above, the story was originally published in three parts: Beowulf, Book 1: With Grimmest Gripe, which deals with the Denmark part of the story, from the introduction to the arrival at Heorot and the fight with Grendel (ll. 1–1250); Beowulf, Book 2: Gear of War, which covers the fight with Grendel’s mother, Beowulf ’s return to Heorot and the transition to Beowulf ’s kingship in Geatland (ll. 1251–2200); and Beowulf, Book 3: Doom of Glory, with old Beowulf in his kingdom fighting with the dragon (ll. 2200–3182). This structure reshapes the text and makes it very unlike the eternal-youth teen-pulp versions mentioned above by bringing the focus onto the process of maturing / ageing and approaching death Beowulf goes through. The 2003 single volume edition retains the structure of the original, which is also kept with no changes in 2007.

Figure 3.5. Grendel and Beowulf. Reproduced with permission from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 38–39; Heaney, ‘Beowulf’, p. 22.

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Figure 3.6. Beowulf, Wiglaf, and the Dragon. Reproduced with permission from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 98–101; Heaney, ‘Beowulf’, pp. 67–68.

Text is only used when necessary: for descriptions, dialogues and specific narrative sequences. When action-packed sequences appear in the narration, Hinds uses drawings alone to tell the poem’s story. Without a single word, Hinds’ art perfectly describes the content of Beowulf, as it is clearly seen in the following examples taken from both fights: that with Grendel in Figures 3.4 and 3.5; and that with the dragon in Figure 3.6. In Figure 3.4, it is worth noting Hinds’ use of a very productive feature of graphic novels: onomatopoeia. Hinds adapts ‘a tremendous wound | appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split and the bone-lappings burst’ by moving, in cinematic terms, from a long shot to an extreme close-up of Grendel’s shoulder in which we see how his sinews split and literally rip off the shoulder. Hinds uses the phonosymbolic verb ‘to rip’ in the visual description; the word itself melts in graphic design with the sinews as they split, so the bursting is visually and aurally highlighted. With the variation in image size and level of zoom, and the interpolation of graphic adaptations of sound-based words, Hinds is really calling attention to the media with which the story is being told here, as well as telling it through multiple media and multiple senses.

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The Collected ‘Beowulf’ (2003) and ‘Beowulf’ (2007): Conceptual Design As Beowulf is the literary text used, and the structure of the graphic novel transfers the narrative content of Beowulf, then it is logical that the conceptual design of the story should reflect that of Anglo-Saxon culture and art. The model Hinds follows as the stylistic base of his drawings is clearly more connected with Anglo-Saxon history than with the style of the aforementioned ‘sword and sorcery’ comic books. The characters’ costume design, their weapons, shields, ships, Heorot itself — everything has been modelled on what we know about early medieval England through archaeology, literary descriptions, drawings, carvings, etc. Hinds’ art has clearly been closely informed by work such as Leslie Webster’s on archaeology; Martin Carver’s on Sutton Hoo; and Gale Owen-Crocker’s on clothing.28 The samples presented in Figure 3.7 make this clear. Beowulf ’s helmet is clearly based on Sutton Hoo’s (the boars at the front, the metal front piece, the sides, even the bearded grin of Beowulf resembles Sutton Hoo’s face mask), the jewels presented on the illustration almost copy in every detail the shape, size and disposition of many known photos of Anglo-Saxon hoards, and Beowulf ’s sword, in its shape and runic inscriptions on the blade, resembles many real swords found in archaeological digs from the period. Fidelity to the historical period is fundamental to the conceptual design of Hinds’ Beowulf. Further, the palette, style, and design, as illustrated in Figure 3.8, participate in Hinds’ telling of the story, engaging in the same interpretation as discussed above in relation to structure. Part one is characterized by intense colours and by bright and vigorous strokes. The pages have soft-coloured backgrounds and panels have some space between them. In the second part, the colour shows a milder hue, though intense in range, but the style is more expressionist, with harder strokes. There is no background and panels clash, with no visible space between them. The final part is monochromatic, dominated by a range of bluish greys, more or less intense depending on the narrative content. We have background again, but it is totally white, with minimal space separating the panels. These three distinguishable styles are obtained, as Karon Flage observes, by means of three different artistic techniques: ‘Pen and ink, colored in Photoshop for [book] #1, paint on wood for #2 and black wash over black ink for #3’, which give graphic expression to the progress of the plot.29 The first part — bright colour palette, powerful strokes, clean lines — is linked with youth, strength, and certainty, with the vigour of the hero at his best. In the second part, the underwater fight with Grendel’s mother, we have milder, more primary colours, and both the

 28 Webster, ‘Archaeology and Beowulf’; Carver, Sutton Hoo; Owen-Crocker, Dress in AngloSaxon England.  29 Flage, ‘Classics Redrawn’.

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Figure 3.7. Hinds’ art. Reproduced with permission from Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, p. 42.

stroke and the panel disposition are rougher, reflecting both Beowulf ’s shift in behaviour and to a certain extent a comment on middle age. In the third part we have the elegiac and melancholic old age of the hero. His end and his people’s uncertain destiny are clearly reflected in the monochromatic chiaroscuro of the predominant bluish grey. Hence, the circle is completed. Storytelling can be carried out in numerous ways and graphic novels allow multiple methods of storytelling; Hinds uses them here all to work towards a similar end: his version of the Beowulf narrative. Content, narrative script plot development, conceptual design, everything participates in Hinds’ retelling of Beowulf. Gareth Hinds takes his place in the story of the transmission of Beowulf, in the long list of artists and performers who have reshaped and retold the same story using new formats to comment on it in new ways.

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Final Words: ‘monðwærust leodum liðost, ond lofgeornost’ Visual artists continue to engage with Beowulf and the release of new visual material is practically a constant situation.30 As I have tried to show in this chapter, Hinds’ retelling of Beowulf shows how productive it can be for a graphic artist to seriously engage with the material and aesthetic culture, and with the process of interpreting his source text — rather than using it as a springboard to write about the same things they were going to work on anyway. It is not only artists who can benefit from this approach. These new retellings could lead into a reflection on how we teach Beowulf in the classroom. They make us think about the ways we tell the story of Beowulf, and force us to be aware of the productive and positive nature of new media;31 the fruitfulness of Hinds’ approach, bringing multiple aspects to bear on his retelling, is by no means his only legacy for future takes on the poem. Artists will succeed if they follow Hinds’ legacy by going back to basics, to the original sources of epic tales about men and monsters, young and old heroes, myths and legends. In John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Maxwell Scott says ‘when the legend becomes fact, print the legend’. That is precisely what the scribes of Cotton Vitellius A. xv did: to print the legend, the story they liked, to make it survive in the years to come. That is what contemporary artists keep on doing when they use Beowulf to talk about heroes, monsters, and legends through graphic novels, visual texts, or any other present or future format. With his own style and techniques as described in this chapter I think it is quite clear that Hinds is deliberately making himself part of the retelling continuum of this poem, pointing back to the manuscript and earlier iterations to claim his place next to them, and at the same time, to open new avenues in its interpretation. As the poem itself  30 Post-Hinds beowulfiana continues with this multifariousness in storytelling. Just a few months after the publication of Hinds’ 2007 Beowulf a couple of versions following Hinds’ trend were published: Stern and Steinger’s Beowulf: The Graphic Novel, and Petrucha and Chamberlain’s Beowulf. The series Beowulf: Gods and Monsters by writer Brian Augustyn and artist Dub! also began to be published around the same time, offering in this case a complete new scenario, as the writer himself explained in an online interview: ‘This story tells what happens to the epic Scandinavian warrior-prince after he’s been granted immortality by a cosmic entity — and given the job to watch for a specific future cataclysmic event […]. That he gets to keep fighting all the monsters and dragons he wants over the years is gravy. So, I guess the original tale informs the character and what he is and does, but the new story takes him into a whole new place. The present. New York.’ (cbr.com, ‘A legend is reborn’). Quite recently, Santiago Garcia and David Rubin have published their own Beowulf retelling in Spanish, with style and narrative intentions quite close to Hinds’ take on the subject. Some of these graphic novels are revised with some detail in Bueno, ‘The Monsters, the Translators, and the Artists’, pp. 111–33.  31 For useful initial thoughts on these and other approaches, see Chickering, Frantzen, and Yeager, eds, Teaching ‘Beowulf’ in the Twenty-First Century, with insights on materials and approaches to deal with the text in a contemporary classroom scenario, in particular Paul Acker’s ‘Beowulf at the Movies’, pp. 39–44 and Harley, ‘Beowulf and New Media’, pp. 45–53.

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Figure 3.8. The style of the three parts. From Hinds, Collected ‘Beowulf’, pp. 10, 42, & 99.

implies, it is the transmission — the retelling — of the tale that is ultimately most significant. Liuzza observes that the very last word of Beowulf is that he was lofgeornost, ‘most eager for fame’ (line 3182). His motive, then, is not wealth or power, though these certainly come his way, but reputation and renown; he seeks not to be rich but to be remembered. Beowulf is about life after death, for the hero and for his story.32 As I have argued, the hero and his story continue to thrive in the twenty-first century.33 If we keep going back to the narrative(s) of Beowulf, and appropriate them to use them with new aims, with a wider imagination,34 with the available media — if they keep on entertaining us, moving us, inspiring us — we will still be faithful to the last will of the old king of the Geats, he who was ‘manna mildust ond monðwærust | leodum liðost, ond lofgeornost’ (l. 3181–82: the man most gracious and fair-minded, | kindest to his people and keenest to win fame).

 32 Liuzza, ‘Beowulf: Monuments, Memory, History’, p. 94.  33 Chris Jones insists that Beowulf has always been a response, an adaptation, and argues for the poem as often standing at the beginning of new technologies, in ‘From Heorot to Hollywood’, pp. 17–18.  34 The importance of trying to read Beowulf with fresh eyes has been recently highlighted by Earl in ‘The Swedish Wars in Beowulf’.

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Works Cited Manuscripts London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv (second part), available online at [accessed 13 April 2018]. Primary Sources Allan, Syd, Beowulf Translations, online at [accessed 14 March 2017], with full archive at [accessed 17 July 2017] Anand, Astrid, and Bill Carroll, Beowulf (Ottawa: Tri-Color, 1987) Augustyn, Brian, and Dub!, Beowulf: Gods and Monsters (Toronto: Speakeasy Comics, 2007) Bingham, Jerry, Beowulf (Chicago: First Comics, 1984) Garcia, Santiago, and David Rubin, Beowulf (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013; English translation published Portland: Image Comics, 2017) Heaney, Seamus, trans., ‘Beowulf’: A Verse Translation, ed. by Daniel Donoghue (London: Norton, 2002) Hinds, Gareth, The Collected ‘Beowulf’ (Cambridge, MA: TheComic, 2003) —— , Beowulf (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2007) Kiernan, Kevin S., ed., Electronic ‘Beowulf’. Third Edition in DVD (London: British Library, 2011) Petrucha, Stephan, and Kody Chamberlain, Beowulf (London: HarperCollins, 2007) Stern, Stephen, and Chris Steinger, Beowulf: The Graphic Novel (London: Markosia Enterprises, 2007) Uslan, Michael, and Ricardo Villamonte, Beowulf: Dragon Slayer (New York: DC Comics, 1975–1976) Uslan, Michael, and Allan Asherman, ‘Beowulf: An epic comes home’, in Beowulf: Dragon Slayer, 1, (New York: DC Comics: April–May 1975), np —— , ‘The source of the saga’, in Beowulf: Dragon Slayer, 2, (New York: DC Comics, June-July 1975), np Secondary Studies Acker, Paul, ‘Beowulf at the Movies’, in Teaching ‘Beowulf’ in the Twenty-First Cen­ tury, ed. by Howell Chickering, Allen J. Frantzen, and Robert F. Yeager (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2014), pp. 39–44 Bredehoft, Thomas, The Visible Text: Textual Production and Reproduction from ‘Beowulf’ to ‘Maus’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

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Bueno, Jorge L., ‘The Monsters, the Translators, and the Artists: lofgeornost and the Challenges of Translating Beowulf’, in Beowulf in Contemporary Culture, ed. by David Clark (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2020), pp. 111–33 Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Pantheon, 1949) Carver, M., Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London: British Museum, 1998) Clarke, Catherine A. M., ‘Re-placing Masculinity: The DC Comics Beowulf Series in its Context 1975–76’, in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 165–82 cbr.com, ‘A Legend is Reborn: Augustyn talks “Beowulf: Gods and Monsters”’. Online at [online since 19 January 2005, accessed 29 September 2017] Chickering, Howell, Allen J. Frantzen, and Robert F. Yeager, eds, Teaching ‘Beowulf’ in the Twenty-First Century (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2014) Earl, James W., ‘The Swedish Wars in Beowulf’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 114 (2015), 32–60 Eco, Umberto, Apocalípticos e Integrados (Barcelona: Lumen, 1999), ed. and trans. by Robert Lumley as Umberto Eco, Apocalypse Postponed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) —— , On Literature (London: Mariner, 2005) Emmerson, Richard K., ‘Medieval Studies at the Beginning of the New Millennium’, in Vital Signs: English in Medieval Studies in Twenty-First Century Higher Education, ed. by Elaine Treharne, Issues in English 2 (Leicester: The English Association, 2002), pp. 17–27 Flage, K., ‘Classics Redrawn: Gareth Hinds’ (2000), online at [accessed 15 March 2017] Gasca, L., and R. Gubern, El discurso del comic (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001) Harley, Martha, ‘Beowulf and New Media’, in Teaching ‘Beowulf’ in the TwentyFirst Century, ed. by Howell Chickering, Allen J. Frantzen, and Robert F. Yeager (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2014), pp. 45–53 Harvey, R. C., The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996) Haydock, Nickolas, and Edward L. Risden, Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations ( Jefferson: McFarland, 2013) Jones, Chris, ‘From Heorot to Hollywood: Beowulf in its Third Millenium’, in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 13–30 Liuzza, Roy M., ‘Beowulf in Translation: Problems and Possibilities’, in ‘Beowulf’ in Our Time: Teaching ‘Beowulf’ in Translation, ed. by Mary K. Ramsey, Old English Newsletter Subsidia, 31 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2002), pp. 23–40

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—— , ‘Beowulf: Monuments, Memory, History’, in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. by David Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 91–108 North, Richard, and Michael D. J. Bintley, Andreas: An Edition (Liverpool: Liverpool Univeristy Press, 2016) Orchard, Andy, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995; rev. edition Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2003) Orchard, Andy, ‘86. Beowulf’, in Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: British Library, 2018), pp. 230–31 Owen-Crocker, Gale, The Four Funerals in ‘Beowulf’ and the Structure of the Poem (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) —— , Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004) Sebeok, Thomas, ed., Myth: A Symposium (Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 1968) Tabachnick, Stephen E., ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Thomson, S. C., Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript: Towards a History of Reception for the Nowell Codex, Library of the Written Word 67 – The Manuscript World, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2018) Varnum, R., and C. T. Gibbons, eds, The Language of Comics: Word and Image ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001) Videen, Hana, and Karrie Fransman, The Medieval Comic Project, online at [accessed 13 April 2018] Webster, Leslie, ‘Archaeology and Beowulf’, in ‘Beowulf’: An Edition, ed. by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 183–94

Erin Michelle Goeres

Being Numerous Communal Storytelling in Liðsmannaflokkr The corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic literature is remarkable not only for the quantity and variety of stories it contains, but also for the wealth of information it provides about medieval storytellers themselves. The genre of court poetry known as skaldic verse is particularly notable for the amount of detail it records about those who composed it.1 Unlike the mythological and legendary verse of the Poetic Edda, or the many anonymous vernacular poems of the European Middle Ages, from Beowulf to the Nibelungenlied, skaldic verse frequently records the names, origins, and political affiliations of those who composed it. This is especially true of verse preserved in the prosimetric chronicles known as the konungasögur, the sagas of the Scandinavian kings. Often composed centuries after the reigns of their royal subjects, the konungasögur draw on the work of the early medieval skalds, with saga authors combining prose and verse as they seek to tell the story of each king’s reign. This may be seen, for example, in the thirteenth-century Knýtlinga saga, the saga of the kings of Denmark. In this text verse and prose work together to describe the successful invasion of England by King Knútr inn ríki (the great) Sveinsson in 1016: En þegar er Knútr konungr kom til Englands, gekk hann upp ok herjaði landit, drap mannfólkit, en brenndi byggð alla. Svá segir Óttarr svarti: Herskjǫld bart ok helduð, hilmir, ríkr af slíku; hykkat, þengill, þekkðusk þik kyrrsetu mikla. Ætt drap Jóta dróttinn Játgeirs í fǫr þeiri; þveit rakt – þrár est heitinn – þeim, stillis konr, illan.2

 1 For a good introduction to skaldic verse see Whaley, ‘Skaldic Poetry’.  2 The prose text is from Bjarni Guðnason, ed., Danakonunga sǫgur, p. 104 and the verse Erin Michelle Goeres, University College London Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 71–85  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121602

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[And as soon as King Knútr arrived in England, he went ashore and harried the country, killed the people and burned all the inhabited land. Thus says Óttarr svarti: Lord, you carried a war-shield and held fast, powerful by such actions. Prince, I don’t think you cared much for sitting quietly. The lord of the Jutes (king of Denmark, Knútr) killed Eadgar’s kin (the English) on that expedition. Ruler’s son (Knútr) – you are called tenacious – you struck them a severe blow.] The verse cited in this saga was composed by one of Knútr’s court poets, the Icelander Óttarr svarti, likely around the year 1027.3 With its bombastic praise and ornate poetic diction, the verse injects a sense of excitement and immediacy into the more dispassionate prose account.4 As Roberta Frank has demonstrated, Óttarr was only one of several poets to address the king in this vein.5 Knútr’s skill in battle, noble descent and precocious victory over the English are themes repeated in nearly all the stanzas performed in his honour.6 Indeed, Óttarr’s stanza is typical not only of praise-poetry composed for Knútr, but for other Scandinavian rulers as well. As this example demonstrates, an important part of Old Norse praise-poetry is the use of the first person: skaldic encomia are often addressed to a singular þú (you), the king, from the perspective of ek (I), the poet.7 The audience is invited to believe this ek and the story he tells, ostensibly from a first-hand perspective. Despite the skalds’ flamboyant language and overt partisanship for the kings they address, their apparent status as direct witnesses to the events described serves to authenticate their work, making the stories they tell seem all the more

 3  4

 5  6

 7

from Townend’s edition of the poem in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1, 1, p. 771 (st. 3). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. This is the date suggested (with some caveats) by Townend in ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur’, pp. 159–61 and adopted in his edition of the poem in Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, 1, p. 767. A full discussion of the relationship between prose and verse in the sagas, and the many different ways in which skaldic verse is used by the saga authors, is unfortunately outside the scope of this paper. On this topic see especially O’Donoghue, Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative. Frank, ‘King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds’. The extant corpus of poems composed for Knútr is relatively substantial. It comprises three sequences, each known as Knútsdrápa, by the poets Sigvatr Þórðarson, Óttarr svarti and Hallvarðr háreksblesi, as well as Hǫfuðlausn and Tøgdrápa by Þórarinn loftunga, and the anonymous Liðsmannaflokkr. Knútr is also mentioned in a series of occasional and fragmentary verses and in Þórðr Kolbeinsson’s Eiríksdrápa, composed in honour of one of his earls. For a discussion of the corpus and its historical context, see Townend, ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur’. Texts and translations may be found in Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, with the exception of Hallvarðr háreksblesi’s Knútsdrápa; for this, see Frank, ‘King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds’, pp. 119–21. On Óttarr’s use of the vocative in this poem, see Jesch, ‘Knútr in Poetry and History’, pp. 253–55.

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believable to the listening or reading audience.8 Therefore, the first-person address of the skaldic poet has often been accepted as a stamp of legitimacy both by later historiographers – such as the author of Knýtlinga saga – and by many modern readers as they seek to understand the narrative of the early kings’ reigns.9 What happens, therefore, when the poetic witness is not only anonymous but plural? What effect does the presence of multiple, unnamed voices have on the way their stories are told? Such a problem is presented by Liðsmannaflokkr, another skaldic sequence that describes the actions of Knútr in England. Liðsmannaflokkr likely dates from the early years of the king’s reign, c. 1017–1019.10 Unlike Óttarr’s stanza and unusually for a skaldic sequence, Liðsmannaflokkr is voiced by a plural ‘we’ rather than a singular ‘I’. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the story it tells is a collective one: the sequence emphasizes the communal, group identity of the Danish force that brought King Knútr to power. The name of the poet is unknown but the sequence is closely associated with Knútr’s household retainers, his liðsmenn.11 The name Liðsmannaflokkr (Poem of the household retainers) is editorial but it does have some basis in the medieval context. Like Óttarr’s stanza cited above, part of the sequence is preserved in Knýtlinga saga, where it is associated with Knútr’s liðsmenn and their attack on the city of London: Knútr konungr lagði ǫllum herinum upp til Lundúnaborgar ok setti þar um herbúðir sínar. Síðan veittu þeir atsókn til borgarinnar, en borgarmenn vǫrðu. Svá segir í flokki þeim, er þá var ortr af liðsmǫnnum.12 [King Knútr brought all of his retinue up to the town of London and set up his camp there. After that they attacked the town, but the townspeople defended it. It is related thus in the short poem that was composed by the troops.] Although the sagas cannot always be trusted to give accurate information about the genesis of skaldic verse, this passage certainly reflects the strong

 8 Cf. the terminology used in Whaley, ‘Skalds and Situational Verses in Heimskringla’.  9 A useful summary of the debate surrounding this issue may be found in Ghosh, Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History, pp. 25–109. See also Goeres, The Poetics of Commemoration, pp. 5–14.  10 Poole, ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History’, pp. 284–86. Although Jan de Vries considered the poem to be a later, antiquarian work (Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 1, pp. 281–82), an early dating is supported by the probable Old English linguistic influence on the verses, as noted by Hofmann, Nordisch-englishe Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit, pp. 59–71.  11 For a thorough discussion of the lið, see Lund, ‘The Armies of Swein Forkbeard and Cnut’. On the use of the word lið and its compounds, see Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age, pp. 187–94.  12 Bjarni Guðnason, Danakonunga sǫgur, pp. 115–16. Ashdown, however, argues that the phrase ‘af liðsmǫnnum’ means that the sequence was composed ‘about the household troops’ rather than by them: English and Norse Documents, p. 206, with a translation (pp. 140–43) and notes (pp. 205–08) on the poem.

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group identity expressed in the poetic sequence.13 In contrast to a work like Óttarr’s Knútsdrápa, which addresses the king almost exclusively and praises his deeds above all others, Liðsmannaflokkr at least pretends to reflect a plurality of voices and, through this, the communal experience of invasion and conquest. The sequence explores in particular the mental and emotional struggles provoked by Knútr’s military campaign of 1015–1016, as experienced by his followers. The Danish invasion of England was longer and involved far more battles, set-backs, and negotiations than that of the Normans fifty years later. As a young man, Knútr had accompanied his father, King Sveinn tjúguskegg (forkbeard) Haraldsson of Denmark, on a series of raids in England. In 1013 they managed to force the Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelred II, into exile and Sveinn ruled England for a short time afterwards. When he died the following year Knútr was forced to return to Denmark. Denied a share of that kingdom by his half-brother Haraldr, Knútr launched his own invasion of England in September 1015 and the next several months saw a series of battles, skirmishes, and sieges across England as Æthelred and his allies attempted to defend the kingdom. Although Æthelred died in April of 1016, his son Edmund was quickly elected king and continued to lead the Anglo-Saxon defence. Only after his defeat at the Battle of Assandun in October of 1016 did Edmund agree to a division of the kingdom with Knútr; and only after Edmund died the following month was Knútr able to claim the entire realm.14 Matthew Townend observes that the corpus of praise-poetry in honour of Knútr falls roughly into two groups, with the early poem Liðsmannaflokkr ‘composed by insiders, those who had already thrown in their lot with Cnut’s assault on England’, and later poems such as Óttarr’s Knútsdrápa, the product of ‘outsiders, those who came seeking Cnut’s court at a subsequent point’.15 Knútsdrápa and the other later poems celebrate a king at the height of his powers; Liðsmannaflokkr, on the other hand, chronicles the difficult, early days of invasion and conquest.16 The Knútr it describes is not yet the ruler of a proto-Scandinavian empire,17 nor indeed is he the sole leader of

 13 It must, however, be noted that only stanza 2 and a stanza combining parts of 8 and 9 are cited in Knýtlinga saga. The full sequence is now extant in the Legendary saga of the royal saint Óláfr Haraldsson and in Styrmir Kárason’s now-fragmentary Lífssaga of St Óláfr, preserved in Flateyjarbók (Guðbrandur Vigfússon and C. R. Unger, eds, Flateyjarbók, 3, pp. 237–39). These sagas in turn likely reflect the text of the so-called Oldest saga of St Óláfr. In the Óláfr sagas Liðsmannaflokkr is spoken by the future saint himself rather than by Knútr’s liðsmenn. For a full discussion of the manuscript context of the sequence, as well as its probable inclusion in the Oldest saga and perhaps in Knúts saga (no longer extant), see Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 90–99; as well as Fidjestøl, Det norrøne fyrstediktet, pp. 21–22; and Bjarni Guðnason, Danakonunga sǫgur, pp. xci–xcvi.  14 There are many excellent accounts of this period, but see in particular Lawson, Cnut, pp. 19–52.  15 Townend, ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur’, p. 163.  16 For a good summary of the historical background of the poem, see Poole, ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History’, pp. 268–98.  17 Cf. Garmonsway, ‘Canute and his Empire’. The extent to which the lands under Knútr’s

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the expedition: as both Russell Poole and Townend observe, the poem is carefully balanced in its praise of Knútr and of his fellow commander, the Danish nobleman and one-time ally of King Æthelred, Þorkell inn hávi (the tall).18 It is unsurprising, therefore, that group cohesion and the necessity of communal resolve emerge at the forefront of the sequence. Liðsmannaflokkr is not just an account of an important moment in the Danish advance; it is the articulation of a common identity and purpose. The story it tells is one of unity: communal endeavour is shown to enable the victory of an upstart and potentially divided Danish force over the once-powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The use of the first-person plural voice is especially notable in this regard, as illustrated by the first stanza:19 Gǫngum upp, áðr Engla ættlǫnd farin rǫndu morðs ok miklar ferðir malmregns stafar fregni. Verum hugrakkir hlakkar; hristum spjót ok skjótum; leggr fyr órum eggjum Engla gnótt á flótta.20 [Let us go ashore, before the great troops of slaughter (army) and the staves of the rain of metal weapons (warriors) learn that the ancestral lands of the English have been crossed by the shield. Let us be bold of mind in battle; let us shake spears and shoot [them]; an abundance of Englishmen takes to flight before the edges of our swords.] In this one stanza, four plural verbs emphasize the joint nature of the undertaking: gǫngum, verum, hristum, skjótum. Although the group ethos is clearly articulated, it is nevertheless striking that the identity of that group is left unspecified; there is nothing in this verse to indicate the attacking control should be thought of as an empire is discussed by Bolton in The Empire of Cnut the Great, pp. 289–316 and Peter Sawyer, ‘Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire’.  18 Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 99–107; Townend, ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur’, pp. 163–64.  19 It should be noted that there is some dispute as to the presumed original order of the stanzas, due in part to the variation between Knýtlinga saga and the Óláfr sagas, noted above. Finnur Jónsson attempted to resolve this by dividing the sequence into two groups of stanzas, attributing one to St Óláfr and dating it to the early years of the English campaign; the other he accepted as the work of Knútr’s liðsmenn, composed around 1016. For this edition, see Finnur Jónsson, ed., Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, BI, pp. 210–11 and 391–93. As Poole notes, however, many later scholars have criticized Finnur’s approach and the sequence presented in the Óláfr sagas is now the preferred text, although the attribution to Óláfr himself is highly suspect (Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 93–99).  20 Liðsmannaflokkr is edited by R. Poole in Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, 1, pp. 1014–28, with revised material from Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 86–115 and Poole, ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History’, pp. 280–98.

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soldiers’ place of origin or their political affiliations. Rather, they are identified through their common enemy, with ‘Engla’ (of the English) repeated in the first and last lines. While English lands have been passively crossed (‘farin’) and the English troops can only flee (‘leggr á flótta’), the joint subjects of the stanza are identified by the actions they perform together. Indeed, the poet nicely exploits the ambiguity of the four plural verbs, which one can interpret either as the indicative (‘we go’) or the imperative (‘let us go’). In the first helmingr,21 gǫngum seems to be a joint call to arms — ‘let us go!’ — but the acts of shaking and throwing spears in the second helmingr are less certain. By the end of the stanza it seems that the Danes have indeed come ashore and engaged in battle with the English; the English would presumably not have fled unless some sort of action had occurred. The initial invitation to act, therefore, blurs into a description of action itself; the verse becomes both a retelling and a re-enaction of the events it describes. The plural voicing of these acts also serves to multiply the identities of the speakers: they are both warriors and poets, those who fight and those who commemorate the story of the conflict in verse. Unlike the stanza by Óttarr svarti, in which a single skald tells the king the story of his own conquest, this sequence presents the invasion as a joint enterprise; the crafting of the narrative of that enterprise is likewise shown to be a communal activity. It is noticeable that, while three of these verbs describe physical action, the fourth is clearly an act of the mind: ‘verum hugrakkir hlakkar’ (let us be mind-bold in battle). Similarly, as the fourth stanza notes, ‘þeir sǫ́usk eigi sǫng sverða’ (they [the Danes] didn’t fear the song of swords). Joint action is important in this poem, but so too is shared mental resolve. While inviting the audience to consider the military prowess of the Danish troops — themselves the original audience of the poem, if Knýtlinga saga is to be believed — the sequence also explores the mental and emotional battles that underlie acts of war and which threaten the group ethos that is so important to victory. This is particularly clear when the sequence introduces the various leaders involved in the conflict: on the Danish side, Þorkell and Knútr and, on the English, the East Anglian nobleman Ullkell (OE Ulfcetel). As Townend argues, poems composed later in Knútr’s reign tend to focus on the king alone, reflecting Knútr’s more powerful, ‘absolutist’ position of authority; the verse by Óttarr svarti, cited above, is a good example of this. In contrast, the early sequence Liðsmannaflokkr demonstrates a form of ‘charismatic’ leadership as Knútr works to unite an otherwise disparate group of allies in order to claim power.22 Indeed, it is initially Ullkell who appears to dominate the conflict: Einráðit lét áðan Ullkell, þars spjǫr gullu,  21 The Old Norse term helmingr (half) is used to denote the first four lines of a skaldic verse.  22 Townend uses Norbert Elias’ formulation, following Max Weber (‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur’ pp. 163–64); see also Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 99–107.

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– hǫrð óx hildar garða hríð – víkinga at bíða. Ok, slíðrhugaðr, síðan sátt á oss, hvé mátti byggs við bitran skeggja brunns; tveir hugir runnu.23 [Earlier, Ullkell had resolved to wait for the vikings, where spears shrieked; a fierce storm of the enclosures of war (storm of shields, battle) grew. And, frighteningly-minded man (warrior), you then saw in us, how one could manage against the bitter inhabitant of the spring’s barley (inhabitant of stone, likely Ullkell); two minds were running (i.e., competing).] The identity of the slíðrhugaðr, the frighteningly-minded or ruthless man, is uncertain but the link between mental resolve and victory is clear.24 Similarly, Ullkell, the enemy, is said to have become of one mind, ‘lét einráðit’; as such, he poses a serious threat to the Danish troops. The rather oblique phrase ‘tveir hugir runnu’ (two minds were running) suggests that there is dissent among the ranks, perhaps due to a dispute between the two leaders, Þorkell and Knútr. Structurally, this focus on mental resolve or the lack thereof encloses the physical acts of war described in the rest of the stanza: the resolution to fight (‘einráðit lét áðan’) occupies the first line of the verse, while the image of two minds running against each other concludes it. In this way, the stanza leaves in the audience in some doubt as to whether the divided Danish army can overcome their single-minded English adversary. Accordingly, it is through mental rather than physical means that Knútr asserts his authority over the Danish troops. As the next stanza notes: Knútr réð ok bað bíða (baugstalls) Dani alla; (lundr gekk rǫskr und randir ríkr) vá herr við díki.25 [Knútr decided and ordered all of the Danes to wait; the mighty tree of the ring-pedestal (tree of the shield, warrior) went, brave, under the shields; the army fought by the ditch.]

 23 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, p. 1023 (st. 6).  24 In the most recent edition Poole translates slíðrhugaðr as a vocative, assuming that the speaker is addressing one of his comrades in the fight (Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, pp. 1023–24). One might also suggest Knútr, Þorkell or even Ullkell as a possible addressee. Finnur, on the other hand, takes slíðrhugaðr as the subject of the verb mega (‘and then you saw how the frighteningly-minded one [warrior] could manage’); see Finnur Jónsson, ed., Den norskislandske skjaldedigtning, BI, p. 210.  25 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, p. 1024 (st. 7).

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Knútr replaces indecision with resolution; in this, he, not Þorkell, is shown to be a match for Ullkell. He further asserts his authority not by leading the charge but by ordering the troops to stop, bíða (to wait). It is not clear why he makes this order. Perhaps it is a tactical decision or a moment the troops need to regroup. Whatever the reason, the stanza indicates not only that Knútr is able to claim authority in the face of uncertainty but also that such authority may be asserted through the discipline that (temporarily) stops the men from fighting, as well as that which leads the charge. The phrase ‘tveir hugir runnu’ thus emphasizes the importance of consensus among the band of fighting men. The sequence further promotes the importance of group identity by creating a sarcastic contrast between those who fight and those who stay at home. The liðsmenn, it appears, are not the enthusiastic fighters that popular images of ‘the Vikings’ would tend to promote. At times they seem merely resigned to the unpleasantness of their chosen career path: Margr ferr Ullr í illan oddsennu dag þenna frár, þars fœddir órum, fornan serk, ok bornir. Enn á enskra manna ǫlum gjóð Hnikars blóði; vart mun skald í skyrtu skreiðask hamri samða.26 [Many a swift Ullr of the point-quarrel (god of battle, warrior) today gets into his nasty old shirt (mail-coat), in which we were born and raised. Again let us feed Hnikarr’s osprey (Óðinn’s bird, raven) on the blood of Englishmen; a cautious poet will slip into a coat made with a hammer (mail-coat).]27

 26 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, p. 1018 (st. 2).  27 In the most recent edition Poole translates vart as ‘scarcely’ (i.e., ‘the skald will scarcely’ put on his mail-coat), although in his earlier translation prefers ‘cautious’ (Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 86–87). The sense of caution seems more in keeping with the tenor of the stanza, particularly as the notion of the skald ‘scarcely’ putting on his mail-coat contradicts the same action as described in the first helmingr. Caution is also suggested by the proverbial quality of the stanza and its use of the verb munu; this construction is reminiscent of the many warnings given in gnomic verse such as Hávamál, in which the cautious man is advised not to be boastful, to keep silent and to beware of drink, other men’s wives and thieves: see Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, eds, Eddukvæði, vol. i, pp. 323 and 348 (sts. 7 and 8, and 131, respectively). The variant reading ǫrt (bold) appears in some manuscripts of Knýtlinga saga and is adopted by such editors as Finnur Jónsson (Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, BI, p. 391) and Bjarni Guðnason (Danakonunga sǫgur, p. 116). Although the image of the ‘bold skald’ is perhaps more in keeping with the heroism described in other battle-verses, it does not match the self-deprecating irony of this sequence. See further Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, p. 112.

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This stanza shows a wry affection for the mail-coat a warrior wears: the image of being born and raised in armour is clearly exaggerated and it contrasts humorously with the more formulaic and over-the-top call to feed ravens with the blood of Englishmen. This is also true of the image of the poet cautiously donning his armour, although use of the third person renders the precise identity of this figure ambiguous: is it the speaker or speakers? Is it another poet who is yet to be introduced, or does the phrase refer to poets in general? The use of the third person here lends the phrase a proverbial quality in which one might read a grim acknowledgement of the danger that awaits Knútr’s men: those who wish to live to tell the story of the battle in verse – that is, to act as poets – are advised to put on their mail-coats. The liðsmenn may be reluctant to fight, but they do, and the stanza that follows expresses typical skaldic scorn for men who stay at home:28 Þollr mun glaums of grímu gjarn síðarla arna randar skóð at rjóða rœðinn, sás mey fœðir. Berr eigi sá sveigir sára lauks í ári reiðr til Rínar glóða rǫnd upp á Englandi.29 [The chattering fir-tree of merriment (man), who brings up the maiden, will be eager to go forward late (i.e., never) to redden the harmer of the shield (sword) at night. That swinger of the wound-leek (swinger of the sword, warrior) does not now carry a shield up into England, angry, [to gain] the Rhine’s embers (gold).] This new character, the chattering reveller, contrasts sharply with the stoic warrior-skalds, those telling the story of the battle. Poole has written on the use of restricted vocabulary and verbal repetition in this text, arguing that the repetition is not random but works to ‘confer unity upon the poem as a whole’, particularly in the linking of one stanza to the next.30 The density of verbs for feeding and nourishing – fœða (‘to feed, to bring up’) and ala (‘to nourish, to bring up’) – is particularly strong across these two stanzas and exemplifies Poole’s argument: these verbs describe the actions both of the liðsmenn and of the reveller, binding the two stanzas together. Such repetition, however, serves only to create a disapproving contrast between the men who perform such actions: the liðsmenn feed ravens through slaughter, while the reveller ‘feeds’, or brings up, an unnamed maiden far

 28 Cf. Perkins, ‘A Medieval Icelandic Rowing Chant’.  29 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, p. 1019 (st. 3).  30 Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, p. 110.

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from the battlefield. Similarly, the kennings that describe the man who stays at home would not be out of place in a description of battle: he is a ‘sveigir lauks sára’ (swinger of the leek of wounds [sword]), for example.31 However, such descriptions are either negated or qualified by the sardonic understatement of words such as síðarla (he will go forward ‘late’, that is, never, into battle). The liðsmenn scornfully describe the warlike acts that this reveller will not perform, in contrast to what he ought to do — and in contrast to what they themselves accomplish. It is clear that, while the act of storytelling works to bind the community of liðsmenn together, it is an equally effective means of identifying and even excoriating those who are not part of that elite group. The liðmenn do have a lady of their own, however. The poem does not hold up for mockery men’s association with women per se, but rather the pacifying effect some women can have on male behaviour. A number of the stanzas are addressed to an unnamed lady, ‘sús býr í steini’ (who lives in stone); she seems at first to be looking down on the fight from behind the stone walls of London.32 She is referred to as a mær (maid) and an ekkja (widow).33 The poet also uses mythological heiti34 such as the goddess-names Syn and Ilmr, as well as the valkyrie-name Hlǫkk to refer to her.35 It has been suggested that the woman is Emma, widow of Æthelred and future wife of Knútr, but this is never made explicit in the poem itself.36 Rather, the lack of a proper name seems designed to heighten the contrast between the woman in London and the reveller’s maiden back home. They should not be read as specific women but as types or perhaps even, in the case of the London lady, as ideals. Unlike the chattering reveller, who stays behind, quietly watching over the woman in his care, the liðsmenn theatrically display both their fighting skills and their poetic abilities before this anonymous resident of the besieged town; yet again, this peculiarly muscular form of storytelling seems to blur the line between the physical acts of war and the narration of those acts through verse. Stanza five, for example, recounts: Hár þykki mér, hlýra, hinn jarl, es brá snarla

 31 Cf. Poole’s analysis of these kennings in Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 111–12.  32 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, pp. 1025 (st. 8). Poole suggests these may be the remains of the city’s Roman walls (Poole, ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History’, p. 288).  33 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, pp. 1022 and 1025 (sts. 5 and 8), respectively.  34 Heiti are poetic synonymns. They usually take the form of an alternative name or descriptive term for the object or person referred to.  35 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, pp. 1024, 1028 and 1027 (sts. 7, 10 and 9), respectively.  36 Poole, ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History’, pp. 290–92. Morawiec has also suggested she may be Knútr’s mother, daughter of King Mieszko I of Poland; see his ‘Liðsmannaflokkr – the Question of its Potential Function’.

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– mær spyrr vitr, at væri valkǫstr – ara fǫstu.37 [The earl (Þorkell), who quickly broke the fast of the eagle’s brother (raven), seems tall to me; the wise maiden learns that there was a corpse-pile.] Skalds rarely address women, although it is not unknown.38 The exact role this woman plays in the production of the poem is ambiguous but she may act as a more active agent than is often assumed. The verb spyrja can mean ‘to hear’, as it is translated in the most recent edition of the sequence — ‘the woman hears that there was a pile of corpses’ — but spyrja commonly means ‘to ask’, particularly in conjunction with at (that), as it is in this stanza. Indeed, the Flateyjarbók version of this stanza substitutes ef (if) for at: ‘the wise woman asks if there was a pile of corpses’.39 In this interpretation the woman is presented as more than a passive observer of the battle and as more than a passive listener of poetry; rather, she participates in a dialogue about the battle and actively elicits verse from the men who fight. In this way, she too is part of the communal process of storytelling. This might explain her interest in the valkǫstr, the pile of slain men; this would be a surprisingly ghoulish concern for a well-bred noblewoman such as Emma but one might see here a suggestive nod to that other female figure who haunts the battlefield, the valkyrie, or ‘chooser of the slain’.40 It is unlikely that the lady represents an actual valkyrie, but it is notable that the language associated with such powerful women plays an important role in the portrayal of this battle: the woman of London stands in dramatic contrast to the absent lady left at home, while the warriors who fight under her gaze are strongly dissociated from the cowardly man who also stays behind. In this, the sequence promotes not only the sort of manly fighting performed by the poem’s subjects, but also advocates specific behaviours on the part of the listening audience. Although not one of the fighters herself, the woman’s active engagement in the production of the narrative means that she too is a storyteller; she too can become part of the community of warrior-poets. As such, she offers a model for the listening audience to emulate, demonstrating how even those who were not present at the battle can take part in it through the shared experience of storytelling.

 37 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, p. 1022 (st. 5).  38 Frank, ‘Why Skalds Address Women’. Frank discusses Liðsmannaflokkr only briefly in this article, but she notes the importance of the female onlooker in ensuring appropriately martial, masculine behaviour (pp. 58–59). See also Poole, ‘Some Royal Love-Verses’.  39 Guðbrandur Vigfússon and C. R. Unger, eds, Flateyjarbók, 3, p. 238.  40 According to the etymology proposed by Jakob Grimm in Teutonic Mythology, trans. by Stallybrass, 1, 417–18. Like this lady, valkyries are also described as wise, vitr (see for example Þorbjǫrn hornklofi’s Haraldskvæði (Hrafnsmál), in Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, 1, pp. 95–117).

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The focus on who fights and who does not, on who travels abroad and who does not, is moreover an important rhetorical move: it allows the liðsmenn to gloss over the fact that the siege of London was a failure. Despite the heroic fighting depicted in the poem, sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle report that London did not fall to the attacking Danish troops; in fact, it withstood multiple attacks both in 1016 and earlier.41 The figure of the woman watching from the walls of London allows for a clever side-stepping of this issue. As the final stanza says: Dag vas hvern, þats Hǫgna hurð rjóðask nam blóði, ár, þars úti vǫ́ rum, Ilmr, í fǫr með hilmi. Kneigum vér, síz vígum varð nýlokit hǫrðum, fyllar dags, í fǫgrum, fit, Lundúnum sitja.42 [It was every day that Hǫgni’s door (the shield) was reddened with blood, the year that we were abroad, Ilmr (lady), on the expedition with the prince. We are able, since hard battles have recently been concluded, meadow of the sea’s day (meadow of gold, woman), to settle down [lit. sit, stay] in beautiful London.] In this stanza the daily, seemingly endless battles have come to an end. The first-person plural of the phrase ‘kneigum sitja’ (we are able to settle down) echoes the plural forms gǫngum, hristum, and skjótum at the beginning of the sequence, those that originally called the troops into battle. Here, though, the lady is drawn into the group of prospective settlers; the plurality of the verb potentially includes her in the act of settling down and she thus becomes complicit in the transfer of London from English to Danish hands. Metaphorically, the lady could even stand for London itself: positioned first behind London’s stone walls, her participation in the production of the poem increasingly identifies her as part of the community of warrior-poets, portrayed now as London’s newest inhabitants. In this final stanza the poetic language associated with her is no longer the warlike description of the valkyrie, but images of prosperity and sunny summer days. In this, the end of the sequence offers an almost domestic, peaceful vision of conquest; the communal story has become one of settlement rather than invasion. In this way, Liðsmannaflokkr invites its audience to consider the experience of those who helped Knútr to establish his first foothold in England, and to relive and reflect on the mental and emotional resolve that enabled them to

 41 Irvine, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS. E, pp. 72–74.  42 Liðsmannaflokkr, 1, p. 1028 (st. 10).

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do so. It presents a communal, rather than an individual, narrative of conquest that is markedly different from later verses composed at the Anglo-Danish court, which focus on the king’s abilities and accomplishments. Indeed, it does even more than this. The work from which this chapter takes its title is not often read in conjunction with medieval poetry. The American poet George Oppen published his collection of verse entitled Of Being Numerous in 1968 against the tumultuous backdrop of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the Kennedy assassination.43 A former Communist Party member who temporarily fled to Mexico to avoid McCarthyism in the 1950s, Oppen was a poet who seems almost diametrically opposed to the Norse skalds and their courtly, elite forms of verse. Nevertheless, the question of what it means to be plural emerges at the forefront of both. What is the relationship between the individual and society? Between those who govern and those who follow? Can a poet describe the experience of the many, and what responsibility does he bear towards those he speaks for? Liðsmannaflokkr does not represent the voice of an eleventh-century proletariat, nor does it offer a challenge to King Knútr and his growing dominance over Scandinavia and England. The sequence poses a challenge not to political structures, but to poetic ones. Unlike so many other skaldic poems it imagines a plural subject, perhaps even a plural self. In articulating the shared experience of war and conquest, the sequence actively works to negate the idea of the single poetic speaker and that speaker’s authority over the story that is told. That story is one which privileges – even relies on – communal experience and the collective performance of verse. It was noted above that both medieval and modern readers often ascribe value to skaldic sequences because of the seeming individuality of the poets who composed them. Liðsmannaflokkr, however, demonstrates that skaldic verse itself engages in a more varied and complex way with issues of voice, identity, and subjectivity. A sequence like Liðsmannaflokkr demonstrates that the corpus of skaldic verse is not limited to what Oppen calls the ‘shipwreck of the singular’, as is so often assumed; rather, early medieval poets, like their modern counterparts, can also explore the ‘meaning of being numerous’.44

 43 Cf. Nicholls, George Oppen and the Fate of Modernism, pp. 82–109.  44 Oppen, ‘Of Being Numerous’, in his New Collected Poems, p. 166.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Ashdown, Margaret, English and Norse Documents Relating to the Reign of Ethelred the Unready (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930) Bjarni Guðnason, ed., Danakonunga sǫgur: Skjǫldunga saga, Knýtlinga saga, Ágrip af sǫgu Danakonunga, Íslenzk fornrit, 35 (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 1982) Fidjestøl, Bjarne, Det norrøne fyrstediktet (Øvre Ervik: Alvheim & Eide, 1982) Finnur Jónsson, ed. and trans., Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, vols AI–II, BI–II (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1912–1915) Guðbrandur Vigfússon, and C. R. Unger, eds, Flateyjarbók: En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler, 3 vols (Christiania [Oslo]: Malling, 1860–1868) Irvine, Susan, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 7: MS. E (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004) Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, eds, Eddukvæði, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 2014), Oppen, George, New Collected Poems, ed. by M. Davidson (New York: New Directions, 2002) Poole, Russell, Viking Poems on War and Peace, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, 8 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) Whaley, Diana, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035, 2 vols Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) Secondary Studies Bolton, Timothy, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and Consolodation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009) De Vries, Jan, Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Berlin: Gruyter, 1964–1967) Frank, Roberta, ‘Why Skalds Address Women’, in Atti del 12. Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull’ Alto Medioevo: Poetry in the Scandinavian Middle Ages. The Seventh International Saga Conference, ed. by Teresa Pàroli (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1990), pp. 55–66 —— , ‘King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds’, in The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. by Alexander R. Rumble (London: University of Leicester Press, 1994), pp. 106–24 Garmonsway, G. N., ‘Canute and his Empire’, Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies (London: Lewis, 1964) Ghosh, Shami, Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History: Problems and Perspectives, The Northern World, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2011)

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Goeres, Erin M., The Poetics of Commemoration: Skaldic Verse and Social Memory, c. 890–1070 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Grimm, Jakob, Teutonic Mythology, trans. by James Steven Stallybrass, 4th edn, 4 vols (London: Bell, 1882–1888) Hofmann, Dietrich, Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, 14 (København: Munksgaard, 1955) Jesch, Judith, ‘Knútr in Poetry and History’, in International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber, ed. by Michael Dallapiazza, Olaf Hansen, Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, and Yvonne Bonnetain (Trieste: Hesperides, 2000), pp. 243–56 —— , Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001) Lawson, M. K., Cnut: England’s Viking King, 2nd edn (Stroud: History Press, 2004) Lund, Niels, ‘The Armies of Swein Forkbeard and Cnut: leding or lið?’, Anglo-Saxon England, 15 (1986), 105–18 Morawiec, J., ‘Liðsmannaflokkr – the Question of its Potential Function and the Audience of the Poem’, in Between Paganism and Christianity in the North, ed. by Leszek P. Słupecki and Jakub Morawiec (Rzeszów: Uniwersytetu rzezowskiego, 2009), pp. 93–115 Nicholls, Peter, George Oppen and the Fate of Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) O’Donoghue, Heather, Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Perkins, R., ‘A Medieval Icelandic Rowing Chant’, Medieval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 92–101 Poole, Russell, ‘Some Royal Love-Verses’, Maal og Minne, (1985), 115–31 —— , ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History’, Speculum, 62 (1987), 265–98 Rumble, Alexander R., ed., The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway (London: University of Leicester Press, 1994) Sawyer, P., ‘Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire’, in The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. by Alexander R. Rumble (London: University of Leicester Press, 1994), pp. 10–22 Townend, Matthew, ‘Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur: Skaldic Praise-poetry at the Court of Cnut’, Anglo-Saxon England, 30 (2001), 145–79 Whaley, Diana, ‘Skalds and Situational Verses in Heimskringla’, in Snorri Sturluson: Kolloquium anläßlich der 750 Wiederkehr seines Todestages, ed. by Alois Wolf, ScriptOralia, 51 (Tübingen: Narr Francke, 1993), pp. 245–66 —— , ‘Skaldic Poetry’, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by Roy McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 234–57

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Evelyn Birge Vitz

Performance and Emotions in Four Epic Works about Roland These pages focus on a particular, if substantial, body of medieval and early modern material: the Roland / Charlemagne material, dating from the end of the eleventh century to the sixteenth century. My purpose here will be to explore some of the ways in which stories from this set of epic narratives are likely to have been performed — that is, presented to their audiences by performers working from memory, or by public readers. I will also address the kinds of emotions these works appear to have invited and elicited in their audiences. Thus, rather than focusing on the plots, or the paths these texts travelled, or the ways they been interpreted by readers, or similar issues, my discussion will bear on the invitations to performance and to emotional response within the works. That is, my focus is on the ways in which these works invited vocalization and embodiment by performers, and emotional responses by the audiences who saw and heard the works performed. I will examine what these works appear to have invited and received, both in terms of performance by performers and audience response. But I will keep in mind — and to some degree explore — the valuable concept developed by Richard Bauman, which he terms the ‘emergent dimension’ of performance.1 No two performances are ever the same; every performance is different from others and emerges in and for a particular occasion. Moreover, performers have ‘flexibility, interpretive choice, [and] creative opportunity’. The same is true of audiences, who may bring their own views and their own emotions to a work; listeners, like readers, may ignore the ‘invitations’ embedded in a work and respond to it emotionally (and cognitively) as they will. I do not hope to exhaust this large topic — or the rich and complex works that I will discuss — but simply to identify and sketch out some key issues. I think this is worth doing since our performance norm is silent, private * Thanks to the outside reader of this volume for useful feedback, and to Simon Thomson for his valuable suggestions.  1 See Bauman, ‘Performance’, pp. 42–43. Bauman is an anthropologist, folklorist, and com­muni­ cations scholar. Various performance and reception theorists have explored similar issues.

Evelyn Birge Vitz, Professor Emerita of French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 87–107  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121603

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reading. Many people today have a hard time even imagining live performance of epic — and performance that strongly invites emotional (as distinct from purely cognitive) response. The four works — two pairs of texts — that I will discuss here are chosen for similarities and differences of treatment, with regard to performance and to emotion. Many other works would of course have been possible — there is no dearth of material about Charlemagne and Roland! — but rarely do we find pairs of closely related works that can be compared and contrasted.2 (Let us note here that there are substantial differences in the performability of the two sets of texts; I will address this issue later in the chapter.) First, I take up two French-language epics: The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland — the famous ‘Oxford’ Roland), dating from the end of the eleventh century, and a thirteenth-century rhymed version of the Roland (commonly called the ‘Châteauroux-Venice 7 Roland’ or the Rhymed Roland). They are fundamentally identical in their basic plot line. Moreover, they are strongly similar in the performances they seem to have elicited — but in some respects, and in some passages, they are strikingly different. These two epics also in general invited similar emotions in audiences — especially anger and sorrow — but, again, with some very interesting differences. I will then turn to another pair of quite similar ‘takes’ on the Roland material: two Italian works, one from the fifteenth century and the other from the sixteenth century — Boiardo’s Roland in Love (Orlando innamorato) and Ariosto’s The Frenzy of Orlando (Orlando furioso). These two ‘romance epics’ also have many resemblances in terms of their setting, key characters, and major themes; Ariosto’s work is indeed a continuation of Boiardo’s unfinished poem. Here again, we see substantial similarities in performance style and in the elicitation of emotions (pleasure, often laughter) in the two works, but again with some strong divergences. The purpose of this paper and these two pairs of comparisons is to serve as a reminder that the stories about Roland and Charlemagne and others could be presented to audiences in widely differing ways and invite very different emotional responses — however similar the works are in terms of genre, plot, and characters. Interactions between the story, the storyteller, and audience are complex and variable. The context for performance — the negotiations between text, teller, medium, audience, and social environment — is thus of essential importance for emotional (and other kinds of) reception.

 2 So far as I know there is no broad general introduction to the literature dealing with Charle­ magne and Roland. But most editions and translations of the works discussed below contain valuable discussions of the history of the material. A useful bibliographical overview is Farrier, ed., The Medieval Charlemagne Legend.

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Medieval French Epics Chanson de Roland / Song of Roland

We begin, then, with two Old French epics that tell the same story, and tell it very similarly — but nonetheless with some striking and memorable differences. La Chanson de Roland is our earliest surviving chanson de geste, dating from around 1100. Like other early French and Anglo-Norman chansons de geste, the Oxford Roland was, evidence indicates, typically performed by jongleurs: these professional performers would normally have sung this poetic epic, which is composed of decasyllabic lines; all the lines in each stanza, or laisse, end on the same vowel — this is termed assonance; the number of lines in a laisse varies considerably. Epic songs were sung to a fairly invariant melody, often with accompaniment of a vielle (a proto-violin).3 The key characters in this epic are almost exclusively warrior males; the emotions they both exhibit and invite are the classic epic male emotions of boldness, anger (at the enemy), admiration (for each other’s prowess), and — at the end of battle — extreme sorrow at the loss of friends and comrades. This epic cycles and re-cycles through these various emotions, for example, moving from boldness and anger at the start of the great battle at Roncevaux (and at major points during the battle), to immense grief on the part of Charlemagne and the French at the end of the battle when all the Twelve Peers are found dead; then to another round of boldness and anger when Charlemagne begins his revenge; and so on. Emotionally, the text is structured in what I term ‘waves’: that is, the epic song shifts, in great sets of passages, or waves, from one large emotion to another. A few brief examples of these waves are in order. We see the boldness begin especially as we move into the great battle, with many passages like this one: 104 La bataille est merveilluse e comune. Li quens Rollant mie ne s’asoürent : fiert de l’espiét tant cum hanste li duret, a quinze cols l’ad fraitë e rumpue ; trait Durendal, sa bone espee, nue, sun cheval brochet si vait ferir Chernuble : l’elme li freint u li carbuncle luisent, tranchet le chef e la cheveleüre si li tranchat les oilz e la faiture, li blanc osbert dunt la maile est menue, et tut le cors tresqu’en la furcheüre, enz en la sele, ki est a or batue, el cheval est l’espee aresteüe ; trenchet l’eschine, unc n’i out quis jointure,

 3 On this issue, see e.g. Page, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages.

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tut abat mort el préd sur l’erbe drue. Aprés li dist : ‘Culvert, mar i moüstes ! De Mahumet ja n’i avez aiüde. Par tel glutun n’ert bataille oi vencue’. 4 (ll. 1320–37, p. 76) [The raging battle is awe-inspiring | Count Roland does not seek protection; | he strikes with his spear as long as the shaft stays intact; | with the fifteenth blow he breaks and shatters it; | he draws Durendal, his good sword; | he spurs his horse to go strike Chernuble; | he breaks his helmet on which carbuncles gleam, | slices through his hair and his head, | cutting his eyes and his face, | his white hauberk with its fine chain mail, | and his whole body down to the crotch, | into the saddle adorned with beaten gold; | the sword comes to rest in the horse; | he cuts the backbone without seeking a joint; | he strikes both of them dead on the thick grass of the meadow. | Then Roland says, ‘Wretch, too bad for you! | Never will Mohammed help you! | Such an evildoer will win no battle today’.]5 The battle scene is filled with such passages accentuating extreme boldness — but sorrow and grief begin to break in as beloved Frenchmen fall, mortally wounded. The most dramatic scene of sorrow unfolds when Charlemagne arrives at the battlefield — Roland has just died — and the emperor finds all his beloved men dead: 177 Morz est Rollant; Deus en ad l’anme es cels. Li emperere en Rencesvals parvient ; il nen i ad de veie ne senter ne voide tere në alne ne plein pied quë il n’i ait o Franceis o paien. Carles escrïet : ‘U estes vos, bels niés ? U’st l’arcevesque e li quens Oliver ? U est Gerins e ses cumpainz Gerers? U est Otun e li quens Berengers, Ive e Ivorie, que j’aveit tant chers ? Qu’est devenuz li Guascuinz Engeler, Sansun li dux e Anseis li fers ? U est Gerard de Russillun li veilz, li duze per que j’aveit laisét ?’   4 The edition used here is The Song of Roland: The French Corpus, ed. by Akiyama and others, vol. i, Part 1: The Oxford Version, ed. by Short. A more frequently used (and affordable) Old French edition is that edited by Short for Lettres Gothiques (Paris, 1990), but I wished to use the same series for the Oxford Roland as for the Rhymed Roland.  5 The translation of the Roland texts is from The Song of Roland: The French Corpus, ed. by Akiyama and others, vol. iii: Translations of the Versions in Assonance and Rhyme, ed. and trans. by Duggan and Rejhon. Other fine and readily-accessible translations of the Oxford Roland exist, such as (my favourite) The Song of Roland, trans. by Sayers.

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De ço qui chelt quant nul n’en respundiet ? ‘Deus! dist li reis, tant me pois enrager que jo ne fui a l’estur cumercer !’  Tiret sa barbe cum hom ki est irét. Plurent des oilz si baron chevaler : cncuntre tere se pasment vint millers, Naimes li dux en ad mult grant pitét. (ll. 2397–2417; p. 113) [Roland is dead; God has his soul in heaven. | The emperor arrives in Roncevaux; | there is not a road or path | or empty terrain or a cubit or full foot of land | where there is not a French or pagan corpse. | Charles shouts: ‘Where are you, fair nephew? | Where is the archbishop, and count Oliver? | Where is Gerin and his companion Gerer? | Where is Oton and Count Berenger, | Ivon and Ivoire whom I held so dear? | What has become of the Gascon Engeler, | Duke Samson and fierce Anseis? | Where is Gerard the Old of Roussillon, | the Twelve Peers whom I left behind?’ | What does it matter, since no one replies? | ‘God’, says the king, ‘I can well go mad | that I was not there when the fight began!’ | He pulls his beard like a man enraged. | His brave knights weep tears; | twenty thousand men fall to the ground in a faint; | Duke Naime feels great pity for them.] Great waves of emotion, then, move through the epic as a whole, with large sections being characterized by a particular and dominant set of emotions. Lengthy passages focus on particular emotions — such as bravery or anger or sorrow — and then give way to a new set of emotions in following passages. As with other medieval chansons de geste, it was probably rare that the entire Roland was sung at any one time, with the full emotional flow: that would have taken days, with several sessions either per day or over the course of several days. What seems more likely on the whole (and is strongly suggested by documents) is that audiences would on one occasion hear one particular passage.6 And, as noted, particular passages invite their own special set of emotions. Thus, to barons actually riding into battle a jongleur present among them might well sing, from the Roland, an upbeat and encouraging passage about male courage and determination to strike great blows — perhaps one  6 A number of scholars have discussed and provided documentation on the performance of medieval epics by jongleurs in court and other settings. See, e.g. Page, The Owl and the Nightingale. See also Page, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages at e.g. pp. 153–54. It is clear that long epics (and other lengthy works, such as romances) could not be performed in their entirety in any one sitting. How long a particular performance lasted would have depended on many factors, including the presence of (and competition from) other per­formers, the wishes of the patrons or audience, and the skills and tastes of the jongleur — this, in general, rather than on intrinsic and built-in breaks in the works. These factors would also have tended to determine the choice of a particular passage to perform on that occasion. On these issues, see for example Duggan, ‘Social Functions of the Medieval Epic’, pp. 730–53. See also Vitz, Orality and Performance, especially pp. 171–73.

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of the passages from early in the epic, such as the first one quoted above. Audiences might want to hear about Roland and the French army at their boldest and most enthusiastic, showing aggressiveness toward the enemy and friendship toward their fellows. A jongleur named Taillefer is said to have performed from La Chanson de Roland to French warriors before the Battle of Hastings — and to have asked for the honour of striking the first blow in the battle. We can, I think, be confident that Taillefer (and other jongleurs on the battlefield) sang from bold and encouraging passages, not from a passage where a weeping Charlemagne finds his beloved nephew and all the men of his rear-guard dead!7 But it is also safe to assume that there would also have been occasions when patrons or audiences would have preferred — or even requested — that a jongleur sing a different kind of passage, perhaps a scene with a different kind of emotional resonance. As is portrayed by the literature, battles do not of course give rise to single or simple emotions. Many potential audience members would have lost loved ones in the fighting; many others would be traumatized by the experience of war in mind and / or in body. This provides a performance context for the sequences of the song that explore loss and grief, which could — just as easily as the passages which depict the glory of battle — have been requested and performed as individual songs. Thus, sometimes audiences would probably have requested one of the saddest parts of the song, one especially focused on loss and sorrow and weeping. One such passage might have been the second passage quoted above, or Charlemagne’s repeated expressions of sorrow over the death of Roland and the Twelve Peers, where he faints, then laments at length over the body of Roland in a series of laisses that begin: 207 Carles li reis revint de pasmeisuns, par mains le tienent quatre de ses barons ; guardet a tere, veit gesir sun nevuld : cors ad gaillard, perdue ad sa colur, trublez ses oilz, mult li sunt tenebros. Cales le pleint pa feid e par amur: ‘Ami Rollant, Deus metet t’anme en flors en pareïs, entre les glorïus ! cum en Espaigne venis mare, seignur ! Jamais n’ert jurn de tei n’aie dulur…’ (ll. 2892–2901, p. 130) [King Charles recovers from his faint. | Four of his barons hold him up; | he looks at the ground, sees his nephew lying there, | his body  7 See Wace, Le Roman de Rou, ed. by Burgess and Holden, ll. 8013–29. Other contemporary sources provide roughly the same information about Taillefer’s performance. There is a very interesting discussion of the somewhat controversial figure of Taillefer and of medieval jongleurs who sang epics in Faral’s classic work, Les Jongleurs en France au Moyen Age, pp. 55–60.

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robust, his color pallid; | his eyes are turned up and full of shadows. | Charles mourns him in faith and love: | ‘Kinsman Roland, may God place your soul amid flowers | in paradise, with the glorious saints! | How ill-starred, sir, your coming to Spain! | Never will a day dawn when I will not ache for you…’] The Oxford Roland as a whole, then, cycles through powerful emotions — but in any single performance, the focus of jongleurs is likely to have been more narrowly on one passage and thus on one major emotion: boldness, anger, or sorrow. One can, however, imagine performers and/or audiences who refused the invitation of the text, in terms of performance style and emotional response. There were, after all, in the Middle Ages those who were not great admirers of Charlemagne and his dynasty; those who were tired of the crusades, indeed no doubt tired of war; those who (like many students in modern classrooms) may have thought that Roland’s death was pointless and unnecessary. In a word, performers and their audience were free to reject the invitations embedded in the Oxford text. Charlemagne may sometimes have been performed, and responded to, as an inept, even a bad emperor; Roland as foolhardy; Ganelon (the ‘traitor’) as falsely accused, and the like. It may well be that the success and popularity of this text (and many others) flow in part from the flexibility available in performance, in terms of the depiction of the key figures and events. The emotional quality or tenor of a performance would be substantially determined by the choice of passage(s) to perform, in implicit or explicit dialogue with the patron or audience, or at least with awareness of their views and emotional state. These issues bear markedly on the nature of the reception of a work. Roland Rimé / Rhymed Roland

The thirteenth-century version of the Roland story, commonly titled the ‘Rhymed Roland’, is very similar in terms of its basic plot and performance style to the Oxford Roland. Rather than being composed in assonanced lines, which was (as noted) the norm for the Old French epic, this poem is instead set in rhymed laisses (hence its nickname). The shift in form in all likelihood reflects the influence of romance — invariably rhymed — whose star was rising by this period.8 Like the Oxford Roland, this song would also probably have been performed by jongleurs — but, this time, in Italy: this version is ‘Franco-Venetian’ or ‘Franco-Italian’; and the key manuscripts containing it date from the late thirteenth century.9 Jongleurs would also in all likelihood have performed,  8 On the rising popularity of rhyme, especially in romance, see the extensive discussion of this issue in Vitz, Orality and Performance.  9 I refer the reader to Duggan’s detailed discussion of the manuscript and its tradition in the

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on any particular occasion, only parts of the epic, as was the case with other epics. The emotions expressed and solicited are, for the most part, quite similar to those in the Oxford version, primarily with alternations of boldness and related emotions on the one hand, and waves of sorrow and grief on the other. But this ‘take’ on the epic story of Roland introduces some long and rather remarkable passages — and some strikingly new performance challenges and emotions. (The Oxford text is 4002 lines; by contrast, this version is 8397 lines long, thus, over twice the length.) Let me focus here on one of the most important of these new scenes. This is a major interpolation, both in terms of its length and of the novelty of approach to the performance and emotion issues that concern us. This interpolation occurs after Charlemagne has revealed to Aude that Roland is dead. Here, rather than simply and briefly asserting that she will never take another husband and dying on the spot, as in the Oxford text, laisse 268 — an 18-line scene that is too short to pack much punch in performance — this Aude truly captures the emotional spotlight! Moreover, in performance she, as a character portrayed by the jongleur, clearly holds on to the spotlight. This is a long, powerfully dramatic and emotionally varied scene, going from around line 7023 in laisse 363 to line 7465 in laisse 383 — well over 400 lines, and falling roughly into two parts. As this version of the Roland story is not well known, it is worth going over key parts of this lengthy and dramatically emotional passage in some detail. Learning that Roland and Oliver are dead, Aude asks to be taken to the church and shown the dead bodies of her betrothed and her brother (372). She sees the lit candles and the biers of Roland and Oliver. She begins to weep; she faints. She claws at her face, making blood spurt out. She pulls the shroud off the discoloured dead bodies, and looks at the blows they received. She kisses Oliver on the mouth, and cries out to him, lamenting that he cannot speak with her. The king lifts her up and has the bodies covered up again. Up to now, this scene is rather similar to that in the Oxford Roland where Charlemagne and twenty thousand Franks faint from sorrow when they see the bodies of Roland and the Peers. But this scene will soon make the Oxford Roland look positively subdued in comparison. Moreover, this scene is — already — substantially more extreme and more performatively graphic: Aude doesn’t just weep, faint, and lament. She is very active and dramatic in her grief. She pulls off the dead men’s shrouds; she looks at their ghastly wounds; she tears her face, making blood flow; she kisses her brother on the mouth. Nothing anywhere near so dramatic occurs in the Oxford Roland. Moreover, this scene continues to increase in performance drama, in several rounds. Aude had fainted, but she revives (373). She looks at Roland, raising the silken pall and the shroud covering him. She sees the blackened flesh, the torn lip. She cries out to him, asking if she is still his beloved. Again she faints. Then she revives and, after further laments, she lies down on top introduction to his edition: The Song of Roland, Part 3, pp. 13–110.

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of Roland’s body. She is still tearing at her face; blood drips onto her white breast. She begs him to speak to her since her love is pledged to his. Many knights are weeping at this sad sight. This is already a strongly dramatic and emotional scene for jongleurs to perform — and let us note that it reflects the sort of interaction between performer, medium and performance contexts that is at the heart of this volume. The medium of performance is used to accentuate the intensity of Aude’s emotions, to make a profound impact on a reception audience. All this will all be taken up several more notches, supplemented by some roller-coaster effects. Some performers will have performed this dramatic scene in a semi-theatrical fashion, with strong embodiment of the character and perhaps drawing on props and costume effects. Aude now makes Charlemagne empty out the church and she remains alone in it. She is happy that the emperor has acceded to her request (378). Once alone in the church, she bolts and locks the door (never since, we are told, has a woman shown such boldness: ‘Unques mes feme ne fist tel hardement’, l. 7302). Then she props the dead bodies into sitting positions and talks to them. She prays at length, asking for a sign — and God sends light into the church, which suddenly becomes resplendent. Seeing the light, Aude feels great joy (379). She then prays another lengthy epic prayer, with a final request that God restore Oliver to life and have him tell her what she should do. An angel leans down and makes Oliver speak as if alive: 379 ‘Bele suer Aude, ne vos espaiez mie: ne remaindrez ne sole ne mendie. Od mei vendrez en al Deu compeignie amont el ciel, o joie est esbaudie. Tote belté i est amanevie. Poi preisierez la terrïene vie ; ele ne valt pas l’amonte d’une alie, or ne argent une pome porrie. Cil qui Deu sert conquiert grant manantie ensenble as angles, ou ja n’avra bosdie. Levez vos en, si soiez esbaudie ; je n’ai congié que plus raison vos die’.  L’angle s’en vet et Aude est sus sailie. ‘A , Deux ! dist Aude, com ore sui garie ! Jamais por duel ne serai esbahie’.  (ll. 7369–83, p. 415) [‘Fair sister Aude, do not be dismayed: | you will not be abandoned or left destitute. | You will come with me into God’s company | up in heaven, where there is joyful rapture. | There all beauty is made ready. | Little will you value earthly life; | it is not worth a head of garlic, | nor is gold or silver worth a rotten apple. | He who serves God acquires great wealth, | together with the angels, in a place without deceit. | Rise up and be of good cheer; | I do not have leave to tell you

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more’. | The angel departs and Aude jumps to her feet. | ‘Ah, God!’ says Aude, ‘now I am restored. | Never again will grief dismay me’.] Hearing her brother’s voice (or that of the Angel Gabriel as a ventriloquist) with the message of consolation, Aude is now healed of her grief. She is restored and happy — beyond grief. She lets Charlemagne and the others back into the church — but then informs Charlemagne that now she will now ‘die of grief ’ (7393: ‘ceste chaitive, qui de duel se mosra’). The king sends for an archbishop to whom Aude makes her confession; she does her penance. She then resumes her grieving and she dies: ‘Li cuers li part’ (7428: her heart breaks). We are told that ‘Lors recomence li duel et la crïee; | ne fu greignor por feme qui soit nee!’ (7434–35: Then the grief and lamentation begin anew; | there was none greater for any woman who ever lived.). This is a long and highly dramatic scene. Performers — whether male or female, but more likely the former — were invited to embody Aude’s strong and highly labile emotions (going from extreme sorrow to great joy, then back to heartbreak), along with her powerful gestures. (This kind of performance might have called for the elimination of the vielle playing — or, alternatively, its dramatically melodic intensification.) This scene invites similar emotions in the audience. Aude is presented as a remarkable woman — one by whose emotions we are to be awed, but also, it would appear, to share. Just as the jongleur becomes Aude by embodying her and articulating her words, so the audience is invited to become her, sharing with her emotions through the intermediary of the performer. We participate in the text not through gaps in it that we fill in (as Iser would put it10), but through the raw emotions that it presents both verbally and physically, and to which we are invited and expected to respond. Despite her radical behaviour, she is not, in the manuscript, in any way presented as ridiculous. All weep with her, all admire her, and they grieve her death ‘as they never grieved any woman before’. In this context it is worth noting that the mother of the owner of one of the key manuscripts of this text, Francesco Gonzaga, was named Alda. Duggan has also noted that the large role attributed to Aude in this iteration of the epic is likely to signal a growing female audience, or a female patron, for the work.11 In short, this epic, while fundamentally similar to the Oxford text, takes us down some new performance and emotional paths: Aude is a highly dramatic epic woman.12 Performing her would call for fairly unusual skill at impersonation on the part of a jongleur since most traditional epic characters were warrior males, not youthful females. The long scene that I have just discussed would

 10 See Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, e.g. pp. 165–69.  11 See Duggan, The Song of Roland, Part 3, p. 26.  12 She is not the only one; for example, in the epic Cycle of Guillaume d’Orange, the hero’s wife Guibourc is a powerful female character. But Aude in the Rhymed Roland certainly has no rival for drama — and, in particular, for grieving.

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also appear to invite a substantial degree of emotional engagement on the part of audiences.13 It is, however, altogether possible to conceive of other kinds of performance of this scene, if we keep in mind Bauman’s ‘emergent dimension’ concept. For example, some performers and / or some audiences may not have cared for the very idea of major roles for women in the epic. (In the Oxford Roland, as noted, Aude played just a bit part, and died quickly.) Aude could perhaps have been played — and responded to — as a pushy and overly-dramatic, slightly hysterical woman. She may even have been performed, and / or responded to, as a somewhat comic, ridiculous figure, and mocked. It is possible that this entire scene (in the absence of Alda’s son, the patron?) may have been eliminated from performance. These various possibilities reflect the fundamental flexibility of this medium in different contexts of performance and reception: performers can respond to their audiences by selection and cutting of the memorized text, as well as by amplification (as this lengthy passage, added to the original narrative, itself demonstrates). In any event, despite the strong similarities between this epic and the Oxford Roland, the Rhymed Roland invites, at major points, new kinds of scenes and acting, and different emotional responses. But more importantly, we can see that there are major differences between a ‘text’, as we conceive of it in printed editions, as something to be read (and re-read) and studied; and a ‘text’ that is essentially an individualized record for performance — where the text produced is the collaborative work of a performer and a patron and / or audience, and is deliberately tailored toward specific emotional meanings. Thus, the performer and audience agree beforehand — at least implicitly — what the emotional need is and use the performed text to fill that need.

Italian Romance Epics Boiardo: Orlando Innamorato

We have been looking at two stories from the large Charlemagne corpus — two French-language epics that are clearly high in emotionality — both in terms of the passions of the characters within the work and of those invited in audiences. The emotions involved, and those on which I have primarily focused, are those of sorrow and grief. Indeed, both of these medieval epic versions of the Roland material are, at important points, certainly tear-jerkers: the Oxford text focuses on the emotions of men — male warriors — while

 13 It is likely that this kind of performance of an epic has been influenced by performances of romance and of the theatre as it was emerging in this period. See, e.g. Vitz, Orality and Performance, pp. 181–86.

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the rhymed version brings in the (mostly) sorrowful emotions of a powerful and memorable woman, as also largely shared by men. We turn now to two Italian Renaissance romance epics — Boiardo’s and Ariosto’s Orlando poems — that handle this Carolingian / Rolandian / Aldian material very differently indeed from the Old French works. And it is not surprising that they do. Not only are we in Italy (as we already were with the Franco-Venetian version), but hundreds of years have passed since the earlier versions were produced. With the Italian works, we have turned from frequently-tear-jerking epics to narratives that are largely intended to give delight to their audiences, and often to make them laugh. But, as we will see, the two Italian texts differ from each other as well, in important ways.14 Both of these texts also differ, in some important ways, from the previous works in terms of their performance possibilities. Both are, truly, texts, and what is more, texts by well-known authors. The kinds of flexibility that performers of the Old French and Franco-Venetian performers enjoyed — the freedom to cut or expand passages from anonymous songs learned from memory is gone. Now performers were dealing with a fixed, printed text. They may have learned at least parts of it from memory: there is evidence that they often did; they may indeed have sung it.15 But they were substantially more constrained — in part indeed by the fixed form of the text: the tightly constructed stanzas, rhyming ABABABCC, were very different from the free-flowing assonanced or rhymed lines of the traditional French epics, where lines could be freely added or removed without doing violence to the poetic structure of a laisse (or stanza). The first text is Boiardo’s Orlando in Love / Orlando Innamorato, dating from the closing years of the fifteenth century;16 the second is Ariosto’s The Frenzy of Orlando / Orlando furioso (dated 1516). As noted above, we are now dealing with works that were published — thus, transmitted via the printing press — rather than works transmitted through live performance by jongleurs and, in manuscripts, through the performance of scribes. The performance situation of these works is thus very different from that of the Old French epics. Both Boiardo and Ariosto speak of singing, and of their works as songs — and both works are composed in the complex poetic form called ottava rima; but both of these poetic ‘romance epics’ expect to be spoken or read aloud and not necessarily sung (though they sometimes were). This fact alone potentially influences the emotionality of the work since songs are more apt to inspire strong emotion.17 But as with the earlier epics, these lengthy  14 On performance issues related to these two works, see Vitz, ‘Teaching Boiardo and Ariosto’. Gardner provides a valuable discussion of the blend of Arthurian and Carolingian material in ‘The Arthurianism of Boiardo and Ariosto’.  15 See Herrid, ‘Singing Epic Verse’.  16 The first two books were published in 1483, Book III in 1495; in that year a complete edition was also published.  17 On this important issue, see Juslin and Sloboda, eds, Music and Emotion: Theory and

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works were unquestionably performed in short sections (as they are today by private readers), not in their entirety at any one session. To focus first on Boiardo and his work: here the narrative discourse implies that the text is being presented aloud — read or recited — in sections by the author himself, perhaps to the court in Ferrara. Whether this was frequently the case is uncertain — and the poem certainly had private readers. It is, however, clear that Boiardo did read it parts of it aloud on occasion: Isabella d’Este speaks in a letter of Boiardo’s reading parts of his poem aloud to her and her mother.18 In any case, the narrator has a distinctive and personal voice. Thus we are not in the realm of the anonymous epic storyteller, singing or telling a tale that is not really ‘his’, but rather of the famous poet speaking in his own voice, in the first person. For example, Boiardo ends the first canto saying ‘Però un bel fatto potreti sentire, | Se l’alto canto tornareti a odire’19 (and you will hear a fine duel in the next song, if you come again, p. 28) and then picks up the narrative thread in Canto ii saying ‘Io vi canti, segnor, come a battaglia | Eran condotti con molta arroganza…’ (p. 29) (Lords, you have heard my song; you know | what arrogance incited [various warriors], p. 15). Canto iii begins ‘Segnor, nell’altro canto io ve lasciai | Si come Alsolfo al Saracin par scherno’ (p. 48) (Lord, when I left you, you had heard Astolfo scorn the Saracen…, p. 23). The second striking feature of this work bears on the nature of the emotions of the characters. Sorrow and grief at the death of heroes are completely gone. Boldness and courage remain, to be sure, but — as the title makes clear — a, perhaps the, key emotion in this romance epic, as experienced by the characters, is love: this ‘song’ is primarily about Roland — Orlando — as a lover: innamorato. This work, then, is full of emotions of love — and amusement replaces sorrow. Whose amusement? Mostly ours! The characters are not necessarily having much fun — but we, as listeners and / or readers, are invited to be (to become) Italian Renaissance ‘lords and knights’ (‘ladies’ as well) and to enjoy ourselves thoroughly as spectators of the mayhem and the fun. The opening canto already makes it quite clear that the work is to cheer and delight, not to sadden us: 1.

Signori e cavallier che ve adunati Per odir cose dilettose e nove, Stati attenti e quïeti, et ascoltati

Research; especially Juslin, chap. 14: ‘Communicating Emotion in Music Performance: A Review and Theoretical Framework’, pp. 309–37. Other chapters are also of considerable interest, such as chap. 10, Gabrielson and Lindström, ‘The Influence of Musical Structure on Emotional Expression’, pp. 223–48; this chapter focuses on mode, tempo, loudness, and other major issues related to emotion in music.  18 See Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato / Orlando in Love, trans. by Ross, p. xlvi. Translations are from this edition, by page number.  19 Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato, ed. by Anceschi, p. 14. References to the text are to this edition, by page number.

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La abelle istoria che ‘l moi canto muove ; E vedereti i gesti smisurati, L’alta fatica e le mirabil prove Che fece il franco Orlando per amore Nel tempo del re Carlo imperatore. (I, i, pp. 3–4) [You who assemble – lords and knights – | to hear things new, things of delight, | be still, attentive, listen to | the rare events that prompt my song; | you shall hear deeds no man can measure, | stupendous feats, amazing labors | Love caused Orlando to perform | when Charlemagne was emperor.] (p. 3) Moreover, we soon realize that the opening cantos are very tongue-in-cheek about our hero, Orlando — for he is not a traditional hero vanquished by Love (who ‘conquers all’); a great knight who will be inspired by Love to do great deeds. He is, rather, a man besotted by love. A magically beautiful woman, Angelica, appears in Charlemagne’s court — and Orlando falls madly in love with her at first sight, trembling, blushing, sighing, and muttering to himself (I, i, p. 12; p. 7). Performance (even imaginary performance by a private reader) of the knight’s new-found passion might naturally include shaking, male blushing, looks of shame, and other relevant behaviours, along with muttered impassioned monologues unheard by others. Falling in love is not — at least as presented here, and as many other poets have shown as well — a very dignified emotional act; it is somewhat ridiculous, and can be, as in the case of married men like Orlando,20 immoral. Now Orlando is not alone in his rather comic passion. We watch as all the other men at the banquet are also suddenly smitten with love for this staggeringly — magically? — beautiful woman. Even old men, like white-haired Duke Namo and Charlemagne himself (32) are overcome — pale and weak, or blazing — with desire for Angelica. Thus we have the entertaining spectacle of an entire hall-full of warriors all besotted — and unmanned — by love. We are made aware, over and over again throughout the course of the poem, of the power of love to make people look foolish and do crazy things — and love certainly invites strong performance. We seem not reliably to be invited to identify with the characters’ love-smitten-ness, but to smile — or indeed laugh — at it all. But perhaps we are sometimes — in some performances — invited to feel sympathetic toward these lovers and even to identify with them! (There are crazy female lovers here as well.) After all, most human beings have been in love at some point in their lives — and most of them / us have done foolish things while in love! Some performers / public readers may have wished to remind themselves and us of the humorous, indeed the ridiculous, side of the human experience of love. Thus, despite the relatively

 20 In this work, Aude is not dead, and Orlando is married to her; but after the opening lines she is never mentioned again.

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lower level of performance flexibility in this work (as compared with the earlier epics), some flexibility does remain. But what of boldness and of admiration on our part for Orlando’s, and other heroes’, great courage? Orlando is, to be sure, ‘great’: he defeats many adversaries. But Boiardo also deflates the impressiveness of his key character, and of others as well. The deflation results from our being reminded at various points that Orlando is protected by magic: his flesh is enchanted; he cannot be wounded; thus, his great power is not entirely his. And while Orlando is, in principle, the best and the greatest, he often has quite a hard time defeating his opponent. Moreover, Boiardo sometimes presents combat in decidedly non-heroic — even vulgar — diction, and the duel may be interrupted for rather comic reasons. For example, in his very first fight in the poem, Orlando fights with Feragu over Angelica, who is lying asleep on the grass. Both men want to seize her. Feragu challenges Orlando boldly, who calls him ‘Vil ribaldello, figlio de puttana’ (I, iii, 76, p. 33) (son of a whore; lowly lout, p. 68). They rush to end the fight before Angelica wakes up but, while they are fighting over her and not paying attention, she wakes up and just rides away: she escapes. In a word, these are all great knights — but often they seem somewhat silly; their heroism pointless. We often smile at them. Boiardo’s work is not, by any means, entirely humorous. In particular, he is seriously concerned about the perilous state of Christendom in his time. And focus on these passages, in performance, would certainly allow for gravity of tone. But the goal of providing delight to his audience (though not to his characters) seems to be Boiardo’s greatest ambition. The very ‘Frenchness’ of the Carolingian-Arthurian court described in the poem may sometimes have undercut Boiardo’s and his audience’s emotional engagement with the hero and other characters. While this court is filled with paladins from everywhere (including the ‘pagan’ — that is, Muslim — world), it is essentially a French court; it may be a very ‘multi-cultural’ court — but Italian it is not. This fact, while not necessarily a problem early on in the existence of the printed text and its early performances, may have become substantially more important at the historical moment when Boiardo breaks off his long but incomplete narrative. He has just been talking about two beautiful women — but he abruptly interrupts himself and says, in the final lines of his poem: 26. Mentre che io canto, o Iddio redentore, Vedo la Italia tutta a fiama e a foco Per questi Galli, che con gran valore Vengon per disertar non so che loco; Però vi lascio in questo vano amore De Fiordespira ardente a poco a poco; Un’altra fiata, se mi fia concesso, Racontrarovi il tutto per espresso. (III, ix; Vol. ii, pp. 1237–38)

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[But while I sing, o my redeemer, | I see all Italy on fire, | because these French – so valiant! – | come to lay waste who knows what land. | So I will leave this hopeless love | of simmering Fiordespina. | Some other time, if God permits, | I’ll tell you all there is to this.] (p. 570) The French are suddenly the enemies of Italy, and Boiardo reminds us of this. Their ‘valour’ is suddenly not so attractive. We are no longer invited to laugh; the French are not heroes but ‘our’ enemies. Ariosto

In his Orlando Furioso, Ariosto’s expressed goal was to continue and complete Boiardo’s poem, which he greatly admired. He too speaks of a French court — with Charlemagne in Paris at an Arthurian Round Table. He keeps ottava rima. He also maintains, to a substantial degree, the cheerfully ironic and tongue-in-cheek treatment of the hero and others, which means, of course, that the emotional engagement of audiences (and readers) with the characters and their feelings is generally very limited indeed. This work, like Boiardo’s, was meant to give pleasure to its audiences — if not to its characters. As Reynolds, the translator of the work, says: ‘The Orlando Furioso is above all a poem to be enjoyed; the chief aim of its creator was to give delight’. She quotes Graham Hough who suggested that ‘it has perhaps given more sheer sparkling pleasure to its readers than any other poem on the same scale’.21 As concerns the basic performance concept of this romance epic, Ariosto’s voice, as ostensible reader-performer, functions much the way Boiardo’s did. There is a fiction — if perhaps rarely a historical reality — of the work’s being performed aloud, in segments, by the poet himself. Ariosto, like Boiardo, speaks in the first person in, and of, his song — and of his own love madness and sorrow. He leads us from canto to canto with reminders of what came before, promises of what will follow, and comments on the plot. Ariosto is perhaps less playful than Boiardo, but his narratorial voice is no less present, and often very personal. While Ariosto’s work, like that of Boiardo, is primarily a work of delight, Ariosto does sometimes take issues of both performance and emotion in disturbing new directions. Most striking is his handling of love in some key passages. Let us turn to the part of the work where Orlando actually becomes mad, in Part II of the poem. Ariosto leads into this section, starting around Canto xxiv, by recognizing that all lovers are rather crazy: all love is madness, as every wise man knows. Ariosto says he wishes that he himself could stop loving and seek tranquillity — but he fears he cannot: it is too late; the ‘malady has gone too deep in him’ (2–3, p. 29). This sort of introduction certainly invites a measure of sympathy and identification with Orlando: all  21 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. by Reynolds, p. 11. The quotation from Hough is from his Sir John Harington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso, p. vii.

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lovers are mad and potentially self-destructive. But Ariosto soon modifies in significant ways his way of speaking about this issue. When Orlando goes mad, it becomes clear that he is not lovably crazy — not just crazy the way all lovers are — but truly mad: repulsively, stupidly, murderously, cruelly insane. Ariosto progressively builds a ghastly and repellent narrative picture of Orlando furioso. We are, it would appear, invited not to be sympathetic but aghast and appalled. Are we being pushed definitively away from identification with the repellent Orlando, and toward the narrator himself? Perhaps. But we may also remind ourselves — be reminded — that Ariosto to a substantial degree identifies with that repulsive lover, with his terrible and incurable ‘malady’. Can we say that Aristo expresses and explores a love-hate relationship with Love, and Lovers too, and invites it in his audience? This is not, then, just irony and detachment. After losing his mind from jealousy over Angelica, first Orlando rips off his clothing and his armour (xxiv, 4); then he tears up trees, making terrible noise. Then he attacks the local shepherds, tearing their heads off  ‘con la facilità che torria alcuno | de l’arbor pome’22 (as a man might easily | Pluck blossom or an apple from a tree, 5). He kills sheep, then oxen and cows, tearing them limb from limb; he slaughters the townsfolk who come running. He continues to live — and kill — like a wild man, tearing bears and boars with his bare hands and eating their flesh raw; he ranges up and down the length of France, then downward toward Spain, over the course of numerous cantos, killing as he goes. Here is how he looks now — Angelica spots him: 59. Che fosse Orlando, nulla le soviene: troppo è diverse da quell ch’esser suole. Da indi in qua che quell furor lo tiene, è sempre andato nudo all’ombra e al sole: se fosse nato all’aprica Siene, o dove Ammone il Ggaramante cole, o presso ai monti onde il gran Nilo spiccia, non dovrebbe la carne aver più arsiccia. 60. Quasi ascosi avea gli occhi ne la testa, la faccia macra, e come un osso asciutta, la chioma rabuffati, orrida e mesta, la barba folta, spaventosa e brutta. Non più a vederlo Angelica fu presta, che fosse a ritornar, tremando tutta: tutta tremando, e empiendo il ciel di grida, si volse per aiuto alla sua guida. (II, xxix, pp. 1247–48)

 22 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, ed. by Bigi, vol. 2, p. 1008.

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[Beholding him, she would not think this man | Could be Orlando, he was so much changed, | For ever since his malady began, | Quite naked in all weathers he had ranged. | He was as burnt and black as if Aswan | Or where the Garamanths their gods avenged | Had been his birthplace, or the mountains where | The sources of the river Nile appear. His eyes were almost sunken in his head; | His face was thin and fleshless as a bone | His tangled, bristling hair, inspiring dread, | And shaggy beard were wild to look upon. | Angelica in trembling terror fled; | In trembling terror, from this monster flown, | Filling the heavens with her piercing shrieks, | Help and protection from her guide she seeks.] (pp. 59–60) Orlando has become physically repulsive as well as frightening. Seeing Angelica, he chases after her. She is able, by recourse to a magic ring, to disappear; he then grabs her mare, which he rides, unrelenting, until the horse drops dead. He continues to drag the mare’s corpse after him, plundering and killing, leaving people dead or lame in every house. All this goes on for many cantos, as Orlando wreaks violent and murderous havoc everywhere he goes. The audience is expected to be appalled at what Orlando has become in his madness — ugly, violent, cruel. We may be able to excuse him for his insanity: yes, all lovers are rather deranged (xxx, 4), but he is revolting. The emotional response that is invited certainly appears to be disgust. It is however possible that some public readers of the work (and some listeners) relished the horror of the description of Orlando’s behaviour; some may even have identified with the repulsive portrait of an insane lover! Though love, with its associated madness, is clearly central to the Orlando furioso, some other — political — issues are also important here (as with Boiardo). Several of them engage Ariosto’s emotions, and he invites the audience to share them. To focus briefly on just one of them — the great threat to chivalry brought about by the invention of the cannon. Ariosto laments in xi, 26: ‘Come trovasti, o scelerata e brutta | invenzion, mai loco in uman core? | Per te la militar gloria è distrutta, | per te il mestier de l’arme è senza onore’ (p. 456) (O hideous invention! By what means | Did you gain access to the human heart? | Because of you all glory’s fled long since; | No honour now attaches to the art | Of soldiering…’, p. 351). Ariosto seems to assume an audience that will agree with him — and will share his attitudes towards chivalry and the terrible invention of the cannon. (Readers today may of course feel differently about these and related isues.) In any case, it appears safe to say that Ariosto wants us to respond to him and his feelings more consistently than to the emotions of his characters. But, either way, despite the presence of a few such serious and sombre passages, the dominant emotion of the work is delight.

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Closing Suggestions In these pages my goal has been to sketch out important and varying invitations present in these works — invitations to performance and to emotional response. But, before closing, let me again briefly problematize the word ‘invitation’. I have indeed tried to show that some particular invitations to performance and to emotional engagement exist in the two epics and the two romance epics examined here — though the two later texts are clearly less flexible in terms of the freedom of performers, who cannot just cut or amplify the text they are performing. But nonetheless performers and readers are free to accept — or to decline — the invitations presented in and by texts. Performers can, to an important extent though within some limits, do as they please; as can readers. Readers can, we know, come up with rather surprising interpretations of the works they read. We can see where a work seems to lead us, in terms of performance and of engagement of the emotions — but we can grind our teeth, dig in our heels, and refuse to be led. We can want to go, and take the text, elsewhere. Even the original performers of these works — quite possibly the poets themselves — may have varied their performances considerably, depending on their audience and the circumstances, or just on the mood they happened to be in. For example, Boiardo and Ariosto, when and if they read their own works aloud to select audiences, may have read them differently according to what was going on in their own lives at the time — and / or what was happening in Italy or in Christendom. They too would have experienced the ‘emergent dimension’ of performance: they may sometimes have been in a happy, jocular mood — or conversely in a sour, sombre, pessimistic mood. Like epic performers, they may also have read aloud some particular passage that especially spoke to them or their audience that day. But the point remains: what is essentially the same (or strongly similar) narrative material can receive many modes of performance and can invite many different emotional responses. All this can serve as a reminder that storytelling is a highly active and dynamic process. Stories are profoundly caught up in emotions performed and received. The very processes of mediation — of retelling, reshaping and reception — contribute significantly to determining how a particular story is experienced as told and what it means.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso, ed. by E. Bigi, 2 vols (Milano: Garzanti, 1982) —— , Orlando Furioso / The Frenzy of Orlando, trans. by Barbara Reynolds (London: Penguin, 1973) Boiardo, Matteo Maria, Orlando Innamorato, ed. by G. Anceschi (Milano: Garzanti, 1978) —— , Orlando Innamorato / Orlando in Love, trans. by Charles S. Ross (West Lafayette: Parlor Press, 2004) Le Chanson de Roland – The Song of Roland: The French Corpus, ed. by Karen Akiyama, Ian Short, Robert F. Cook, Joseph J. Duggan, Annalee C. Rejohn, Wolfgang van Emden, and William W. Kibler, 3 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) The Song of Roland, trans. by Dorothy L. Sayers (London: Penguin, 1957) Wace, Le Roman de Rou, ed. by Glyn S. Burgess and A. J. Holden (St Helier: Société Jersiaise, 2002) Secondary Studies Bauman, Richard, ‘Performance’, in Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-centered Handbook, ed. by Richard Bauman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 41–49 Duggan, J. J., ‘Social Functions of the Medieval Epic in the Romance Literatures’, Oral Tradition, 1 (1986), 728–66 Faral, Edmond, Les Jongleurs en France au Moyen Age (Genève: Slatkine, 1987) Farrier, Susan E., ed., The Medieval Charlemagne Legend – An Annotated Bibliography, (New York: Garland, 1993) Gabrielson, Alf, and Eric Lindström, ‘The Influence of Musical Structure on Emotional Expression’, in Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, ed. by Patrik N. Juslin, and John A. Sloboda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 223–48 Gardner, Edmund G., ‘The Arthurianism of Boiardo and Ariosto’, in The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature, ed. by Edmund G. Gardner (New York: Octagon, 1971), pp. 273–94 Herrid, Grant, ‘Singing Epic Verse’, in Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic, ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo (New York; Modern Language Association of America, 2018), pp. 259–70 Hough, Graham, ed., Sir John Harington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso (Carbondale: Centaur, 1962) Iser, Wolfgang, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) Juslin, Patrik N., and John A. Sloboda, eds, Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

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Page, Christopher, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France, 1100–1300 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) —— , The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) Vitz, Evelyn Birge, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1999) —— , ‘Teaching Boiardo and Ariosto through Performance’, in Teaching Italian Renaissance Epic, ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018), pp. 98–103

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Towards a Poetics of Storytelling, or, Why Could Early Medieval English Writers not Stop Telling the Story of Judith? ‘[S]omehow, I’m drawn to do my version of this haunting story’.1 Howard Barker, of Judith and Holofernes

Introduction: Judith and the Storytellers The narrative of the Hebrew heroine Judith is well known and frequently represented. Besieged by the noble and all-conquering general Holofernes, at the behest of the megalomaniacal Nebuchadnezzar, the Jewish city of Bethulia is ready to fall. But it is saved by the actions of the widow Judith, who rejects the Bethulian elders’ defeatist passivity and goes with her handmaid to the enemy camp armed only with a bag of food so she can follow Jewish practice. The need to pray means that she will be guaranteed some privacy each evening. On arrival, she claims to have abandoned the city and is welcomed by the Assyrian army. At a feast for which Judith carefully beautifies herself, Holofernes is so dazzled that he drinks far more than he usually would, eventually falling into an unconscious sleep. She beheads him in his bed with his own sword and steals fabric from his bed and perhaps throne. The two women return to Bethulia with head and booty in the (presumably quite large) food bag; displaying both to her people, Judith exhorts them to attack. Jubilant, they rout the Assyrian forces, who are stunned into despair by the loss of their leader. Jewish freedom is assured, and Judith celebrated in Bethulia and Jerusalem. About half of the scriptural narrative is concerned with the Assyrians, the build-up to their siege, and accompanying descriptions of Jewish history, but in this chapter I will engage primarily with the sequence

* I am grateful to my students at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, in particular Hannah-Aileen Panther and Jessica Klute, for discussing Judith with me and inspiring or developing a number of the ideas explored here. I am also grateful to Jon Wilcox for his close readings and constructive criticisms of an earlier draft of this chapter.  1 Barker, ‘About Things on the Stage’, p. 144. S. C. Thomson, Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 109–132  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121604

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summarized here which focuses on Judith and her actions (chapters 8–14 in the Vulgate account). There are a vast number of later and post-medieval visualizations and innumerable retellings of Judith and her story. Many of these exhibit interesting concerns, often attempt to claim Judith as a champion of one type or another, and frequently develop the erotically charged tension between seduction and danger that the narrative offers.2 But this chapter is concerned solely with retellings in England during the early medieval period, of which there are at least four stretching from the late seventh to the late tenth centuries. Aldhelm (died 709 or 710) told her story twice, in two different ways, in his prose and poetic De Virginitate.3 Ælfric of Eynsham (died c. 1010) produced a vernacular translation of the Vulgate account.4 And, around the same time, an anonymous poet composed a creative retelling of at least part of her story.5 There are other references, too: Alcuin of York (died 804) ventriloquized Judith (along with many other biblical figures) in De laude Dei;6 Ælfric’s ‘Letter to the Monks of Eynsham’ notes that her story is read alongside those of Esther and Esdras in the fourth week of September;7 and, without clarifying precisely what she models, Ælfric also specifically recommends Judith as an example for how another correspondent, Sigeweard, should resist contemporary viking attacks.8 Little is surprising in several learned authors using the same scriptural narrative across three hundred or so years within an intensely religious culture. But what is, I suggest, so striking about the extant early medieval English retellings of Judith is how anxious they are, with similar concerns  2 An excellent introduction to the scriptural narrative, along with some of its qualities and challenges is Gera, Judith; a sparkling discussion of variant interpretations of the narrative is Appelbaum, ‘Judith Dines Alone’. For overviews of the Judith narrative, see also Tilford, ‘Judith and her Interpreters’; Stocker, Judith: Sexual Warrior; Curry, ‘Representing the Biblical Judith in Literature and Art’; Milne, ‘What Shall we do with Judith?’. Focused on the Old English versions, but with useful comment on the wider tradition, are Lee’s edition of Ælfric’s Homilies, esp. § viii.3b on patristic commentaries; Kaup, The Old English ‘Judith’, esp. pp. 68–92 on two twelfth-century German texts.  3 Both prose and poetic versions are edited by Ehwald in Aldhelmi Opera, at pp. 212–323 and 327–471 respectively. The prose De Virginitate is translated in Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trans. and ed. by Lapidge and Herren, with Judith at pp. 126–27; the poetic Carmen de Virginitate is in Aldhelm: The Poetic Works, trans. and ed. by Lapidge and Rosier, translated by James Rosier pp. 97–170, with Judith at p. 159.  4 Ed. by Lee in Ælfric’s Homilies.  5 Ed. by Griffith in Judith.  6 De laude Dei has not been published in full, though an edition is currently in preparation by David Ganz; see his ‘Le De Laude Dei’ for a review of Alcuin’s sources. The most recent discussions are in Billet, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 126–31 and Bullough, Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, pp. 193–204. Richard Marsden lists the verses used by Alcuin in The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, at p. 224. See also his comments on Aldhelm’s use of Judith at p. 66.  7 Ed. and trans. by Jones in his Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, pp. 110–49.  8 Ed. by Marsden in The Old English and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo, lines 463–67 at p. 217.

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about both the character of Judith and the story that she shapes. This seems peculiar to me, not because the story of Judith is straightforward, but because there was no need for any of these men to choose to tell it. Why, among all the narratives of the Christian past, did such distinguished writers settle so persistently on a story that unsettled them so much?9 My suggestion is that Judith exemplifies a number of aspects of that extremely nebulous concept: ‘a good story’; that, in effect, for storytellers as good as Aldhelm, Ælfric, and the anonymous Judith-poet, her narrative was irresistible, taking on a force and vitality of its own only barely under its tellers’ control. As Howard Barker’s comment at the head of this chapter suggests, this quality continues to be felt today. I will attempt to support this position by sketching out some features of the variant retellings and clarifying where I see anxieties being expressed, before going on to suggest some features of the Judith narrative that seem to me to make it a ‘good story’. It is worth beginning before these English versions, with their source: Jerome’s preface to his Vulgate translation of Judith. This provides a model example of self-conscious anxiety about her story, and gave all subsequent churchmen adequate reason to not engage with the story at all. He complains: […] quia hunc librum Synodus Nicæna in numero sanctarum Scripturarum legitur computasse, acquievi postulationi vestræ, immo exactioni: et sepositis occupationibus, quibus vehementer arctabar, huic unam lucubratiunculam dedi, magis sensum e sensu, quam ex verbo verbum transferens.10 [… because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request, indeed a demand, and works having been set aside from which I was forcibly curtailed, I have given to this [book] one short night’s work, translating more sense from sense than word from word.]11 As his preceding and following sentences suggest, it is possible that Jerome’s concern was about genre (he regards it as Chaldean history, not Hebrew Scripture) or about unreliability (finding considerable variance and perhaps corruption in his sources) rather than about the story itself. Indeed, he goes on to proclaim her to be ‘castitatis exemplum’ (an example of chastity), which virtue is ‘non solum feminis, sed et viris imitabilem dedit’ (given as imitable not only for women but also for men). But this focus on chastity as Judith’s prime virtue is not particularly borne out by his telling; it reads more as an attempt to control the story and force it to a clear didactic point  9 Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament, discusses the early medieval English interest in the Old Testament generally, pp. 4–5.  10 Jerome, Præfatio Hieronymi in Librum Judith, col. 39.  11 Translation from ‘Vulgate Prologues’, trans. by Edgecomb.

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than as a learned introduction.12 Similarly, as Deborah Levine Gera shows, in comparison with the Septuagint his translation seeks to grant more active control to God and to make Judith as ‘subdued and domesticated’ as possible.13 Jerome’s compulsion to retell Judith against his better judgement was external — from the Council — and not a product of his own interest. But the methods he deployed to restrict and control the story are all his own, and both these and his anxiety may have influenced early medieval authors; they are certainly reflected in their work.

Aldhelm’s Judith: A Dangerous Virgin It is presumably as a response to Jerome’s argument for the story as one about chastity that Aldhelm included her in De Laude Virginitatis, his catalogue of (male and female) virgins produced for the community of nuns at Barking.14 As Juliet Mullins observes, however, Judith’s story is related towards the end of the work in chapter 57 and following Joseph, David, Samson, Abel, and Melchisedech, rather than among the female virgins.15 Indeed, Aldhelm seems to use her story less as an opportunity to praise her purity than as a bridge between positive and negative examples as he works towards a conclusion. Introducing Judith as a widow who lived a life of fairly extreme ‘pia castitate’ (devout chastity), he swiftly moves on to explaining that she in fact defeated Holofernes through deceit and seduction, because haud secus decipiendum credidit nec aliter obtruncandum rata est, nisi cum natiua uultus uenustate ornamentis etiam corporalibus caperetur.16 [she did not believe he could be deceived in any other way, nor think that he could be killed otherwise, than by ensnaring him by means of the innate beauty of her face and also by her bodily adornment.]17 That is, it is not her chastity which defeated Holofernes but her careful calculation of what she would have to do allied to her ‘natiua uultus uenustate’. The action is only not morally reprehensible quia hoc in arta Betuliae obsidione pro contribulibus dolitura compatientis affectu, non castitatis defectu fecisse memoratur  12 Where the narrative (as translated by Jerome) is interested in purity, it is most often about obedience to Jewish customs about food, as at e.g. 12. 9, though Jerome does praise her chastity at 16. 26.  13 Gera, Judith, p. 14.  14 On the date of composition, see Aldhelm, Aldhelm: The Prose Works, ed. by Lapidge and Herren, pp. 14–15 and pp. 51–132.  15 Mullins, ‘Aldhelm’s Choice of Saints’, p. 45.  16 Quotations from De Virginitate are from Aldhelm, Prosa de uirginitate, ed. by Gwara, here from § 57.  17 Translations of the prose De Virginitate are from Aldhelm, Aldhelm: The Prose Works, ed. and trans. by Lapidge and Herren.

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[because she is known to have done this during the close siege of Bethulia, grieving for her kinsfolk with the affection of compassion and not through any disaffection from chastity.] Aldhelm cannot, in fact, bring himself to praise Judith’s victory, only to defend it.18 Her actions are not praiseworthy, because they do not show chastity; but they are not blameworthy either, because they took place in extreme circumstances and there was no fundamental rejection of chastity, just a temporary suspension of it. Judith’s self-control, her poise, seems admirable here: being chaste in mind, if not in body. But this is a tightrope-balancing act of some skill, and Aldhelm’s accounts of who she was and what she did are divided by an extended comment on the ornamenta with which she decorated her body. Pointedly quoting from the Septuagint rather than Jerome (who does not include this assessment), he explains that induit se uestem iocunditatis suae et imposuit periscelides et dextralia et anulos et omnia ornamenta sua et composuit se nimis in rapinam uirorum [she clothed herself with the garments of her gladness, and put sandals on her feet, and took her bracelets, and lilies, and earlets, and rings, and adorned herself with all her ornaments and tricked herself out to prey on men.]19 Not convinced that his point is clear enough, he goes on to have an imaginary argument with his audience: En, non nostris assertionibus sed scripturae astipulationibus ornatus feminarum rapina uirorum uocatur! [You see, it is not by my assertion but by the statement of Scripture that the adornment of women is called the depredation of men!] Further, having finished his account of Judith’s victory, in chapter 58 he moves on to describing the woman in Proverbs 7 who dresses herself up and thereby seduces foolish young men, ultimately leading them into hell. That is, in Aldhelm’s retelling, Judith is paralleled with a satanic prostitute and Holofernes with the sinfully naïve audience of the proverbs. In this reading, Judith’s actions can be accepted, but they are not to be imitated, and as a storyteller he — and, he assumes, his audience — finds it easier to look at Judith from the outside, to align with the (male) villain of the story rather than its (female) hero. Judith’s inner sense of control over her own

 18 Contrast Magennis, ‘Contrasting Narrative Emphases’, who sees Aldhelm as finding the seduction unproblematic at p. 62.  19 Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 66 notes this usage in the context of discussing Aldhelm’s use of non-Vulgate versions of Scripture. Compare Vulgate 16. 9–11, where Judith’s own victory song celebrates her clothing of herself ‘ad decipiendum illum’ (to deceive him).

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body and mind must be in place, otherwise her actions are disgusting. Like Holofernes himself, Aldhelm might be able to acknowledge the strength of Judith’s mind, but he simply cannot pull his gaze away from her dazzling exterior. This is unusual in De Virginitate, where the audience are repeatedly exhorted to imitate the saints rather than placing themselves in the pagans’ shoes, being inspired to greater faith by a superhuman example. Aldhelm goes on to attack ‘frontosam elationis impudentiam’ (§ 58: the shameless impudence of vanity), with which he has connected Judith’s modus operandi in undermining Holofernes. This is a complete inversion: shifting from the sinful desires he has identified Judith’s actions as inspiring in the men who look at her, to siting the sin in Judith’s own thinking. The perception of Judith as carefully in control of her appearance without sacrificing her integrity has dropped away. Her appearance as perceived by male gazes from within and without the text has become the only reality, and she is to be judged by it. At the start of his section on Judith, Aldhelm respects — but does not admire — how effectively she ‘asks for it’ while retaining control of the situation; in effect, making use of the male gaze for her own ends. By the time he has finished working through her story and fully imagined her appearance and what it might do to a man, he is ready to slut-shame her. This retelling is not a heroic hagiography: it is a moral lesson on the threats posed by female beauty to both men and to the women who want to display it. Aldhelm seems to have had something of a change of heart when, a few years later, he produced the companion Carmen de Virginitate. There are many revisions between the works, but among them is the removal of the section on the Old Testament figures among whom Judith appears. Her story is instead referred to, at lines 2560–70, in the battle of vices and virtues as an example of the defeat of Debauchery, of whom Holofernes becomes a type. As I will discuss below, this is a significant darkening of the general from the sources, which I would interpret (both here and in the Old English poem) as an attempt to make Judith more palatable by making the man she vanquishes more reprehensible. Whether this is so or not, Aldhelm’s poetic Judith is much more admirable than her prose cousin. Her virginity is active now, blazing brightly rather than being hidden behind the bushel of her performance, blasting away the evil lust that the prose Judith deliberately provokes: Sic vitium carnis polluta sorde nocentis Integritas almo contemnit casta triumpho Aemula virgineis proturbans bella sagittis.20 (ll. 2566–68) [Thus pure chastity rejects in blessed triumph the vice of wicked flesh with its defiled filth, repulsing rivalling conflicts with virtuous arrows.]

 20 Quotations from the poetic Carmen de Virginitate are from Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Ehwald, at p. 457.

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As so often, in this text and in hagiography more broadly, there is delight in the irony of a small, pure, young, female saint triumphing in a forbidding world; here finding clearest expression in a fine and onomatopoeic compressed image: ‘Casta cruentatum gestavit bulga tropeum’ (2565: the chaste girl carried the blood-spattered trophy in a sack).21 Aldhelm seems to, in effect, use generic conventions to place limits around what the story itself is about. The Vulgate Judith is not meek, young, or small: she is a strident and independently wealthy widow who challenges the ruling council of her city and takes an incredible risk, retaining extraordinary self-control in horrifying circumstances, for a cause she believes in. In a television adaptation, she would be played by Kris, not Kylie, Jenner. The key points in the immediate context, however, are that, first, the same author writing for the same audience in a closely related work tells the same story in very different ways. And, second, whichever way he tells it, Aldhelm has to flatten the narrative. There must be a good and a bad, with a clear moral message. In his prose telling, the bad is the process of seduction (justified in Judith’s very particular case, but nonetheless dangerous and seemingly leading the author himself to troubling thoughts); in the poetic, the bad is carnis nocens, associated with Holofernes. The story cannot be narrated as it stands: it must be controlled and shaped, cut to fit the Procrustean bed of legitimacy.

Vernacular Versions: Flattening and Worrying Ælfric also changes his mind about what the story means. In fact, as Mary Clayton has shown, he changes his mind repeatedly within the same homily. Delightfully, and accurately, Clayton argues that ‘[l]ike a dog worrying over a bone, Ælfric circles around and round in his conclusion, unable to find a safe resting-place’.22 Defensively proclaiming ‘Nis þis nan leas spel’ (339: This is not a false story), he seems particularly concerned over the extent to which Judith lied to Holofernes, and to make it clear (contradicting his own narrative, but also following Jerome’s account in 15. 14 and 16. 23) that she did not accept the vanquished general’s tainted possessions.23 Despite his difficulty in bringing the homily to a neatly controlled ending, the body of Ælfric’s telling is a broadly straightforward translation of Jerome’s, including

 21 No noun for Judith is given in the Latin; girl is supplied by Lapidge and Rosier, in keeping with the imagery here and frequent depiction of female saints by Aldhelm and other contemporary texts such as the Old English Martyrology.  22 Clayton, ‘Ælfric’s Judith’, p. 222. Much of my discussion of the text follows Clayton closely.  23 Quotations from Ælfric’s Judith are from Lee’s Ælfric’s Homilies and use his line numbers. Translations from Old English are my own. Jerome may be drawing a distinction between Holofernes’ ‘universa vasa bellica’ (16. 23: all the arms of Holofernes) which she renounces along with the stolen canopy and all of the possessions, including clothes and ‘omni supellectiles’ (15 .14: all household stuff) that she is given by the Bethulians.

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a more sympathetic portrayal of Holofernes than any other early medieval English version.24 Before moving on to the particular struggles he has with Judith and how she behaves, it is worth noting a slightly different element of adaptation: he seems particularly insistent on the Bethulians being always hungry and thirsty. Lines 146–63 translate Jerome’s chapter 7, verses 6, 8–17, and 23–25, notably omitting verse 7, which observes that a limited supply of water was available to the besieged citizens from a source unknown to the Assyrians. He also gives much greater prominence to the intense hunger that forced the Hebrews to submit to the Egyptians noted in Vulgate 5. 9 (75–86 in his account). Further, in Jerome’s account, when Achior (whose explanation of Jewish history displeases Holofernes to the extent that he is expelled from the Assyrian camp and given to the Bethulians as a captive who foretells doom) is brought to the city, he is welcomed with ‘cenam magnum’ (6. 19: a great feast) hosted by Ozias and the other elders. Ælfric omits this at lines 131–45, noting only that the Bethulians gefrefrodon (142: comforted) him. Famine was not uncommon in tenth-century England, and Ælfric had presumably personally experienced it, even if from within a relatively protected environment. Despite its ubiquitous presence — the narrative of Judith is, I would argue, on a fundamental level and like almost all stories, about food more than any other single issue — Ælfric never develops it into a theme: this seems to be a teller’s response to a story rather than a conscious aspect of his presentation. However, it is worth noting Ælfric’s response to a particularly troubling instance of this story’s relationship with food. A key plot element is the satchel (L pera [13. 11: bag, wallet], OE fætels [228: vessel, bag]) that Judith takes with her to the Assyrian camp, containing her supplies for the period of her stay. This serves three purposes: first, it is a clear indication that Judith stays true to Jewish culture even when in the camp, because she eats only from approved foodstuffs; second, it ensures that she is not contaminated in the feast-scene when Holofernes eats and drinks so freely; third, it conceals the bloody head of Holofernes and the purloined golden canopy that she takes back to the city as emblems of victory (stolen at Vulgate 13. 10, displayed at 13. 19, and renounced at 16. 23). The obvious problem — that the food will not last, and that the bag therefore effectively signals to Holofernes that she does not expect to stay for long — is identified by the Vulgate general and summarily dismissed by the widow (12. 3–4); an exchange that, presumably because it problematizes the story itself, Ælfric omits. He also cleanly steps around the challenge of explaining Jewish food customs to an English audience by attributing Judith’s meal plan to her general wish to avoid Holofernes’ hæðenscipe (227: paganism). But unlike Jerome, who is quite specific about

 24 See e.g. Ælfric’s Homilies, ed. by Lee, VIII.3c, on the homily’s presentation of Judith and Holofernes.

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the idea that the head was put into the same bag as contained the food (13. 11, 19), Ælfric seems to suppress this image, saying that Judith: bewand þæt bodig mid ðam beddclaðum. Heo nam ða þæt heafod, & his hopscytan, & eode hire ut mid hire þinene. (258–60) [wrapped the body with the bedclothes. She took the head and his bed-curtains, and left there with her handmaiden.] It is still plausible that Holofernes’ head is spirited away in the food bag, but the parallel between the body swathed in sheets and the head taken with the curtains implies otherwise. That is, the tight and troubling connection between food and bloodied head is at the very least obscured, as too is the idea that she stole the golden canopy (it does not even seem to exist at 199–213 and only the head is displayed at 262–77). An invading stranger taking away a bloodied victim for later consumption is a spectral figure of horror in Beowulf, where Grendel’s glof is, as reported by Beowulf (ll. 2085b–2092), deployed to bear away human corpses to be eaten later in a manner clearly analogous to how Judith uses her food bag.25 Ælfric’s suppression of it may, perhaps, be tied to his sensitivity to the issues around food in this narrative; Judith’s story plays with acceptable and unacceptable foodstuffs, with questions of hunger and satiation, and with theft and the gathering of booty. Ælfric’s response to this is mostly to flatten it out into a practical use of the bedclothes alone.26 A lack of food and drink becomes an absence of it. A human head skirting close to being associated with food is tidied up. Like Aldhelm, Ælfric seems to seek to sharpen contrast in the story, betraying a discomfort with his source material’s looseness. And yet, as Clayton observes, Ælfric is not always interested in heightening contrast. The Vulgate’s account of an enraged Judith asking scornful questions of the Bethulian elders, scolding them for setting a test for God, and finally moving on to preaching a proper course of action to which the elders fully submit (8. 9–34), is carefully controlled in the Old English homily. Ælfric reports most of her speech indirectly and never clarifies to whom she speaks: Ðeos Iudith ofaxode hu Ozias gespræc, & cwæð þæt hit wære witodlice unræd þæt mann sceolde settan swylcne andagan Gode (177–79) [This Judith learned how Ozias had spoken, and said that it was certainly unwise for anyone to set such a fixed appointment for God] Thus, the troubling idea that a widow not only knows better than the elders but is prepared to publicly scorn them, overwhelming them just as she will go on to overwhelm Holofernes, is evaded.27 The opening of the poetic Judith is  25 Cf. Appelbaum, ‘Judith Dines Alone’, p. 698; Thomson, Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, p. 51.  26 Cf. Clayton’s argument that he seeks in general ‘to contain Judith within patterns dictated by his desire to make her into a model for virgins’, ‘Ælfric’s Judith’, p. 225.  27 Cf. Clayton, ‘Ælfric’s Judith’, p. 224.

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now missing, but, given the absolute absence of mentions of the elders when Judith returns to Bethulia, it is likely that this version missed them out, too.28 Indeed, if Ælfric ‘worries at’ his text, finding ways to step around or clamp down on troubling elements, the poet slashes uncertainty out of the way. His technique has been more widely discussed than the other versions considered here, and it suffices to briefly rehearse some observations made most clearly by Mark Griffith in his introduction to the text.29 The poetic Judith is a living embodiment of God’s force on earth: righteous, chaste, pure to the point of disembodiment. As it now stands, the opening of the poem (ll. 2b–6a) seems to be absolving her of guilt because she ‘ahte trumne geleafan | a to ðam Ælmihtigan’ (6b–7a: always held firm belief in the Almighty), perhaps as a defence of the dressing to impress that troubled Aldhelm.30 So absolute is her holiness that Peter Lucas argues even her heroism is washed away.31 This does not seem entirely fair given that her strength of mind is so strongly emphasized by the poet, and her potent exhortation to war once back in Bethulia.32 Nonetheless, whether she is read as passive or heroic, the poetic Judith is a model of sanctity. At the same time, the impressive commander of Jerome’s telling is gone and Holofernes is, in Griffith’s accurate and useful term, ‘satanised’.33 Like so much in the poem, this may have been inspired by Aldhelm’s approach; the poet’s emphatically repeated idea of her as mægð (virgin, girl) is certainly closer to the poetic De Virginitate account than either Ælfric or the Vulgate.34 Similarly, and as discussed in more detail below, the poetic Judith is here cast as an innocent potential victim of rape, not a self-controlled seductress. However, the poet does seem to take delight in two problematic moments. Like Ælfric’s, his Judith does not steal from Holofernes. But the poet merges Jerome’s golden canopy under which the general sits with the cortina (curtain) that shields Holofernes’ body from his servant Vagao’s view at 14. 13–14,  28 The original length and contents of the poem cannot be known, but the clearest discussion (arguing that it was not much longer than what now survives) remains Woolf, ‘The Lost Opening to the Judith’.  29 Judith, ed. by Griffith, pp. 53–58. For a recent full review of scholarship on the poem, see Kaup, The Old English ‘Judith’, pp. 1–3. In line with convention, I assume here that the poet was male, but there is no evidence either way.  30 Quotations from Judith are from Judith, ed. by Griffith. Translations are my own, but cf. that in Fulk, ed. and trans., The ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript.  31 ‘Judith and the Woman Hero’.  32 Along with 6b–7a, Judith’s strong mind or perceptive thinking is noted at 41a, 55a, 74b, 125a, 145a, 148a, 171a, 333b, 341a. For a strong reading of the poetic Judith as a warrior-hero, see Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament.  33 Judith, ed. by Griffith, p. 55. See also Olsen, ‘Inversion and Political Purpose in the Old English Judith’; Astell, ‘Holofernes’ Head’; Estes, ‘Feasting with Holofernes’; Kaup, The Old English ‘Judith’, pp. 193–97.  34 The word is used of her at ll. 35, 43, 78, 125, 135, 145, 165, 254, 260, 334. Another noun, ides, usually translated ‘noble-woman’ and with more connotations of power and authority is used of Judith at ll. 14, 55, 58, 109, 133, 146, 339.

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converting the objects into a single rich symbol of deceptive leadership and weak masculinity, an ‘eall gylden | fleohnet’ (46b–47a: entirely golden fly-net), through which Holofernes can spy on his men without being seen.35 Second, the problematic association of a man’s head with food, away from which Ælfric shies, is gleefully embraced by the poet: Þa seo snotere mægð        snude gebrohte þæs herewæðan        heafod swa blodig on ðam fætelse        þe hyre foregenga, blachleor ides,        hyra begea nest, ðeawum geðungen,        þyder on lædde, ond hit þa swa heolfrig        hyre on hond ageaf, higeðoncolre,        ham to berenne, Iudith gingran sinre. (ll. 125–132a) [Then the wise girl swiftly put that war-seeker’s head, bloody as it was, into the bag that her attendant – that pale-faced lady, excellent in customs – had brought rations in for them both to that place, and, gory as it was, Judith gave it into the hand of her thoughtful handmaid to carry home.] Possibly there is an element of comedy in the silent servant’s hygeþancol (thoughtful) receipt of the head, with the idea of its goriness being handed over repeated (125–27 and 130–132a). But at least as noticeable, particularly in contrast to Ælfric’s treatment although again in line with Aldhelm’s poetic approach and perhaps influenced by it, is the careful emphasis that the poet lays on the bag having been used to contain food. This is even more striking given that the only copy of the poem is in a manuscript also containing Grendel’s aforementioned glof and his mother’s journey to and from Heorot, from which she carries away a single head, that of Æschere, which she also displays on the border of her territory. The poetic Judith, like that of the poetic De Virginitate, is characterized by her young, bright, virginal beauty and her willingness to give that body over to God to be deployed in a dangerous and ultimately bloody situation, but with added talents of perception and rhetoric. This is a different approach from Ælfric’s, but betrays the same concerns of controlling and flattening: of retaining the drama and excitement of the story while making Judith herself ‘relatively uniform and conventional’ within the world of Old English poetry.36

 35 See Berkhout and Doubleday, ‘The Net in Judith’.  36 This is Ruth Steiner’s description of the approach taken to Judith’s story in responsories, ‘Gregorian Responsories Based on Texts from the Book of Judith’, p. 33.

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From Table to Bed Before moving on to consider why these distinguished tellers could not keep themselves from telling a story they had to work so hard to control, a productive comparison can be made between the accounts of why Judith ends up in Holofernes’ bedroom. In Jerome’s version, it becomes so late that everyone else leaves, ‘eratque Iudith sola in cubiculo’ (13. 4: and Judith was alone in the chamber). Holofernes’ shift from drinking at the feast to lying in his bed is not narrated, and it is entirely unclear quite what Vagao, Holofernes’ eunuch and manservant, expects to happen when he leaves them alone together. Ælfric, who avoids having to talk about eunuchs by making him into one of several burþegnas, gives these attendants a more active and blameworthy role, as they ‘gebrohton þone ealdormann on anum bedde mid þære Iudith, & na swiðe ne gymdon syððan heora hlafordes’ (251–53: carried the leader to his own bed with Judith, and did not really check on their lord afterwards). Judith is then said to be able to continue with ‘hire ræde’ (255: her plan), though she has played no part in engineering the situation. The most ‘conventional’ approach, if such a description is fair, is thus to have Judith happening to be alone with her helpless victim through vague coincidence or the incompetence of his staff. Holofernes would not have become so drunk were he not lost in her beauty, but lust and seduction do not really play any role in the crucial events. The anonymous poet does not include the eunuch-commandant figure anyway, probably primarily to streamline the narrative for clearer storytelling rather than with a specific focus on this incident. In what may be a realistic detail of incidents of sexual violence, or simply follow Ælfric’s anonymizing pluralization of the figure, a ‘gumena ðreate’ (62a: band of men) functions in Vagao’s role by going with Holofernes to his bed-chamber and swiftly abandoning him there (69b–71a). But the most significant early medieval English transformation of this episode is the poet’s transformation of it into the attempted rape with which the story is now most often associated: He ða niða geblonden þa eadigan mægð         ofstum fetigan to his bedreste         beagum gehlæste, hringum gehrodene. […] Þa wearð se brema on mode bliðe, burga ealdor,        þohte ða beorhtan idese mid widle ond mid womme besmitan. (ll. 34b–37a; 57b–59) [Then he ordered, corrupted with evil, that the blessed woman be swiftly brought to his bed chamber, burdened with rings, adorned with bracelets […] Then he was happy in his heart, the famous one, governor of cities; he expected to defile the bright lady with filth and with shame.]

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Moving into hypermetric lines, the repetition of mid hammering home the idea that the joy of rape is the humiliation of another more than any personal pleasure, the poet makes Holofernes into a repugnant creature. This telling makes explicit the idea, so often unthinkingly repeated, that Holofernes is brought low by lust; in every other account, Holofernes desires Judith but this simply causes him to drink too much. He loses his reason and behaves like a fifteen-year-old drinking too much and trying to impress a pretty girl at a party before passing out on his bed, but he does not plan sexual violence, still less take a foul delight in anticipating his victim’s suffering. Aldhelm does not see fit to show us into Holofernes’ bedroom, a silence which may itself be significant.37 But his prose version’s concern with the scriptural woman who ‘composuit se nimis in rapinam uirorum’ (tricked herself out to prey on men) implies clearer action on her part than is allowed by either of the scriptural accounts on which he relied. By contrast, his poetic account’s claim that ‘servans integrum devota mente pudorem’ (2565: she devoutly preserved undefiled her womanly honour) implies the opposite, something more akin to the tenth-century poet’s version of an innocent victim assaulted by a monster. This crucial plot question, then, which is poorly answered by the source texts used by the authors considered here, is treated in different ways. All three writers seek, to greater or lesser extents, to solve the narrative problem of just how and why Judith got from the feast to Holofernes’ bedside, and all seem to have an interest in selecting an individual to be responsible for that movement: Vagao, Holofernes, or Judith. This issue, then, in some ways crystallizes the problems of the story for those who sought to retell it. It is not clear what happened. It is not clear who was at fault. It is not clear what sin (a servant’s incompetence, a woman’s seductive deception, a man’s vicious joy in depravity) paved the way for that crucial image of the woman wielding the man’s own sword above him in his bed. Each writer is certain that something went wrong, but free to provide their own assessment of precisely what it was. It seems, then, to be the case that each reteller of the story of Judith in early medieval England felt anxious about it. They worried about Judith’s use of appearance and dress to manipulate Holofernes. They worried about how she ended up by his bed. They seem to be simultaneously stimulated and troubled by the whole idea of a predatory woman; some even seem to find the idea of their own gaze being arrested by beauty unsettling. Ælfric is concerned about the issue of booty and the display of wealth; the poet, too, has a complex relationship with it, given his conversion of a straightforward symbol of wealth and power into the enigmatic fleohnet. Other potentially troubling elements of the text — a woman overturning the decision of elders in the city, a hero who steals golden fabric for no clear reason, the association of an enemy’s head with food, the relentless arrogance of male leaders — are  37 I am grateful to Hannah-Aileen Panther for this suggestion.

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responded to in different ways, but often by simply not recounting them. The enigmas of the Judith story are so many, the known unknowns so relentless, that each telling seeks to tie it down, to pare away the unhelpful clinging fibres of extraneous meaning and leave a single clear core of whatever ‘message’ is most useful in a particular moment. Ælfric is, of course, most honest about this approach; it has indeed been argued that his awareness of the multiple meanings of the story enabled him to reshape it for different ends at different moments, and that this lies behind his repeated endings to the homily.38 What puzzles me is why, given all each writer wants in each instance is a single clear core of meaning — sex is bad, shiny things are bad, men are bad, anyone can be a hero, God is stronger than bad men with swords — they decide to work so hard with the Judith narrative to get to it. Aldhelm arguably makes effective use of the story in his prose De Virginitate, because its ambiguities enable him to shift from the ‘good’ to the ‘bad’ through its shimmering curtain of the troubling. But — as I have argued above — the tone of his narration is anxious and defensive, rather than rhetorically controlled. None of these writers seem to value or celebrate the ambiguities of the Judith story and its hero; instead, they seem to resent and seek to flatten them. My contention, then, is that this is a story that demands to be told so strongly that it cannot be set aside, but must instead be tamed. In an attempt to join the long line of male writers (if the poet was male) who seek to use Judith for their own ends, the next section seeks to use it as a case study which works towards understanding what makes a good story.

The Poetics of Storytelling Umberto Eco’s preferred approach to storytelling was the perfectly formed narratives of Gerard Nerval, but he still finds space to enjoy ‘the irregularities, weaknesses, patches, mends, slips, drops in tension, and even actual faults that at times spoil the much-vaunted harmony and necessity of the structure’.39 This runs strongly counter to what one might term a modernist aesthetic of form, in which each element of a story slots together, as integral to the overall picture as a single piece of a jigsaw. This leads to Chekov’s famous directive that if a revolver appears in a story, it must at some point be fired.40 But the story of Judith is full of unfired revolvers. It could be a story about food and hunger, or gold and display, or sex, or gender relations, or different power  38 Magennis, ‘Contrasting Narrative Emphases’, p. 65; Clayton, ‘Ælfric’s Judith’, p. 218. Kaup argues that Ambrose provides a model of treating the text as offering a range of possible readings, and she uses Aldhelm as an example of taking this approach, The Old English ‘Judith’, p. 53; see also pp. 54–58. Curry lays out a set of different roles that the original Judith can be read as playing in ‘Representing the Biblical Judith in Literature and Art’, pp. 9 and 10.  39 Eco, On Literature, p. 205.  40 See Bi︠ts︡ illi, Chekhov’s Art, p. x.

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systems, or deception, or war, or movement and enclosure, or faith. It offers symbols, characters, and moments that invite exploration of each of those elements, but resolves none of them. I do not know if Chekov ever commented on Judith and Holofernes, but he would certainly have had to work hard to smooth it into an acceptable form.41 Mary Carruthers has argued that part of the efficacy of monuments such as war memorials is precisely this kind of slippery multivalency: we can all agree that we are looking at the same thing, and are therefore united.42 But the vagueness of the symbolic representation we look at (and indeed the frequent use of silence as a mode of remembering) enables each individual to reflect on what they find most productive. In these terms, meaning is something experienced in or through something external (an object, a story, an event), but not contained by that external thing; it resides in the interaction between individual and thing, which is deeper the more individual it is, and richer the more it (or the experience of engaging with it) can be shared with others. A lack of precision, then, can in fact be a strongly positive value for a story.43 This can be closely connected with what Wolfgang Iser called ‘gaps’, moments in the story where we are not explicitly told what happened, where it is not clear what took place, or why a character took a particular action.44 As has been made clear above, the Judith narrative heaves with such ‘gaps’, both in terms of what happens (e.g. how does Judith end up in Holofernes’ bed-chamber?), of characters’ motivations (e.g. why does she steal the golden canopy?) and even of evaluative judgement of the events (e.g. is Judith merciless seducer or innocent victim?). Like the silences in memorial services, these vacant spaces are not unproductive voids, but opportunities — perhaps even demands — for individual audience members to step into. That is, having read the story of Judith, it was not possible for Aldhelm to leave it alone, as it may have been were the narrative cleaner. Instead, he, like so many other storytellers within and without the early medieval period, felt — like Barker — irresistibly and mysteriously compelled to step in and close the gaps in a way that, to paraphrase Iser, was meaningful for him.45 Such active participation in making the story is what excites Iser: ‘gaps’ are ‘those very points at which the reader can enter into the text’, and therefore the focus of a story full of gaps is not the story itself but the reader who encounters it, who is thereby enabled to access her own ‘hidden reality’; ‘we read books

 41 Cheap woodcuts of the beheading are mentioned in his short story ‘The Witch’, which has some resonances with the Judith narrative.  42 Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, esp. pp. 36–37.  43 Cf. Barthes’ sense of the pleasure inherent in faults and flaws, The Pleasure of the Text, at e.g. pp. 7, 10; and his distinction between the pleasurable, comfortable text and the ‘text of bliss’ that discomforts, p. 14.  44 Iser, ‘The Role of the Reader’, p. 34.  45 Iser, ‘The Role of the Reader’, p. 34.

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to find out who we are’, as Ursula Le Guin put it.46 The reason these early medieval writers could not stop telling the story of Judith is because they were really telling and retelling the stories of themselves. This is the ‘interactive relationship’ that Jonathan Gotschall calls ‘game’, the ‘play’ that has become increasingly recognized as a key learning process.47 That is, ‘good’ stories compel us not only to engage with them, but to play with them, to work with them; in its simplest form, to retell them.48 This can easily be seen in young audiences who take part in a storytelling performance: immediately after I have finished telling a story in any primary school setting, the children move smoothly to acting out the story in person or with toys, or drawing parts of the story, or writing untold aspects, or rewriting parts they enjoyed or found unsatisfactory in my version. It is this instinct that I see kicking in for Aldhelm, Ælfric, and the Judith-poet. Encountering a story as full of gaps as Judith, talented storytellers that they are, they cannot hold themselves back from playing with it, from trying to work it into a form they find fits them better. It is possible to go further. It is not just the gaps in Judith that make it a story that irresistibly draws writers to rework it. It is also its profound foreignness. For early medieval male monastic writers in England, and indeed for most modern audiences, the Jewish widow living high in the mountains, who sits at a feast and does not eat, then goes into a bedroom to use a man’s sword is fundamentally ‘other’. But, perhaps contrary to modern expectations where, for instance, stories about women are bizarrely frequently assumed to be primarily for women, the alterity of Judith does not push us away; it sucks us in. Neil Gaiman argues that a key role of engaging with stories is precisely this sort of encounter, because: we learn to empathize with real people via made-up people […] The act of looking out through other eyes tells us something huge and important, which is that other people exist.49 As discussed in the Introduction to this volume, this is the same power that Emmanuel Levinas finds in the ‘face of the other’; both Gaiman and Levinas argues that an encounter with something that we cannot understand is a profoundly positive shock, and a fundamental aspect of our humanity. Levinas goes further in arguing that the incomprehensible is fundamentally alluring: ‘[t]he intrigue of alterity is born before knowledge’.50 This goes beyond Iser’s sense that stories help us to form our conscious sense of self by battering it against mysteries to be interpreted. For Gaiman and, in my extension, Levinas,  46 Iser, ‘The Role of the Reader’, pp. 40 and 36; Le Guin, ‘Prophets and Mirrors’, quoted in The Language of the Night, at p. 31. Cf. Levinas, ‘Interview with François Poirié’, p. 60.  47 Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal, p. 190. Cf. Le Guin, ‘Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?’, p. 41.  48 For a fuller discussion of storytelling as play, see Thomson, ‘Playful Storytelling in Beowulf’.  49 Gaiman, ‘How stories Last’, np.  50 Levinas, ‘The Proximity of the Other’, p. 213.

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stories show us that there are experiences that exist totally outside of our own, therefore teaching us not only that other people and perspectives exist, but also that we are a single person seeing the world from a single perspective. It is, then, in Judith’s very alterity that her magnetism resides. Perhaps more significant, though, is the fact that we know she is not saying what she thinks — but that we do not know what she thinks. And, I would argue, even more significant is the fact that the storyteller participates in the same game of revelation and clarity surrounded by obfuscation and misdirection. The story and what it ‘means’ is as alien to us as she is, and each authorial attempt to clear things up only makes the gaps more apparent, the alterity more insistent. In this line of argument, Judith is a good story because it is a difficult one, impossible to tell because it contains too much, itches in places that cannot be scratched. The grit in the story is what forces each reader to seek to write it into a new pearl. To attempt to exemplify and clarify this view of the Judith narrative, it is worth briefly discussing a single example that intrigues me. This is the death of her husband Manasses, who died during a barley-harvest because his head got too hot as he supervised his workers, an event that took place at an unspecified time before Holofernes’ invasion. His death engages with the issues around food (an ironic death in a time of plenty), contains more than an element of absurdity (dying from heatstroke while watching others working for him), and (like so many moments in this narrative) is given in far more detail than is necessary, demanding our engagement and then abruptly refusing to satisfy the curiosity raised thereby. As a storyteller, I have told the story of Judith in at least three different forms and on multiple occasions; I have never mentioned Manasses. He isn’t necessary, of course, but I like the idea of the scene and would enjoy working in this moment. How does Judith react to his death? What was their marriage like? Are those who tie the barley in the sheaves still out there, working in the hot sun, and does she now manage them from her shady upstairs chamber; is it their sweat that shapes Judith’s jewels? Most of the men with power in this story abuse it, and the only other overseeing described is the Egyptians’ use of their Hebrew slaves; was Manasses a cruel master, or simply a foolish one? What kind of overseer is Judith, so emphatically set apart from the social world of Bethulia, and yet apparently dripping with wealth? So I would love to include his story, but the truth is that I simply do not know what to do with him. We are accustomed to thinking of high-quality narrative as being stripped down and lean, focusing on the key issues and not nodding in other, purely digressive, directions. But this ‘nodding’ is precisely what the Judith narrative does, mercilessly throwing Manasses-shaped ideas out, then turning around to look at something else and leaving the reader behind to gather up all of the pieces and try to hold them together. This is a similar line of argument to that used by Gotschall of dreams, which he regards as a key driver behind the storytelling impulse, being ‘the mind’s desperate attempts to craft ordered

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narratives out of random input’.51 This can be compared with Le Guin’s argument in favour of fantastical stories, claiming that ‘realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence’.52 She develops this initially rather impressionistic idea in much more detail when discussing the Hans Christian Anderson story about a man and his shadow. Here, Le Guin argues that myths occupy the same dreamscape as the unconscious, and that therein lies their power. Their use of ‘symbol and archetype’ goes direct to unconscious understanding, bypassing ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason’.53 So a story in which every element slots neatly into place remains closed off, without the capacity to enter our minds and without giving us the spaces we need through which to enter its world. Gottschall, and perhaps Iser, would say that the mind takes these signifiers without clear objects and (irritably) works them into a meaning: that storytelling at this level is an interaction, not a delivery, with stories like Judith that offer so many potential ‘meanings’ providing a challenge, rather than a message, to our unconscious. In Iser’s terms, ‘[t]he withholding of certitude activates the human potential’.54 Either way, what makes Judith a ‘good’, indeed an apparently irresistible, story is its opacity and inscrutability to the conscious gaze, qualities that are as integral to the narrative itself as well as to its elusive central figure. This gives the sense that every retelling is deficient, that ‘[a]ll explanations are partial’.55 We do not only want to hear the story of Judith; we want to retell it, to draw it, to sing it: to play it. It offers ‘an uneasy pleasure, which makes us feel the greatness of our subjectivity, capable of wishing for something we cannot have’.56 Working towards a ‘poetics of storytelling’ through the Judith narrative seems to me, then, to bring us to a fuzziness around the edges: gesture rather than display; signifiers, not signified. Gotschall argues that ‘[t]he storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning’.57 If this is so, what the Judith story offers is a sequence of opportunities — indeed demands — that we attempt to satisfy this addiction. In its revealings and concealings, its rejection of fixed meanings, its ungathered threads, and its loosely anchored symbols, it both emblematizes and pushes us towards an ‘infinity that is never finished, where the light gained illumines above all

 51 Gotschall, The Storytelling Animal, p. 74. Cf. Le Guin, ‘Dreams Must Explain Themselves’; Knight, ‘Ritual / Speech Coevolution’, esp. pp. 69, 76.  52 Le Guin, ‘National Book Award Acceptance Speech’, p. 58.  53 Le Guin, ‘The Child and the Shadow’, p. 62; Keats, ‘Letter to George and Tom Keats’, p. 42. Cf. Hockley, ‘Therapy and Cinema’, esp. pp. 79, 82. Levinas expresses a similar understanding of music, literature, and poetry in ‘Interview with François Poirié’ at p. 119.  54 Iser, ‘Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress’, p. 24.  55 Le Guin, ‘The Child and the Shadow’, p. 66.  56 Eco, The Infinity of Lists, p. 17. Eco connects this idea with Kant’s thinking.  57 Gotschall, The Storytelling Animal, p. 103.

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the insufficiencies of the light required’.58 It is this that made Barker — like Aldhelm, Ælfric, and an anonymous tenth-century poet — feel ‘somehow’ compelled to tell the story. We cannot control it, and as a result we cannot stop trying to do so.

 58 Levinas, ‘In the Name of the Other’, p. 199.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Ælfric, Ælfric’s Homilies on ‘Judith’, ‘Esther’, and the ‘Maccabees’, ed. by Stuart D. Lee (Oxford: University of Oxford, 1999), online at [accessed 22 February 2018] —— , Ælfric’s ‘Letter to the Monks of Eynsham’, ed. and trans. by Christopher A. Jones, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) —— , The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s ‘Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo’, ed. by Richard Marsden, EETS o.s. 330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) Aldhelm, Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Rudolf Ehwald, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, 15 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1877–1919), 15 (1919) —— , Aldhelm: The Prose Works, ed. and trans. by Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (Cambridge: Boydell, 1979) —— , Aldhelm: The Poetic Works, ed. and trans. by Michael Lapidge and James Rosier (Cambridge: Boydell, 1985) —— , Prosa de virginitate cum glosa Latina atque anglosaxonica, ed. by Scott Gwara, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 124, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001) Barker, Howard, ‘About Things on the Stage’, with Elisabeth Angel-Perez et al., in Howard Barker Interviews 1980–2010: Conversations in Catastrophe, ed. by Mark Brown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 137–50 Fulk, Robert D., ed. and trans., The ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript: Complete Texts and ‘The Fight at Finnsburg’, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 3 (London: Harvard University Press, 2010) Jerome, Præfatio Hieronymi in Librum Judith, in Patrologiae cursus completes: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1864), 29 (1846), cols 37–40 —— , ‘Vulgate Prologues’, trans. by Kevin Edgecomb (Berkeley), online at [accessed 19 April 2018] Judith, ed. by Mark Griffith (Exeter: Liverpool University Press, 1997) Keats, John, ‘Letter to George and Tom Keats (21st or 27th December 1817)’, in John Keats, Selected Letters, ed. by Robert Gittings with an Introduction by Jon Mee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 40–42 Secondary Studies Appelbaum, Robert, ‘Judith Dines Alone: From the Bible to Du Bartas’, Modern Philology, 111 (2014), 683–710 Astell, Ann W., ‘Holofernes’ Head: Tacen and Teaching in the Old English Judith’, Anglo-Saxon England, 18 (1989), 117–33 Barthes, Roland, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. by Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975)

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Berkhout, Carl T. and James Doubleday, ‘The Net in Judith 46b–54a’, Neuphilo­ logische Mitteilungen, 74 (1973), 630–34 Billet, Jesse D., The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, 597 – c. 1000 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014) Bi︠ts︡ illi, Petr Mikhaĭlovich, Chekhov’s Art: A Stylistic Analysis, trans. by Toby W. Clyman and Edwina Jannie Cruise (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1983) Bullough, D. A., Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation, Being Part of the Ford Lectures Delivered in Oxford in the Hilary Term 1980 (Leiden: Brill, 2004) Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Clayton, Mary, ‘Ælfric’s Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated?’, Anglo-Saxon England, 23 (1994), 215–27 Curry, Peggy L., ‘Representing the Biblical Judith in Literature and Art: An Intertextual Cultural Critique’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts, 1994) Eco, Umberto, On Literature, trans. by Martin McLaughlin (London: Vintage, 2006; first published as Sulla Letterature in 2002; first published in English, 2005) —— , The Infinity of Lists: From Homer to Joyce, trans. by Alastair McEwen (London, 2009; first published as La Vertigine della Lista, Milan, 2009) Estes, Heidi, ‘Feasting with Holofernes: Digesting Judith in Anglo-Saxon England’, Exemplaria, 15 (2003), 325–50 Gaiman, Neil, ‘How Stories Last’, lecture recorded for the Long Now Foundation, 9 June 2015, online at [accessed 24 April 2018]; online with partial transcription at

[accessed 24 April 2018] Ganz, David, ‘Le De Laude Dei d’Alcuin’, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 111 (2004), 387–91 Gera, Deborah Levine, Judith (Berlin: Gruyter, 2014) Gottschall, Jonathan, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: First Mariner, 2012) Hockley, Luke, ‘Therapy and Cinema: Making Images and Finding Meanings’, in Embodied Encounters: New Approaches to Psychoanalysis and Cinema, ed. by Agnieszka Piotrowska (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 77–90 Iser, Wolfgang, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, first published in English 1974; originally published as Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett, 1972) —— , ‘Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: The Doctrine of Predestination and the Shaping of the Novel’, in Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 1–28

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—— , ‘The Role of the Reader in Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones’, in Wolf­ gang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 29–56 Jones, Christopher A., Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Kaup, Judith, The Old English ‘Judith’: A Study of Poetic Style, Theological Tradition, and Anglo-Saxon Christian Concepts (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013) Knight, Chris, ‘Ritual / Speech Coevolution: A Solution to the Problem of Deception’, in Approaches to the Evolution of Language, ed. by James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, and Chris Knight (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 68–91 Le Guin, Ursula, ‘Prophets and Mirrors: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing’, The Living Light, 7 (1970), 111–21 —— , The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood (New York: Putnam, 1979) —— , ‘Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?’, in Ursula Le Guin, Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood (New York: Putnam, 1979), pp. 39–45 —— , ‘Dreams Must Explain Themselves’, in Ursula Le Guin, Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood (New York: Putnam, 1979), pp. 47–56 —— , ‘National Book Award Acceptance Speech’, in Ursula Le Guin, Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood (New York: Putnam, 1979), pp. 57–58 —— , ‘The Child and the Shadow’, in Ursula Le Guin, Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood (New York: Putnam, 1979), pp. 59–71 Levinas, Emmanuel, Is It Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) —— , ‘Interview with François Poirié’, trans. by Jill Robbins and Marcus Coelen with Thomas Loebel, in Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 23–83 —— , ‘In the Name of the Other’, trans. by Maureen V. Gedney, in Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 188–99 —— , ‘The Proximity of the Other’, trans. by Bettina Bergo, in Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 211–18 Lucas, Peter, ‘Judith and the Woman Hero’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 22 (1992), 17–27 Magennis, Hugh, ‘Contrasting Narrative Emphases in the Old English Poem Judith and Ælfric’s Paraphrase of the Book of Judith’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 96 (1995), 61–66

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Marsden, Richard, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 15 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Milne, Paulina, ‘What Shall we do with Judith? A Feminist Reassessment of a Biblical “heroine”’, Semeia, 62 (1993), 37–58 Mullins, Juliet, ‘Aldhelm’s Choice of Saints for his Prose De Virginitate’, in Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture, ed. by Stuart McWilliams (Cambridge: Brewer, 2012), pp. 33–53 Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey, ‘Inversion and Political Purpose in the Old English Judith’, English Studies, 63 (1982), 289–93 Steiner, Ruth, ‘Gregorian Responsories Based on Texts from the Book of Judith’, in Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Brian Gillingham, ed. by Terence Bailey and Alma Santosusosso (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 23–34 Stocker, Margarita, Judith: Sexual Warrior: Women and Power in Western Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) Thomson, S. C., Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript: Towards a History of Reception for the Nowell Codex, Library of the Written Word 67 – The Manuscript World 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2018) —— , ‘Playful Storytelling in Beowulf’, in ‘Beowulf’ in Contemporary Culture, ed. by David Clark (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2020), pp. 153–83 Tilford, Nicole, ‘Judith and her Interpreters’, in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A. Newman, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), pp. 391–95 Woolf, Rosemary, ‘The Lost Opening to the Judith’, Modern Language Review, 50 (1955), 168–72 Zacher, Samantha, Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)

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Mosaics, Marbles, and Medievalisms Displaying the Foundation Narrative of the English Church in Westminster Cathedral

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin. As foundation narratives go, the story of the Augustinian Mission, sent from Rome by Gregory to ‘convert the barbarian English people’ in 597, is — as constructed and recounted by Bede — one of the most iconic stories to be preserved in an early medieval ecclesiastical context, and is considered to be a turning point in the religious history of England.1 Indeed, many early historical texts rely on this tale: Bede’s Historia Ecclesiatica; Goscelin’s accounts of the early saints and Church in Kent;2 Eadmer’s account of the Church in Canterbury;3 the writings of William of Malmesbury — all of whom wove accounts of the ‘old’ churches and saints into their discussions of the English Church;4 right up to the antiquarian accounts of the medieval which came to form the perceptual locus of ‘English’ religiosity and historicity. Through all of these textual accounts, the narrative of the Augustinian mission and the ensuing processes of conversion are relentlessly repeated by those discussing and retelling the story of the origins of the English Church.5 Indeed, this tale becomes something that we know without critiquing, that we too repeat and embed into our own accepted narratives of the peoples and places and stories of early medieval England. The tale of the Augustinian mission is pervasive in its structuring primacy as it casts and constructs a narrative of Englishness, of religion and of identity  1 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I, § 22–§ 27, particularly § 23–§ 24; see also Farmer, ‘St Augustine’s Life and Legacy’.  2 Goselin of Saint-Bertin, Vita maior s. Augustini, ed. by Migne, cols 41−94; Goseclin of SaintBertin, Vita minor s. Augustini, ed. by Migne, cols 743−64; Taylor, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral Church at Canterbury’; see also Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral.  3 Eadmer of Canterbury, ed. by Muir and Turner.  4 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regnum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winter­ bottom, vol. 1, § 280; Fernie, The Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 8; Hawkes, ‘Creating a View’, pp. 373–77.  5 For further discussion, see Boulton and Hawkes, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Church in Kent’.

Meg Boulton, University of Edinburgh Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 133–155  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121605

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that has echoed throughout history; to the extent that it is retold as an origin myth in the mosaics of Westminster Cathedral, as we shall see. While the story of the Augustinian mission and the conversion of the English is well known, the retelling of this storied and historied narrative in the nineteenth century is less so; it is this recasting of the medieval original in the stones and stories of the Victorian cathedral that is the focus of this chapter. Of this pervasive date and tale, Richard Gem, in the introduction to his discussion of the church complex constructed at Canterbury by the mission, wrote: 597 is one of those key dates in English history that are known to many people, even if they have a less sure understanding of its precise significance other than that it was the year in which Augustine arrived in Kent to bring Christianity to the English. With all such key dates there is something symbolic about them; that is, they are only a shorthand for historical events that were more drawn out in reality. Yet, for all the symbolism of this particular date, it corresponds to a very real historical process that saw the establishment of the Christian religion as one of the principal bases for the development of English political, social, and cultural life up to modern times.6 In this he is correct; the date, and the wider tale of conversion it (re)presents, are both symbolic and significant: serving to embed and commemorate a date and a story that resonates in both the medieval past and the modern present for the (Catholic) Church in England. The tale of the mission celebrates and narrativizes the perceived arrival of the Church in England, in its Roman incarnation, in part through its continued repetition as an authoritative narrative. In its telling and retelling, the mission (and its Roman inheritance), continually form and reform the English Church; remembering the Catholic and Roman roots also celebrated by the monumental cathedral at Westminster, which explicitly ties its own story to that of Bede’s/Augustine’s, through its decorative programme. The importance of Gem’s discussion of the mission also lies in his recognition of the event as a ‘shorthand’ — an abbreviated, veiled account which serves to inform those subsequently engaging with the story about a whole nexus of data and events which surround the central tale. When dealing with the contemporary textual accounts of the mission, and even more particularly when considering modern visual retellings of the story, we must acknowledge that a part becomes the whole. We are offered a glimpse into one aspect of the complex process of sweeping religious and socio-political conversion which becomes a monumental totem of that event. For example, while highlighting the importance of this particular story to the identity of the English Church, it is also essential to acknowledge that such an emphasis largely ignores the significant Irish roots of the Church in  6 Gem, ‘The Anglo-Saxon and Norman Churches’, p. 9.

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the British Isles, some of which predate this highly political and politicized act of conversion by Gregory and Augustine — no trace of which is found in this relentlessly retold account. That this type of omission is all too often seen in scholarship of the English Church is a whole other story, but one that is important to foreground. Be this as it may, the impact and significance of Irish Christianity and the missionary work that helped to forge the developing English Church is certainly a story for another day, as our particular tale as told in the Westminster mosaics of the SS Gregory and Augustine Chapel begins with Augustine and his narrative in 597, as well as the endless retellings and reimaginings it has since seen. In considering this Augustinian conversion narrative (and here we might also say Gregorian or Bedan narrative, as both protagonist/s and author all play vital roles in the lasting perceptions and receptions of this tale), the temporal resonances it holds, the connotations of ‘origins’ it creates and the institutional identities and authorities it presents, it is important to note that the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England was a deliberate papal act, forged across and through theological, geographical, socio-political, and material tropes, tools and methods.7 Gregory the Great sent Augustine through the post-Roman space of Northern Europe, and across a hostile sea to convert a barbarian people, in a land that, if not entirely unknown to the people of Rome, did not hold the most favourable of reputations.8 This act of sending the mission was an act purposefully constructed by the Church in a top-down model of religious conversion for political purposes; an act that is arguably later replicated by the architect of Westminster Cathedral in the retelling of the foundation narrative in stone and glass to link church with Church across temporal periods, and to emphasize the history and authority of Catholicism in England. The sending (and ultimate success) of the mission fostered the perception of the power and stability of the Church of Rome, whereby the conversion of a land at the ‘edge of the world’ was understood to be the act that would render the Universal Church complete;9 a narrative of power and authority that we again find in the later retelling of the story of the mission at Westminster. Thus, in both medieval and early modern accounts, the newly Christianized England was irrevocably tied to the papacy and to Rome, realizing and representing a potent act of ‘global’ salvation in a time of relative instability for the Catholic Church (in both the sixth and the nineteenth centuries). The mission, and its papal author, deliberately write/s a story

 7 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, I.23, pp. 68–73. See also Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, pp. 51–77; Neuman de Vegvar, ‘The Value of Recycling’; and Lambert, Christians and Pagans, pp. 164–200.  8 Tacitus, Agricola, trans. by Church and Broadribb I.11, pp. 8–9; see also Markus, ‘Gregory the Great’s Pagans’.  9 I would like to thank Jane Hawkes, Diamuid Scully, and the late Jennifer O’Reilly for many useful and illuminating conversations around this idea, which is one often highlighted in their own research.

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of salvation, inscribing it onto the landscapes of early medieval Europe and England. The tale of the mission and its subsequent success writes the narrative of ecclesiasticism through the structures and institutions of the Church of Rome, positing conclusions about romanitas, authority and identity, binding and housing these within the eschatological implications of the newly forged English Church. This highly visible performance of conversion, including the procession of the mission across Europe and through Canterbury to ‘convert’ the English people is of interest here in terms of the active construction of an ‘institutional’ identity and salvific narrative linked to Rome from the moment of the Church’s arrival in England through the presence of the Augustinian mission. It is this triumphal and institutional narrative that is echoed and retold centuries later in the decorative vocabularies of Westminster Cathedral, specifically in the adornment of the chapel which is dedicated to both Augustine and Gregory. It is this (re)telling of the Augustinian narrative that we are concerned with reading here. However, before we begin, let us revisit the tale as it was told by Bede, as well as some of the implications held and carried by the narrative. While Bede’s version is well known, especially among medievalists, it is not universally familiar, particularly when considered in the context of the nineteenth-century adornment of Westminster, and so is revisited here in some detail. As discussed, it is well-established that the Church of Rome, embodied by Augustine, arrived under instruction from Gregory, who, shortly before his papal appointment, was, Bede tells us ‘diuino admonitis instinctu’ (prompted by divine inspiration), after his chance encounter with angelic blond English slave boys in the markets of Rome. The event is apocryphally recorded and referenced by Bede, although as if narrated by a long-Christianized English tongue, stressing both the authority of the Church, the Englishness of it, and the Divine authority that underpinned the inevitability of English Christianity. The manner of Bede’s storytelling as he recounts the (imbalanced) meeting of margin and centre in a Roman slave market means this, divinely inspired, event becomes the logical and inevitable beginning of English Christian history, rather than being told or seen as an act of Christianization imposed on the marginalized English by the political centre of Christian Rome.10 The slave boys were identified by Gregory, as recorded by Bede, in a masterly piece of semiotic manipulation as ‘non Angli, sed angeli’ (not Angles but angels), thus reinforcing the seeming (pre)destination of the (angelic) English for conversion and participation within the Church. This event is again foregrounded in the nineteenth-century retelling of the chapel, linking the cathedral at Westminster to the very earliest presence of the Church in England; collapsing time and space to stress the romanitas and Catholic inheritance of the Church, through the stories of its origin11

 10 For ideas of voice, identity, margin and centre see hooks, Feminist Theory.  11 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I. 22–23, pp. 68–69); see also Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, II. 1–2:

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As narrated by Bede, this pivotal mission was led somewhat reluctantly by Augustine, who expressed the wish on more than one occasion, to give up the ‘tam periculosam, tam laboriosam, tam incertam peregrinationem’ (so dangerous, so wearisome, so uncertain journey).12 Nevertheless, the lack of heroic agency on Augustine’s part notwithstanding, once the mission arrived in England it did so with the full pomp of the Roman Papal Church and its (Roman, classically-engaged) visual culture behind it: a visual identity firmly based in the classical tradition of figural art, an architecture of carved and dressed stone, and a literate culture; all of which became irrevocably entwined with a Roman Christian tradition in England from the time of the arrival of the mission, and later reflected in the marbles and mosaics of Westminster.13

‘Nec silentio praetereuna opinion, quae de beato Gregorio traditione maiorum ad nos usque perlata est, qua uidelicet ex causa admonitus tam sedulam erga salute nostrae gentis curam gesserit. Dicunt quia die quadem, cum aduenientibus nuper mercatoribus multa uenalia in forum fuissent conlata, multi ad emendum confluxissent, et ipsum Gregorium inter alios aduenisse, ac uidisse inter alia pueros uenales positos candidi corporis ac uenusti uultus, capillorum quoque forma egregia. Quos cum aspiceret, interrogauit, ut aiunt, de qua regione uel terra essent adlati; dictumque est quia de Brittania insula, cuius incolae talis essent aspectus. Rursus interrogauit utrum idem insulani Christiani, an paganis adhuc erroribus essent inplicati. Dictum est quod essent pagani. At ille, intimo ex corde longa trahens suspiria, “Heu, pro dolor!” inquit “quod tam lucidi uultus homines tenebrarum auctor possidet, tantaque gratia frontispicii mentem ab interna gratia uacuam gestat!” Rursus ergo interrogauit, quod esset uocabulum gentis illius. Responsum est quod Angli uocarentur. At ille: “Bene” inquit; “nam et angelican habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes. Quod habet nomen ipsa prouincia, de qua isti sunt adlati?” Responsum est quia Deiri uocarentur idem prouinciales. At ille “Bene” inquit “Deiri, de ira eruti et ad misericordiam Christi uocat”’. (We must not fail to relate the story about St Gregory which has come down to us as a tradition of our forefathers. It explains the reason why he showed such earnest solicitude for the salvation of our race. It is said that one day, soon after some merchants had arrived in Rome, a quantity of merchandise was exposed for sale in the market place. Crowds came to buy and Gregory too amongst them. As well as other merchandise he saw some boys put up for sale, with fair complexions, handsome faces, and lovely hair. On seeing them he asked, so it is said, from what region or land they had been brought. He was told they came from the island of Britain, whose inhabitants were like that in appearance. He asked again whether those islanders were Christians or still entangled in the errors of heathenism, He was told that they were heathen. Then with a deep-drawn sigh he said, “Alas that the author of darkness should have men so bright of face in his grip, and that minds devoid of inward grace should bear so graceful an outward form.” Again he asked for the name of the race. He was told that they were called Angli. “Good”, he said, “they have the face of angels, and such men should be fellow-heirs of the angels in heaven”. “What is the name”, he asked, “of the kingdom from which they have been brought?” He was told that them me of the kingdom were called Deiri. “Deiri”, he replied, “De ira! Good! Snatched form the wrath of Christ and called to his mercy.”).  12 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I. 22–23, pp. 68–69: ‘Nec mora, Augustinum […] disposuerat, domum remittunt qui a beato Gregorio humili supplicatu obtineret, ne tam periculosam, tam laboriosam, tam incertam peregrinationem adire deberent’.  13 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I. 24–26, pp. 72–77.

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Given the centrality of this narrative to the nineteenth-century visual retelling in Westminster, and the frequent lacunae between scholars of the medieval and of medievalisms, it is pertinent to revisit the story that these mosaics are based on in some detail. The arrival is described thus by Bede: Roboratus ergo confirmation beati patris Gregorii, Augustinus cum famulis Christi, qui erant cum eo, rediit in opus Verbi peruenitque Brittaniam. Erat eo tempore rex Aedilberct in Cantia potentissimus, qui ad confinium usque Humbrae fluminis aximi, quo meridian et septrionales Anglorum populi dirimuntur, fines imperii tetenderat. Est autem ad orientalem Cantiae plagam Tanatos insula non modica, id est magnitudinis iuxta consuetudinem aestimationis Anglorum familiarum sexcentarum, quam a continenti terra secernit fluuius Uantsumu, qui est latitudinis circiter trium stadiorum, et duobus tantum in locis est transmeabilis; utrumque enim caput protendit in mare. In hac ergo adplicuit seruus Domini Augustinus et socii eius, uiri ut ferunt ferme XL. Acceperant autem, praecipiente beato papa Gregorio, de gente Francorum interpretes; et mittens as Aedilberctum, mandauit se uenisse de Roma ac nuntium ferre optimm, qui sibi obtemperantibus aeterna in caelis gaudia et regnum sine fine cum Deo uiuo et uero futurum sine ulla dubietate promitteret. Qui haec audiens manere illos in ea quam adierant insula, et eis necessaria ministrari, donec uideret quid eis faceret, iussit. [So Augustine, strengthened by the encouragement of St Gregory, in company with the servants of Christ, returned to the work of preaching the word, and came to Britian. At that time Ӕthelbert, king of Kent was a very powerful monarch. The lands over which he exercised his suzerainty stretched as far as the great river Humber, which divides the Northern from the Southern Angles. Over against the eastern districts of Kent there is a large island called Thanet which, in English reckoning, is 600 hides in extent. It is divided from the mainland by the river Wantsum, which is about three furlongs wide, can be crossed in two places only, and joins the sea at either end. Here Augustine the servant of the Lord, landed with his companions, who are said to have been nearly forty in number. They had acquired interpreters from the Frankish race according to the command of Pope St Gregory. Augustine sent to Ӕthelbert to say that he had come from Rome bearing the best of news, namely the sure and certain promise of eternal joys in heaven and an endless kingdom with the living and the true God to those who received it. On hearing this the King ordered them to remain on the island where they had landed and be provided with all things necessary until he had decided what to do about them.]14

 14 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I. 24­–25, pp. 72–73.

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The narrative continues: Post dies ergo uenit ad insulam rex, et residens sub diuo iussit ugustinum cum sociis ad suum ibidem aduenire colloquium. Cauerat enim ne in aliquam domum ad se introirent, uetere usus augurio, ne superuentu suo, siquid maleficae artis habuissent, eum superando deciperent. At illi non daemonica sed diuina uirtute praediti ueniebant, crucem pro uexillo ferentes argenteam, er imaginem Domini Saluatoris in tabula depictam… Dedit ergo eis mansionem in ciuitate Doruuernensi, quae imperii sui totius erat metropolis, eisque, ut promiserat, cum administratione uictus temporalis licentiam quoque praedicandi non abstulit. Fertur autem, quia adpropinquantes ciuitati more suo cum cruce sancta et imagine magni regis Domini nostri Iesu Christi hanc laetaniam consona uoce modularentur… [Some days afterwards, the king came to the island and, sitting in the open air, commanded Augustine and his comrades to come thither to talk with him. He took care that they should not meet in any building, for he held the traditional superstition that, if they practised any magic art, they might deceive him and get the better of him as soon as he entered. But they came endowed with divine and not devilish power and bearing as their standard a silver cross and the image of our Lord and Saviour painted on a panel. […] So he gave to them a dwelling in the city of Canterbury, which was the chief city in all his dominions; and, in accordance with his promise, he granted them provisions and did not refuse them freedom to preach. It is related that as they approached the city in accordance with their custom carrying the holy cross and the image of our great King and Lord, Jesus Christ, they sang this litany in unison…]15 In so telling the story of the entry of the Augustinian mission onto English soil and into the city of Canterbury, moving the mission and the reader from the marginal edge of Thanet to the accepted centre of the royal city, from which their task of conversion would begin, Bede clearly states that the monks made full visual display of their beliefs at this initial meeting, bearing before them ‘cruce sancta et imagine magni regis Domini nostri Iesu Christi’ (the holy cross and the image of our great King and Lord, Jesus Christ).16 In so doing, they were displaying a non-textual narrative of the symbols of salvation. It is perhaps of note that in (re)telling his, later, textual version of this tale, Bede (normally famously scanty on material detail in his history) stresses these objects — amplifying the messages contained in both cross and painted panel. These objects — cross and icon — were integral to the visual and material traditions of the papal Church of Rome, although arguably somewhat  15 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I. 25, pp. 74–77.  16 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, I. 25, pp. 74–75.

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alien in terms of English visual styles, which were largely non-figural in their vocabularies, relying more on pattern and ornament for their visual repertoire. Like the date of the mission’s arrival in England, as recognized by Gem these signs — cross and panel — become an abbreviated shorthand for the event and eventual success of the mission itself, stressed, replicated, and retold in the later mosaic versions in Westminster, as discussed below. As I have discussed elsewhere with Jane Hawkes,17 while displays of highly decorated and precious metalwork objects, albeit in forms dissimilar to that of the cross carried by Augustine and his monastic brethren, would have been familiar to and appreciated by Anglo-Saxon viewers, especially in the context of social elites and personal adornment,18 the figural painted panel would likely have appeared somewhat foreign in the setting of early medieval England.19 The use of the wooden board as a standard, its painted medium, and its display of the human figure were all phenomena alien to the visual culture of the region.20 They were, however, integral to the visual tradition of the Church in its Roman incarnation, coming from a city bedecked with icons, and employing them to construct its own sacred topographies. Bede’s invocation of them makes it clear that, in the absence of a built space to house the meeting between Roman Church and English king, these specific signs of the Church were deliberately employed in such a way as to indicate that they were considered a significant part of structuring and constructing/writing the meeting between the two parties. Indeed, these forms could perhaps be understood as signifying and actualizing the symbolic space and institutional identity of the Church in lieu of an architectural articulation as yet not (widely) available in the Anglo-Saxon landscape of the late sixth century. Certainly, they visually carry and embody the salvific narrative that the mission was to bring to England through their material form. In both the public employment of the icon by the mission (complete with its Christological portrait), and in the use of the abbreviated iconography of the institution and of Christ himself (re)cast in shining metal (the cross), held like standards, there is evidence that these signs, and the wider stories they represented, were read as signifying and embodying the institutional identity of the Church on English soil. As stated, for scholars, the story of the Augustinian mission tends to be employed as the ‘bedrock’ upon which to construct a narrative of English ecclesiastical conversion, historically, textually, and visually; also serving to monumentalize the associative presentation and (re)creation of a Romanized

 17 See Boulton and Hawkes ‘The Anglo-Saxon Church in Kent’, pp. 104–05.  18 See e.g. Richards, ‘Anglo-Saxon Symbolism’, pp. 145–46.  19 While such objects may have been familiar to Æthelberht as being part of the visual vocabulary of Bertha and Liudhard’s religion, reflected in religious and liturgical objects brought from Francia, the artefacts brought by Augustine as part of the papal mission are nonetheless indelibly tied to the institutional identity of the Roman Church as it marked its arrival into the Anglo-Saxon landscape in 597 — here used in a very public context.  20 Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 84.

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Christian topography in and on the English landscape. However, this story lives on far beyond its medieval origin, functioning both to acknowledge the medieval past that perpetuated the narrative passed from Bede to other English historians, and also existing as subsequent recastings of the story in the nineteenth century, such as those as evinced in the shining mosaicked surface of  the chapel of SS Gregory and Augustine in Westminster Cathedral.21 This was an era in which abundant cultural preoccupations with the perceived romanticisms of both the medieval past and subsequent medievalisms flourished; it was also an era of significant Catholic revival in England and of a burgeoning national interest in medieval Gothic revival as an architectural style. It is unsurprising, then, that the story of the mission was employed to emphasize English identity and the uninterrupted inheritance of Catholic religiosity by the Victorian architects and designers of the new cathedral at Westminster — which seeks to tell its own story of a Catholic England that stretches back to the moment of the conversion by the original (Roman) mission, constructed and authorized as historical fact by Bede. The narrative of the Augustinian mission finds particular expression in the decorative programme of one of the chapels within the Byzantinate structure of Westminster Cathedral, built in 1895 by John Francis Bentley — more specifically in the mosaics covering the chapel dedicated to Saints Gregory and Augustine, the two protagonists of the Mission narrative cemented together in this visual retelling.22 The mosaic iconography of the mission of conversion within this chapel, and thus the entrance of the English into ecclesiastical history and tradition, is fittingly situated next to the cathedral baptistery, the liturgical point of entry into the Church. Both visual tale and architectural structure thus preserve and present the Bedan account of the mission, which thereby becomes a monument to Bede as the original storyteller,  21 Such discussions of the perpetuity of stories and the identities they carry with their retellings necessitate recognition of their continued and vital use, but also of their abuse. We are at a pivotal moment for medieval studies, whose traditional terminologies are at the centre of a debate about the future and ethos of a discipline which has been plagued by marginalising and gatekeeping behaviours and often, as in this case, been appropriated for a far-right agenda. I have used the term 'Anglo-Saxon' throughout this piece, following the manner in which Catherine Karkov employs the term in Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Heterotopia, Dytopia. I have not done so unthinkingly or uncritically: while fully acknowledging its problematic nature, I have retained the term here because the specificity of place and identity it depicts was at the core of the engagement and interest of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures who drove the medievalist revival; and to remove it would have been to excise their version of this story, and in so doing lose some of the meaning crafted in and around the marbles and mosaics of this study. I am grateful for the work of scholars including Roland Betancourt, Geraldine Heng and Mary RambaramOlm, as well as Catherine Karkov and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, for their discussions about who we are as scholars, the significance of the language we use, and the stories we tell.  22 For the history of the cathedral and its building see de L’Hôpital, Westminster Cathedral and its Architect. For an excellent introduction to Westminster Cathedral, its architecture and construction see also Rogers, Westminster Cathedral.

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as well as memorializing the conversion of the English people, whose legacy is continued in the form and faithful of the Victorian cathedral. All of which exists within the context of the wider universalizing iconography of salvation and ecclesiastical history that plays out in the cathedral’s visual spaces and schemes. Moreover, the cathedral itself, in its wider context, employs a multiplicity of iconographic tropes and narratives from various ecclesiastical histories and hagiographies within its as yet unfinished decorative programme, which could be said to continue the story of English Catholicism begun by Augustine and Gregory and recounted by Bede. Studies that address the specific medievalism of the stories woven into the stones of this Victorian cathedral are not prolific, although mentions of its universalizing historicities are implicit in the very earliest works on its design. In the introduction to her comprehensive discussion of the cathedral begun by her father, Winifrede de L’Hôpital discusses its structure as being something that presents the story of a single church built out of multiple narratives, all of which bring their own symbolic and material presences to engage with its own, as she implicitly recognizes when describing the space of the building during the ceremony which accompanied the laying of the foundation stone: the cathedral of the future was a glorious and harmonious reality […] beneath domes gleaming with mosaic […] shining marbles from quarries the world over encompassed [the architect] in walls and balustrades and columns; the great red cross drew his eye of worship to the holy of holies under the baldacchino to be so faithfully wrought out. His feet rested in imagination on the marble floor wherein seemed to float the multitudinous fish of St Peter’s net.23 Her discussion of the ceremony is interesting, as, in addition to the attention it pays to the materials of the cathedral — specifically to the global (and so universal) sources for the stones of the building, and the Italianate Byzantine styles of the architecture — it also ties the cathedral as both image and concept to one of the most sacred spaces in the Christian imagination, Solomon’s Temple, through explicit mention of the holy of holies (echoing the Holy of Holies). She also emphasizes the encrustation of the cathedral in precious stones and surfaces, which is akin to the earlier Solomonic adornment of the Temple. This lithic encrustation further links the cathedral at Westminster to the physical and architectural glories of the great churches of the past, both east and west, that had so inspired its architect. The materials, marbles and stones of Westminster, gathered from across the world (many of which themselves have symbolic meanings and speak to ecclesiastical narratives),24 emphasize the connection between this church and all churches, but always seemingly

 23 de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I, p. 5.  24 For discussion of the precious stones and marbles of the church, see Rogers, The Beauty of Stone.

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Figure 7.1. Pillars at Westminster Cathedral. Photo by the author.

return to the material and narrative presence of the (universalizing) Church of Rome, here (re)constructed in its most elaborate, Byzantine iterations, but also, as seen in the chapel of SS Gregory and Augustine, positioning it as the inheritor of the Anglo-Saxon Church, which itself was irrevocably tied to a Roman identity.25 As well as describing the material presence of the cathedral, de L’Hôpital alludes to the collapse of time and space produced by the cathedral, through her reference to the space as a shining actualization of ‘the cathedral of the future’. It is thus imagined to be(come) the completion of the work of St Peter — the apostle of Rome — housing and displaying the faithful fishes for which he cast his net at the beginnings of the Christian narrative (understood as both physical and metaphorical realities as discussed

 25 Indeed, Bentley studied Byzantine and Byzantine influenced churches first-hand in both Italy and Constantinople (now Istanbul) before beginning work on the plans for Westminster, including Ravenna, Classe, and Venice; see de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I pp. 25–36 at p. 26.

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below). Arguably, these complex material and symbolic references to a Church which spans both past and future are deliberately produced through the building’s design and adornment, many of which aspects lean on medieval originals, as shall be seen. Neo-Byzantine in style, designed by the Victorian architect John Francis Bentley, influenced by iconic ecclesiastical structures including St Mark’s in Venice (built c. 1092), San Vitale in Ravenna (c. 548), Sant Apollinaire in Classe (c. 534), and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, c. 537, Westminster Cathedral is an intriguing space. As is fitting given its clear eastern influences it employs early Christian Byzantine material traditions and the common visual lexicon of using precious stones and glass to adorn its architectural surfaces;26 however, it must be noted that when Bentley died in 1902, although there were mosaics sketched in his plans for the cathedral, he left no finished mosaics in situ.27 Given Bentley’s demise, it was thus left to future architects, donors, and designers, along with the Cathedral Art Committee, set up in 1936, to decide on the mosaic programmes for the cathedral.28 Today, many of its brick walls are still bare, existing in stark contrast to the dazzling and ornate passages of mosaic work set in some of its chapels; however, even with an iconographic programme that is technically incomplete, the vast size and proportions of the church are remarkable, especially when viewed from the west end, from between the two massive columns of red granite (see Figure 7.1) (emblematic of the Blood of Christ, to which the cathedral is dedicated). In terms of (re)telling the story of the Augustinian mission, the foundation narrative of the English Church, the cathedral makes the connection clear from the very outset of an encounter with its stones, presenting a pictorial, memorializing account of the conversion of the English as one approaches its entrance. The lineage of English ecclesiastical authority that began with Gregory and the Augustinian mission is clearly expressed on the facade of the cathedral in the classicizing roundels over the doorway (forms denoting prestige and status, but which also traditionally perform a memorial function) that show the earliest archbishops of England — Augustine (hidden round a corner as one enters the church, a performative ‘cornerstone’ placement of his roundel); Lawrence and Mellitus; Justus and Honorius; Theodore; Dunstan, etc. These figures are all placed below columns capped with symbols

 26 For further reading on this tradition of ecclesiastical adornment see Boulton, ‘The Conceptualisation of Sacred Space’; Boulton, “‘The End of the World as We Know It”’; Boulton, ‘(Re-) Viewing “Iuxta Morem Romanorum”’; Boulton, ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem’; Boulton, ‘Art History in the Dark Ages’; and Boulton, ‘Pearls before Paradise’.  27 Indeed, full sets of his drawings were completed and all the marbles chosen for the chapels of St Gregory and St Augustine and that of the Holy Souls before his death. See de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I, p. 148.  28 For detailed discussion of the mosaics (in the Chapel of SS. Gregory and Augustine, but also in the Cathedral more widely) see de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I, pp. 158–207 and 223–58 and Rogers, Reflections.

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of the evangelists (those who spread the Word to the four corners of the world), positioned beneath Anning Bell’s mosaic tympanum, installed in 1915–1916. The tympanum shows Christ enthroned, holding a book with the Latin text of John 10. 9: ‘sum ostium per me si quis introierit salvabitur’ (I am the gate, if anyone enters by me he shall be saved), flanked by the standing figures of the Virgin Mary and Joseph and, kneeling, by Peter, who, typically, holds the keys to heaven, alongside Edward the Confessor (the principal saints to whom the cathedral is dedicated). This iconographic arrangement clearly sets the English saint in a sacred group that includes the potent grouping of the Holy Family and the Prince of the Apostles: setting England and English ecclesiastical identity in a narrative that includes the parents of Christ and the foundation of the Church in Rome, but which, significantly, also echoes the Bedan notion of ‘living stones’, through the presence of the early churchmen who were the pillars of the Church, imagined by Bede simultaneously as figural and literal supports to the ‘structure’ of the Church; all here firmly tied into an English context through the figure of Edward, that most English of saints, and the overarching structure of the cathedral which frames the scene. Inside, the vast nave is flanked with barrel-vaulted chapels measuring 6.7 m (22 ft) wide, each presenting a unique narrative (often tied to individual, regional, or geographical identities or common ecclesiastical narratives of salvific triumph) within the overall iconography of the church. As mentioned above, the chapel that concerns us most directly is that of Saints Gregory and Augustine, placed next to the baptistery, the space in which symbolic and sacramental entry into the Church takes place. The decoration in the Chapel of Gregory and Augustine was completed under the patronage of Lord Brampton, costing around £8500 (around £400,000 today).29 The theme is very evidently the conversion of England to Christianity from and by Rome, with the saints who brought this about portrayed in the glowing forms of stone and glass, their figures worked in opus sectile and mosaic (see Figure 7.2). These mosaics have been described by the cathedral historian Patrick Rodgers as ‘glowing, vibrant, late Victorian Gothic on gold’;30 in their material tradition they also recall the decorative programmes of earlier Italian and Byzantine structures. The mosaic work itself was done by Clayton & Bell of Regent Street, renowned for ecclesiastical stained glass, using a team of female mosaicists. The altarpiece which shows St Gregory, St Augustine, his companions and successors, was made of opus sectile obtained from James Powell & Sons, Glassmakers of Whitefriars, who, in the 1860s produced this material by grinding up waste glass and baking it. Intriguingly, from a technical perspective, the chapel did not employ the more traditional ‘direct’ method of application, where (unsurprisingly) tesserae are applied directly to the

 29 Rogers, Reflections, pp. 21–30, at p. 21. See also de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I, pp. 158–62.  30 Rogers, Reflections, p. 24.

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Figure 7.2. Mosaic depicting Pope Gregory sending Augustine on the conversion mission. Photo by the author.

wall into a bonding medium, as elsewhere in the cathedral. Instead, full-size coloured drawings were sent over to the Venice and Murano Glass company where glass tesserae were attached to the drawings face down before being dispatched to England.31 From December 1902 to May 1904, George Bridge’s mosaicists hammered each section into place before removing the drawings to reveal the completed mosaics as they may be seen today, telling and retelling the narrative of the conversion of the English people, here placed at the entrance to Westminster Cathedral — built to be a cathedral of the future, a new and complete expression of the English Church, which was explicitly linked to its medieval beginning and its Roman, papal identity. To anyone familiar with Bede’s account of the conversion, the medieval narrative is clearly present in the mosaics of the Victorian chapel. As de L’Hôpital describes, it shows the narrative of the Augustinian mission, replete with details such as the sending of Augustine to England and the meeting with Ӕthelbert in the open air, complete with painted panel and metal cross, all of which we have seen prominently featured in Bede’s account of the conversion of the English. She writes: To observe the historical sequence of the story […] one must begin with the tympanum above the altarpiece. Here the central figure is St Gregory,

 31 Rogers, Reflections, pp. 13–14.

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Figure 7.3. Mosaic depicting Augustine meeting Æthelbert and Bertha. Photo by the author.

enthroned and turning with outstretched hands to St Augustine […] to charge him with the apostolic mission […] its upper edge bordered with the explanatory inscription: † S. GREGORIUS MAGNUS AUGUSTINUM IN ANGLIAM MITTIT REGI ETHELBERTO EJUSQUE POPULO CHRISTI FIDEM PRÆDICATURUM. […] The great lunette of the east end carries us to the next incident in the story, the reception of Augustine […] by Ethelbert, King of Kent […] Six full length figures of saints occupy the ramp of the vault, three on either side, standing on the herbage of tender green sown with the flowers of spring.32 As well as Rome, presented through the figures of Gregory and Augustine, and recognized by de L’Hôpital to be the starting point for the story told across the space of the chapel, the meeting between England (represented by the king) and the Church (embodied by Gregory and Augustine) and the subsequent story of conversion and the nascent English Church they represent are also viscerally present (see Figure 7.3). Ӕthelbert is depicted seated on a double throne with Bertha, perhaps stressing the already present (underlying) Christian encroachment into Anglo-Saxon society from Francia (or merely emphasizing the romance often associated with such medievalisms); flanked

 32 de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I, pp. 158–59.

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Figure 7.4. Mosaic depicting Augustine alongside John the Baptist. Photo by the author.

on one side by his thanes and on the other side by the mission, under an oak tree (all of which is intimately familiar from Bede’s historical account). The cross and the panel, centralized in the Bedan narrative cited above, are again the two visual signifiers which are stressed in the detail of the medieval narrative recast in the mosaicked space of the chapel. The forms of cross and panel are presented three times within the iconography: once in the Ӕthelbert panel; once in the lower portion of the mosaic that shows Gregory enthroned, instructing the mission, surrounded by ecclesiastics, with the painted panel and the cross prominently held on either side of the throne, symbols of Roman ecclesiastical authority; and finally, in the opus sectile altarpiece, where Gregory and Augustine are presented side by side in a triumphant meta-narrative, showing Augustine holding the icon and Gregory, in papal tiara, holding the metal cross, flanked by the first archbishops of Canterbury who followed in the footsteps of Augustine. This depiction thus consolidates the future of the Church in England, which implicitly culminates in this cathedral, as epitomized in this chapel. These imagined connections are stressed by the adjacency of the chapel to the baptistery, a spatial relationship which memorializes the past (historic) narratives of the Church, while underscoring its eschatologically charged future, all of which is also intimated in the sacrament of baptism. This particular visual depiction of the conversion narrative, rendered in some detail and with historical accuracy, emphasizing the relationship

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Figure 7.5. Vault mosaic depicting Oswald, Bede, and Edmund. Photo by the author.

between Gregory and Augustine and the English, is placed immediately opposite the baptistery, the flanking arch to which presents another image of Augustine, this time juxtaposed with John the Baptist, a figure, scripture tells us, who ‘cried in the wilderness’ (see Figure 7.4).33 The Baptist might be read as a figure somewhat akin to Augustine’s own preaching mission to the wild unknown of Anglo-Saxon England, further sanctioning and legitimizing that act of conversion, in concordance with the scriptural narrative. Under these figures are depictions of the four rivers of paradise, cementing the message that it is through the Church — through the propagation and spread of the Word, the act of baptism, and through the recognition of both Christ and the cross — all of which are integral aspects of conversion — that salvation will be attained for the Christian faithful; both then and now, throughout the Christian world. On the vault, flowing between the font in the baptistery and the image of the figures of Wilfrid, Benedict, Bede, Cuthbert, Oswald, and Edmund — all well known from Anglo-Saxon (and later) narratives. These figures are subject to playful historical details in this particular (re)telling of their stories, as embodied through their visual representations. One such detail being the figure of Cuthbert, who is depicted holding Oswald’s head, but is placed opposite the (whole) figure of the saint in the composition across the chapel — reflecting both the separate sacred narratives of the two men, and their entwined posthumous narratives as simultaneously embodied and disembodied sacred forms. Indeed, this relationship is cemented in liturgical actuality, as their relics are venerated jointly, still buried together today in Durham Cathedral, after the relics of Lindisfarne were amalgamated during

 33 John 1. 23 (see also Mark 1. 3, 3. 3; Luke 3. 4; and Isaiah 40. 3).

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the flight from Viking raids.34 These figures are separated by plants (symbolic of the growth of the Church in English soil, perhaps, or performing in a similar manner to the ‘living’ vines seen on Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, which, again, were objects of fascination to the Victorians, and which visually and symbolically ‘plant’ ecclesiastical narratives in the English landscape); and backed by a baluster of abbreviated Gothic architecture (again an architectural shorthand for the Church), and standing on a tiny crenellated border, suggestive of the heavenly mansions awaiting the faithful, itself repeated on the opus sectile altarpiece. The whole is placed on a gold ground, whereby the portraits of the English saints and the figures associated with the historical narrative of the Roman mission are all placed against a surface of glittering flat gold that is redolent of both Byzantine tradition and a Victorian Gothic sensibility, but also serves to fix the historic and narrative iconographies in a field of a-spatial, a-temporal ‘otherness’ (see Figure 7.5). Here, they exist outside the limits of history, textual tradition, and iconography, merging the story of the mission seamlessly into the wider eschatological narrative woven by the cathedral. Both the figures of the Roman mission and English saints merge here, against the space of the gold-grounded sacred, regardless of origin, all now speak to an amalgamated narrative of triumphant English Christianity within the Universal Church, as represented by the cathedral as it weaves its storied identity of/as the English Church. Sadly, it is impossible to unpack the iconography of all of the cathedral’s chapels individually here to show how they fit this narrative, which leans on historical examples and stories even as it looks to an eschatological future. But St Andrew’s Chapel, designed by Robert Weir Schultz, is a particularly noteworthy example to consider alongside the story told by the mosaics of the Chapel of SS Gregory and Augustine. This chapel, like that depicting the conversion of the English, provides a topographical hagiography of the saint that is in direct juxtaposition with the localized specificities of English Christianity seen in the earlier Chapel of Gregory and Augustine.35 The mosaics on the far wall of St Andrew’s Chapel portray cities connected with Andrew’s life — moving from his birthplace to the site of his crucifixion, via Constantinople (showing Hagia Sophia, one of the sources of inspiration for the cathedral), where he became bishop. The opposite wall follows the journey of his relics, seized in Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusaders, showing their translation to the cities of Milan, Amalfi, and St Andrews. The short walls of the chapel, on the other hand, show an abbreviated iconography of his crucifixion and display the saint located in a paradisal landscape, an iconography common to earlier Ravennate and Roman examples, but existing,

 34 For further reading see Stancliffe and Cambridge, eds, Oswald.  35 de L’Hôpital Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, I, pp. 163–67. See also Rogers, Reflections, pp. 28–29.

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Figure 7.6. Chapel ceiling with a golden sky. Photo by the author.

here, resolutely outside the confines of an/y earthly narrative, as indicated by the remaining iconographies in the chapel. While the visual stories on the walls follow the vita of the saint, displaying geographical and temporal binaries of life and death, place and non-place, embodied saint and disembodied relics, the floor and the ceiling play with pan-geographic and a-temporal narratives outside of this linear progression from place to place; person to object. These are largely presented by and through the far-flung cityscapes that both witness and memorialize the location of key events in the narrative of the saint’s life and the posthumous sanctity of his relics; while acknowledging that the story as a whole is being retold here, in Westminster, in London, in England. Like the twinned places and non-places of the walls, again echoing the spatial composition of the SS Gregory and Augustine Chapel which moves from Rome to Kent, to the golden non-place of (heavenly) English sanctity, both the floor and the ceiling of the chapel are clad in precious stones. These present shifting surfaces, simultaneously there and not-quite-there, representing the glittering and mutable surfaces of sky and sea. The floor is a seascape of polychrome marble, inset with twenty-nine marine creatures which seem to swim and shift and eddy around the margins of the chapel, linking the various cities and journeys associated with the Saint’s Vita. The ceiling presents a shimmering skyscape of clouds that play across the vault, forming a glittering surface that presents a sacred other, akin to the golden ground in the Gregory and Augustine chapel. As there, the gilded cloudscape in St Andrew’s Chapel presents a universalizing space/ story to those reading the iconology, connecting the disparate cities on the

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walls, and collapsing space and time, linking past and future in a microcosm of the wider conflation of sacred temporalities and locations seen throughout the cathedral (see Figure 7.6). Taken together, then, the walls and the floor present a meta-narrative, combining and transforming the disparate stories of Andrew’s life and afterlife as they play out across time, space, and geography into one cohesive story belonging to the Universal Church, which exists outside these structuring and (dis)locating devices, and yet serves to firmly locate the cathedral in a universal narrative of ecclesiastical stories and events. The other chapels, including those of St Paul, St George, St Patrick, and St Thomas Beckett, present other stories, other hagiographies, all constructed at various points in the cathedral’s history, all employing various artistic styles, but all speaking to the wider, universal story of the Church. This is epitomized in the chapel of the Holy Souls, which, significantly, was constructed at the same time as the Chapel of Augustine and Gregory by the same mosaicists, and presents a poignant narrative that speaks to the wider eschatology of the Catholic Church — recalling the eschatological end to its viewers, and bringing them full circle, positioned, as it is, across the nave from the SS Gregory and Augustine Chapel with all its beginnings. In addition to the glittering mosaics — which as a material are often associated with power, prestige, and the immutable presence of the sacred, emphasized by their individual iconographic programmes and stories — it is worth taking a moment to consider the wider materiality of the cathedral as a whole, as this, too, might present a mediated nineteenth-century version of a medieval sensibility. There are around a hundred different varieties of marble decorating Westminster Cathedral; all of which, taken together, may powerfully recall the vison of the heavenly city given in Revelation 21. 18–21: et erat structura muri eius ex lapide iaspide ipsa vero civitas auro mundo simile vitro mundo fundamenta muri civitatis omni lapide pretioso ornata fundamentum primum iaspis secundus sapphyrus tertius carcedonius quartus zmaragdus quintus sardonix sextus sardinus septimus chrysolitus octavus berillus nonus topazius decimus chrysoprassus undecimus hyacinthus duodecimus amethistus et duodecim portae duodecim margaritae sunt per singulas et singulae portae erant ex singulis margaritis et platea civitatis aurum mundum tamquam vitrum perlucidum. [And the building of the wall thereof was of jasper stone: but the city itself pure gold, like to clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper: the second, sapphire: the third, a chalcedony: the fourth, an emerald: The fifth, sardonyx: the sixth, sardius: the seventh, chrysolite: the eighth, beryl: the ninth, a topaz: the tenth, a chrysoprasus: the eleventh, a jacinth: the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, one to each: and every several gate was of one several pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.]

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This passage was widely understood to inform the material form and symbolic identity of the Church throughout the early Christian period including that of early medieval England, as I have discussed elsewhere.36 In closing, I would like to emphasize the significance of the repeated association of earthly materials (and their variety and preciousness) as being analogous with the fabric of heaven that is seen across, within, and upon the material surfaces of Westminster Cathedral. Such an association goes hand in hand with the associative link between the earthly church and heavenly city that is so pivotal in (re)presenting the stories (re)told by the cathedral, and by the Church more widely. While it is paramount to acknowledge that the mosaic iconography found in the chapel of Saints Gregory and Augustine is undoubtedly enmeshed with early Christian traditions and medieval narratives and (hi) stories — easy to see for those of us familiar with those stories and versed in those iconographies — it is also important to suggest that this conversion iconography is also powerfully set within the context of the wider universalizing iconography of the cathedral itself, as well as speaking to the specific past of the Catholic Church in England. Acknowledging this overarching, structuring iconography of the Universal underpinning the specific, individual narratives of chapels and cathedral is significant, as it presents a wider story that tells of the past, the present, and the future of a land at the ‘edge of the world’; telling and (re)telling a conversion narrative that rendered the Universal Church complete. In the case of Westminster Cathedral and its chapels (including, of course, that of Gregory and Augustine) these narratives are presented across time and space; monumentalized and memorialized and retold in stone and glass, emphasizing the coherence and longevity and presence of the Catholic Church in England. Indeed, it could be said for Westminster, as for many other ecclesiastical structures throughout history, that the building itself is made out of the telling of stories in various forms — textual, visual, material, liturgical; existing as an architextual, material, surficial form. The cathedral, the stories and spaces it preserves, and the ecclesiastical narratives of sanctity, identity, and power that are (re)told across its surfaces are significant. They speak of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reclamations of a medieval history, a late Antique and early Christian inheritance and a specific, English and Catholic religious identity that exists outside of the founding and primacy of the Church of England; but also continue an ecclesiastical tale, constructed though marbles and mosaics, which functions as a microcosm of both Church and Faith, a work in progress, and a narrative half-told, which still awaits the close of its wider eschatological story.

 36 Boulton, ‘“The End of the World as We Know It”’; Boulton, ‘(Re-) Viewing “Iuxta Morem Romanorum”’; Boulton, ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem’; Boulton, ‘Art History in the Dark Ages’; and Boulton, ‘Pearls before Paradise’.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) Eadmer of Canterbury: Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. by Bernard J. Muir and Andrew J. Turner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006) Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Vita maior s. Augustini, in Patrologiae cursus completes: series Latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1865), 80 (1850), cols 41–98 —— , Vita minor s. Augustini, in Patrologiae cursus completes: series Latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1865), 150 (1854), cols 743– Tacitus, Agricola, trans. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (London: Macmillan, 1868) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regnum Anglorum, ed. by R. A. B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998–1999) Secondary Studies Boulton, Meg, ‘The Conceptualisation of Sacred Space in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria in the Sixth to Ninth centuries’, 2 vols (unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, 2013) —— , ‘“The End of the World as We Know It”: The Eschatology of Symbolic Space/s in Insular Art’, in Making Histories: Proceedings of the Sixth International Insular Arts Conference, ed. by Jane Hawkes (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013) pp. 279–90 —— , ‘(Re-)Viewing “Iuxta Morem Romanorum”: Considering Perception, Phenomenology, and Anglo-Saxon Art and Architecture’, in Sensory Perception in the Medieval West: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, ed. by S. C. Thomson and M. D. J. Bintley, Utrecht Series in Medieval Literacy 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 207–26 —— , ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem: Architectural adornment and symbolic significance in the Early Church in the Christian West’, in Islands in a Global Context: Proceedings of the Seventh International Insular Arts Conference, ed. by Conor Newman, Mags Mannion, and Fiona Gavin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2017), pp. 15–23 —— , ‘Art History in the Dark Ages: (Re)Considering Space, Stasis and Modern Viewing Practices in Relation to Anglo-Saxon Imagery’, in Stasis in the Medieval West?: Questioning Change and Continuity, ed. by M. D. J. Bintley, Martin Locker, Victoria Symons, and Mary Wellesley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 69–86

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—— , ‘Pearls before Paradise: Heavenly Water, Precious Stones and Liminality in early Christian Art’, in Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England, ed. by Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming) Boulton, Meg, and Jane Hawkes, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Church in Kent’, in Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland, 300‒950, ed. by P. S. Barnwell, Rewley House Studies in the Historic Environment, 4 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2015), pp. 92–188 de L’Hôpital, Winifrede, Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, 2 vols (London: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1919) Dodwell, C. R., Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982) Farmer, D., ‘St Augustine’s Life and Legacy’, in St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. by Richard Gem (London: Batsford, 1997), pp. 15–32 Fernie, Eric, The Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons (London: Holmes and Meier, 1983) Gem, Richard, ed., St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (London: Batsford, 1997) —— , ‘The Anglo-Saxon and Norman Churches’, in St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. by Richard Gem (London: Batsford, 1997), pp. 90–122 Hawkes, Jane, ‘Creating a View: Anglo-Saxon Sculpture in the Sixteenth Century’, in Making Histories: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Insular Art, York 2011, ed. by Jane Hawkes (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), pp. 372–84 hooks, bell, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (New York: Routledge, 2014) Lambert, Malcolm, Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) Markus, R. A., ‘Gregory the Great’s Pagans’, in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, ed. by Richard Gameson and Henrietta Leyser (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 23–34 Mayr-Harting, Henry, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London: Penn State University Press, 1991), pp. 51–77 Neuman de Vegvar, C., ‘The Value of Recycling: Conversion and the Early AngloSaxon Use of Roman Materials’, The Haskins Society, 9 (1997), 123–35 Richards, Julian D., ‘Anglo-Saxon Symbolism’, in The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-western Europe, ed. by Martin Carver (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), pp. 131–48 Rogers, Patrick, The Beauty of Stone: The Westminster Cathedral Marbles (Westminster: Westminster Cathedral, 2008) —— , Reflections: The Westminster Cathedral Mosaics (Westminster: Westminster Cathedral, 2010) —— , Westminster Cathedral: An Illustrated History (Westminster: Westminster Cathedral, 2012) Taylor, H. M., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral Church at Canterbury’, Archaeological Journal, 126 (1969), 101−30 Stancliffe, Clare, and Eric Cambridge, eds, Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint (Donnington: Paul Watkins, 1995) Willis, Robert, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London: Longman, 1845)

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Euan M c Cartney Robson

A Storied Cathedral Space and Audacious Women in Early Medieval Durham

In his Libellus de exordio, book iii, part 11, Symeon of Durham (d. 1129) tells us that Judith of Flanders (d. 1095) was an honest and pious woman who ‘loved Cuthbert even more than did her husband’ (multo plus sanctum Cuthbertum diligens).1 By the time she became Countess of Northumbria in 1055, Judith had already donated a wide variety of ornamenta to adorn the saint’s church.2 More though, she’d promised, was yet to come. The countess did, however, have a special stipulation. In return for some of her landed possessions she wanted to worship, in situ, at Cuthbert’s shrine. Thus, a dilemma emerged: new territories were welcome gifts, but custom had long dictated that women were prohibited from visiting ‘any of the churches … sanctified with the presence of his [Cuthbert’s] sacred body’ (In nullam autem pene ecclesiarum quas … sui sacri corporis presentia illustrauit).3 Still, Judith remained undeterred. While she did not yet dare to test the saint’s resolve herself, Symeon reports that she did secretly hatch a plan to send in a servant girl ahead of her: … si hoc ipsa impune facere posset, domina post sequens securior ingredi auderet. Puella ergo, domine sue uoluntate agnita, hora secretiori ad hoc temptandum conata est aggredi. Iam pedem intra cimiterium erat positura, cum subito ueluti uentorum uiolentia repelli cepit et uiribus deficere, et grauiter infirmita uix ad hospitium ualuit redire, decidensque in lectum, graui torquebatur cruciate… [… if she were able to do this with impunity, the mistress would follow after her and would dare to enter the church with more confidence  1 This passage is paraphrased from the most recent translation of the monk Symeon’s Libellus, which I use throughout. See Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 175–77. See also Aird, ‘The Boundaries of Medieval Misogyny’.  2 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, p. 175. She was also believed to have patronised the cult of St Oswald very heavily. See Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda’.  3 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, p. 105. Euan McCartney Robson, Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 157–174  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121606

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of her safety. So, when the girl had learned her mistress’s will, she undertook to approach the church at a very quiet time in order to attempt this. As she was about to place her foot inside the cemetery, she was suddenly repelled by a violent force as of the wind, her strength failed, and stricken with a grave infirmity, she was scarcely able to return to the hospice, where falling on to her bed, she was racked with a terrible torment…]4 Before long the girl had died, leaving the countess ‘terrified’ (exterrita) by what had happened.5 Humbly, and in order to make amends, she immediately ordered a series of new commissions for the adornment of the church, including — among the several items that our chronicler delighted in describing — a brand new gold and silver image of the crucified Christ. Throughout the early medieval period, Durham Cathedral was an especially active location for the production of anti-female literature. This is one story among close to a dozen in Symeon’s Libellus alone. Elsewhere in book ii, for example, the monk also recorded the ‘rash daring’ (ausu temerario) of a woman named Sungeova, the wife of a man named Gamel, son of Bevo.6 Sungeova had only taken a quick shortcut across Cuthbert’s churchyard — in order, of all things, to avoid a puddle in the road — when she was immediately relieved of her senses and died the same night.7 Another, the ‘wife of a certain rich man’ (uxor cuiusdam diuitis), went mad, bit out her tongue, and eventually cut her own throat, only moments after her ‘womanly eagerness’ (feminea auiditate) had compelled her to walk through the saint’s cemetery.8 In fact, by the end of this particular passage the monk’s exasperation with the female sex seems almost to leap off the page when he stresses that: ‘Many other divine signs against similarly audacious women could be related here, but we must now move on to other things…’ (Plura quidem contra similem aliarum feminarum audaciam diuinitus ostensa adhuc narrari poterant, sed quoniam ad alia nobis transeundum est…).9 Even though what we might recognize today as misogynistic or otherwise gynephobic behaviour was (to a greater or lesser extent) par for the course at many English Benedictine priories, the unusual volume combined with the rhetorical complexity of these stories makes Durham unique. Why, how and for whom were they written? And, more to my point, what work did they do to ‘story’ the cathedral? You have to be a fool, the revered philosopher of language J. L. Austin once remarked, to rush in over ground already so well-trodden. To begin researching stories and storytelling is to be met with a formidable, not to mention ancient

 4  5  6  7  8  9

Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, p. 177. Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, p. 177. Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 108–09. Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 108–09. Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 108–09. Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 109–10.

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corpus, of chiefly theoretical work.10 Many begin with an allusion to Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 bc) or Horace’s Epistle to the Pisos (c. 19 bc); and, if not, look for a note on the sheer ubiquity of their primary subject. Something to the effect that every society indulges in ‘make-believe’, that humans are ‘natural storytellers’, shaping and sharing narrative almost by habit.11 Thus, for Barthes: ‘Like life itself, it is there, international, transhistorical, transcultural’.12 These trends to the timeless and possibly even innate properties of storytelling have resurfaced in recent years (and in medieval studies not least, where manuscripts, plays, comic books, film, and social media have all formed rich diachronic alliances). And yet, as our editor puts it so well in the introduction to this volume, stories still remain both ‘fundamental and ephemeral’.13 The excerpts above from Symeon’s Libellus speak to many perennial human themes: to wrath, to violence, to an evergreen male phobia of powerful female bodies. Just as certainly though, they are shot through with the ways in which our narrator — this particular monk in this particular moment — worked to come to terms with them. The hows, whys, whens, and wheres of that dynamic are no less valuable, but inevitably much more speculative. This isn’t to apologize per se, but to admit sympathy for the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’: what Rita Felski calls the ‘less visible’ and sometimes ‘less flattering’ realities of individual narrative construction.14 If, however, synchronic-style literary analyses in, for example, narratology or ‘double structuring’ do often place an equitable stress on stories (histoires) as well as their telling (discourse or récit), then most architectural historians of early medieval England have yet to follow suit. Austin’s caution for the foolish notwithstanding, there is ample good reason for this. First-hand accounts detailing individual reception — how buildings impressed, attracted, persuaded or, in this case, even terrified medieval people — are vanishingly rare. Those that mention ecclesiastical structures, in particular, tend either to be generalized and platitudinous, located in well-rehearsed topoi, or, as Sandy Heslop put it pointedly, riddled with ‘ambivalence and contradictions’.15 Above all else though, it is the special emphasis that the synchronic approach invests in disassembly, in unpacking the active and multi-temporal operations between body, image, and word. This is to say that, by contrast, the study of early medieval architecture remains overwhelmingly focused, to borrow from Wolfgang Kemp, on ‘optimal, unconditional visibility’.16 In truth, the visual or quantifiable form of any

 10 See, for example, Barthes, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’; Cobley, Narrative; Kemp, ‘Narrative’; and Lewis, ‘Narrative’.  11 See, for example, White, ‘The Value of Narrativity’.  12 Barthes, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’, p. 237.  13 See this volume, Thomson, ‘Stories and their Tellers’, p. 17.  14 Felski, ‘Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion’. See also Anderson, The Way We Argue Now; Felski, ‘Suspicious Minds’; and Milne, ‘Introduction: Criticism and/or Critique’.  15 See  Heslop, ‘Attitudes to the Visual Arts’.  16 Kemp, ‘Narrative’, p. 72.

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historical building — its shape and its dimensions, its geometry, its style relative to others, its basic lithic reality — are all always likely to list among its most instructive attributes. Big old buildings like Durham, in particular, tend to offer us the rare comfort that big old histories might be saved and remembered. The cathedral’s remarkable survival as an object, its hard and fast factuality, its sheer thereness, all strengthen the belief — indeed, the hope — that meaning might wait, patiently and protected, in a close examination of its stones. And yet, because humans perceive and create the world simultaneously, because the relationship between bodies and buildings is mediated through both the physical and cogno-cultural spaces that surround us, no stone can simply be an end in itself. This isn’t to impugn in any way, or underestimate, the many striking endowments of Durham’s material form, but to attempt to do that rare thing in my field: to switch the attention from object to subject, from cause to effect, from a cathedral seen to a cathedral read. And so, we return to Symeon’s stories on female ingress. To describe territory, to write down or to legislate for the limitation of spatial access, has always been a means to order and to classify, to incorporate and therefore, also, to segregate particular types of people.17 Thus, broader divisions of individual belonging or disaffection, within Durham Cathedral’s larger socio-cultural landscape, are all apt to be traced through the storied rules and customs by which different types of bodies could (or could not) approach it.18 As geographer Doreen Massey once put it tersely: ‘Geography matters!’.19 In this now canonical reader, Massey trialled theories of spatiality later expanded on in Gillian Rose’s Feminism and Geography, suggesting that the ‘mattering’ of the map is almost always predicated on ingrained habits of privilege and placement.20 This is to say that architectural space in Durham Cathedral was not only a physiological but a richly psychological lever; not simply a bland and homogenous stage upon which life and liturgy passed by. Rather, stories of these spaces spoke directly to the larger inclinations of Durham’s local community, to the innate tensions between its lay and clerical members.21 Insofar as gender is concerned the narration of built spaces has long been critical in the making and maintenance of societal roles. A ‘woman’s space’, the ‘space of the home’; these are still recognizably cultural constructs today. They

 17 See also Meehan, ‘Outsiders, Insiders, and Property’ and Foster, ‘Custodians of St Cuthbert’.  18 See Golding, Conquest and Colonisation, especially chapter 5 (‘Governing the Conquered’). See also Karkov and Howe, eds, Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England, and Webber, The Evolution of Norman Identity, at pp. 115–35.  19 Massey and Allen, eds, Geography Matters!: A Reader.  20 See Rose, Feminism and Geography.  21 On the recent explosion of medieval spatial studies see, for example, Cohen and Madeline, eds, Space in the Medieval West; Weiss and Salih, eds, Locating the Middle Ages; Gertsman and Stevenson, eds, Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture; Garner, Structuring Spaces; Hanawalt and Kobialka, eds, Medieval Practices of Space; Clarke, ed., Mapping the Medieval City; and Howes, ed., Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative.

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work to suggest more than the designation of separate geographies: expressions such as these move to reinforce charged political systems predicated on the presumption of male and female difference. In describing the ‘audacity’ of these medieval women, their ‘rash daring’ (ausu temerario) and ‘womanly eagerness’ (feminea auiditate), Symeon was participating in much the same kind of process.22 With each spatial infringement the cathedral’s harshly exclusionary policies were blamed not on the male monks, nor even much on Cuthbert himself, but on an intrinsic lack of female decorum and propriety: clear nods, no doubt, to Paul’s original injunction that ‘…all things should be done decently and in order’ (1 Cor 14. 40).23 Our hands were essentially tied, Symeon seems to have been arguing. Even if, he says, we, the monks at Durham, had aspired to overhaul or to somehow impede or mitigate the rules for female ingress, we would have been unable to do so. In fact, these were, he made plain, ‘crimes’ (scelera), committed knowingly, and even in spite of the fact that ‘…with the consent of all, both men and women’ Durham Cathedral was a male-only space.24 Sixty years later, another monk at Durham, Reginald (d. 1190), would go on to describe several more women who, similarly, had ‘dared’ to infringe on Cuthbert’s turf.25 One ‘young and immature girl’ (aetate juvencula ac sensibus immatura) named Emeloth, the daughter of a local man, Asceloth, was only playing with her friends when, chasing a bouncing ball, she inadvertently strayed inside the cathedral.26 Like Judith’s servant girl she was instantly ‘struck down with insanity’ and died quickly thereafter.27 Not long after that, Geoffrey of Coldingham (d. 1215) noted the tale of a ‘certain Flemish woman’ who tried to gain access to Cuthbert’s former church on Inner Farne.28 For little else beyond the temerity, apparently, of deigning to question why women should be regarded like dogs (Quare nos non ingredimur, et, quasi cum caeteris hominibus nil habentibus commune, canibus comparamur?), she was blown away from the church door by another strong wind.29 Thus, some patterns emerge in these early sources. Not only an artful craft of shirking any culpability for these shocking casualties, but the repetition of

 22 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 108–09.  23 The Didascalia Apostolorum also inagurates its instructions for spatial arrangements in the gathered assembly with an appeal to ‘good order’. And a much more elaborate reasoning for liturgical gender separation, and its biblical precedents, can also be found in an intriguing passage in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Procatechesis, which he bases on what he assumes was a strictly gendered Noah’s ark. See St Cyril of Jerusalem, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments. See also, especially, Rees Jones, ‘Public and Private Space and Gender in Medieval Europe’.  24 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 108–09.  25 See Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis, p. 1 and Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita, p. 20.  26 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita, p. 403.  27 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita, p. 403.  28 See Geoffrey of Coldingham, ‘Vita Bartholomael Farnensis’, p. 309.  29 Geoffrey of Coldingham, ‘Vita Bartholomael Farnensis’, p. 309.

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very particular topoi: strong winds, insanity, a ruthlessly vindictive saint and, almost invariably, the audacious presence of a female body. Indeed, at nearly every stage in its long evolution the discursive history of Cuthbert’s apparent misogyny, married with his cathedral’s zero-tolerance policy, was highly derivative. Its chroniclers — all of them men — operated in transparently citational modes, abdicating their own voices at will. The objective, for the most part, seems to have been to mask any hint of a personal or confessional style by pointing to precedent, to what Symeon termed ‘divine signs’, or to the embedded and thus irreparable operations of an assumed female psyche.30 This type of back-and-forth, from source to source, from the present to the past, underlines the challenge inherent in locating the misogynistic impulse at Durham. It makes the questions both of reading and reception crucial: not just the what and where of stories themselves, but once again the who, how, and why of their telling. While Bourdieu’s research on gender was quite minimal — some might say surprisingly — the core of much of his work was still given over to showing that culture (broadly defined) was regularly complicit in sanctioning oppressive structures of bodily power, while, at one and the same time, helping those structures maintain a kind of invisibility. In his ‘The Berber house or the world reversed’, for example, his now famous analysis of the ‘Kabyle’ sees its assembly and configuration as being directly reflective of the socio-cultural binaries that its residents seem to think underpin the world.31 The house was defined by public and private spaces which were principally organized by a corollary demarcation of male and female bodies. The somewhat dark and dank lower quarters of the house, the private spaces where stock and cattle were stored, equated to the female body; the much lighter and drier upper rooms, public spaces within which guests would be hosted, were associated with the male. As Sarah Stanbury and Virginia Chieffo Raguin explain: ‘By mimicking in its boundaries the divides that structure society, the house reifies a perception of the world as organized by male/female opposition’.32 By insisting, in other words, that this relationship between the ‘male discontinuous and the female discontinuous’ be lived out, that divide came to be so deeply felt, Bourdieu believed, that it ultimately matured — in effect — into something like a principle of natural or cosmic law.33 In much the same way, with their strong emphases on living the life of ‘impatient angels’, of strict asceticism, celibacy, and a general distrust of flesh and female sexuality, the many vitae of the Desert Fathers might seem like natural intellective scaffolding for Cuthbert’s biographers. So too, perhaps,  30  31  32  33

Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, pp. 109–10. Bourdieu, ‘The Berber House or the World Reversed’. Stanbury and Raguin, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. Studies of the medieval parish, in particular, have sometimes been influenced by Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘habitus’ too. See, for example, Graves, Social Space in the English Medieval Parish Church; and, to a lesser extent, Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars.

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would any number of early monastic regulae, or the canons of church councils concerned with the strict prohibition of female ingress. In his Regula ad Monachos, for example, St Cesarius forbade women to enter his monastery. The Regula S. Ferreoli ruled that no women, not even nuns, were to be permitted entry into male-only spaces either. The Carolingian reformer, St Benedict of Aniane (d. 821), famously refused women to access both his basilica and his monastery. And many other accounts of early medieval cartularies, chronicles, and saint’s lives — not least those pertaining to individual Benedictine houses — pursued similarly exclusionary policies. However, prior to 1083, when the new cohort of Benedictine monks was introduced at Durham, sex and even marriage within Cuthbert’s old clerical congregatio was happily tolerated. In fact, very few — if any — records of the saint’s alleged misogyny can be shown to predate the Conquest. To the contrary actually: various accounts such as Bede’s Vita Sancti Cuthberti suggest that many women played both positive and highly influential roles in his daily life. Cuthbert was known, for example, to enjoy the company not only of many abbesses such as Aebbe (d. 683), Aelfflaed (d. 713) and Verca (d. late seventh century), but queens as well, not least King Ecgfrith’s wife, Iurminburgh (d. late seventh century?). He was also recorded as having paid frequent visits to meet with his former nurse Kenswith, a woman to whom he affectionately referred as his ‘mother’.34 And, of course, many nuns, as well as the sisters and wives of many priests, earls, and prefects, were all cured in his presence.35 Why then and at what point was Cuthbert’s misogyny first manifest? Passing the buck once again, Symeon also singled out the monks and nuns of nearby Coldingham Priory. Centuries before they had ‘grown lax’, he wrote, ‘…by feasting, drinking and committing other improprieties together, […] in those very residences which Cuthbert had dedicated to prayer and study’.36 Although most other accounts record the occasion as an accident, Symeon went on to claim that, when their old monastery burnt down in 683, it was as a direct consequence of ‘their improper familiarity with each other’.37 Their proximity in space, in other words, had ‘…afforded the enemy [the devil] an opportunity of attacking them’.38 At least a dozen other explanations  34 Moreover, Ascelina (often Anselma), no less a figure than the mother of the cathedral’s founder, Bishop William de St-Calais (d. 1096), was also recorded for posterity — along with dozens of other women — in the Durham Liber Vitae (the record of the names of men and women for whom the monks prayed). See Rollason, and others, The Durham Liber Vitae and Its Context.  35 Archaeologists have also demonstrated that, from the early eleventh century (more than two decades, at least, after his arrival on the peninsula), female bodies were still permitted burial within Cuthbert’s cemetery. See Emery, ‘The Contribution of Archaeology’.  36 See Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, p. 107.  37 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio. On this story and Cuthbert’s alleged misogyny generally see also Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans, at pp. 125–26 and, in part, Whitehead, ‘Spiritual Healing’.  38 See Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio, p. 107.

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arose over the next four hundred years. The anonymous author of the early thirteenth-century Libellus de Ortu Sancti Cuthberti described a beautiful but ‘presumptuous’ young girl, who had apparently taken to distracting a group of men listening to one of the saint’s sermons.39 And elsewhere the Ortu writer, together with the man who assembled the late sixteenth-century Rites of Durham, also shared versions of essentially the same story wherein Cuthbert was falsely accused of impregnating a young female member of royalty.40 Astonished in both instances, Cuthbert said a prayer to God and asked him to prove his innocence, whereupon the ground immediately opened up, swallowing the ‘reckless’ girl whole.41 Depending on the account, either Cuthbert or her father, the then king of the Picts, subsequently forbade any woman to access any church dedicated to, or in any way affiliated with, the saint. In any event, the various explanations for Cuthbert’s change of heart probably mattered less, in almost every case, than the desire on the part of their authors to tell them. In the very early twelfth century, Symeon, and the (celibate) powers-that-were at Durham, probably still needed to justify their 1083 eviction of the cathedral’s formerly married canons.42 By the time Reginald was writing in the 1170s, this controversy had abated, but a new series of prohibitions had quickly taken their place. The fear of the female body, and the threat it presented to the ‘purity’ of the high altar was a particularly pressing concern. Canons 6, 7 and 11 of the Second Lateran Council (1139) had only doubled down on the First’s condemnation of marriage and concubinage among clerics. The result was that, by the dawn of the thirteenth century, a whole host of other bishops, priests, and monks across England had begun to resurrect ancient taboos associated with female bodies. Levitican authority was widely invoked to advocate for the removal of menstruating women from churches, as well as those who had recently given birth.43 And, by the early fourteenth century, some clerics had even begun to demand that any furnishings for a church’s east end — lamps, draperies, vestments, plates, and so on — all had to be cleaned under strict observation prior to admission, in case they too had been handled (and thus polluted) by the touch of a female hand.44 Curiously, however, in spite of an increasingly permissive regional context of anti-female behaviour, Reginald’s tone had, if anything, grown more measured than Symeon’s. Though far from the only story he told, the

 39  40  41  42

See Raine, ed., ‘Libellus de Ortu Sancti Cuthberti’. See Fowler, ed. and trans., The Rites of Durham, at pp. 35–37. Fowler, ed. and trans., The Rites of Durham, pp. 35–37. This was an argument first put forward by Rosalind Hill in an unpublished paper titled ‘Saint Cuthbert, the Woman and the Weasel’ delivered at the International History Conference held in Oxford in 1972.  43 See, especially, McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’.  44 At Norwich for example, the precentor is recorded as deliberately choosing a washerman over a washerwoman to launder the many fabrics and vestments of the clergy. See Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close, at pp. 240–43.

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account of Emeloth and her ball was in fact his sole example of a woman to fall fatally foul of Cuthbert’s vindictive side.45 So, for instance, when he recounted the story of Maud, a female intruder whose dynamic closely paralleled that of Judith’s maid in Symeon’s Libellus, she was not punished anything like so harshly. Maud, the new wife of the future king, David I of Scotland, had approached Cuthbert’s cathedral one evening after dark. She stopped short of entering his churchyard, however, because, like Judith, she had devised a test of her own. This time she asked her chambermaid, a woman named Helisend, whose talents included the working of fabrics, to disguise herself and attempt entry on her behalf. At once, Reginald stresses, Cuthbert noticed Helisend’s presence. He alerted the cathedral’s sacristan, a man named Bernard, who, while forcibly ejecting her, revealed that it was her ‘stench’ (foetoris), her ‘impurity’ (immunditia) and possibly even a ‘fart’ (pedoris) which gave her away.46 Nonetheless, disguised in her black cope and hood, she did at least make it inside the main body of the church. And, further, she lived to tell Reginald the tale. Any number of reasons might explain this change, but it cannot have been inconsequential that the final decades of the twelfth century were an especially worrisome time for the monks at Durham. Cuthbert’s gravitational pull had been lessened by a series of exciting new cult sites in the south, all of whom allowed female pilgrims unfettered access to their cults: most notably Edmund’s at Bury (d. 869), Saint Godric of Finchale (d. 1170) and Thomas Becket at Canterbury (d. 1170).47 In fact, around this time, several women even seem to have suddenly found favour once again with Saint Cuthbert. One ‘noble woman’ named Agnes, for example, who fell ill following a blood-letting session, was healed right next to Durham’s western doors. Another, Osanna of Foxton, was cured of an ‘inflamed eyelid’. And two further unnamed females were offered mercy within quick succession: a ‘blind and handicapped woman’, and an ‘epileptic from Brompton’. As Victoria Tudor has noted, at certain times in the cathedral’s history it almost seems as if the saint’s once notorious intolerance had been assuaged completely.48 In 1374, Alice Neville, the baroness and wife of Ralph Neville (d. 1367), was interred beside her husband in a highly prominent position, right in front of Durham’s Jesus Altar. Not much later, in 1386, their son John (d. 1388) and his wife Maud (d. 1379), were also put to rest just inside the nave’s south wall without even a hint of disapproval from Cuthbert.49 (In the interests of cynicism, it can be pointed out that the Neville family were famously liberal benefactors for the cathedral, but so too of course was Judith of Flanders, with whom we began.)

 45  46  47  48  49

Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita, p. 403. Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis, pp. 151–54. See, especially, Rice, The Hermit of Finchale, at p. 299. Tudor, ‘The Misogyny of St Cuthbert’, pp. 160–61. Tudor, ‘The Misogyny of St Cuthbert’, p. 164.

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Another significant feature to note in these stories then is that although many attest to an unyielding and often merciless partition of male and female bodies in the cathedral, these lines were by no means inflexible over time. Put another way, if the formal dictates regarding not just who could occupy particular spaces, but how, when, and why, were often important, then — not unlike a palimpsest — they were also important differently to successive medieval generations. Time and again these dynamics were lived out or practised, as opposed to followed: products of custom, habit, and stories, rather than legislation pre-emptively set down. Bourdieu, theorizing on habitus, encourages us to interrogate the different, but practically related, contexts through which both men and women might have become inured to these performances at Durham over time.50 He defined habitus as the ‘… systems of durable, transposable dispositions’ that are ‘…always tending to reproduce the objective structures of which they are the product’.51 That is to suggest that the modes of thinking through and enacting such operations were not necessarily evolved consciously, with a specific objective or end in mind, but as one part of a much larger, much more flexible process which drove sometimes radical, sometimes incremental change. For a long time, in other words, there were no rules per se (or at least none that were set down and non-negotiable) steering the development or applicability of spatial norms at Durham. Instead, because these customs tended to reproduce those which had already produced them, they were in effect largely determined by the efficacy of past successes selectively (or sometimes even haphazardly) fused with the tendencies of the present. It is very difficult to otherwise explain why for example, after a period of relative calm, Cuthbert seems to have reinstated his ban on female ingress so forcefully in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. On 18th September, 1417, a formal order was issued to organise the very public punishment of two women, ‘Matilda Burgh and Margaret Usher’. Together, they had attempted to approach the shrine, only to be found out.52 The crime of ingress had apparently now been quite precisely outlined and made punishable by excommunication.53 On a technicality of some sort (possibly a joint confession) the two women were ultimately spared. But they were then directed to ritually process, on six separate holy days in the coming liturgical year, around the nearby churches of Saint Nicholas and All Saints in Newcastle. What is more, as part of an apparent if curious warning to other would-be criminals, they were asked to dress in the male clothes which they were wearing when caught trying to break into the cathedral.

 50  51  52  53

See, again, Stanbury and Raguin, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–22. See Hernes, The Spatial Construction of Organization, at pp. 52–54. See also Fordyce, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, p. 263. Tudor, ‘The Misogyny of St Cuthbert’, p. 164.

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In certain centuries then, the limits of Cuthbert’s male domain were evidently quite unclear, to the extent that some women, like Judith and Maud, were moved to test them, while others, like Sungeova and Emeloth, apparently had no idea they existed at all. At other points though, and ironically for reasons that were often less clear, they were much more formally described. By the late sixteenth century, the author of the Cosin roll, the oldest version of the Rites of Durham, even took to enumerating a whole series of ‘causes wherfore women may not [come in] to the fferretere of St Cuth[bert]’ or ‘enter within the p[re]cinct annexed in [the] monasterye’ either.54 Candidly, he stressed: There is betwixt [the] pillar of [the] north syde w[hi]ch [the] holie Water stone did stand in, & [the] piller that standeth ou[er] against that of [the] south side … a Rowe of blewe mrble, … in [front of which] all women that come to here [for] devine s’vice should not be suffered to come aboue.55 This line of ‘blewe mrble’ is still visible today, a clear lithic echo of a much older tradition of segregating the genders which, in classical (or largely Western) hierarchies of thinking, distinguished the female body from the male mind and intellect.56 While both ecclesia and synagoga were routinely thought of and portrayed as female beings, insofar as the plan of a medieval church was thought to be a reflection of the body, its most highly sanctified spaces — those contained in its east end — were almost invariably associated with male hegemony: a male head and simultaneously, of course, a male locus of clerical power.57 It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of recognizing this dichotomy in Durham’s stories (especially given their often-provocative histories). Modern feminist theory has repeatedly taken this analogy to task, and contributions to (re-)mapping the socio-cultural history of the female body have been extensive in recent years.58 A number of medievalists, such as Katherine L. French and Corine Schleif, have also investigated how social position and marital status, among other things, could often determine where and under what conditions a woman in medieval England could be seated and present within her local parish.59 Schleif, in particular, has drawn out at length not only how pew arrangements (as well as other material signs) could divide men from women inside the church, but a variety of corollary ways in which Fowler, ed. and trans., The Rites of Durham, pp. 35–37. Fowler, ed. and trans., The Rites of Durham, pp. 35–37. See, again, Stanbury and Raguin, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–22. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) had already written about the connection at length, and his example was later followed and, in a number of respects, extrapolated even more probingly by Honorius of Autun (d. 1151/1154) and Peter of Celle (d. 1183), both of whom were likely to have been familiar to many learned English clergymen.  58 See, especially, Kay and Rubin, eds, Framing Medieval Bodies; Miller, Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body; and Lomperis and Stanbury, eds, Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature.  59 See French, ‘The Seat under Our Lady’. See also French, The Good Women of the Parish; and Aston, ‘Segregation in Church’.  54  55  56  57

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this separation was also played out in related socio-cultural constructs. She argues that, whether performed (as for example in the context of processions, weddings and other ritual enactments of the liturgy) or represented artistically on the wall or the page, the female body was very often confined to the left, in opposition to the male, who dominated on the right.60 This common medieval binary also corresponded to many more deep and gendered polarities that recurred throughout medieval Europe: dark / light, weak / strong, and even evil / good. Within these discourses, analyses of basic spatial boundaries, boundaries that divided public from private, body from mind, and interior from exterior, have all played a foundational role in discussions of spatial semiotics, as they have in postcolonial studies. The harsh stance outlined by the anonymous author of the Rites of Durham was probably maintained up to the Suppression, suggesting that Cuthbert’s misogyny had, after more than four hundred years, finally become something like an ‘institutionalised part of the conventual routine’.61 That line of ‘blewe mrble’ slashed indelibly across the west end of the nave is of unknown date, but it is unlikely to have been fashioned prior to the late fifteenth century. By this time, women were permitted both to approach the line and to convene for a time in the Galilee Chapel at the extreme west end. At a distance approaching 200ft, the space behind the line offered a long if largely unimpeded view of the nave, its many altars and the screens and rood separating the monks in the east end. Even if, however, the most sacred spaces of the cathedral, its ‘highest parts’, ‘St Cuthberts feritorye’ and the ‘Quire’ might suddenly have seemed that little bit more accessible for women, their separation still remained obviously and politically expedient.62 Their new position offered a view of a pronounced institutional divide, an even stronger lithic reminder, in a sense, of who went where. The anonymous author cited, as the proximate cause for this latest act of segregation, the old story of Cuthbert impregnating the king’s daughter. Except that, by 1593, a slightly cheerier ending had evolved: the ground still swallowed the ‘foolhardy’ princess whole, only to mercifully regurgitate her later in the day.63

Space, It’s about Time too The histories of medieval cathedrals are (by and large) the histories of a small and somewhat select group of adult men. More often than not they speak of the abbots and bishops who built and occupied them, or the wealthy male benefactors who paid for them with their patronage. Many of the stories told

 60  61  62  63

Schleif, ‘Men on the Right, Women on the Left’. Tudor, ‘The Misogyny of St Cuthbert’, p. 164. Fowler, ed. and trans., The Rites of Durham, pp. 1–19. Fowler, ed. and trans., The Rites of Durham, p. 102.

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and retold here about Durham Cathedral, however, invite us to consider a different set of perspectives. References to the cathedral’s many spatial boundaries, its grades of access, and its degrees of sanctity, all seem to have been instrumental in not only reflecting but actively (re-)constructing local divisions drawn along strongly gendered lines. These also, I think, continue the challenge made elsewhere in medieval studies to reconsider the still widespread modern attachment to the idea that powerful medieval men are the main (or even the most interesting or instructive) parties to study. Because, even if the historical restrictions for female access at Durham might seem to have been both harsh and uncompromising, this really ought not to suggest that their influences on its daily operations are not worth our attention. As we have seen, a woman’s space was very often ground for both material and immaterial (re-)negotiation. Many of the stories told and analysed here attest to a dynamic world of female influence, as well as something like an indirect index of the bold historical strategies adopted by women resisting patriarchal authority. It was probably Louis Sullivan, one of the spiritual fathers of modern American architecture, who first wrote that ‘form ever follows function’.64 Sullivan was indebted to what he termed ‘rational thinking’ and the example of Vitruvius (d. 15 bc), who, in his De architectura, extolled the value of utility (utilitas).65 Like Mies van der Rohe’s ‘less is more’ and Le Corbusier’s ‘une maison est une machine-à-habiter’ (a house is a machine for living in), Sullivan’s mantra for modernity went on to become one of the twentieth century’s greatest architectural clichés. Even if, however, this was a ‘rule’ of building that Sullivan insisted ‘shall permit of no exception’, one of the more conspicuous must surely be the medieval cathedral.66 The quantifiable form of any medieval structure, however defined, is always likely to express certain function(s) by its measure or appearance. And yet, the broad point that the many stories in this chapter help me to stress here is that the spaces in between these forms regularly resisted such clarity or stasis. In Durham Cathedral, space generated a wide and dynamic range of possibilities and influence. It was a by-product of a whole series of energetic and interactive relationships. It was more than just the stuff — put bluntly — between other more important things. By thinking through space as a category with a rich sense of pliability, heterogeneity and flux, an implicit point has also been made therefore of emphasizing time. Much of the original stone fabric at Durham survives intact, and yet, at the intersection between traditional use and newly-emerging customs, the spaces it contains have made, unmade, and remade incessantly. In a sense, the steady old stones with which Durham greets us today might deceive us, if only inadvertently, with their

 64 See Sullivan, ‘The Tall Office Building’, pp. 403–09.  65 Sullivan, ‘The Tall Office Building’, p. 404.  66 Sullivan, ‘The Tall Office Building’, p. 403.

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apparent inanimacy. Rather than ever-following function (as it were) the medieval cathedral might be more accurately described as ever-negotiating or ever-becoming functional: it was (and remains) constantly under construction, never finished, never done, or — as Doreen Massey once put it so brilliantly — always a ‘simultaneity of stories-so-far’.67

 67 Massey, Space, Place and Gender, p. 9.

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Cohen, Meredith, and Fanny Madeline, eds, Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) Emery, Norman, ‘The Contribution of Archaeology’, in Durham Cathedral: History Fabric and Culture, ed. by David Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 159–66 Felski, Rita, ‘Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion’, M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture, 15.1 (2012), available online at [accessed 9 March 2018] —— , ‘Suspicious Minds’, Poetics Today, 32 (2011), 215–34 Fordyce, William, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (Edinburgh: Fullarton, 1857) Foster, Meryl, ‘Custodians of St Cuthbert: The Durham Monks’ Views of their Predecessors, 1083-c. 1200’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed. by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), pp. 53–65 French, Katherine L., ‘The Seat under Our Lady: Gender and Seating in Late Medieval English Parish Churches’, in Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, ed. by Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Sarah Stanbury (New York: SUNY Press, 2005), pp. 141–60 —— , The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) Garner, Lori Ann, Structuring Spaces: Oral Poetics and Architecture in Early Medieval England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011) Gertsman, Elina, and Jill Stevenson, eds, Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012) Gilchrist, Roberta, Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005) Golding, Brian, Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066–1100 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Graves, C. Pamela, Social Space in the English Medieval Parish Church (New York: Routledge, 1989) Hanawalt, Barbara A., and Michal Kobialka, eds, Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) Hernes, Tor, The Spatial Construction of Organization (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004) Heslop, T. A., ‘Attitudes to the Visual Arts: The Evidence from Written Sources’, in Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, ed. by Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1987), pp. 26–32 Howes, Laura L., ed., Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007)

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Karkov, Catherine E., and Nicholas Howe, eds, Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006) Kay, Sara, and Miri Rubin, eds, Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994) Kemp, Wolfgang, ‘Narrative’, in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Schiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 58–69 Lewis, Suzanne, ‘Narrative’, in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. by Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 86–105 Lomperis, Linda, and Sarah Stanbury, eds, Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993) Massey, Doreen, and John Allen, eds, Geography Matters!: A Reader (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) Massey, Doreen, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) McNamara, Jo Ann, ‘The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. by Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 3–30 Meehan, Bernard, ‘Outsiders, Insiders, and Property in Durham around 1100’, Studies in Church History, 12 (1975), 45–58 Miller, Sarah Alison, Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body (New York: Routledge, 2010) Milne, Drew, ‘Introduction: Criticism and/or Critique’, in Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists, ed. by Drew Milne (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 1–22 Ó Riain-Raedel, Dagmar, ‘Edith, Judith, Matilda: The Role of Royal Ladies in the Propogation of the Continental Cult’, in Oswald: Northumbian King to European Saint, ed. by Clare E. Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), pp. 210–29 Rees Jones, Sarah, ‘Public and Private Space and Gender in Medieval Europe’, in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. by Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 246–61 Rice, Francis, The Hermit of Finchale: The Life of Saint Godric (London: Pentland, 1994) Rose, Gillian, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) Schleif, Corine, ‘Men on the Right, Women on the Left: (A)Symmetrical Spaces and Gendered Spaces’, in Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, ed. by Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Sarah Stanbury (New York: SUNY Press, 2005), pp. 207–49 Stanbury, Sarah, and Virginia Chieffo Raguin, ‘Introduction’, in Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, ed. by Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Sarah Stanbury (New York: SUNY Press, 2005), pp. 1–21

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Sullivan, Louis, ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered’, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, 57 (1896), 403–09 Tudor, Victoria, ‘The Misogyny of St Cuthbert’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5 (1984), 157–67 Webber, Nick, The Evolution of Norman Identity, 911–1154 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005) Weiss, Julian, and Sarah Salih, eds, Locating the Middle Ages: The Spaces and Places of Medieval Culture (London: King’s College, Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, 2012) White, Hayden, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1980), 5–27 Whitehead, Christiania, ‘Spiritual Healing: Healing Miracles Associated with the Twelfth-Century Northern Cult of St Cuthbert’, in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine, ed. by Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey (Tübingen: Narr, 2013), pp. 176–79

Christoph Witt

Dynamic Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel The diverse and dynamic field of the study of material culture1 has significantly inspired literature studies over the last two decades,2 especially in connection to historical media studies that analyse how material things communicate meaning, and how writing interacts with its material aspects.3 This also lends new urgency to the problem of how to relate media history, cultural reality, and fictional literature. In this essay, I shall enquire how material studies and media studies can provide a method of interpreting the literary phenomenon of inscriptions occurring in fictional texts. Inscribed objects in literary texts are an apposite example for such a case study, for several reasons. First of all, inscriptions frequently occur in pre-modern and modern literature of different cultures and literary genres. Furthermore, despite the initially unusual appearance of many inscriptions, the phenomenon focuses attention on a fundamental condition of writing: all forms of writing are written on something.4 Inscriptions reflect this, often under-examined, connection between material object and writing particularly clearly.5 Also, historical and archaeological studies already supply a large body of research on actual, historical inscriptions.6 Literary studies can draw from this  1 See, for example, Bennett and Joyce, eds, Material Powers; Brown. A Sense of Things; Coole and Frost, eds, New Materialisms; Bennett, Vibrant Matter; Hodder, Entangled; Tilley and others, eds, Handbook of Material Culture; Hicks and Beaudry, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies; Richardson, Hamling, and Gaimster, eds, The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe.  2 See, for example, Johnston, ‘Material Studies’; Tiffany, ‘Lyric Substance’; Bintley, ‘Material Cul­ ture’; Meier, Ott, and Sauer, eds, Materiale Textkulturen; Cohen, ed., Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.  3 See, for example, Kiening, ‘Medialität’.  4 Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England, p. 20.  5 See Chaganti, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary, p. 16.  6 See, for example, vast cataloguing projects such as ‘Die Deutschen Inschriften des Mittel­ alters und der Frühen Neuzeit’, continued as ‘Inschriften Online’ at http://www.inschriften. net/, or the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum begun by Theodor Mommsen in 1853 and still continued, its 17 vols covering c. 200.000 ancient Latin inscriptions, https://cil.bbaw.de/. For a fundamental introduction, see Kloos, Einführung in die Epigraphik. Christoph Witt, Freie Universität Berlin, Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule für literaturwissenschaftliche Studien Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 175–202  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121607

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material. It also serves as a backdrop against which the characteristics of fictive inscriptions emerge more distinctly. Literature is rooted within and often concerned with the reality of historical material and media culture.7 On the other hand, literature is also capable of fictionalizing it for its own explorations of various questions.8 This tool of fictionality allows the creation of imaginary inscriptions such as Beowulf’s engraved giant sword,9 Gregorius’ miraculously re-appearing tablet,10 a glacier bearing the names of every famous person in history in Chaucer’s House of Fame,11 Discordia’s magical, language-changing apple in Der Trojanische Krieg,12 or God’s commands appearing and vanishing on Parzival’s Grail stone.13 The plethora of marvellous inscriptions should make us wary of treating literary inscriptions too positivistically. Some of those examples seem to have been set up deliberately as impossible in order to explore abstract concepts of time, materiality, literature, orality, or writing.14 However, the difference lies not merely in what kind of inscriptions are possible, but also in how we encounter them — not as physical artefacts but as literary representations of fictive objects. I will show how not recognizing this can threaten to obscure the entire point of an inscription’s narrative presentation. Therefore, the task is to balance the influence exercised by material and media culture on literature with literature’s capacity of fictionalizing cultural reality, and to win out of this tension a practical approach for literary interpretation. Finally, inscriptions can make the objects that bear them part of the story they are telling, and literary texts can tell of inscribed objects in order to use this structure to create a form of mise-en-abyme.15 This allows to explore how a text’s material realization affects the way it tells a story — for example by showing how the material qualities of the object shape the way the inscription

 7 See Ott and Focken, ‘Metatexte und schrifttragende Artefakte’.  8 See Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages, pp. 177–80. For a refusal to accept historical reality as the last court of appeal for literary interpretation, see, for example, Felski, ‘Context Stinks!’, esp. pp. 578–88. Recently, Cheah has argued that literature’s independence from the historical status quo, its world-making potential, is what allows it to challenge historical reality and assert postcolonial alternatives and indeterminacy against the capitalist rationality of globalization, see Cheah, ‘What is a World?’, esp. pp. 34–36.  9 Klaeber’s ‘Beowulf’, ed. by Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, ll. 1687–1698a.  10 Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius, ed. by Neumann and trans. by Kippenberg, ll. 719–69, 3730–35.  11 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The House of Fame’, ed. by Benson, III.1119–64.  12 Konrad von Würzburg, Der Trojanische Krieg, ed. by von Keller, ll. 1452–79, 1510–29.  13 See Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, ed. by Schirok and trans. by Knecht, ll. 470, 23–30.  14 For example, Beowulf’s chronologically paradoxical giant sword can be read as a selfconscious literary reference to Aeneas’ shield in Vergil’s Aeneid (itself referring to the shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad) that, together with other material artefacts strategically placed in the poem, reveals the superficially über-Germanic Beowulf as a response to the classical epic tradition, see Johnston: ‘Beowulf as Anti-Virgilian World Literature’, pp. 47–52; see also Johnston, ‘Schriftkommunikation im Beowulf’, pp. 212–17.  15 On inscription as a poetic device of enshrinement closely connected to reliquaries that dialectically connects the container and the contained, see Chaganti, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary, pp. 13–15, 34, 37, 100–29, 150–64.

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

is understood, by narrating how protagonists interact with the material object and process its inscription (or fail to do so), or by having the material object change in a way that alters the inscription’s significance. This mise-en-abyme structure can focus attention on how a text’s material and media aspects meet once the material object does not disappear behind its media functions. It also allows the creation of different levels of time within a story: For example, past stories encapsulated in the inscription or the background story of the inscription-bearing object can resurface in a present scene of reception if the object and the inscription originated at separate moments, or if an object with a story of its own was inscribed later and then found and deciphered even later.16 A literary text can even connect this to the difference between the perspective of its protagonists reading the story an inscription tells them, and the vantage point of the recipients of the literary work that contains this episode, which, in turn, requires critics to mind the way they involve the text’s historical cultural background into their analysis. Thus, constellations of inscriptions and material objects appearing in literary texts can bring together questions of media, materiality, and temporality in storytelling on several levels. The example treated in this case study is a hunting dog wearing a necklace and leash adorned with gemstone letters, which occurs as the central motif in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s thirteenth-century Titurel.17 It is considered one of the most complex inscriptions in Middle High German literature.18 Titurel’s notorious opacity is usually attributed to explicitly literary features — its textual layers,19 its network of metaphors,20 its questioning of courtly culture and Arthurian literature,21 its fragmented  16 Especially during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, artefacts and artworks often were used to self-consciously reflect different time levels or explore concepts of temporality, see Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, pp. 7–71.  17 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel, ed. and trans. by Brackert and Fuchs-Jolie. The most recent English translation is Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. by Edwards. For a general introduction, see Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach, pp. 407–25, and the introduction to Fuchs-Jolie’s and Brackert’s edition (pp. 3–24).  18 On the inscription on the leash, see Lieb and Ott, ‘Schnittstellen’; Lieb and Ott, ‘Schrift-Träger’.  19 See Brackert, ‘Sinnspuren’, on how Titurel dissolves courtly culture, creating traces of significance in unsolvable tension.  20 Kiening and Köbele, ‘Wilde Minne. Metapher und Erzählwelt in Wolframs Titurel’, identified and significantly influenced Titurel’s three main research questions as firstly, Titurel’s intertextual connection to Parzival, suggesting a relation of paradoxical simultaneity, secondly, Titurel’s condition as a fragment, proposing that instead of enquiring reasons for the text’s fragmented condition, scholars should focus on how this condition affects its complexity, and finally Titurel’s literary opacity, exploring how the text uses ambiguities and blank spaces to create a network of metaphors in ever-new, mirroring connections, with signifiers and signified not following a clear 1:1-relation but multiplying dynamics of metaphorical language. On the relation between reality, perception and metaphorical language in Titurel see also Fuchs-Jolie, ‘al naz von roete (Tit. 115,1)’. On Titurel’s narrative strategy of bringing together contradictory elements of courtly culture, literary tradition and metaphorical language, see Trînca, ‘Parrieren’ und ‘undersnîden’, esp. pp. 77–83, 132, 196–228.  21 See Haug, ‘Erzählen vom Tod her’, on Titurel fundamentally questioning the possibility

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status,22 or its self-referential exploration of reading.23 I shall discuss how material aspects of the inscription and the objects crucially contribute to Titurel’s complexity. I do not aspire to deliver a full interpretation of the text — I merely want highlight how reflections on the material dynamics of writing can open up potential interpretations of literary phenomena. Even though letters made of stone raise expectations of permanence, I shall observe that in Titurel writing appears as a phenomenon of change, not as a means of preserving content unaltered. Drawing on theoretical works on medieval materiality and media, I shall argue that this is not an exceptional trait of a special case, but that Titurel’s extraordinary example highlights a fundamental quality of writing as a dynamic phenomenon, not despite its material aspects but because of them. Once these dynamic material aspects are not dismissed as a mere failure of preservation, an interpretation of Titurel’s inscription can focus less on positivistic attempts to restore the elusive words and instead recognize the productivity of the phenomenon unfolding around the inscription in specifically literary ways. Within the fictional text, the inscription’s dynamic material qualities follow a poetical concept of blank spaces and ambiguities, and a-chronologically connect several protagonists’ stories to create a polyphony of the inscription’s contrasting meanings.

Titurel: A Summary Any summary of Titurel has to start with another work of Wolfram of Eschenbach, his immensely influential Arthurian Grail romance Parzival. Parzival encounters his cousin Sigune in the wild four times. At their first meeting, Sigune is holding her dead lover, Schionatulander, who just died in a joust. She blames herself for Schionatulander’s death in her service, lamenting that ‘Ein bracken seil gap im den pîn’ (a dog leash brought doom upon him), which remains unexplained.24 Bitterly regretting having denied Schionatulander her love, Sigune becomes a hermit and is ultimately put to rest next to him. of fictional language, especially Arthurian literature, to grasp reality (pp. 23–24). See also Seeber, ‘Wolframs “Titurel” und der Mythos der Minne’, on how Titurel constructs a mythic minne concept that resists courtly literature and modern logic.  22 On Titurel’s fragmented status and textual criticism, see Baisch, Textkritik als Problem der Kulturwissenschaft. See also the introduction to Brackert’s and Fuchs-Jolie’s edition, pp. 26–28, and the introduction to the edition Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel, ed. by Bumke and Heinzle, pp. ix–xiv.  23 On questions of reading courtly literature in Titurel, see Wenzel, ‘Wilde Blicke’, and Gephart, ‘Textur der Minne’. Concerning courtly literature and questions of gender, hierarchy and minne, see for contrary positions Tax, ‘Tragische Spiegelungen’; Sager, Minne von mæren. On Titurel playing with different literary genres and traditions, see Greulich, Stimme und Ort.  24 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, ed. by Schirok and trans. by Knecht, ll. 141.16. English translations of Wolfram’s works are mine.

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

If Parzival contains Sigune’s ‘ending without a story’,25 Titurel provides the story without an ending, or at least impressions of it, since the known text amounts to two fragments totalling 700 lines. The first fragment outlines Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s childhood: they fall in love, discuss their affections but soon get separated. Missing each other painfully, they receive their guardians’ approval for their relationship. The second fragment resumes the narrative in medias res, without any information on the intervening time: reunited, Schionatulander and Sigune are out in the wild, resting at a riverside, when suddenly a hound comes crashing through the forest.26 It escaped its master to follow a hot trail, and it wears a sparkling silken collar and a twenty-metre-long leash. Schionatulander catches the animal, then leaves it with Sigune who notices gemstone letters covering leash and collar. On the collar, she reads the dog’s name, Gardeviaz, its translation, ‘Hüete der verte’ (keep the trail)27 and an explanation: ‘swie ditze sî ein bracken name, daz wirt ist den werden gebære. man unt wîp die hüeten verte schône! die varent hie in der werlde gunst, und wirt in dort sælde ze lône.’ [Sigune] las mêre an der halsen, noch niht an dem seile: ‘swer wol verte hüeten kann, des prîs wirt getragen nimer veile. der wonet in lûterem herzen sô gestarket, daz in nimer ouge übersihet ûf dem unstæten wenkenden market.’ (ll. 149.2–150.4) [‘Be this but a hound’s name, still these words suit the worthy: | May man and woman always remain steadily on good tracks! | Those who do so shall fare well in this world and later on will be rewarded with salvation.’ | [Sigune] read more on the collar, not yet on the leash itself: | ‘Whoever knows to truly keep the right track shall never cheaply forfeit his renown | because it resides in a pure heart so strong |it can never be over-looked in this unsteady, fickle fair.’] The leash tells Sigune of Gardeviaz’s previous owners: upon succeeding her sister Florie, who succumbed to her grief after her lover Illinot died in her service, Queen Clauditte was urged by her vassals to marry, and she chose her lover Ehkunat de Salfâsch Florien, a duke known for always following the right way: Sît er von der wilde hiez, gegen der wilde si sante im disen wiltlîchen brief, den bracken, der walt unt gevilde phlac der verte, als er von arte solte. ouch iach des seiles schrift, daz si selbe wîplîcher verte hüeten wolte. (ll. 158.1–4)  25 Matthews, ‘Holding it All Together’, p. 104.  26 On this scenario’s narrative unfolding see Matthews, ‘Holding it All Together’, pp. 112–14.  27 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel, ed. and trans by Brackert and Fuchs-Jolie, ll. 148.4.

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[As he was called ‘Of the Wild’, into the wild | she sent him this wild letter, the hound who, through woods and fields | always stayed on his trail, as it was in his nature, | the writing on the leash also stated that she herself aspired to keep the feminine way.] To read on, Sigune has to open the knot that ties Gardeviaz to a tent pole, but as soon as she loosens it the dog runs off again. Trying to restrain him, Sigune hurts her hands on the stones on the leash. Schionatulander pursues the dog, but is left behind with his bare feet bleeding. He is surprised when Sigune tells him about the ‘âventiure an der strangen’ (170.1: adventurous story on the leash), because, although he is experienced with ‘brieve, buoch, en franzoyse’ (169.2: letters, books, in French), he has never heard of writing on leashes. He asks her to forget about it. But Sigune, determined to read the whole story, declares its recovery a condition for accepting his future service for her love, so he has to accept the quest. And so the second fragment ends.

A First Material Analysis of Gardeviaz’s Inscription The entire second fragment revolves around Gardeviaz. He is central to the plot and, according to numerous prolepses, also to the protagonists’ future, and wears the fatal leash that remained unexplained in Parzival, providing an important intertextual connection. Therefore, interpretations of Titurel usually are based on an analysis of Gardeviaz’s inscription. As long as the difference between fictive and non-fictive objects of research is recognized, such an analysis can draw inspiration from archaeology, where inscriptions on historical artefacts have been studied systematically for a long time. A method recently suggested by the Assyriologist Markus Hilgert provides a starting point for analysing Gardeviaz’s inscription. Hilgert argues that, for understanding an inscription, it is not so much the words that matter as the historical practices of producing and reading them, and the cultural significance of the artefact that carries them.28 The meaning of the inscription and the object do not merely interact additively — for instance, the significance of a candle does not just appear next to the words of a prayer written on it29 — but in their interplay, new meaning emerges, something each individual component would not have been capable of expressing on its own.30 Hilgert’s method introduces two categories: the object’s material and its cultural taggings.31

 28 See Hilgert, ‘“Text-Anthropologie”’, pp. 97–98.  29 See Hilgert, ‘“Text-Anthropologie”’, pp. 108–12.  30 See Hilgert, ‘“Text-Anthropologie”’, pp. 111–12; Hilgert calls this phenomenon ‘effektive Materialität’ (effective materiality), further observing its potential circularity and its effect on other objects and the space surrounding them.  31 Hilgert calls his second category Präsenz (presence), which I rename ‘cultural tagging’ since

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

Material Hilgert’s first category analyses the carrier’s material: what is the object made of? who created it? what physical properties and cultural connotations do these materials contribute?32 In Titurel, an aphorism and a love story appear in gemstone letters on a colourful silken collar and leash worn by a dog. The material’s most prominent feature is the exceptional value: an excellent dog, precious stones, a leash so priceless the narrator jokes that there ‘[…] nie seil baz gehundet | Wart’ (147.2–3: never was a better-dogged leash), before appreciating that ‘ouch was der hunt vil wol geseilet’ (147.3: the dog was well-leashed, too). The material’s cost often matters for an inscription’s interpretation. The point is to imply equivalence, even superiority: Using invaluable material to praise virtue’s worth in metaphors of markets and prices (150.2–4), Clauditte expresses that this inscription tells us what she treasures above all else. The material splendour also mirrors her respect for Ehkunat’s qualities. But the inscription is also precious beyond its cash value because it remains connected to Clauditte, who had it fashioned after her own instructions (148.3), and to Ehkunat, the gift’s recipient, via his name and reputation (156.4, 158.1–3), symbolizing their relationship.33 But Gardeviaz’s inscription is not written on one single object, but rather on an ensemble whose components have to be considered individually and in their interplay.34 The dog is primarily associated with his tracking skills, and with ferocious vitality.35 Both qualities link him to Ehkunat. The former provides the aphorism’s core metaphor connected to Ehkunat’s reputation of always keeping on the right track and Clauditte’s aspiration to do so. The dog is a gift of love, which relates this metaphor to minne, courtly love. ‘Pursuing minne’ means to faithfully follow minne’s path for both men and women. The dog’s second main quality, his vigour, then turns into an image for minne’s uprooting energy. In allegorical literature, hounds sometimes personify courtship’s driving forces such as triuwe (faithfulness) or staete (steadfastness).36 But the much-admired canine hunting drive also carried such ambiguous connotations that it occurs as an allegory of the believers’ pursuit of heaven and of sins hounding the sinners.37 The key word is wild: Präsenz already denotes several concepts within German Literature Studies, none of which Hilgert intends to evoke. See Hilgert, ‘Praxeologisch perspektivierte Artefaktanalysen des Geschriebenen’, pp. 159–61.  32 See Hilgert, ‘“Text-Anthropologie”’, pp. 116–17.  33 On inscribed jewellery as gifts of love in medieval literature, see Witt, ‘More Than Bling’, pp. 299–303.  34 See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, p. 266. See also Gephart, ‘Textur der Minne’, p. 117.  35 On medieval German hunting dogs, see Dalby, Lexicon of the Mediæval German Hunt, pp. 34–36.  36 See Schmidtke, Geistliche Tierinterpretation in der deutschsprachigen Lite­ratur des Mittelalters, p. 171.  37 Schmidtke, Geistliche Tierinterpretation in der deutschsprachigen Lite­ratur des Mittelalters, pp. 307–08, 315–16, compare with pp. 310–11, 317, 432–33.

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dogs move between the realm of the cultivated court and the sphere of wild instincts. Clauditte uses this very term to evoke the connection to Ehkunat’s name ‘of the Wild Flower’ (157.4–158.2). Leash and collar, the inscription’s immediate carriers, first and foremost contribute extraordinary value and beauty. This supersedes the market price of their raw materials. It demonstrates the trading connections to the Orient and the entire aristocratic world required to obtain Arabian fabric (142.2), pearls (145.1) and such a collection of gems (147.1–2, 148.2),38 as well as the sophisticated craftsmanship needed to fashion such masterpieces. Clauditte’s present does not display expensive conspicuous consumption but high culture at its richest splendour. Commissioning and receiving such a gift identifies Clauditte and Ehkunat as members of an exclusive courtly elite. Gemstone letters also bear the connotations of indestructibility:39 This inscription on what is priceless beyond measure is to last forever. The materials’ durability (or ephemerality) often plays an important role for inscriptions, especially considering the most frequent class of inscriptions, epitaphs. However, a tombstone might consist of the same stone as a piece of jewellery but still would be understood quite differently, and even the time-defying durability would evoke another meaning, first and foremost because they are connected to different cultural practices. Hilgert’s second category of analysis focuses on this factor.

Cultural Tagging Hilgert’s second category, ‘cultural tagging’, is directed at the object’s situation within the cultural practices of its time: what other things or cultural phenomena is it connected to?40 All three components of Gardeviaz’s ensemble display courtly craftsmanship, thus establishing a courtly frame of reference. While minne and reading culture are certainly relevant spheres here,41 I shall focus on the cultural practice central to the material objects’ practical use: the medieval hunt.42 Considering their practical functions, dog, necklace, and leash illustrate the courtly educational programme: hounds were appreciated for their tracking instincts but also carried an ambiguous air of the wild, which is why the courtly art of hunting demanded the retention of control over them. So

 38 For brevity’s sake, I will have to omit the various powers medieval lapidaries, following ancient tradition, attributed to gemstones. See Cohen, Stone, pp. 160–65, 211–22; Murphy, Gemstone of Paradise, pp. 42–68.  39 On stone’s durability, see Cohen, Stone, pp. 56–58, 98, 103–07, 136, 197–201.  40 See Hilgert, ‘“Text-Anthropologie”’, pp. 117–19.  41 See, for example, Brackert, ‘Sinnspuren’, pp. 168–71, and Stolz, ‘Randgänge der Mediävistik’, p. 51.  42 On hunting as a motif in medieval literature, see Thiébaux, The Stag of Love, especially pp. 176–84 on Titurel.

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

Gardeviaz can be seen as mirroring a person whose natural gifts, no matter how admirable, are useless until one has learned self-restraint. The collar was the tool of domestication that allowed one to control a dog and to make use of its instincts. It therefore carries the part of the inscription that talks about learning to stay on the right track to win men’s and God’s favour. This distinction between what is written on the collar and what is written on the leash is repeatedly emphasized (150.1, 151.3, 155.1). Once the natural gifts and instincts are under control, i.e. once the dog is collared, they can be directed towards their ultimate purpose by attaching a leash and letting the dog follow a trail on the actual hunt.43 Accordingly, only after people have cultivated themselves through courtly education, they can pursue minne, one of the ultimate goals of courtly culture, and stories of minne can develop. The constellation of material objects mirrors this idea. This is why the actual love story appears on the leash,44 which symbolizes a bond of love,45 attached to the collar representing courtly education: the collar is a necessary element of connection between the story-inscribed leash and the naturally gifted dog, just as minne, and stories of minne, first demands people to undergo courtly cultivation. One would not just tie the leash to a noose and put it around the dog’s neck. The duality of the inscription, being both hunting leash and love-letter, serves to further express the duality of minne as zam unde wilde (tamed and wild).46

Ambiguities, Change, and Dynamic Material Aspects So far, the abstract analysis of Gardeviaz’s inscription has led to a fairly smooth illustration of the courtly educational programme. But does such an interpretation still comply with the dramatic scene depicted in Titurel’s second fragment? The inscription’s letters remain the same, as do the general cultural connotations since Titurel’s protagonists share the same courtly background. The dog is still vigorous, the emeralds are still splendid — if one were to produce a mere list, an abstract blueprint description of these material qualities, then one could easily jump to the conclusion that the unchanged material aspects of Gardeviaz’s inscription will still lead to this interpretation. But this is not what Titurel presents us with. Instead, the narrator shows Gardeviaz’s ensemble in action, by describing with great immediacy the sensory impressions its material qualities cause, such as the gems ‘die glesten durh den walt sam diu sunne’ (142.4: gleaming through the wood like sunlight), the booming barking suddenly making ‘den walt alsus mit krache […] erhellen’

 43  44  45  46

See Dalby, Mediæval German Hunt, pp. 197–99. See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, p. 262, and Gephart, ‘Textur der Minne’, p. 119. See Thibeaux, The Stag of Love, p. 179. See Wenzel, ‘Wilde Blicke’, p. 135.

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(138.1: the forest resound with noise), or the dog’s energy when tearing tent poles out of the ground (163.1). We do not encounter the inscription’s material qualities removed from any specific situation: we witness them within a specific situation that profoundly influences their meaning. The particular scene in which Sigune reads the inscription associates it with aventiure (170.1, 146.3: adventurous quests). In comparison, the two ‘off-screen’ circumstances of the inscription’s reception create different associations: Clauditte favouring Ehkunat with a ‘wild letter’ hints at communication and minne, and Ehkunat’s hunt implies sociable aristocratic pastime. Some of the materials’ sensory impressions thus appear with a different twist or in combination with new impressions contributed by their changed surrounding, such as the barking dramatically announcing the dog to the surprised couple. The figures also interact differently with the material objects, thus creating entirely new sensations such as Sigune’s pain when trying to restrain an inexorable Gardeviaz or her feeling of loss after he has escaped. These new impressions surrounding the inscription contribute to its significance, drawing recipients into a multi-sensory reading process. Passing through these different situations and interactions, Gardeviaz develops a biography of his own. He starts off as a present of love, then develops a history of breaking loose, escaping first Ehkunat and later on the same day Sigune, to vanish into the wild, where Schionatulander will die looking for him, as is known from Parzival, and the narrator’s proleptic statements (137.4, 139.2–3, 143.1–4, 159.3–4, 163.4). The narrator presents the inscription in the light of these stories, and its interpretation as an allegory of courtly education, as composed by Clauditte, falls apart. A more ambiguous picture emerges: apparently, the dog’s instincts could not be tamed. So, does this imply that courtly education fails to cultivate human nature? Gardeviaz disappears with the inscription, and what stays behind is chaos, a feeling of loss, and pain — does that suggest that minne remains an elusive, unrestrainable force that makes people end up alone, and hurt, and that pursuing it entails separation and death? Furthermore, Gardeviaz still wears the necklace and leash. If the dog (with all its ambiguities) represents minne, while the writing represents courtly attempts to tame minne (as mistaken as those may be), then the picture emerging is not necessarily a warning against minne unrefined by courtly culture, or of unleashed minne wreaking havoc. Quite the opposite: leash minne all you want, but that will not make it easier to hold it in the slightest — the glittering gemstone letters make it more dazzling, more beautiful, but they also make it cut even deeper. Or, considering Gardeviaz’s name and the aphorism, is this what ‘keeping one’s way’ means when actually put into action — not even allowing love to hold you back, your lover staying behind while you cleave your path through anything and anybody?47

 47 A similar dog leash described in Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneasroman might invite a comparison of Schionatulander and Sigune with Eneas and Dido, which might also offer

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Practices of reading and hunting here metaphorically enrich each other, while simultaneously — from a practical perspective — blocking one another.48 In the light of the incidents taking place around Gardeviaz, the inscription increasingly grows too complex to settle for a single interpretation of the story it tells, despite the figures’ desire for unambiguity.49 Surprisingly, the material realization of the inscription in lithic letters does not guarantee the preservation of a specific meaning, as is traditionally considered a key function of writing.50 On the contrary, the inscription’s meaning changes as Gardeviaz is encountered in different situations and met with different interactions and receptions, and while the inscription’s letters remain unaltered, its extravagant material implementation causes this change, ultimately even its disappearance when Gardeviaz escapes with the leash. Titurel tells us a story of storytelling materials that do not discreetly vanish behind their function as media — instead, they remain tangible as dog, collar, and leash, even usable, and their material qualities and original practical functions form an integral part of their role as media as well as they resist it. Maybe parchment and ink would have been a better choice, after all. But would they, really? Is it a failure of writing due to unsuitable, exceptional materials if Gardeviaz’s inscription does not guarantee the stable conservation of meaning? This question is best treated in two parts: firstly, does Gardeviaz’s inscription appear as equivocal, and as a phenomenon in flux, even under threat of disappearance, because of its exceptional material realization? That is, is a gemstone inscription worn by a dog such an outlandish singularity that it works entirely different from standard forms of writing, or does the extraordinary instance exhibit a more fundamental phenomenon? And secondly, is this a failure of writing at all, or is it a productive phenomenon?

Aspects of Medieval Mediality and Materiality, Writing, and Orality To evaluate the morphing aspects of Gardeviaz’s inscription, it helps to reconsider their causes. Central contributing factors are the appearance of the material qualities in new situations, new impressions brought about in each new interaction, and the history the objects continue to develop. These factors are connected to the fundamental material conditions of writing: writing always requires physical realization. As long as writing materially endures, this material realization might also be subjected to physical change.

new interpretations of their fate. This intertextual reference is occasionally mentioned, but rarely explored, most recently in Greulich, Stimme und Ort, pp. 318–19.  48 See Lembke and Lieb, ‘Magie der Inschrift’.  49 See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, p. 274, discussing ‘das Bedürfnis der Figuren nach Eindeutigkeit’.  50 See Assmann and Assmann, ‘Schrift’, p. 393.

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This resonates with many of the diverse medieval concepts of matter. Within the various controversial debates, ‘most medieval theorists assumed a material substratum with some dynamic aspects’, understanding ‘matter […] as by definition that which changes’.51 However, even if the letters had remained perfectly unaltered, its physical implementation makes writing outlast one situation so that it can reappear in the different surroundings of a new situation. In fact, physically transporting a message through time and space is often considered a key function of writing. But if the meaning of writing is influenced by its material aspects and its surroundings at all, then change of these factors might also affect the meaning of writing. Once something is written down, physical change becomes possible, while change of situation, in a way, even is one of the reasons for writing something down in the first place. As follows, material aspects of writing are at least as much a potential factor of change as of preservation.52 Writing appears as a dynamic phenomenon not despite its material realization, but rather because of it. So, the dynamic material aspects of Gardeviaz’s inscription are not just particularities of an exceptional case. They are fundamental consequences of the material conditions of writing. But do such dynamic material aspects only affect forms of writing that exhibit their materials’ semantics, such as inscriptions, or do they also, more subtly, influence writing practices less ostentatiously flaunting their material conditions? Schionatulanter’s initial reaction of rejecting such unheard-of writing in favour of French literacy, books and letters, briefe, seems to confirm that Gardeviaz’s inscription is a peripheral case. His desire to locate writing within familiar literate practices might explain why he did not notice the letters when catching Gardeviaz — writing outside of established writing culture might pass unrecognized.53 However, the narrator uses precisely the same term as Schionatulander when describing Gardeviaz as wiltlîchen brief and conspicuously emphasizes that he supplies tiutsch (157.3: German) translations of Gardeviaz’s (148.4) and Ehkunat’s (156.1, 157.3–4) French names, the language Schionatulander associates with literary superiority. Thus, the advocate of conventional literacy versus marginalized deviations fails to recognize exactly those features he demands of established writing culture — the separation of peripheral and standardized writing forms falls apart. If the spectrum of writing practices includes French literacy and the inscription on the leash, aventiure but also brief (albeit a wild one), then

 51 Walker-Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 254; see also pp. 231–41, 250–56. See also Robertson, ‘Medieval Materialism’ pp. 102–07, 115.  52 See Bode, ‘“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and Despair!”’, pp. 148–49, on this observation concerning Shelley’s Ozymandias.  53 See Johnston, ‘Medialität in Beowulf’, pp. 144–46.

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

Gardeviaz’s inscription does not merely represent a special class of writing. It exemplifies what Juliet Fleming, when analysing early modern English writing arts, calls writing ‘in its fully material, visual mode’.54 This way of composing and understanding writing focuses on material conditions so fundamental that ‘Nothing that has ever been written can finally be excluded’ from such a perspective:55 be it ink on paper or diamonds on a dog leash, both can be understood as ‘to be written on something’.56 Such a perspective might seem far-fetched for modern mass printing culture that aspires to ‘distinguish meaning from its physical media and […] abandon the latter as extraneous’.57 But, without presupposing one universal medieval concept of mediality (just as ‘there was […] no one medieval understanding of matter’58), a text’s material qualities could matter differently in medieval literate practices. Middle High German literature thrived within a non-typographical59 media culture of oral and visual performances, gestures, mnemonic techniques, and writing that relied on forms of communication based on literacy and physical presence.60 Medieval literature frequently reflects this background61 by inventing imaginary constellations of writing and literary communication that do not faithfully represent the reality of the cultural media, but fictionalize it to explore issues of materiality, mediality, or literary theory within the narratives.62 Therefore, even though conclusions on the reality of historical media based on literary constructs might be treading on thin ice, media history can draw attention to questions literary phenomena raise within fictional text. Literature played a significant role in medieval debates on materiality63 and possessed ‘models making imaginative and highly conscious use of such concepts as “orality” and “literacy”’.64 Gardeviaz’s inscription reflects questions of literacy, but nonetheless it seems to abandon attributes modernity traditionally associates with writing, especially its stability. Its material constitution appears as both conditioning its continuing physical existence and turning it into a phenomenon of change that resembles the ephemerality traditionally attributed to spoken words.65

 54 Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England, p. 20.  55 Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England, p. 21.  56 Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England, p. 20–21.  57 Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England, p. 25.  58 Walker-Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 254.  59 See Hilgert, ‘“Text-Anthropologie”’, pp. 112–14.  60 See Wenzel, ‘Einleitung: Vom Anfang und vom Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis’, p. 11; Kiening, ‘Mediale Gegenwärtigkeit’, pp. 20, 36.  61 See Starkey and Wenzel, ‘The Visuality of German Courtly Literature’, pp. 131–32; Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages, p. 178.  62 See Ridder, ‘Fiktionalität und Medialität’, p. 30.  63 See Robertson, ‘Medieval Materialism’, pp. 110–12.  64 Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages, p. 180.  65 See Assmann and Assmann, ‘Schrift’, pp. 393–94.

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Writing is usually considered to obliterate visual, acoustic, and other ‘non-verbal aspects of oral communication’.66 But this inscription is infused with them. Thus, Titurel not only counters distinctions of peripheral versus established writing practices, but also undermines clear-cut categories of orality versus literacy: the second fragment deconstructs writing as a system of stable preservation of meaning by focusing on its dynamic material aspects, and reveals Schionatulander’s call for established literacy as falling short of recognizing the very features it demands. The first fragment similarly challenges notions of orality. Its minne-debates between Sigune and Schionatulander (57.61–62) and their legal guardians (118–20 and 98–102.95, 116.2–3) stage direct communication between interlocutors influenced by hierarchies, relationships, and specific situations. And yet the figures, in Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s case even young children (48.1–49.1), employ highly artificial language following complex rhetorical literary conventions.67 Furthermore, Sigune’s guardian accuses her of talking as the mouthpiece of her arch-rival, the French Queen (127) — apparently, even a direct face-to-face situation cannot guarantee that it is the physically present person who is actually talking. If the first Titurel fragment challenges orality as immediate communication between parties present, while notions of writing as a stable system for fixing meaning are questioned in the second fragment, then a dichotomy of orality versus literacy might prove inadequate for analysing Titurel. Research on medieval orality and literacy has shown that operating with ‘exclusive opposites is historically false’, and even what is considered as ‘intermediate forms’ might appear as such only according to a modern distinction of phenomena.68 Furthermore, models of bi-mediality risk remaining ‘locked in the conceptual either/or of the binary opposition orality versus literacy’ without seeing ‘the intermediate stage […] as opening up aesthetic and interpretive possibilities’.69 Christian Kiening’s dual terms Körper (body, corpus) and Schrift (writing) offer a more productive alternative. Körper denotes all physical, material, or situational elements; Schrift describes factors such as reading practices or principles of literacy and textuality.70 These concepts do not merely replace orality and literacy with tabula rasa terms: Körper does not equal ‘orality’ because spoken and written words require physical components, Schrift is not the same as ‘literacy’ because spoken words can also use literary techniques. The advantage of these terms is that they do not stand in diametric opposition (let alone the often-implied teleology of complexity rising with increasing literacy), they condition each other. Körper is never meaningless matter,  66 See Green, Medieval Listening and Reading, p. 113.  67 See Sager, ‘Geheimnis und Subjekt’.  68 Quotations from Green, Medieval Listening and Reading, pp. 169 and 10 respectively; see further pp. 8–17, 232–33, 315. See also Kiening, ‘Vorspiel: Zwischen Körper und Schrift’, p. 14.  69 Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages, pp. 177–78.  70 See Kiening, ‘Vorspiel: Zwischen Körper und Schrift’, pp. 12–14.

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

while Schrift is never pure information.71 Literature can explore questions of mediality and materiality in ever-new imaginary configurations of these entwined dual concepts. Analysing the tension between Körper and Schrift features of Gardeviaz’s inscription promises more insights than categorizing its degrees of literacy and orality.72 This perspective shows Gardeviaz’s inscription not as writing that fails to fix its content, nor as a special hybrid of orality and literacy, but as an experiment with productive, fundamental, material features of writing. So, from the pragmatic perspective of Titurel’s protagonists, especially Sigune and Clauditte, it might appear problematic that Gardeviaz’s material characteristics affect the inscription’s meaning, move it through the narrative’s world, and even cause its disappearance. But the reflections on the dynamic material aspects of writing and the historical media background shed a new light on these phenomena. The meaning of the inscription changes because new significance emerges through the inscription’s Körper features, such as Sigune’s reading situation surrounding it with new sensory impressions within a new context. Even the inscription’s loss follows the same logic by creating new factors that affect the inscription’s meaning just as profoundly as the sense of marvel evoked before — pain, and longing so overwhelming that Sigune redefines Gardeviaz as Schionatulander’s challenge. The inscription’s dynamic material aspects, including its withdrawal, therefore prove to be a highly productive quality of writing.73 To sum up so far: the background of medieval media culture and medieval ideas of materiality supports it to understand Gardeviaz’s inscription not as a peripheral or failing instance of writing due to extravagantly unfit writing materials, but to see it as an extraordinary example that shows writing as a phenomenon fundamentally in flux not despite, but rather because of its material condition. The dual concepts Körper and Schrift are more conducive than a literacy-orality-dichotomy for appreciating this dynamic material constellation’s productive experiments with notions of writing and materiality. But on which textual levels do these experiments take place? The perspective on Gardeviaz’s inscription sketched out so far is, largely, in principle accessible to Titurel’s protagonists (or, considering Clauditte’s fashioning of the inscription, apparently even made use of). On such an intra-diegetic level, these observations resemble archaeology, cultural, or media studies; disciplines concerned with historical reality. However, Titurel’s audience can go beyond the protagonists’ point of view and see Gardeviaz’s inscription as an  71 See Kiening, ‘Vorspiel: Zwischen Körper und Schrift’, pp. 22–24.  72 See Johnston, ‘Medialität in Beowulf’, pp. 130–31 & 147, who applies Kiening’s terms to Beowulf, especially the giant sword.  73 The withdrawal of the inscription, and Titurel’s fragmented poetics, can even be seen as corresponding with the textual condition of Titurel itself, a text now fundamentally shaped by its fragmentary material aspects and loss. See Baisch, Textkritik als Problem der Kulturwissenschaft, p. 322. See also Kiening, ‘Wilde Minne’, pp. 274–75.

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imaginary Körper and Schrift constellation within a literary text that is capable of fictionalizing the reality of cultural media for its own means.74 This entails more fundamental consequences than literature’s ability to invent impossible inscriptions — they are also given in a particular way, not as actual physical objects but as literary constructs. Therefore, the central question is: how do the reflections on dynamic material aspects of writing help to understand Gardeviaz’s inscription as a literary phenomenon? The inscription’s loss shows the difference between those perspectives particularly clearly.

Gardeviaz’s Dynamic Material Aspects as a Literary Phenomenon Losing the inscription significantly affects the way Sigune understands it, but from her perspective this is not a literary experience. However, the inscription’s loss is mirrored on another reading level: upon closer analysis, it proves impossible for Titurel’s audience to determine the inscription’s exact content. After directly quoting the collar’s aphorism (149.1–150.4), the narrator only tells us twice that Sigune is reading of the queen and the duke named on the leash (151.3–4, 155.1), but then (152.1–158.3) can be understood either as paraphrasing the inscription, or as supplying background information, until he finishes by indirectly quoting Clauditte’s resolution (158.4). Thus, it remains conjecture as to whether the inscription mentions Florie at all, and how much of Cauditte’s story it covers.75 In this regard, Titurel is no singular case. The literal words of inscriptions in literature remain undisclosed so often it has even been suggested that their exact words do not matter and that critics should focus on their more general meaning.76 But unfortunately, the inscription’s content and the extent of Sigune’s reading is crucial for understanding her reaction. Its withdrawal seriously challenges any interpretation of Titurel. Usually, Florie’s story is seen as a warning of the deadly model of minne for chivalric service that Sigune should have minded, but because she fails to heed it, she ends up sharing Florie’s fate. Accordingly, Clauditte’s happy story of minne out of respect for someone’s virtues is often presented as the alternative example Sigune should have followed. So, whether or not Sigune can read Florie’s story determines whether she ignores (or fails to understand) the warning, or if her own future is mirrored on a level she cannot access. Similarly, whether Sigune misunderstands the counterexample or doesn’t fully know it depends on how much of Clauditte’s  74 See Ridder, ‘Fiktionalität und Medialität’, pp. 30–34, and Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages, pp. 177–80.  75 For different positions see Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 264, 267, Brackert, ‘Sinnspuren’, pp. 159–61, Tax, ‘Tragische Spiegelungen’, p. 52.  76 See Lieb, ‘Spuren materialer Textkulturen’, pp. 11–12.

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story Sigune can read on the leash. She might desperately long to read it all because she perfectly understands that a potential alternative is opening up to her.77 Whether she acts out of whim, tragic misunderstanding, or correct comprehension hinges on the content of the inscription and the extent of her reading.78 Furthermore, the inscription’s undisclosed content might continue beyond what the narrator reveals — perhaps neither we nor Sigune know the inscription’s actual ending. Or, even though most critics assume that we know everything, Clauditte’s story might have continued after she had it committed to gemstone and silk, and maybe it did not end happily — after all, Gardeviaz ran away, and losing tokens of love usually bodes ill.79 The withdrawal of the inscription’s literal words is one of the reasons Titurel is so disputed and so hard to understand.80 But following Sigune’s desire for clarity by trying to deduce the inscription’s precise content is futile.81 Titurel simply does not contain that information. Furthermore, such attempts still seem to classify writing materials as either conveying a specific message undiluted or as failing to meet their purpose. A more dynamic idea of writing would suggest that the interplay within a particular Körper – Schrift constellation might actually be more interesting than knowing its literal words, and that its elusiveness might be a productive element.82 This is exactly what Titurel stages. Restoring the lost inscription would make sense if Titurel referred to an external artefact. But while archaeology is concerned with actual, physical objects when collecting, deciphering, or describing inscriptions, literary studies, in contrast, do not work with physical objects but literary representations of fictive objects and risk missing the point if they ignore this fundamental difference by treating their objects as if they were archaeological artefacts. Even though Titurel’s plot flaunts the inscription’s physical presence, it is only possible to deny the inscription’s wording to Titurel’s audience because it is a literary artefact inaccessible to the recipients. The object of enquiry is Titurel itself, not some factual leash existing beyond the text it is referring to. Titurel does not give an incomplete description of a complete inscription but  77 Sigune might respond so intensely to the story on the leash because it tells of the possibility of a queen marrying a duke, which possibly kindles her hope of marrying Schionatulander despite his inferior position within the aristocratic hierarchy. On their feudal ranks, see Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel, ed. and trans. by Brackert and Fuchs-Jolie, ll. 43.1–44, 57.1–4, 62.1–4, 105.1–108.2, 128.1–4, 71.1–2, 104.1, 170.2–4. See also Tax, ‘Spiegelungen’, pp. 42–45, 48–49, 52–53.  78 See Baisch, Textkritik als Problem der Kulturwissenschaft, pp. 308–10.  79 See, for example, Matthews, ‘Holding it All Together’, p. 113, Tax, ‘Tragische Spiegelungen’, pp. 53, 56.  80 See Brackert, ‘Sinnspuren’, pp. 160–61.  81 See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, p. 274.  82 See Johnston, ‘Schriftkommunikation im Beowulf’, pp. 206–10, for an analysis of this problem regarding Beowulf’s giant sword.

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a complete description of an incompletely presented inscription. Turning this into a positivistic pseudo-archaeological puzzle underestimates the potential of literature and focuses on what Titurel strategically omits, not on what it actually contains, nor on such an omission’s literary significance.83 Instead of treating this passage as if it was referring to real-world artefacts left to reconstruct, an obstacle to interpretation, why not interpret its literary character? Then the inscription’s loss does not appear as an instance of destructive deterioration the reader has to compensate or to ignore as far as possible, but as a strategic move of first spectacularly presenting, then ostentatiously withdrawing, the inscription as a literary construct within the fictional text.84 Such a staged withdrawal turns the inscription’s material realization into a productive literary phenomenon. But this does not mean that the inscription’s precise words and content are irrelevant. Instead, it forms part of the poetics of ambiguity and blank spaces characteristic of Titurel.85 While blank spaces are impossible to fill in, their purpose is not to indicate dispensability but to achieve the opposite effect: the absence of the precise words tantalizingly reveals their relevance for understanding Sigune and directs attention to their surroundings, to their material realization, to the figures’ interaction, to everything that constitutes the inscription’s meaning apart from its literal words — the literary presentation of its Körper factors. It is the loss of the inscription, in particular, that reflects both the material aspects of literature and the literary presentation of material objects. This results in the observation that at different moments, Gardeviaz’s inscription conveys different meanings: Clauditte composed it as an allegorical token of minne which is contrasted by Gardeviaz repeatedly behaving unrestrainedly; and Sigune urgently desires it while the narrator laments that it spells her and Schionatulander’s doom. Thus, Titurel’s inscription offers a literary example of writing that, via its material status, triumphs over the message originally intended by its composer and that cannot be permanently exhausted by any single interpretation as the story unfolds. Because the inscription moves through the narrated world as an actual physical object, its significance cannot be pinned down to one singular, unchanging meaning. Any allegorical reading is met with the lush semantic surplus of actual objects whose ‘materiality precedes and outlasts context’.86 The initial issue when interpreting Gardeviaz’s inscription was that it keeps taking on new, contrasting meanings: do Gardeviaz’s escapes unmask Clauditte’s idea of keeping one’s way when loving as a naïve illusion? Does the narrator’s prolepsis of future sufferings reveal Sigune as tragically clinging to a model of minne for chivalric service that inevitably entails disaster, despite  83 I follow the approach laid out for Beowulf’s giant sword in Johnston, ‘Medialität in Beowulf’, pp. 130–31, 140–41.  84 See Johnston, ‘Medialität in Beowulf’, p. 140. See also Kiening, ‘Metapher’, p. 274, for a similar approach to Titurel’s fragmented textual condition.  85 See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 268, 272–74, and Haug, ‘Erzählen vom Tod her’, pp. 160–61.  86 Harris and Overbey, ‘Field Change / Discipline Change’, p. 134; see also pp. 133–38, 142.

Material Aspects of Writing in Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Titurel

the alternative to this deadly way literally dangling in front of her eyes, spelled out in shiny letters on the leash?87 This problem led to the observations on dynamic material aspects of writing as the source of this change of meaning, which now grant access to a new perspective that allows us to rephrase the original question: if the dynamic material aspects of Gardeviaz’s inscription keep reasserting themselves over its different interpretations appearing in Titurel, thus continuously generating new meaning, then what is the relationship between those different interpretations? If Sigune’s future and Gardeviaz’s escape disprove Clauditte’s and Sigune’s understandings of him, then chronologically later perspectives on the inscriptions are privileged over earlier ones. But dynamic material aspects of writing as a source of change in meaning, as laid out above, do not necessarily imply a succession of interpretations each refuting its predecessors. This perspective merely proposes that matter makes writing materially persist through time, but that this temporal preservation then in turn causes material change that affects the writing’s meaning so that the altered conditions create new interpretations.88 Thus, a temporal element enters the question of the relation between Gardeviaz’s different meanings. It is best met with a brief look at Gardeviaz’s temporal presentation.89 Gardeviaz’s biography unfolds within a non-linear chronology. He is not first presented as Clauditte’s allegory of minne, then dismantled. Instead, he is introduced as a runaway. Before the protagonists even set eyes on him, the narrator already announces that the dog will only stay briefly (137.4) and will bring about future suffering (140.3). Once Gardeviaz actually appears on stage, the narrator entangles his past with proleptic announcements of Schionatulander’s future sufferings: […] sus kom iagende an dem seile des fürsten bracke, dem er enphuor ûz der hende, nider ûf diu strâlsnitec mâl. daz si nimer hunt mêre gesende, diu in dem grôzgemuoten sande, von dem er iagte unze ûf den stolzen Grâhardeiz, daz dem vil fröuden sît erwande! (ll. 140.4–141.4) [Thus came, hunting on the leash | the duke’s hound, out of whose hands it had slipped | following the trail cut by an arrow. May she never again send any more dogs to anybody, | she who gave it to the

 87 For positions, see Brackert, ‘Sinnspuren’, pp. 172–73, Tax, ‘Tragische Spiegelungen’, pp. 52–54, and Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 267–69. Without further engaging in this debate, perhaps Sigune fails because she does not follow Clauditte’s example, but does Ehkunat losing Gardevîaz really signify closure, or maybe rather hint at Clauditte’s story continuing beyond its ending on the leash?  88 See Bode, ‘“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and Despair!”’, pp. 148–49.  89 On Titurel’s temporality, see also Matthews, ‘Holding it All Together’, p. 109, and Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 263, 270–72.

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valiant | from whom it now was running in wild pursuit towards proud [Schionatulander] of Graharz, which made him since then lose all his happiness.] The present scene resonates with Gardeviaz’s contrasting past and future meanings. As the plot unfolds, the narrator continues to create this effect by repeatedly setting out from and returning to Gardeviaz as a material object physically present in the fragment’s scene. The tension of this movement relies on the difference between the perspective of the present scene’s figures and the privileged positions of the narrator and his audience, who presumably remembered Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s end in Parzival.90 Despite ostentatiously drawing on his storytelling powers, the narrator pretends to have met their limit at the plot’s crucial moment, when lamenting Gardeviaz’s escape, ‘mih müet ir ûf lœsen, daz si tet. hei, wan wære sis erwunden’ (160.2: [Sigune’s] untying [of Gardeviaz’s leash] troubles me. Woe, if only she could be spared it!), and Sigune’s injured hands, ‘waz mac ich des? [Daz seil] was von steinen herte’ (161.3: What could I help it? [The leash] was hardened with gemstones.). By stylizing these present moments as fixed, and as lamentable because of what he knows will happen in the future, then mentioning two lines later that Gardeviaz escaped his owner in the same way earlier that day, the narrator creates a sense of present and past moments mirroring each other and as being similarly pre-set. The narrator’s revelations of Gardeviaz’s background and future produce interpretations of the inscription in contrast to the immediate scene. Making those interpretations meet does not serve to have them cancel each other out, and does more than merely creating a sense of tragic (or intertextual) inevitability91 — it offers alternative perspectives on the present scene by evoking future and past interpretations and a-chronologically entangling present, future, and past. Writing on a dog’s leash would have allowed a powerful image for linear storytelling, but Titurel’s narrative technique actually resembles an inter-woven network, not only of motifs and metaphors but also of levels in time.92 The narrator’s lamentation for Sigune’s torn hands marks the pinnacle of this temporal entanglement unfolding around Gardeviaz’s material aspects: innerhalp ir hende, als si wæren berîfet, grâ als eines tiostiurs hant, dem der schaft von der gegenhurte slîfet, der zuschet über blôzez vel gerüeret rehte alsô was seil durch der herzoginne hant gefüeret. (ll. 167.1–4)

 90 See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 249–51, 273–74.  91 See Haug, ‘Erzählen vom Tod her’, p. 23, Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 249, 268–69.  92 See Kiening, ‘Metapher’, pp. 250, 257–58, 262, 270; Haug, ‘Erzählen vom Tod her’, pp. 14–17; Seeber, ‘Wolframs Titurel und der Mythos der Minne’, p. 57.

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[Inwards, as if rimed, her hands were as grey | as the hand of a joust’s combatant skimmed by the backlash of the lance’s hilt | hissing as it runs over bare skin | just the same the leash had been dragged over the duchess’ hands.] This unusual image of the injuries caused by delivering, not receiving, a thrust with a lance is followed by a narratorial prolepsis introducing the dialogue during which Sigune sends Schionatulander on his fateful quest: ‘diu flust muoz nu vil sper zerbrechen’ (168.4: the loss [of the writing on the leash] will now break many lances.) This combination anticipates Sigune’s future suffering based on blaming herself for Schionatulander’s death, as known from Parzival, which further establishes Gardeviaz as a sign of their future doom. It also re-evokes Florie’s death who, after her lover’s mortal fight, ‘starb ouch an der selben tiost, doch ir lîp nie spers orte genâhte’ (153.2–4: also died in that very joust, despite never approaching a lance’s tip). Different moments in time are combined in so densely enmeshed a fashion it becomes almost impossible not to relate them to each other: the description of Sigune’s current interaction with the inscription as a material object conjures up glimpses of her future, and allusions to a past which further specifies Sigune’s future, both of which affect our understanding of the present scene. With Gardeviaz’s inscription at the centre, past and future, key moments from his own story and the stories of the people connected to him are meeting: Clauditte’s and Ehkunat’s, Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s, even Florie’s and Illinôt’s.93 The narrator thus uses the inscription’s dynamic material qualities to evoke and entangle different stories and temporal levels. Therefore, any interpretation that chronologically cancels out Gardeviaz’s different meanings remains insufficient, for two reasons. First, it resembles an attempt to seal off Gardeviaz’s inscription with an ultimate meaning, which clashes with a fundamental condition of writing that, as long as it physically persists, remains open to change because of its dynamic material aspects. Indeed, Titurel even seems to stage an instance of writing that reflects this effect in particular. The second reason results from Gardeviaz’s inscription appearing in a literary text: considering the pains the narrator takes to evoke and entangle different stories and temporal levels, why exorcize the alternative meanings of Gardeviaz? Chronologically cancelling them out is reminiscent of the positivistic puzzle of deducing the inscription’s content as if it was an archaeological object: reconstructing the inscription misses the narratological point of its literary withdrawal.94 Similarly, having the inscription’s different

 93 On the connections between the three couples, see Kiening, ‘Metapher’, p. 254; Brackert, ‘Sinnspuren’, pp. 163–65, 167; Tax, ‘Tragische Spiegelungen’, pp. 52–53.  94 For example, the arguments developed in Johnston, ‘Schriftkommunikation im Beowulf’, and Johnston, ‘Beowulf as Anti-Virgilian World Literature’, rely on the material object’s temporal contradictions to get noticed as impossibilities, not on them to be explained in a realistic or positivistic manner.

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meanings falsify each other in order to settle for a final one misses the point of the narrative deliberately unfolding one and the same inscription as carrying different meanings at different moments to orchestrate relations of contrast and dialogue between them. Recognizing Gardeviaz’s dynamic material aspects as a narrative technique to achieve this effect thus opens up further interpretive perspectives.

Conclusion As bewildering as Titurel’s gemstone inscription worn by a dog might seem at first, it exemplifies rather fundamental reflections on both the material aspects of literature and the literary presentation of material objects. An archaeological method helped to analyse Gardeviaz’s inscription as constituted by its material realization — the material properties and cultural connotations of dog, leash, and collar. However, Titurel shows that this method of reading the inscription leads at different moments to different interpretations. Writing is revealed to be a phenomenon in flux. Especially in relation to medieval notions of materiality and mediality, media studies help us to see this not as the eccentricities of a special case or a particular class of writing, nor as writing that fails to preserve its original meaning, nor as a hybrid of orality and literacy, but rather as a fundamental condition of all forms of writing, whose material existence makes them endure over time, but also subjects them to change. This allows to recognize the dynamic material aspects of writing as a productive phenomenon literature can employ in fictional Körper – Schrift constellations. In Titurel’s case, we are missing the narrative point of the inscription’s withdrawal if we try to reconstruct it on an intra-diegetic level, as if it was a factual object instead of a literary construct. Similarly, if we try to settle for one ultimate interpretation of the inscription we risk missing out the point of its dynamic material aspects as a narrative technique to evoke and entangle its different meanings at different moments. What happens to Gardeviaz later on does not retrospectively prove Gardeviaz’s past meaning wrong for that past moment, but it does change our perception of both interpretations. Gardeviaz can still be the valid token of Clauditte’s and Ehkunat’s love, while simultaneously also being the image of Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s hope and doom. Knowing that he once meant something entirely different, in fact, makes this later significance more striking. This poetological method interlocks two movements on different levels. Within the story, it requires Gardeviaz’s inscription to be presented as an actual physical object whose material realization physically preserves the writing so that it can be met and interacted with by different figures and develop a biography of its own, while its dynamic material aspects appear as a productive source of reconstituting and changing the inscription’s meaning. But because the inscription appears within a literary text, it is possible for

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the narrator to present these dynamic material aspects of writing at work by setting out from the material artefact and revealing that it bore different meanings at different moments of its story and equally keeps reasserting itself over them. Using inherently literary techniques, the narrator embraces the special opportunity which the inscription’s dynamic material aspects offer to the story he is telling, and a-chronologically links different moments in time, different figures’ stories, and different perspectives on the inscription, to weave Gardeviaz’s contrasting meanings into a network of ambiguity and polyphony. The media aspects of Clauditte’s story on the leash remain tangible as material objects that interact dynamically with the writing they bear. This leads to a multi-temporal perspective on the inscription, and reflects upon storytelling as a process unfolding between different moments in time that are conjured up over its material aspects. However, the fact that this perspective is only partially accessible to Titurel’s protagonists that hold the story in their hand on such a literal level the letters can cut their palms, reflects in turn the media difference between the inscription on an intradiegetical level and the vantage point of Titurel’s audience that experiences it as a literary construct — in some aspects, enjoying a privileged point of view, in others, faced with tantalizing inaccessibility of the inscription as a material object. The dynamic material aspects of Gardeviaz’s inscription thus turn into a literary phenomenon serving a poetological concept. Titurel exemplifies what potential interpretations can open up when analysing the specific effects and consequences of such a narrative strategy.

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Richard North

Iceland’s Alexander Gunnarr and Pale Corn in Njáls saga It is only there for a moment, and then the epiphany is gone and with it his allusion to Alexanders saga, but by the end of the scene in which Gunnarr looks back at the pale corn of Hlíðarendi and chooses to die there, the author of Njáls saga has defined him as an Alexander on the brink of undying fame. Although Gunnarr wins his in the diametrically opposite way, this essay will argue that his scene borrows from Alexander’s and that the author of Njáls saga alludes to Alexander’s story within Gunnarr’s for the purpose of anti-Icelandic satire.

Bleikir akrar: The Two Contexts Alexanders saga and Njáls saga were both written by Icelanders in the later thirteenth century. The former work is often held to have been translated by Bishop Brandr Jónsson of Hólar, while he was in Trondheim in Norway in 1262–1263, from a popular twelfth-century Latin verse epic on Alexander of Macedon, the De Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon.1 In 1262, the time of Brandr’s arrival, his country’s independence was in its last throes. In Iceland the century had been marked by an intermittent but increasingly psychotic civil war between alliances of leading kindreds, whose selfish jockeying for position allowed King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway, who reigned 1217–1263, to annex the whole country a year before he died.2 Njáls saga was probably composed in the 1280s, a generation later.3 Although its author is thus far unknown, Lars Lönnroth has argued that he may have been working for the  1 de Leeuw van Weenen, ed., Alexanders Saga, fols 4r–4v; Laxness, ed., Alexanders Saga; Wolf, ‘Review of Alexanders Saga by de Leeuw van Weenen’; Wolf, ‘Gyðinga saga, Alexanders saga and Bishop Brandr Jónsson’, pp. 394–96.  2 Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland, pp. 221–31.  3 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, pp. lxxv–lxxxiv; Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, pp. 34–39; Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction, pp. 174–87.

Richard North, University College London Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 203–220  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121608

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interests of the Svínfelling clan, to whom Bishop Brandr belonged.4 At any rate, he or she (but henceforth: he) moves his story from Gunnarr to Njáll in such a way that the burning of the latter and his family (chaps. 127–30), the complex litigation that follows and the climactic breakdown of order in the Althing (chaps. 140–44) reveal systemic flaws in the old secular Commonwealth which not even Christianity or the nascent Icelandic Church can overcome. To go into the comparison between contexts, let us start with Alexanders saga. In the first book of this often humorous translation, the young king of Macedon surveys the beauty of Asia from a hilltop, looking forward to bleika akra (pale cornfields) among many other resources as an incentive to conquer the world.5 In chapter 75 of Njáls saga, a deft prose epic acknowledged to be a masterpiece, the hero Gunnarr Hámundarson, departing Iceland, looks back by chance at the bleikir akrar of his farm and decides to stay there, although it will cost him his life, because the hillside looks so beautiful.6 This phrase is found in no other source.

Gunnarr Looks Back Gunnarr is at the end of his tether. A warrior in his prime, but sensitive and worn out by the little men trying to bring him down, as well as trapped in a bitter marriage of his own pride’s devising with the freewheeling beauty Hallgerðr, and now at odds with Grani, one of their two sons — perhaps it is not surprising that he is tired of life.7 From being feted as a near equal and richly endowed by kings for his exploits abroad, he has been reduced to petty feuds, ambushes, and legal entanglement in the south of Iceland, with only his close friend Njáll to steer him through the wiles of envious neighbours. Yielding to renewed provocation, once more against Njáll’s advice, Gunnarr kills Þorgeirr, son of a dupe named Otkell whom he killed earlier. Slowly he pays the price. In the Althing towards midsummer Þorgeirr’s kinsmen, the local magnates Gizurr inn hvíti (the white) Teitsson and his cousin Geirr goði (chieftain), combine to have Gunnarr sentenced to three years’ outlawry.8 Compliance with this means holding to an agreement by which Gunnarr moves himself out of Iceland to Norway or further afield, to the emperor in Byzantium. For others, such as his brother or the sons of Njáll, a tour of this kind is desirable, but Gunnarr has grown so sick of Iceland that he toys with the idea of not returning at all. The arrangements are made, his farm entrusted  4 Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction, pp. 123, 174–87.  5 Laxness, ed., Alexandreis það er Alexanders Saga, p. 19.  6 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 182. For a summary of critical positions, see Lönnroth, ‘New and Old Interpretations’.  7 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, pp. 88–89 and 132–33. Dronke, ‘The Role of Sexual Themes’, pp. 22–24.  8 Miller, Why is Your Axe Bloody?, pp. 134–37.

i ce land’s ale xand e r

to Njáll and some goods transferred to the ship. Having told his household ‘at hann myndi ríða í braut alfari’ (that he would be riding off for good, chap. 75; but nobody believes him), Gunnarr vaults into the saddle. He rides off with a certain Kolskeggr, his brother, whose absence in Landnámabók, or indeed in any other source, may show that the author of Njáls saga has invented him for what follows. As the brothers follow the Markarfljót down to the coast þá drap hestr Gunnars fœti, ok stǫkk hann ór sǫðlinum. Honum varð litit upp til hlíðarinnar ok bœjarins at Hlíðarenda ok mælti: ‘Fǫgr er hlíðin, svá at mér hefir hon aldri jafnfǫgr sýnzk, bleikir akrar ok slegin tún, ok mun ek ríða heim aptr ok fara hvergi’. (chap. 75)9 In Andrew Hamer’s faithful translation: Gunnarr’s horse stumbled, and he sprang from the saddle. His glance was drawn upwards to the slopes and the farm at Hlíðarendi, and he said: ‘How lovely the slopes are, more lovely than they have ever seemed to me before, pale cornfields and new-mown hay. I am riding back home, and I will not go away’.10 Grœnlendinga saga, from the mid-thirteenth century, has a scene in which the Greenlander Eiríkr the Red turns back from taking ship to Vínland because his horse stumbles on the way to the harbour (chap. 3).11 This may show us how the author of Njáls saga has transformed a motif of ill omen into something new. Aside from the beauty of his cornfields, Gunnarr gives no reason for his volte-face, but that is not hard to find: as Peter Foote and Preben MeulengrachtSørensen both observed, Gunnarr returns because of his honour.12 Kolskeggr’s reproaches tell us that he puts himself thus in a position of criminal compromise.13 Then the brothers part company, Kolskeggr continuing to Norway, from there to baptism in Denmark and through Russia to Byzantium, where marriage and salvation as a Varangian knight await.14 Gunnarr returns home, to the rejoicing of Hallgerðr, glad to see either that he shows spirit,15 or that he will die; and to the misgivings of Rannveig, his mother. For him an unreal tranquility continues. Out in the west of Iceland, Óláfr pái (peacock) Hǫskuldsson, Hallgerðr’s half-brother and one of Gunnarr’s last-remaining friends, offers sanctuary there to him and Hallgerðr. Gunnarr eagerly accepts, before changing his mind

 9 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 182.  10 Hamer, Njáls Saga and its Christian Background, p. 136.  11 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, eds, Eyrbyggja Saga. Grœnlendinga Sǫgur, p. 249.  12 Foote, ‘Review Article: New Dimensions in “Njáls Saga”’, p. 57. Meulengracht-Sørensen, Fortælling og ære, pp. 306–07. For Miller, Gunnarr’s vision is not resigned but aggressive, one of ‘mowing down his enemies like hay’, in Why is Your Axe Bloody?, p. 139.  13 Lönnroth, ‘Hetjurnar líta bleika akra’; Allen, Fire and Iron, pp. 108–09.  14 Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation, pp. 211–12, p. 212: ‘Which of the two has the author’s sympathy is an open question’.  15 Miller, Why is Your Axe Bloody?, p. 139.

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again. The following summer, being sentenced in absentia to outlawry for life, Gunnarr goes nowhere but waits at home for the end. In a last-ditch attempt to save him, or at least his honour through the prospect of their vengeance, Njáll offers Gunnarr the muscle of Skarpheðinn and Hǫskuldr, two of his formidable sons. But Gunnarr declines and goes about as he did before, and in the autumn the attack takes place (chaps. 76–77). The attackers sneak up on Gunnarr one sultry afternoon, with the advantage of numbers and higher ground. Gunnarr, dozing in the same upper room as where his wife and mother are also asleep, is wakened by the dying bark of Sámr, his Irish wolfhound. Although he knows he is next, he prolongs the inevitable with his halberd and bow, making such short work of Gizurr’s forty volunteers that after their third retreat they come close to calling it off. But at this point Gunnarr grows tired. Pretending to want to shame Gizurr’s party by shooting them with one of their spent arrows, for which he must extend his arm, he plants a thought in Gizurr’s mind: ‘mundi eigi út leitat viðfanga, ef gnógt væri inni’, says Gizurr, having seen Gunnarr’s golden ring, ‘ok skulu nú sœkja at’ (he wouldn’t have been looking for more ammo if there was enough inside, and we must attack now, chap. 77). On the advice of Mǫrðr, a Loki-like hater of Gunnarr whose role in the saga continues almost to the end,16 Gizurr has the roof twisted off with a windlass and his enemy exposed, whereupon Gunnarr’s bow-string is cut by a stray attacker. Pitching him off the roof with his halberd and then killing the man’s brother, Gunnarr turns to Hallgerðr for two locks of her famously long hair.17 Since this request can have little practical value,18 it may be that Gunnarr’s aim is to let Hallgerðr (and his mother) believe that she is to blame for his end. At any rate, the scene is set for some theatre in which Hallgerðr plays a magnificent part. Having asked her husband if anything depends on it, she hears him claim that they will never get him as long as he can use his bow. Then she reminds him of the time he slapped her in front of guests for having tried to restore his honour, by enlisting a thrall to steal Otkell’s butter and cheese (chap. 48). Gunnarr replies that ‘Hefir hverr til síns ágætis nǫkkut, ok skal þik þessa eigi lengi biðja’ (To each his own idea of excellence, and you shan’t be asked again, chap. 77). By removing his pronoun he effaces himself from his final words, fighting Gizurr’s men until he tires even further and they kill him. But this is not the end of Gunnarr. For a while Njáls saga shifts into the gear of a fornaldarsaga (legendary saga), with an aftermath in which Gunnarr speaks a verse to his son Hǫgni and Skarpheðinn Njálsson from his heathen burial mound (chap. 78). This scene is also the prelude to the latter two’s vengeance on the perpetrators. It comes a while after Gunnarr’s interment

 16 North, Pagan Words, pp. 173–75.  17 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. xxxi.  18 Miller, Why is Your Axe Bloody?, p. 142.

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there with grave-goods, but without the halberd which his mother Rannveig has withheld so that someone may avenge him. Hǫgni becomes that man, when Skarpheðinn, not daring to tell him the shepherd’s tale that Gunnarr is singing verses from the mound, takes him out there one evening instead. The mound opens and Gunnarr is discovered. He has turned himself south to face the moon, which is full and moving through clouds. Roundabout inside are four lights and thus no shadow, while Gunnarr, just as when the shepherd heard him, appears ‘kátligr ok með gleðimóti miklu’ (genial and glowing with great happiness). His verse is loud enough to be heard from a distance: Mælti dǫggla deilir,        dáðum rakkr, sá er háði bjartr með beztu hjarta        benrǫgn, faðir Hǫgna: Heldr kvazk hjálmi faldinn        hjǫrþilju sjá vilja vættidraugr en vægja,        val-Freyju stafr, deyja – ok val-Freyju stafr deyja.19 [Spoke the giver of rings, proud in deeds, he who raised | Bright with the best heart the wound-gods, Hǫgni’s father: | Said that helmet-encased sword-board’s lifting-demon, | Staff of slaughter-Freyja, that he’d rather die than yield – | Staff of slaughter-Freyja, rather die.] Jamie Cochrane has shown that the belief of the normally sceptical Hǫgni (a doubting Thomas after the Resurrection) in what he has seen helps to fix the status of this incident as true; also that there is no evidence that Gunnarr knows he is being observed, despite the descriptor ‘Hǫgni’s father’.20 Gunnarr’s extra half-line fits with verses declaimed by the ghosts in the later Icelandic literary tradition, which is one reason to date the verse to the thirteenth century, some time before the 1280s when the saga was probably composed.21 In the stanza’s first half, the compound benrǫgn (wound-gods) appears to be a kenning for ‘battle’, on analogy with heyja orrustu (to initiate a battle); we have seen this word earlier, in the prelude to Gunnarr’s killing of Þorgeirr Otkelsson by the Rangá, for a gout of blood on Gunnarr’s halberd, which tells him that a battle is due (chap. 72).22 The meaning of the stanza’s second half is complicated by vættidraugr, the base for its warrior-kenning, in that this may mean either ‘lifting-demon’ as here (for the man who lifts a shield, a warrior) or ‘watcher-ghost’, which the prose narration takes literally: in the prose, Gunnarr, invested in the land like one of the vættir (watchers) of Icelandic folklore, has become a draugr, one of the living dead.23

 19  20  21  22  23

Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 193. Cochrane, ‘The Incredulity of Hǫgni’. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 193, n. Verse 4. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 175. Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, A Piece of Horse Liver, pp. 143–62. Guerrero, ‘Stranded in Miðgarðr’, p. 44: ‘the happiest draugr that I found in the whole corpus of sagas’.

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Nonetheless, there is a salvific aspect to this scene. Gunnarr’s position between four lights, as if in the midst of the cross, puts him at the centre of a thirteenth-century Christian symbolism,24 whereby Gunnarr has a post-mortem promise of the Christian alternative which lies only five years away with the arrival of the missionary Þangbrandr (in 997).25 Death becomes Gunnarr because his apparition portends Christianity. While living through the feuds of paganism, he was more dead than alive; now dead, he begins to resemble the superlative young athlete we met back in chapter 19. Gunnarr, in this way, if we match this scene with his vision of home on Hlíðarendi, has become one with the fair hillside for which he went home to die.26

Alexander Looks Forward In Alexanders saga, having subdued the Greeks, young King Alexander sets sail for Asia Minor in order to settle accounts with Darius, Great King of Persia. The Greek host with him looks with longing aft at the land they have left behind. Alexander nonetheless looks not back but forward, with such eagerness to fight Darius ‘að hann gleymdi þegar fósturlandi sínu, og var þar eftir móðir hans og systur’ (that straightaway he forgot his native land, even though his mother and sisters remained there).27 When he sees Asia rising over the bow, ‘þá gladdist hann svá mjög við, að gleðinni var næsta rúmfátt í brjóstinu’ (he was so immensely happy about this that for the joy of it there was barely room in his breast). He orders his own rowers to bring their ship first in to land. No further than an arrow’s shot from land, ‘þá skýtur konungur öru á landið upp og særir svá jörð óvina sinna’ (then the king shoots an arrow up on to the shore and so wounds his enemies’ estate). With a war-yell from his men, convinced of victory, they all cast anchor, walk up the beach and pitch their tents in Asia. The next morning gengur konungur á fjall eitt hátt og sér þaðan yfir landið. Þar mátti hann alla vega sjá frá sér fagra völlu, bleika akra, stóra skóga, blómgaða víngarða, sterkar borgir. Og er konungur sér yfir þessa fegurð alla, þá mælir hann svo til vildarliðs síns: ‘Þetta ríki, er nú lít eg yfir, ætla eg mér sjálfum. En Grikkland, föðurleifð mína, vil eg nú gefa yður upp’, segir hann til höfðingjanna.28

 24 Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation, pp. 211–17, at 217: ‘Gunnarr Hámundarson’s posthumous fate seems to be deliberately associated with Christian features that anticipate the new creed and its promise of redemption’.  25 Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation, p. 214: ‘If nothing else, this is an exceptionally well-lit scene’.  26 North, Pagan Words, pp. 165–71, at 168.  27 Laxness, Alexandreis það er Alexanders Saga, pp. 18–19.  28 Laxness, Alexandreis það er Alexanders Saga, p. 19.

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[the king goes up on a high mountain and from there surveys the land. There he was able to see, in all directions from him, fair plains, pale cornfields, great forests, blossom-covered vineyards, strong cities. And when the king surveys all this beauty, he says to his chosen men: ‘This realm, which I now survey, I intend for myself. But Greece, my patrimony, will I now give up to you’, says he to the generals.] Hereby he renounces his homeland for a vaster country which he means to have for himself. As he goes on to tell his men, this is because of a dream in which a shining figure in priestly robes and foreign signs (ultimately this comes from Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, in which the figure is God)29 has already told him all this will be his, should he only protect his people; Alexander complies with this unexpectedly later, after the sack of Tyre, when the High Priest of Jerusalem confronts him outside his city. At this moment, however, the translator stakes Alexander’s claim with a series of memorable images. Here the words bleika akra (pale cornfields) drew the attention of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, luminary of Njáls saga, who posited that one passage is the source of the other. Although the author of Njáls saga would have left out the forests and vineyards, by letting Gunnarr see bleikir akrar he would have transformed ‘the spring-time dream of the young warrior king’ into ‘the autumnal vision of the weary champion who returns home to die’.30 The translator’s source, Walter’s De Alexandreis, may show us what changes have been made. In the first book of his epic poem, Walter presents Asia as the inspiration for Alexander’s decision to conquer the world: Hinc ubi uernantes Cereali gramine campos, Tot nemorum saltus, tot prata uirentibus herbis Lasciuire uidet tot cinctas menibus urbes, Tot Bachi frutices, tot nuptas uitibus ulmos, ‘Iam satis est’, inquit ‘socii, michi sufficit una Hec regio. Europam uobis patriamque relinquo’. (I. 436–41)31 [From there, he saw plains growing green with Cereal herb, | So many forest pastures, so many meadows luxuriant | With verdant grasses, so many cities girt with walls, | So many vines of Bacchus, so many vine-wedded elms, | ‘Now this one region, my friends’, said he, ‘is enough, | Sufficing just for me. Europe and home I leave to you’.]32

 29 See Ashurst, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil?’, pp. 284–88 (Jewish Antiquities, XI 333–44).  30 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ‘Journey to the Njála Country’, pp. 13–14. See also Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls saga, p. xxxv.  31 Colker, ed., Galteri de Castillione Alexandreis, pp. 29–30.  32 My translation is based primarily on Telfryn Pritchard, trans., The Alexandreis, p. 49; and to a lesser extent on the less literal Townsend, ed., Walter of Châtillon. The Alexandreis, pp. 18–19.

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Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s idea of a loan has since won acceptance. Lönnroth takes it further in order to read into both scenes a Christian condemnation of the pale corn as ‘a dangerous worldly temptation, snares of the devil’, the author’s imputation being that Gunnarr’s moral flaw, pride, makes him susceptible (as well as Hallgerðr’s abundant hair, so much like the waving corn).33 More recently, however, the presence of a loan has been disputed in two of the most detailed discussions of these two narrative contexts. David Ashurst concludes that there is none, partly on the grounds that the phrase bleikir akrar could have come to the author of Njáls saga independently as a figure of speech.34 He suggests that the translator of De Alexandreis, momentarily turning spring into harvest, used these words separately for Walter’s term ‘uernantes Cereali gramine campos’ (plains growing green with Cereal herb, i.e. corn) on the basis of John 4. 35: ‘levate oculos vestros et videte regiones quia albae sunt iam ad messem’ (Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest).35 With these words, John’s Jesus enjoins his disciples to start God’s work on the figurative wheat while there is still time to reap a reward. Thereby Alexander would see before him a Promised Land, a meaning which is hard to read into Hlíðarendi. Andrew Hamer also favours the influence of John 4. 35 on this part of Njáls saga. He, however, darkens this verse’s bright meaning by adducing a line from St Paul to the Galatians 6. 7–8: ‘nolite errare: Deus non inridetur; quae enim seminaverit homo haec et metet’ (Make no mistake: God will not be deceived. For a man also reaps what he has sown).36 In his view, the bleikir akrar tells us (but not Gunnarr) that he shall reap the whirlwind. So, in short, with Ashurst advising that this term is a figure of speech for the Promised Land in Alexanders saga, and with Hamer maintaining that it has a biblical currency as a warning of retribution in Njáls saga, there is a consensus at least that these scenes are too different for a loan to have been made. Nonetheless, certain elements other than the words bleikir akrar strengthen the likelihood that the author of Njáls saga took something from Alexander and gave it to Gunnarr. Of these the first, implied but not noted by Ashurst, is that Gunnarr’s words fǫgr (fair, beautiful) and then jafnfǫgr (as fair, equally beautiful) appear to recapture the line ‘er konungr sér yfir þessa fegurð alla’ (when the king surveys all this beauty) in the above passage in Alexanders saga. For Gunnarr one critic sees this beauty as a locus amoenus, another as an image of Hallgerðr’s silky hair, others as a marker for good farmland.37

 33 Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction, pp. 151–60, at p. 154. Lassen, ‘Indigenous and Latin Literature’, p. 84.  34 Ashurst, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil?’, p. 289; Ashurst, Ethics of Empire in the Saga of Alexander the Great, pp. 144–67.  35 Ashurst, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil?’, pp. 276–77 and 288. John 4. 35, in Colunga and Turrado, eds, Biblia Sacra, p. 1045.  36 Hamer, Njáls Saga and its Christian Background, p. 143; Colunga and Turrado, eds, Biblia Sacra, p. 1132.  37 Langeslag, Seasons in the Literature of the Medieval North, p. 151, n. 170. O’Donoghue, Old

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On the other hand, there is more than gardens, sex, or good grass to consider here. It is the unexpectedness of the aesthetic in Gunnarr’s ‘Fǫgr er hlíðin’ which defines his outcry as his unwitting literary allusion. Indeed, it seems more likely that the author borrowed the phrase bleikir akrar to reinforce the notion of fegurð than the reverse. At any rate, the fact that the sagas have not one but two terms in common makes it more likely that one passage is the source of the other. Three more comparands follow of a more general kind. The first, noted long ago by Lönnroth, concerns the learned Aristotle, tutor to Alexander, who rejects his advice by marching into Asia.38 In Njáls saga Gunnarr keeps a friendship with the older and wiser Njáll, whose advice, starting with his homecoming trip to the Althing (chap. 33) and certainly in this decision to stay (chap. 75), he likewise disregards. Perhaps their friendship was formed as the raison d’être of Njáls saga, on the basis of the teacher-pupil duo in Alexanders saga, if, as Lönnroth believes, Njáls saga was created from separate oral narrative traditions to do with Gunnarr and Njáll.39 It is worth noting that two of the five extant manuscripts of Alexanders saga include a text of the fictional Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem (Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle), in which Alexander addresses his teacher.40 In this light we might compare Aristotle’s advice to his charge with Njáll’s. Aristotle warns the prince about wine and women, particularly about women: ‘Lát ok eigi heimsklega konurnar hugsýkja eða vanmegna sterkan hug’ (And be not so foolish as to let the women fill your strong mind with longing or weakness’); Bacchus and Venus must be avoided, especially Venus: ‘þá er sem og sé lagt á háls þér, það er svo þjáir huginn, að hann gáir ekki að hugsa það, er viti gegni’ (then, it is as if the mind is so enslaved by what’s laid itself about your neck, that it gives not a thought for what may answer to reason).41 Not dissimilar is Njáll’s reaction to Gunnarr’s announcement concerning Hallgerðr, ‘Hann tók þungt á kaupum hans’ (He took his marriage bargain rather hard); when asked why, he says: ‘Af henni mun standa allt it illa, er hon kemr austr hingat’ (All manner of evil will arise from her if she comes here from the west, chap. 33).42 Admittedly it is Hrútr’s, rather than Njáll’s, attempt to dissuade him in the foregoing chapter that shows how naïvely Gunnarr has fallen for Hallgerðr.43 Norse-Icelandic Literature, p. 60: ‘Gunnarr’s vision is of farmland, not natural scenery; a landscape transformed by human endeavour’. Ashurst, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil?’, pp. 278, and, at 289: ‘All that the two episodes have in common for sure is an awareness that productive farmland is beautiful to its owners’.  38 Lönnroth, ‘Hetjurnar líta bleika akra’; Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction, p. 154.  39 Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction, pp. 152–60, at p. 154. Miller, Why is Your Axe Bloody?, pp. 15–23. Disputed, however, in Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Um Njálu, pp. 223–25 (§ 41); and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, pp. 10–12.  40 Wolf, ‘Review of Alexanders Saga by de Leeuw van Weenen’, p. 276.  41 Laxness, Alexandreis það er Alexanders Saga, p. 13.  42 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 87.  43 Dronke, ‘The Role of Sexual Themes’, p. 20.

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Secondly, Alexander and Gunnarr are both bowmen. By the arrow which he shoots from his prow into Asia, ‘ok særir svá jǫrð óvina sinna’ (and so wounds his enemies’ estate), Alexander may be compared with Gunnarr, who ‘skaut mann bezt af boga ok hœfði allt þat, er hann skaut til’ (shot with a bow better than any other man and hit everything he aimed at, chap. 19; see also Hœnsna-Þóris saga, chap. 17, below); Gunnarr holds off some forty attackers with his bow before the end (chap. 77). Thirdly, each saga flirts with the challenge of prospecting for a dead pagan’s salvation: for Alexander, whose life appears to be cut short through the devil’s fear that by invading the Underworld, he, just as Christ later, will harrow hell (in Book 10); and for Gunnarr, whose undead apparition, as Antonsson has shown, portends salvation, for all he is now a draugr.44 For these reasons there is more weight in the argument that with Gunnarr’s sudden decision to return home, the author of Njáls saga has borrowed two words and something of a context from the young Macedonian’s impulse to conquer Asia in Alexanders saga. And yet we still need to find out why, or to what end, he did so.

Purpose of the Loan: Satire With Gunnarr lying dead, the saga adds a commemorative verse, upon which Gizurr seals the moment with magnanimity: ‘Mikinn ǫldung hǫfu vér nú at velli lagit, ok hefir oss erfitt veitt, ok mun hans vǫrn uppi, meðan landit er byggt’ (A great prince we have now laid low on the earth, and his defence will be remembered as long as the land is inhabited, chap. 77). But Gizurr is still glad that Gunnarr is dead. Iceland’s general retrospective awe for Gunnarr is borne out by at least five other accounts of his death, all of which the author of Njáls saga, who stands at the end of the narrative tradition, may have read. First is the verse before Gizurr’s words, which is attributed to Þorkell Elfaraskáld: Spurðu vér, hvé varðisk        vígmóðr kjalar slóða glaðstýrandi geiri,        Gunnarr, fyrir Kjǫl sunnan. Sóknrýrir vann sára        sextán viðar mána hríðar herðimeiða        hauðrmens, en tvá dauða.45 [We heard how the kill-minded steed-steerer of keel-trails, | Gunnarr, with a spear defended himself south of Kjǫlr. | The assault-curtailer got sixteen hard-boughs of the blizzard | Of the earth-circlet tree’s moon wounded, and two dead.]

 44 Ashurst, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil?’, p. 286. Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation, pp. 211–17.  45 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 190 and n. Verse 3.

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Þorkell is otherwise unknown. He does not seem to have been there and his reference to this interior route, as Einar Ólafur Sveinsson infers, puts him north-west on the other side of Iceland from Hlíðarendi.46 In his stanza’s first half the ‘keel-trails’ are ocean roads, whose ‘steed’ is a ship, whose ‘steerer’ is a captain, or nobleman; in the second, the ‘earth-circlet’ is the sea (rather than the World-Serpent), whose ‘tree’ is a ship, whose ‘moon’ is a shield, whose ‘blizzard’ is battle, whose ‘hard-boughs’, or trunks, are warriors. Although the second kenning for ‘warriors’ is unbalanced in favour of Gunnarr’s opponents, the verse works well enough to measure his last stand by the numbers of dead and wounded, if not also by his ‘kill-minded’ way of shrinking the attackers. This verse portrays Gunnarr as a sea-borne hero whose (final) exploit takes place on land south of one of Iceland’s central deserts. Related to this verse is one in Íslendingadrápa, a 26-stanza class-action eulogy of famous Icelanders which is found in the third quire of AM 748 Ib 4to, a manuscript of Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál.47 This poem, which Roberta Frank defines as a combination of de viris illustribus and de casibus virorum illustrium, is attributed to the otherwise unknown Haukr Valdísarson, probably of the early thirteenth century:48 Varðisk Gǫndlar garða         Gunnarr snǫrum runnum greitt, en Gizurr sótti         garp ákafa snarpan; Njǫrðr lét sextán særða         snarr hljómviðu darra (sárt lék halr við hǫlða)         hjǫrregns, en tvá vegna. (St 20)49 [Gunnarr defended against the swift shrubs of Gǫndul’s forts | smoothly, while Gizurr sought the sharp hero in full force; | The swift Njǫrðr of sword-rain got sixteen clanging spear-trees | (sorely the man played with yeomen) wounded and two slain.] In the first half, Gǫndul is a valkyrie, whose ‘forts’ are shields, whose ‘shrubs’ are warriors; in the second, ‘sword-rain’ is blood, whose ‘Njǫrðr’, or sea-god, is an older warrior, again apparently Gunnarr, whereas the ‘spear-trees’, warriors, are his opponents. Although the Njáls saga context makes it plausible that Haukr’s verse postdates the original Þorkell’s, who has influenced whom in transmission must remain a mystery. Gunnarr and his attackers appear only once in his poem and then almost as equals, in that Haukr depicts each side as snarr (swift), although Gizurr’s side outnumbers Gunnarr’s. Geirr goði Ásbrandsson is added to this expedition in an anecdote told by Chieftain Snorri of Fróðá in Eyrbyggja saga, of the second third of the thirteenth century. The story’s interest here lies in Bjǫrn Ásbrandsson Breiðvíkingakappi (champion of the men of Breiðavík). Bjǫrn has been having an affair with  46 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 190, n. 1.  47 Nordal, Tools of Literacy, p. 60.  48 Frank, ‘Skaldic Poetry’, p. 180.  49 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 189, n. 6.

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Þuríðr, Snorri’s daughter and wife of Þóroddr, the man who wants to kill him. Not wishing to let it go so far, Snorri warns his son-in-law that an attack on Bjǫrn must be made outdoors; the man, he says, is both brave and tough, while their force is small: en þeim mǫnnum hefir lítt sózk at sœkja afarmenni slíkt í hús inn, er með meira afla hafa til farit, sem dœmi finnask at þeim Geiri goða ok Gizuri hvíta, þá er þeir sóttu Gunnar at Hlíðarenda inn í hús með átta tigu manna, en hann var einn fyrir, ok urðu sumir sárir, en sumir drepnir, ok létu frá atsókninni, áðr Geirr goði fann þá af skyni sjálfs síns, at honum fækkuðusk skotvápnin. (chap. 47)50 [and little has been achieved by attacking such an outstanding figure in his house by those men who have gone at it with more force, for which the story of Chieftain Geirr and Gizurr the White provides an example, when they attacked Gunnarr at Hlíðarendi in his house with eighty men, with only him there, and some were wounded and others killed, and they would have dropped the attack if Chieftain Geirr hadn’t seen with his own eyes that Gunnarr was running out of missiles.] Bjǫrn leaves Iceland and ends up in America.51 An interrelation of versions may be glimpsed in Snorri’s word atsókn (attack), which partly corresponds with the kenning for Gunnarr sóknrýrir (assault-curtailer) in the verse attributed to Þorkell Elfara. Arrows are also cited in our last analogue for Gunnarr’s last stand, which may be seen at the end of Hœnsna-Þóris saga, of the later thirteenth century. Here a young hero Gunnarr Hlífarson, similarly facing an attack, in his case from a villain named Tungu-Oddr, takes up his bow and shoots better than anyone, ‘ok er þá helzt til jafnat, er var Gunnarr at Hlíðarenda’ (and now the best comparison to make is with Gunnarr at Hlíðarendi, chap. 17).52 Gunnarr’s story is also remembered in chap. 312 of the Hauksbók recension (c. 1310) of Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements). Here, as in Njáls saga, Gizurr is the chieftain leading the attack. In this account Gunnarr’s record is compressed in such a way that it might be argued that its narrative preceded the composition of Njáls saga. The entry comes apropos of Egill Kolsson of Sandgil er sat fyrir Gunnari Hámundarsyni hjá Knafahólum ok fell þar sjálfr ok austmenn tveir ok Ari húskarl hans, en Hjǫrtr bróðir Gunnars ór hans liði. Synir Gunnars váru þeir Grani ok Hámundr. Gunnarr barðisk við Otkell ór Kirkjubœ við garð at Hofi, ok fell Otkell þar ok Skammkell. Geirr goði ok Gizurr hvíti ok Ásgrímr Elliða-Grímsson ok Stǫrkuðr undan Þríhyrningi, son Barkar bláskeggs, Þorkelssonar bundinfóta, er átti Þuríðr

 50 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, and Matthías Þórðarson, eds, Grœnlendinga Sǫgur, p. 133.  51 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, and Matthías Þórðarson, eds, Grœnlendinga Sǫgur, pp. 177–80 (chap. 64).  52 Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, eds, Borgfirðinga Sǫgur, pp. 44–45.

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Egilsdóttur frá Sandgili, þeir fóru um leiðarskeið ok kómu um nótt með þrjá tigu manna til Hlíðarenda, en Gunnarr var fyrir með einn karlmann fulltíða. Tveir menn fellu ór liði Geirs, en sextán urðu sárir, áðr Gunnarr fell. (Hauksbók, chap. 312)53 [who waylaid Gunnarr Hámundarson by Knafahólar and fell there along with the loss of two Norwegians and his bodyguard Ari, and of Gunnarr’s company his brother Hjǫrtr. Gunnarr’s sons were Grani and Hámundr. Gunnarr fought with Otkell from Kirkjubœr near the house at Hof, and Otkell fell there along with Skammkell. Chieftain Geirr and Gizurr the White and Ásgrímr Elliða-Grímsson and Starkaðr below Þríhyrning, son of Bǫrkr Bluebeard, son of Þorkell Bound-Feet, husband of Þuríðr the daughter of Egill of Sandgil, they went on a road-trip and came in the night with thirty men upon Hlíðarendi, while Gunnarr was there just with one grown man. Two men fell of Geirr’s company and sixteen were wounded, before Gunnarr fell.] Although the number of attackers varies between all surviving stories, Hauksbók’s number of dead and injured matches that of the extant skaldic verses exactly: its story may thus have a foot in one or both poems. As in Njáls saga (chap. 47), Otkell’s place is named for a church which is unlikely to have graced the area in the 980s when the story is supposed to be set, while his death appears to lead to the attack.54 On the other hand, there are three battles in Njáls saga for Hauksbók’s two, while the fact that a Hǫgni, not a Hámundr, Gunnarsson is named in the story in Njáls saga is further evidence that this was written after the story in Hauksbók, and that its hero is the least ‘historical’ Gunnarr of them all. Historically, the family relationship between Gunnarr’s two groups of opponents might tell us that their attack was a joint venture to suppress a local menace. Some legendary glamour would attach to the man after they put him down. In the two centuries of storytelling between this event and the composition of Njáls saga, whose author appears (on the evidence of Hauksbók) to have rewritten the attack for daylight, Gunnarr was celebrated as a bowman and seafarer beyond Iceland’s shores. This is the growing legend to which the five other commemorations of Gunnarr bear witness. Last but not least, we should not forget the scribal addition in the Z-group of three manuscripts of Njáls saga, which says, on introducing him, that ‘svá er sannliga sagt, at hans jafningi hafi eigi fœðzk á Íslandi’ (truly it is said that his equal has not been born in Iceland, chap. 19).55 With each retelling of his story, Gunnarr’s fame becomes more extraordinary.

 53 Jakob Benediktsson, ed., Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, p. 357.  54 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, p. 120, n. 4.  55 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, pp. 4 and 53, n. 3.

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The other prodigy is the hero of Alexanders saga. This aspect of the likeness between protagonists has rarely been remarked upon, but it is so striking that it may as well have been hiding in plain sight. Alexander, after his moment of inspiration at the sight of Asia’s cities, forests and fields, takes his army to the ruins of Troy to find the tomb of Achilles. Bringing incense to the grave as if for a saint, Alexander gives a speech in which he uses Achilles to idealize the relationship between history’s nonpareils and the poets, clerks, or writers who commemorate them: Svo háleit er þessa manns hamingja orðin, er hér hvílir, allra helzt í því, að hans frægð mun svo lengi lifa, og mikil sæmd var honum í því að sigra svo mikinn kappa sem Hektor var. En það þykir mér honum þó mestur sæmdarauki verið hafa, að svo góður klerkur sem Hómerus var gerði bók um hans stórvirki, þá er allan aldur mun uppi vera, og þess vildi eg æskja, að nokkur maður væri mér slíkur eptir líflát mitt sem Hómerus var Achilli, ef vér fáum nokkuð þess gjört, er loflegrar umræðu þyki vert.56 [So sublime it turned out, the destiny of this man lying here, most of all in the fact that his fame will live so long, and great honour there was in him in defeating so great a champion as Hector. And yet to me it seems that Achilles’ greatest distinction lay in having a clerk as good as Homer make a book about his exploits to be remembered for all time, and that is what I would ask, that after my decease, some man, should we do something that seems worthy of eulogy, would be there for me as Homer was for Achilles.] The celebrity-conscious Macedonian even says that he would surrender heaven if this meant being famous after his death. Then he turns to his men and tells them of his dream in which the heavenly stranger promised him the world. The latter objective, though historically he failed to achieve it, had nonetheless made his legend so well known by the time the later work was composed that it seems unlikely even momentarily that an allusion to fegurð and bleikir akrar seen from the Asian hilltop in Alexanders saga could have passed Njáls saga’s audience without notice. In the context of local history it has been argued that this saga’s audience or readership were primed to treat details as an aide-de-mémoire for narratives already known, and there is no reason why this could not be true of bookish reference also.57 There are other learned loans in Njáls saga, from the bible, Saints’ Lives and the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great.58 Finally, the contrast. If we study the difference between fresh young Alexander looking forward to victory in a new world in one saga and the weary  56 Laxness, ed., Alexandreis það er Alexanders Saga, p. 20.  57 Müller, Erzähltes Wissen, pp. 48–51, at p. 50.  58 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, pp. 12–21. Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation, pp. 220–25.

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older Gunnarr turning back to defeat in his old world in the other, we see that this is not only a comparison but also a contrast, of diametrical opposites. The latter has been treated as evidence that no loan from one to the other story could have been made.59 However, it is precisely this aspect of Gunnarr as Alexander’s opposite which seems to have motivated the allusion in the first place. While Kolskeggr makes a gesture towards Alexander’s trajectory, going on to a modern Asia Minor to take service as a knight, Gunnarr decides to die at home — of course, that is how Alexander would have won his fame, had he been born in Iceland. The force of this allusion is its humour. As Dronke says of the Njáls saga author in another context, in Hrútr’s way of achieving impotence by enlargement in the marriage with Unnr (chap. 7), he has an ‘impish and satirical eye for opposites’.60

Alexander in Njáls saga: Reflections on his Refraction The author of this saga gives shape to national history as well as local story by contrasting Gunnarr’s aborted departure with Alexander’s successful launch. However, his contrast is also founded on a comparison, between national prodigies. Alexanders saga announces one, just as Njáls saga in chapter 19. And as the former story finishes by saying that the world was not ready to be ruled by Alexander of Macedon, so the author of Njáls saga momentarily mocks his country for tormenting, rejecting, and destroying Gunnarr. For all this author’s apparent admiration for the nobility of a few individuals three centuries before him, the satire in his refraction of Alexander’s pale corn reflects his disillusion in Iceland as a working society. Here was the political basket-case which had sold the last of its independence to Norway barely three decades earlier. As a pupil of the great Árni Magnússon, collector of manuscripts, one Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík, put it four and a half centuries after the composition of Njáls saga: ‘Þá lesnar eru sumar (já flestar) vorar sögur, verður conclusionen: bændur flugust á’ (When some (yea most) of our stories are read, the conclusion must be this: farmers at fisticuffs). Then he added: ‘En patriotinn svarar: Hvað kunni að vera meira söguefni á slíku landi?’ (But the patriot answers: in such a country, what other subject for a story could there be?).61 Countries do not always choose the right governments. The wearing down and death of Gunnarr in Njáls saga heralds the burning of Njáll and much civil unrest as well as parliamentary chaos and then vengeance and warfare abroad. With bleikir akrar, words for an Alexander lost, the author makes this failure speak for his lifetime.

 59 Ashurst, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil?’, p. 278.  60 Dronke, ‘The Role of Sexual Themes’, p. 10. See also Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, pp. 49–50.  61 Sverrir Tómasson, ‘“Bændur flugust á”’ (‘“Farmers at Fisticuffs”’), in 1738.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Colker, M. L., ed., Galteri de Castillione Alexandreis, Thesaurus Mundi, 17 (Padua: Antenore, 1978) Colunga, Alberto, and Laurentio Turrado, eds, Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clemen­ tinam, Biblioteca de los Autores Cristianos 14, 7th edn (Madrid: BAC, 1977) de Leeuw van Weenen, Andrea, ed., Alexanders Saga: AM 519a 4° in the Arnamagnæan Collection, Manuscripta Nordica: Early Nordic Manuscripts in Digital Facsimile, 2 (København: Museum Tusculanum, 2009) Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, ed., Brennu-Njáls Saga, Íslenzk fornrit, 12 (Reykjavík: Hið Islenzka Fornritafélag, 1954, repr. 1971) —— , ed., Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, trans. P. Schach with an introduction by E. O. G. Turville-Petre (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971) Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, and Matthías Þórðarson, eds, Eyrbyggja Saga. Grœnlendinga Sǫgur, Íslenzk fornrit, 4 (Reykjavík: Hið Islenzka Fornritafélag, 1935) Jakob Benediktsson, ed., Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, Íslenzk fornrit, 1 [1 and 2] (Reykjavík: Hið Islenzka Fornritafélag, rev. edn 1986) Laxness, Halldór K., ed., Alexandreis það er Alexanders Saga Mikla (Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1945) Nordal, Sigurður, and Guðni Jónsson, eds, Borgfirðinga Sǫgur, Íslenzk fornrit, 2, 2nd edn (Reykjavík: Hið Islenzka Fornritafélag, 1956) Pritchard, Telfryn R., trans., The Alexandreis (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986) Townsend, David, trans., Walter of Châtillon. The Alexandreis: A Twelfth-Century Epic (Peterborough: Broadview, 2007) Secondary Studies Allen, R. F., Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to Njáls Saga (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971) Ashurst, David, ‘Bleikir Akrar – Snares of the Devil? The Significance of the Pale Cornfields in Alexanders Saga’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 25 (1998–2001), 272–91 —— , The Ethics of Empire in the Saga of Alexander the Great: A Study Based on MS AM 519a 4to, Studia Islandica, 61 (Reykjavík: Haskolautgafan, 2009) Cochrane, Jamie, ‘The Incredulity of Hǫgni: The Importance of Believing in Ghosts in Njáls saga’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 44 (2020), 5–30 Dronke, Ursula, ‘The Role of Sexual Themes in Njáls Saga’, Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Norse Studies delivered at University College London, 27 May, 1980 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1981) Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Um Njálu (Reykjavík: Menningarsjóður, 1933)

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—— , ‘Journey to the Njála Country, 7th August 1973’, Gripla, 1 (1975), 7–18 Foote, Peter, ‘Review Article: New Dimensions in “Njáls Saga”’, Scandinavica, 18 (1979), 49–58 Frank, Roberta, ‘Skaldic Poetry’, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. by C. J. Clover and J. Lindow (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), pp. 157–238 Guerrero, Fernando, ‘Stranded in Miðgarðr: Draugar Folklore in Old Norse Sources’ (unpublished MA dissertation, Universitetet i Oslo, 2003) Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation in Old Norse Literature (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018) Hamer, A. J., Njáls Saga and its Christian Background: A Study of Narrative Method, Germania Latina 8, Mediaevalia Groningana, new series, 20 (Groningen: Peeters, 2008) Hastrup, Kirsten, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, A Piece of Horse Liver: Myth, Ritual and Folklore in Old Icelandic Sources, trans. T. Gunnell and J. Turville-Petre (Reykjavík: Haskolautgafan, 1998) Langeslag, Paul, Seasons in the Literature of the Medieval North (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015) Lassen, Annette, ‘Indigenous and Latin Literature’, in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 74–87 Lönnroth, Lars, ‘Hetjurnar líta bleika akra. Athuganir á Njáls sögu og Alexanders sögu’ [‘Heroes survey pale acres: Observations on Njáls saga and Alexanders saga’], Skírnir, 144 (1970), 12–30 —— , Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) —— , ‘New and Old Interpretations of Njáls saga’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 13 (2017), 101–14 Meulengracht-Sørensen, Preben, Fortælling og ære: Studier i islændingesagaerne (Aarhus: University of Aarhus Press, 1993) Miller, W. I., Why is Your Axe Bloody? A Reading of Njáls saga (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) Müller, Claudia, Erzähltes Wissen: Die Isländersagas in der Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.), Texte und Untersuchungen zur Germanistik und Skandinavistik, 47 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001) Nordal, Guðrún, Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001) North, Richard, Pagan Words and Christian Meanings, Costerus New Series, 81 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991) O’Donoghue, Heather, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)

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Sverrir Tómasson, ‘“Bændur flugust á”: Þrjár athugasemdir Jóns Ólafssonar úr Grunnavík um fornbókmenntir’ [‘“Farmers at Fisticuffs”: Three Comments on the Old Literature from Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík’], Gripla, 14 (2003), 325–26 Wolf, Kirsten, ‘Gyðinga saga, Alexanders saga and Bishop Brandr Jónsson’, Scandinavian Studies, 60 (1988), 371–400 —— , ‘Review of Alexanders Saga: AM 519a 4° in the Arnamagnæan Collection by Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110 (2011), 276–78

Melissa Herman

Sensing Stories Iconography, Pattern, and Abstraction in Metalwork from Early Medieval England

The creation, telling, and retelling of stories formed an integral part of early medieval life. The evocative image of warriors and their families gathered in a hall listening to a scop spin a tale of heroism, loyalty, or tragedy is one that resonates with modern perceptions of early medieval England.1 Although clear and unequivocal historical proof remains elusive,2 these storytellers remain a touchstone, drawn from the surviving literature, for our understanding of the period.3 But stories are not just narratives told to or read by an audience to relate a series of events, real or imagined, as many other contributions to this volume illustrate.4 Stories convey sensations and emotions to bring a sense of immediacy and familiarity. The more evocative the description, the more tangible the connection with the audience will be and therefore the more effective the story.5 Stories change a listener and through stories it is possible to demonstrate both experiences and knowledge.6 Words are not alone in creating this effect: imagery too can create a sense of story, sensation, and immediacy. Stories can be inspired by the viewing of objects, both from the object itself, as in Beowulf when mention of the healsbeag (necklace or torque) inspires the poet to launch into a detailed narrative about its past, entirely tangential to the main story,7 and from the decoration, even non-narrative and abstracted ornament, found on the object.

 1 Niles, ‘Beowulf’, p. 32; Kendall, The Metrical Grammar of ‘Beowulf’, p. 3.  2 Frank, ‘The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet’, pp. 11–36; Niles, ‘Myth of the AngloSaxon Oral Poet’, pp. 7–12.  3 Frank, ‘The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet’, p. 12.  4 See the chapters by Jane Coles, Theo Bryer, and Daniel Ferreira; Jorge Luis Bueno; Christoph Witt; Meg Boulton; and Euan McCartney Robson.  5 Gotschall, The Storytelling Animal, at e.g. pp. 137, 152.  6 O’Neill, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.  7 Fulk, ed. and trans., The ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, ll. 1195–1216.

Melissa Herman, University of York Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 221–238  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121609

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Imagery from early medieval England, that of the sixth and seventh centuries, is predominantly found in the surviving material record as metalwork, personal ornament and armament as well as — more rarely — decorative and functional objects. Decorative motifs may have ornamented more ephemeral media, such as textiles, wood and bone or ivory, but few examples have survived to be included in the corpus of extant art.8 The metalwork artefacts are richly decorated with intricate and detailed linear (interlacing) patterns and zoomorphic images.9 In approaching this type of highly ornamented metalwork it is necessary to remember that the artistic choices being made in the patterns are no happy accident: they are deliberately and rigorously planned to achieve their end result. These complex patterns, and the skilled craftsmanship they display, served a purpose apart from the simple cultural delight in aesthetic complexity.10 Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo is one of the richest, high-status, ‘princely’ burials of the early medieval period in England and the artefacts excavated from it are of the highest quality and value. A small, gold and garnet cloisonné triangular ‘dummy buckle’ (Figure 11.1) might be overlooked in the shadow of the other, more prominent, Sutton Hoo treasures. However, despite its small size and relative simplicity, the buckle is a masterpiece of technical execution and geometric ornamentation. Nearly every available surface is decorated with cloisonné work in complex and alternating patterns. Each decorative field is separated from the others by a gold framing border or a decorative boss; however, they are all in dialogue with each other, creating a shifting but harmonious rhythm as the eye moves over the surface of the object. If, as Derrida claims, stories told to oneself are autobiographies,11 and autobiography is, in turn, a form of auto-affection or self-relation, then it follows that telling stories is the means by which experience is analysed and turned inward to affect the self.12 From its creation as a physical object, the buckle begins to tell stories about itself and the culture it originates from. As denoted by the ‘label’ it has been given, dummy buckle, this object is shaped like a triangular buckle but is not functional: its form is, instead, part of the ornamentation. That ornamentation mirrors that of a functional triangular buckle closely, albeit in miniature: three bosses at the points of the triangle set with cabochon garnets, as if to hide rivets; step-pattern cloisonné encased in a more intricate border; and even a cut-away dummy tongue, mimicking the hinged tongue that would hold the belt or strap. These ornate details suggest

 8 Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art, p. 1; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 6.  9 Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 24–27; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 62–67; Budny, ‘Deciphering the Art of Interlace’, pp. 183–85; Hull, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 25–26; Webster, ‘Encrypted Visions’, pp. 11–21.  10 Deshman, ‘Anglo-Saxon Art after Alfred’, pp. 177–78; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 10; Geake, The Use of Grave-Goods, p. 125.  11 Derrida, The Ear of the Other, pp. 43–44.  12 Derrida, The Animal, p. 95.

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that the ‘buckle’ was created in a workshop which seems, technologically and materially, to have been among the elite of its time — and included consideration of the pleasure of viewing in its criteria of manufacture. Triangular buckles were a common part of dress in early medieval England from the late sixth to early seventh centuries,13 and when found in a burial context, are almost always in the graves of men.14 Ornately decorated triangular buckles made from high-status materials like gold and garnet are particularly found in prestigious or ‘princely’ grave contexts.15 In replicating the form and ornamentation of the triangular buckle, the Sutton Hoo dummy buckle is utilizing the cultural familiarity of the object and the perceived associations with masculine dress and high status, telling a story about what it is, which would be immediately recognized and understood by a contemporary audience. Perhaps the complexity and layered patterns that typify much of the art of early medieval England were meant to be perceived by a viewer in a manner akin to the reception of Old English poetry, the stories crafted and recounted regularly within the society. Meaning shifts as a visual interpretation adjusts while the eye moves over the dense iconography, much as a reader or listener’s understanding shifts as they proceed through a poem or riddle.16 The layered and often shifting zoomorphic interlace and patterns serve as sensory reminders of a viewer’s engagement with the natural world, much as the ekphrastic descriptions found in Old English poetry serve as vivid reminders of a sensory experience.17 These aesthetic effects are both dependant upon and enhanced by the materiality of the ornamented artefacts. They utilize the reflective qualities of metal and polished stone, the shadows and recesses as well as the texture (smooth or rough) created by the ornament the direct the movement of the eye and therefore the understanding of the iconography across the surface of the object.18 Considering this visual legacy alongside the surviving stories of early medieval England, it can be argued that an interest in or enjoyment of deliberate ambiguity and multivalent meaning infuses a wider cultural milieu and encompasses a key aspect of the cultural sensibility.19 Turning to the literature of early medieval England, the realm of stories both written and recounted, similar aspects of puzzling and shifting meanings are found in both the poetic verses and the riddles, which practically beg to be solved even as they seek to obfuscate the answer in their language. They reflect a delight in process,

 13 Owen-Crocker, Dress, pp. 195–96.  14 Marzinzik, Early Anglo-Saxon Belt Buckles.  15 Marzinzik, Early Anglo-Saxon Belt Buckles, pp. 49–50; Owen-Crocker, Dress, p. 195.  16 Leyerle, ‘The Interlace Structure of Beowulf’; Brooks, ‘Sight, Sound, and the Perception of the Anglo-Saxon Liturgy’.  17 Ricoer, The Rule of Metaphor, pp. 82, 96; Too, ‘The Appeal to the Senses in the Old English Phoenix’; Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, pp. 1–2.  18 Herman, ‘All that Glitters’.  19 Keefer, ‘“Either / And” as “Style”’.

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in the effort to unravel meaning, analogous to that involved in encountering the visual material. Vernacular poetry of the time relies on pattern, familiarity and a sense of timelessness, creating a contiguous experience of present within which the uncanny and intriguing events recounted are enacted, a juxtaposition that effectively draws a reader or listener into the narrative.20 In this respect, one of the most notable characteristics of Old English poetry is the kenning. The term itself is drawn from Nordic poetic treatises as the practice proliferates in Scandinavian verse and sagas, and refers to a set of vivid metaphoric terms.21 Simply defined, a kenning is most generally understood to be a compound word or short phrase which replaces a name or noun in which the object of the metaphor is implicit but not explicitly stated.22 The frame of reference of a kenning may be straightforward, but it can sometimes be quite obscure and therefore open to debate, leaving them, and by extension the poem’s meaning, unresolved.23 Clearly, the way in which a kenning is translated or interpreted will have a significant effect on the verse and the poem in which it is contained, making their understanding a point of contention in some instances. For example, the commonly accepted interpretation of the two kennings lifes wealhstod and banhuses weard in Exodus is ‘soul’ or ‘intellect’, but it has been argued that both should instead be understood to refer to Christ, an interpretation that significantly changes the reading of the poem.24 If the kennings in Old English poetry are meant to be multi-layered and complex ways to describe someone or something, it follows that their use was a deliberate attempt to control or guide the mental journey of the reader or listener. The vivid metaphor created by the kenning is intended to lead to analytical steps of unravelling meaning and impressions in order to eventually arrive at an intended point. Such poetical journeys may obfuscate an immediately accessible understanding but offer a more complex and aesthetically pleasing process of understanding. Using the example of ban-hus: thinking ‘bone house’ leads to images of bones or perhaps specifically the ribs, the framework of the chest, and a house, built upon a frame, which shelters and protects; the term thus aptly denotes the body as something that houses the soul, or the chest as something that contains the heart.25 However, it can also be argued that the kenning in Old English poetry is not simply used to lyrically or metaphorically replace a term, or paint a

 20 Clemoes, Interactions of Thought and Language, p. 117.  21 Gardner, ‘The Old English Kenning’, pp. 109–10; Jackson and Amvela, Words, Meaning and Vocabulary, p. 24; Sauer, The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, p. 234.  22 Gardner, ‘The Old English Kenning’, pp. 109–10; Sauer, The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, p. 234.  23 Gardner, ‘The Old English Kenning’, pp. 109–17; Sauer, The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, p. 234.  24 Haines, ‘Unlocking Exodus 11, 516–532’; Sharma, ‘The Economy of the Word’, pp. 188–89.  25 Lee, Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon, pp. 82–83.

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Figure 11.1. Gold and garnet cloisonné triangular dummy buckle from Sutton Hoo (British Museum 1939, 1010.10).

picture vividly in the mind of the audience, meeting the needs of alliteration and stress required of the poetic lines. Rather, it can be considered as a means by which to draw the audience along a cognitive path that includes all the associated connotations.26 In this way, the poetic tradition of early medieval England embraced a complexity, nuance and, perhaps most importantly, a shifting sense of meaning which is directly analogous to that invoked by visual perception of the art; it follows that puzzles and riddles would be readily embraced. In light of such characterization of the poetry, emphasizing complexity and multivalency, it becomes necessary to consider the iconography of the ubiquitous ‘anonymous’ zoomorph. There is no single type of anonymous or unidentifiable zoomorph, but rather an array of creatures of all shapes and sizes that defy clear categorization by displaying no obvious markers to identify them as any particular animal.27 They can appear in a somewhat naturalistic form or dramatically abstracted, but their often ribbon-like, interlacing bodies are interrupted by limbs, which indicate biped or quadruped, and often terminate in a feathery paw.28 The pervasiveness of the motif in art created in early medieval England strongly suggests that it was deliberately used because of its anonymity: because it was ambiguous. Animal ornament in Germanic contexts, both on the Continent and in early medieval England, was capable of expressing a number of meanings depending on how it was read and understood by a viewer.29 The act of viewing dictates how the imagery is understood, but only for that moment, as returning to it may result in a different reading and

 26 Greenfield, The Interpretation of Old English Poems, pp. 36–37; Stewart, ‘Kenning and Riddle in Old English’; Lee, Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon, pp. 82–83.  27 Leigh, ‘Ambiguity’, pp. 288–364; Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art, pp. 77–78; Haseloff, Die germanische Tierornamentik der Völkerwanderungszeit, pp. 486–521; Hicks, Animals in Early Medieval Art, pp. 32–62; Hawkes, ‘Symbolic Lives’, pp. 316–17.  28 Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art, pp. 42–43; Hicks, Animals in Early Medieval Art, pp. 66–67.  29 Jesch, ‘Eagles, Ravens and Wolves’; Hawkes, ‘Symbolic Lives’, pp. 317–19.

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therefore a different understanding. This multivalency and ambiguity was a long-standing aspect of the art, appearing ubiquitously in earlier Style I ornament,30 and persisting (although not necessarily as animal art), into later imagery and context.31 Given the widespread appreciation of ‘riddling’ in the society of sixth- and seventh-century England, linguistically, ‘texturally’ and visually,32 it is possible that the anonymous beast was capable of carrying more than one type of significance: it may, in fact, have been intended to express variable meanings for different audiences that could change depending on the context within which they were being experienced.33 This effect can be clearly illustrated by both the complicated interlacing patterns and transformative creatures commonly decorating the artwork of this period. The effect of things metamor­phosing into something other is widespread in the decoration of metalwork in early medieval England. One of the clearest and most dramatic examples of this transformative quality can be seen in the face mask of the Sutton Hoo helmet (Figure 11.2), which displays a three-dimensional appli­que of a bird whose shape also creates the masculine face. The bird — seen from above — has wings spread over the oval eye-holes, fashioning prominent brows which terminate in tiny boar’s heads. The body of the bird becomes the mask’s nose and, in conjunction with the outstretched wings, forms the distinctive lyre-shaped facial structure typical of depictions of human figures in early medieval England.34 Finally, the bird’s fanned tail becomes a luxuriant moustache, shielding the upper lip of the mask’s moulded metal mouth. The helmet’s face mask is thus simultaneously human and zoomorph, static yet reminiscent of movement, and caught endlessly in its transformative process. This aesthetic state of flux continuously tells and retells a story; be it one of masculine ideal, animal prowess, transformation, dynamism, or something more indefinable, ambiguous and open to the interpretation of the viewer, the wearer and perhaps even the artist, actively constructed in the moment it is worn or viewed. More subtle transformations enliven many types of contemporary metal­work ornamented with zoomorphic imagery. Flourishes on brooches

 30 Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought, pp. 103–06; Leigh, ‘Ambiguity’; Shepherd, A Study of the Relationship between Style I Art and Socio-Political Change, pp. 84–89; Dickinson, ‘Translating Animal Art’, pp. 170–72.  31 Hawkes, ‘Symbolic Lives’, pp. 333–34; Pirotte, ‘Hidden Order, Order Revealed’, pp. 203–04; Karkov, The Art of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 25; Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 29–41.  32 Nelson, ‘Time in the Exeter Book Riddles’; Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book; Jember, ‘Literal and Metaphorical’; Wilcox, ‘“Tell me what I am”’, pp. 46–49; Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 34–35.  33 A similar approach has been utilized in recent scholarship of the Anglo-Saxon riddles, largely moving away from identifying solutions to the riddles but rather taking a broader view that looks at common semantics and thematic considerations across the riddles as a collective. See Bitterli, Say What I Am Called and Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles.  34 For a broader discussion of the human figure in Anglo-Saxon art see Herman, ‘Something More than “man”’ and Herman, ‘Unmasking Meaning’, pp. 192–95.

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or pendants become bird heads; wing tips become boars’ heads; two animals confronting each other become a face mask. An early seventh-century gilt-copper mount (Figure 11.3) found at Barham near Suffolk demonstrates this vivification of ornamentation very well for present purposes. It has three unidentifiable beasts, crouched and biting their own backs. A thick border embellished with vertical lines frames the central motif. The lower corners of the pelta form (a small crescent-shaped shield) transform into two predatory bird heads. Here, the zoomorphic interlace embodies shifting meanings just as it creates a shifting pattern, which in turn urges viewers to unravel them, creating stories to comprehend the visual complexity.35 When viewing sections of zoomorphic interlace it takes some effort and understanding of the style of the ornament to be able to decipher the individual creatures. A late sixth- or early seventh-century gilt bronze disc held in the Ashmolean (Figure 11.4) illustrates this. It has three distinct fields of decoration with an outer ring of interlace, divided into four quadrants by small decorative bosses. The interlace of the outer section is densely looped and serpentine, with two snakes entwined in each quadrant. The inner ring of interlace depicts four unidentifiable beasts interlaced though the legs and bodies as they each turn and bite their own backs. The third decorative component is the four small satellite bosses and a larger central boss, all formed of white shell inset with small garnets. The disc offers a multivalent viewing experience, shifting from complex lines and patterns into writhing beasts and back to sinuous pattern again. As it is being viewed, the pattern seems to be shifting, moving, changing as the eye moves and struggles to find another aspect on which to focus. Returning to the ways in which such ornament would have been viewed in the early medieval period, it is necessary to remember the context of the objects decorated by this type of pattern, when they were being worn or used by their bearer. Most viewers would have seen the ornament at some distance with little opportunity to move closer and decipher its detail. It is unlikely that an ornament would have remained stationary long enough to enable the extended viewing that is required for the pattern resolve into readable images. Therefore, perhaps the initial reading of this pattern was in fact intended to be the primary reading. At a distance, the zoomorphs dissolve into a twisted mass of line, curve, and plane, looping in and around in complicated shapes. This interlaced pattern has the effect of conveying movement and depth created by the numerous twists and crossings of the lines over and under each other. This sense of movement, and perhaps of mystery, is further heightened by the lustre of the material, usually highly polished and golden or silver toned metal — if not always actual gold or silver — and often black niello for contrast. The shine and shadow created by the pattern in the metal would have been exaggerated by the interaction of light, either sunlight or  35 Gotschall, The Storytelling Animal, pp. 99, 102–03.

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Figure 11.2. Three-dimensional applique of a bird forming the masculine face of the Sutton Hoo helmet (British Museum 1939, 1010.93).

torchlight, with the metal creating a sense of subtle movement and shifting within the pattern itself. Given the probable primacy of the pattern and the obscurity of the zoomorphs visible (at least to a modern gaze when such objects are static and studied in a museum), it must then be asked why the elements making this pattern, usually seen from such distance, were zoomorphic rather than geometric.36 The answer comes down to familiarity; experience and engagement with animals in nature would bring recollection of physical traits and behaviours of those animals, while understanding and fluency in the aesthetic principles of representation within the culture would allow recognition of stylistic conventions and preferences for representing animals. With such knowledge,

 36 A more detailed exploration of the nature of modern viewing of early medieval objects in comparison to the contemporary experience can be found in Herman, ‘Sensing Iconography’, pp. 110–15.

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if one were able to look close enough to make out the animals or knew they formed the pattern — a likelihood given the pervasiveness of zoomorphic interlace pattern at the time — the sense of movement within the ornament would have given life to the creatures inhabiting it. In essence, the decorative practices of zoomorphic pattern work with the cultural conventions of early medieval England and the material experience of contemporary viewing of the object to tell a story about the ornament and the bearer of the artefact. The story is not necessarily a narrative, although certain patterns, zoomorphs, or combinations thereof might certainly have evoked familiar tales heard in the hall, but in utilizing a contemporary viewer’s familiarity with animals real and depicted, it taps into the stories people tell themselves to make sense of the world around them.37 The understanding of the zoomorphs within the pattern, paired with the cultural knowledge needed to identify them, and a familiarity with animals in nature makes the zoomorphic ornament, in effect, a visual ekphrasis.38 With some liberty taken in the interest of brevity, ekphrasis is a rhetorical device whereby an object, usually a work of art and not necessarily existing in life, is described in both form and essence in order to make it real for the audience. The zoomorphic interlace, here described as ekphrastic, is neither descriptive nor narrative. Although the representations are emphatically non-naturalistic, they are recognizable by means of their key signifiers and, in recognizing them as motifs of living creatures — in some cases identifiable animals — a viewer is able to enhance and vivify the zoomorph, only schematically depicted in the art, in their mind, by referencing their experience, either direct from nature or transmitted through stories. The ubiquitous disposition of zoomorphic ornament on the metalwork of early medieval England and the formulaic conventions for its depiction ensure that sustained viewing of these animals was not needed in order to recognize them and begin telling stories to make them come alive. This might be related to the oral transmission of stories within the culture,39 characterized by their descriptive vibrancy, which often offer a reader (or listener) a rich palette of linguistic nuance in order to encapsulate the sights, sounds, and emotions portrayed in the poem.40 The practice of ekphrasis is dependent on a close connection between words and sensory perception,41 so much so that the words evoke the sensory experience. It thus depends on

 37 Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal; O’Neill, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.  38 For fuller discussion of ekphrasis as a classical rhetorical practice see Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion.  39 Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe, pp. 160–61; Orchard, ‘Oral Tradition’; Orchard, ‘Looking for an Echo’; Amodio, Writing the Oral Tradition, pp. 4–7; Niles, Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts, pp. 53–58.  40 Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, pp. 1–2.  41 For further discussion of this connection see: Lacey, ‘Birds and Words’ and Symons, ‘Doing Things with Words’.

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Figure 11.3. Gilt-copper mount from Barham near Suffolk (British Museum 1984, 0103.1).

shared attitudes towards the psychological effects of language, something that develops through a communal experience or common tradition. In Beowulf, the titular hero returns from slaying Grendel’s mother with the hilt of a sword which he presents to Hrothgar.42 The poet tells us that the story of the Flood is inscribed on the wreoþen-hilt (1698a: wrapped hilt) and the name of its first owner on its golden scenn (1694a: sword-guard). The object, the letters inscribed on it, the hands that have held it, and the stories it tells are woven together. Within the poem, they are wrapped into Hrothgar’s speech act, which is introduced at 1687a but delayed until 1700 to allow him (and us) to examine the hilt. The entire passage is, indeed, a record of the process of Hrothgar’s eyes moving over the sword hilt, described ekphrastically in the poem.43 Such ekphrastic expression can also be powerfully deployed in Old English nature poetry, as it is for instance in ‘The Panther’.44 This short poem uses vivid description appealing to multiple senses: the creature’s hide is ‘blæc brigda gehwæs’ (26a: brilliant in every shade); the sounds it makes is ‘woþa wynsumast’ (43a: most delightful of sounds); even its breath is ‘swetta ond swiþra swæcca gehywlcum’ (46: more sweet and potent than every fragrance). These details have, of course, relatively little to do with any encounter with

 42 Quotations and translations from Beowulf are from Fulk, ed. and trans., The ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript. See also Christoph Witt’s reflections on the sword-hilt and other inscribed objects in this volume, pp. $$ [177–79].  43 Lerer, ‘Hrothgar’s Hilt’ p. 593.  44 For more on the natural world (including animals) in Old English literature see: Burton, ‘Nature in Old English Poetry’; Neville, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry; Williamson, A Feast of Creatures. Quotations from ‘The Panther’ are from Jones, ed. and trans., Old English Shorter Poems 1.

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Figure 11.4. Gilt bronze disc with geometric and animal decoration (Ashmolean Museum AN1909.316).

a big cat. Instead, the poem evokes an audience’s senses in order to lead to its allegorical presentation of the sweetness and beauty of the risen Christ.45 Ekphrasis is used to engage with the audience’s body and mind in order to participate in the creation of meaning. The poetry evokes sensory experience to enrich and enliven the narrative being told. Given such poetic vibrancy, it is worth considering the sense of animation resulting from the visual representations of beasts in the decoration of art in early medieval England as evocative in an analogous manner. Just as the non-naturalistic animals in the poetry are intended to be symbolic and evoke ekphrastic experiences, so too the animal motifs in the art, whether identifiable or not, were intended to function ekphrastically to evoke sensory experiences in the viewers. As the viewers’ own frames of reference are used to enliven and lend meaning and significance to the motifs, the art becomes immediate and alive through by the process of mutual creation between object, context, and viewer: it becomes storied. Certainly, zoomorphic interlace in particular, and, to a lesser degree, general zoomorphic motifs, are imbued with a sense of suppressed movement and vivacity. The vitality of animals would have been constantly reinforced by daily interactions in life in early medieval England and this familiarity with the movement and life of creatures would no doubt have been imparted into

 45 Peebles, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Physiologus’, pp. 571–73; Hoek, ‘Anglo‐Saxon Innovation and the Use of the Senses’; Drout. ‘The Partridge is a Phoenix’, pp. 490–50.

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the zoomorphic patterns familiar to viewers. That impression of movement would thus have been emphasized by the materials used, reflective metals reacting to flickering light on their surface. This specific set of circumstances would give life to the zoomorphs, regardless of how well they could be seen or identified. In this respect, the zoomorph is perhaps the creature most ideally suited to generate sensations of vibrant and sinuous movement, explaining its pervasiveness in the art. Images of animals were understood to have great power which could be exploited as talismanic or apotropaic symbols on behalf of their bearer.46 The inclusion of animal imagery in complex interlace suggests that there may have been multiple meanings attached to the ornament depending on who was viewing, how they were viewing, and what prior knowledge they possessed, lending insight into the perceived power of these forms in this society. In this way, the meaning of the ornament and the way it can be understood by a viewer changes as the pattern shifts. The ornament carries one meaning for a distant viewer, who may see the interlace and read it as creating a sense of depth, movement, and mystery upon the surface of an object. That same viewer may see the imagery of animals emerge out of the pattern, depending on their prior knowledge of the type of ornament or their experience of moving closer to the object. Those animals might just as quickly disappear back into pattern as light shifted across the surface. At the same time that a distant viewer is reading the complexity and movement of the ornament, a close viewer, or even the bearer, is able to read and understand the meaning of the individual animals depicted on the object. Close examination and knowledge of the pattern causes the bird of prey, serpent, or anonymous beast to become clear within the interlace. This process of engaging with the ornament, viewing and trying to interpret even as the pattern shifts and changes as the eye moves over it, is strikingly similar to the cognitive experience of reading the Old English riddles. There is a clear and well-established link between literature and visual ornamentation, both key artistic expressions of any society. It has been established that, in early medieval England, the literature and visual arts express a shared aesthetic in the use of puzzles and rhetorical devices, and the reinforcement of sensory experience. There also appears to have been similar motifs and means of expression. Within the corpus of Old English poetry this resulted in a strong sense of continuity in the form and structure of the verse-line as well as a deep interest in and glorification of the past in the poems themselves.47 This would have resulted in a familiarity with the conventions of the legends being told, allowing for abbreviated references

 46 Dickinson, ‘Symbols of Protection’; Hawkes, ‘Symbolic Lives’, pp. 317–19.  47 Drout, How Tradition Works; Drout, Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature, pp. 1–10; Tyler, Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar, pp. 157–71; Trilling, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia, pp. 253–59.

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within the stories, even buried in the dense allusiveness of such poems as Beowulf and Widsith, to evoke story-worlds in the minds of listeners,48 much as a similar phenomenon made zoomorphic ornament identifiable despite its abstraction.49 The awareness of the stories and the worlds constructed by the stories are often set in a unspecified but familiar past shared within the audience.50 This resulting timelessness is both familiar, capitalizing on an artificially-constructed sense of nostalgia, and ambiguous, open to interpretation and manipulation, wherein the content and meaning of a poem remains relevant to contemporary social and political events by being both a permanent feature of the culture and created anew for and by each individual in each storied interaction.51 It can be argued that the persistence of zoomorphic imagery, and the resultant ambiguity of associations, was a deliberate practice, designed to allow for multivalent interpretations of meaning, different for each viewer. Such symbolic flexibility within visual motifs allowed a viewer to construct whatever story held the most significance in that time and place, allowing the imagery to remain potent and popular throughout a transitional period of early medieval England marked by major cultural upheaval. This mutability of understanding embedded in the visual art is arguably akin to the storyteller-poet’s creative skill in melding rhetorical conventions, customs which imbue the poetical with the sense of familiarity and comfort, and evocative narrative, which provide interest and immediacy, within the structure of his stories.52 This fluidity of cultural adherence, in essence allowing traditional Germanic artistic sensibilities to be used within and appropriated by a contrasting cultural context, is due in large part to the multivalency of the imagery. The schematic, abstracted Germanic art of early medieval England is a symbolic rather than representative visual language.53 By its very nature it is ambiguous and can therefore be reinterpreted and recast with different symbolic associations. This multivalency allows for a reading of the iconography that is contingent on each viewer’s specific set of associations; in essence a viewer tells their own story with the imagery. This allows for multiple different readings of the iconography, each shaped by individual viewers’ contexts, priorities, and knowledge. Storytelling exists in imagery — even geometric pattern or abstraction — as the promise of understanding and imbued with the experience brought by the viewer into the depiction.54 The ambiguity of the anonymous zoomorphs

 48 Shippey, ‘Names in Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England’.  49 Herman, ‘The More Things Change, The More they Stay the Same’.  50 Gotschall, The Storytelling Animal, p. 169.  51 Tyler, Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar, p. 170.  52 Clemoes, Interactions of Thought and Language, p. 130.  53 Hawkes, ‘Symbolic Lives’, pp. 312–18; Hawkes, ‘The Plant-Life of Early Anglo-Saxon Art’, pp. 266–78; Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul.  54 Elkins, ‘On the Impossibility of Stories’, p. 64.

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and zoomorphic interlace, which produce the most intricate and visually confusing patterns, forces sustained contemplation in viewing, regardless of whether they could be studied or merely seen in a quick glance. They are open to the most elaborate storytelling, and to the simplest. There is no way to identify the creatures or understand the shapes and there is no need to so do: the pattern and the way it moves becomes the primary focus. However, the pattern is not without meaning and purpose beyond aesthetically pleasing decoration. The choice to vivify these patterns, to put eyes and jaws and claws on the sinuous shapes, was not happenstance or artistic conceit but instead an effort to enhance the sensory experience of viewing, to embed stories in the imagery, and to enrich the art with a viewer’s memories of the beasts, real or legendary, that inhabited it. This artistic tendency to utilize symbolic imagery in apotropaic and talismanic ways and to delight in ambiguous and spatially disconcerting pattern, persists throughout the seventh century and well beyond.

Works Cited Primary Sources Fulk, Robert D., ed. and trans., The ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript: Complete Texts and ‘The Fight at Finnsburg, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 3 (London: Harvard University Press, 2010) Jones, Christopher, ed. and trans., Old English Shorter Poems volume 1: Religious and Didactic, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 15 (London: Harvard University Press, 2012) Klaeber’s ‘Beowulf’ and the ‘Fight at Finnsburg’, ed.  by Robert  D. Fulk, Robert  E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, 4th edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) Secondary Studies Amodio, Mark C., Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) Bitterli, Dieter, Say What I Am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009) Brooks, Francesca, ‘Sight, Sound, and the Perception of the Anglo-Saxon Liturgy in Exeter Book Riddles 48 and 59’, in Sensory Perception in the Medieval West: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, ed. by S. C. Thomson and M. D. J. Bintley, Utrecht Series in Medieval Literacy, 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 141–58 Budny, Mildred, ‘Deciphering the Art of Interlace’, in From Ireland Coming: Irish Art from the Early Christian to the Late Gothic Period and Its European Context, ed. by Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 183–210

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Burton, R., ‘Nature in Old English Poetry’, Atlantic Monthly, 73 (1894), 476–87 Clemoes, Peter, Interactions of Thought and Language in Old English Poetry, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Davidson, Hilda Ellis, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1993) Derrida, Jacques, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. by Peggy Kamuf (Nebraska: The University of Nebraska Press, 1988) —— , The Animal that Therefore I am, ed. by Marie-Loiuse Mallet, trans. by David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008) Deshman, Robert, ‘Anglo-Saxon Art after Alfred, 1974’, The Art Bulletin 56 (1974), 176–200 Dickinson, T. M., ‘Translating Animal Art: Salin’s Style I and Anglo-Saxon Cast Saucer Brooches’, Hikuin, 29 (2002), 163–86 —— , ‘Symbols of Protection: The Significance of Animal-Ornamented Shields in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Medieval Archaeology, 49 (2005), 109–63 Dodwell, C. R., Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982) Drout, Michael D. C., How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Poetics of the AngloSaxon Tenth Century (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006) —— , ‘The Partridge is a Phoenix: Revising the Exeter Book Physiologus’, Neophilologus, 91 (2007), 487–503 —— , Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature: An Evolutionary, Cognitivist Approach (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Elkins, James, ‘On the Impossibility of Stories: The Anti-Narrative and NonNarrative Impulse in Modern Painting’, Word & Image, 7 (1991), 348–64 Frank, Roberta, ‘The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 75 (1993), 11–36 Gardner, Thomas, ‘The Old English Kenning: A Characteristic Feature of Germanic Poetic Diction?’, Modern Philology, 67 (1969), 109–17 Geake, Helen, The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England, c. 600 – c. 850 (Oxford: British Archaeological Records, 1997) Gotschall, Jonathan, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: Mariner, 2012) Greenfield, Stanley B., The Interpretation of Old English Poems (London: Routledge, 1972) Haines, Dorothy, ‘Unlocking Exodus 11, 516–532’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 98 (1999), 481–98 Halsall, Guy, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992–2009 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Haseloff, G., Die germanische Tierornamentik der Völkerwanderungszeit. Studien zu Salin’s Stil I (Berlin: Gruyter, 1981) Hawkes, Jane, ‘Symbolic Lives: The Visual Evidence’, in The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by John Hines (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), pp. 311–37

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—— , ‘The Plant-Life of Early Anglo-Saxon Art’, in From Earth to Art: The Many Aspects of the Plant-World in Anglo-Saxon England. Proceedings of the First ASPNS Symposium, University of Glasgow, 5–7 April 2000, ed. by C. P. Biggam (Amsterdam: Brill, 2003), pp. 263–86 Herman, Melissa, ‘Something More than “man”: Re-Examining the Human Figure in Early Anglo-Saxon Art’, in The Art, Literature and Material Culture of the Middle Ages: Transition, Transformation and Taxonomy, ed. by Meg Boulton, Jane Hawkes, and Melissa Herman (Dublin: Four Courts, 2015), pp. 278–92 —— , ‘All that Glitters: The Role of Pattern, Reflection, and Visual Perception in Early Anglo-Saxon Art’, in Sensory Perception in the Medieval West: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, ed. by S. C. Thomson and M. D. J. Bintley, Utrecht Series in Medieval Literacy, 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 159–80 —— , ‘The More Things Change, The More they Stay the Same: Decorative Continuity in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Stasis in the Medieval West?: Ques­ tioning Change and Continuity, ed. by M. D. J. Bintley, Martin Locker, Victoria Symons, and Mary Wellesley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 47–68 —— , ‘Sensing Iconography: Ornamentation, Material, and Sensuousness in Early Anglo-Saxon Metalwork’, in Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, ed. by Fiona J. Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey, (Boston: Gruyter, 2018), pp. 97–115 —— , ‘Unmasking Meaning: Faces Hidden and Revealed in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes, ed. by Meg Boulton and Michael D. J. Bintley (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), pp. 187–202 Hicks, Carola, Animals in Early Medieval Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) Hoek, M. C., ‘Anglo‐Saxon Innovation and the Use of the Senses in the Old English Physiologus Poems’, Studia Neophilologica, 69 (1997), 1–10 Hull, Derek, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Art: Geometric Aspects (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003) Jackson, Howard, and Etienne Z. Amvela, Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology (New York: Continuum, 2000) Jember, Gregory K., ‘Literal and Metaphorical: Clues to Reading the Old English Riddles’, Studies in English Literature, Tokyo, 65 (1988), 47–56 Jesch, Judith, ‘Eagles, Ravens and Wolves: Beasts of Battle, Symbols of Victory and death’, in The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by Judith Jesch (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), pp. 251–80 Karkov, Catherine E., and George Hardin Brown, eds, Anglo-Saxon Styles (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003) Karkov, Catherine E., The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011) Keefer, Sarah Larratt, ‘“Either / And” as “Style” in Anglo-Saxon Christian Poetry’, in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. by Catherine E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 179–200 Kendall, Calvin B., The Metrical Grammar of ‘Beowulf’, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

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Klingender, Francis D., Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages, ed. by E. Antal and John Harthan (London: Routledge, 1971) Lacey, Eric, ‘Birds and Words: Aurality, Semantics and Species in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Sensory Perception in the Medieval West: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, ed. by S. C. Thomson and M. D. J. Bintley, Utrecht Series in Medieval Literacy, 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 75–98 Lee, Alvin, Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: ‘Beowulf’ as Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998) Leigh, David, ‘Ambiguity in Anglo-Saxon Style I Art’, Antiquaries Journal, 64 (1984), 34–42 Lerer, Seth. ‘Hrothgar’s Hilt and the Reader in Beowulf’, in The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook, ed. by Eileen A. Joy, Mary K. Ramsey, and Bruce D. Gilchrist (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007), 587–628 Leyerle, John, ‘The Interlace Structure of Beowulf’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 37 (1967), 1–17 Marzinzik, Sonja, Early Anglo-Saxon Belt Buckles (Late 5th to Early 8th Centuries a.d.): Their Classification and Context (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2003) Murphy, Patrick J., Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011) Nelson, Marie, ‘Time in the Exeter Book Riddles’, Philological Quarterly, 54 (1975), 511–18 Neville, Jennifer, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 27 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) Niles, John D., ‘Beowulf’: The Poem and Its Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) —— , ‘Myth of the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet’, Western Folklore, 62 (2003), 7–61 —— , Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) O’Neill, Mary, ‘Introduction: Theories and Criticism’, in Telling Stories: Countering Narrative in Art, Theory and Film, ed. by Jane Tormey and Gillian Whiteley (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), pp. 2–4 Orchard, Andy, ‘Oral Tradition’, in Reading Old English Texts, ed. by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 101–23 —— , ‘Looking for an Echo: The Oral Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Literature’, Oral Tradition, 18 (2003), 225–27 Owen-Crocker, Gale, Dress in Anglo Saxon England, revised edn (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004) Peebles, Rose Jeffries, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Physiologus’, Modern Philology, 8 (1911), 571–79 Pirotte, Emmanuelle, ‘Hidden Order, Order Revealed: New Light on CarpetPages’, in Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Insular Art, held at the National Museum & Gallery, Cardiff 3–6 September 1998, ed. by Mark Redknap, Nancy Edwards, Alan Lane, and Susan Youngs (Oxford: Oxbow, 2001), pp. 203–07 Ricoer, Paul, The Rule of Metaphor: Multidisciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. by Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto: Routledge, 1977)

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Sauer, Michelle M., The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600 (New York: Facts on File, 2008) Sharma, Manish, ‘The Economy of the Word in the Old English Exodus’, in Old English Literautre and the Old Testament, ed. by Michael Fox and Manish Sharma (London: University of Toronto Press), pp. 172–94 Shepherd, Colin, A Study of the Relationship between Style I Art and Socio-Political Change in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1998) Shippey, Tom, ‘Names in Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Dating of Beo­wulf: A Reassessment, ed. by Leonard Neidorf (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 58–78 Speake, George, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) Stewart, A. H., ‘Kenning and Riddle in Old English’, Papers on Language and Literature, 15 (1979), 115–36 Symons, Victoria, ‘Doing Things with Words: Language and Perception in Old English Riddles and Charms in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Sensory Perception in the Medieval West: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, ed. by S. C. Thomson and M. D. J. Bintley, Utrecht Series in Medieval Literacy, 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 123–40 Thomson, S. C., and M. D. J. Bintley, eds, Sensory Perception in the Medieval West: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, Utrecht Series in Medieval Literacy, 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) Too, Yun Lee, ‘The Appeal to the Senses in the Old English Phoenix’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 91 (1990), 229–42 Trilling, Renee R., The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009) Tyler, Elizabeth M., Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar in AngloSaxon England (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2006) Webb, Ruth, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham: Routledge, 2009) Webster, Leslie, ‘Encrypted Visions: Style and Sense in the Anglo-Saxon Minor Arts, ad 400–900’, in , ed. by Catherine E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 11–30 —— , Anglo-Saxon Art: A New History (London: British Museum, 2012) Wilcox, Jonathan, ‘“Tell me what I am”: The Old English Riddles’, in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. by David Johnson and Elaine Treharne (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 46–59 Williamson, Craig, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977) —— , A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) Wilson, David M., Anglo-Saxon Art from the Seventh Century to the Norman Conquest (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984)

James Plumtree

A Telling Tradition Preliminary Comments on the Epic of Manas, 1856–20181 Bul bütkön soŋ qoyboyun; azġına kepke toyboyun! Aytılbay ketip baratat baatırları Qırġızdın; namısımdan tırıštım.

Qazaq, Noġoy, baarı bar; Qırġızdan qısa körbödüm. Baarın jazġan Orustun bilgenimče jazayın – ar qaysı baatır urušun.

I’ll not stop after this is finished; I’ll not be satisfied with only a few words! The heroes of the Kirghiz aren’t talked about and are being forgotten, but I’ve tried to duck the shame of this. There are tales written of the Qazaqs and Noġay and all of them, but I have never seen one about the Kirghiz. I’ll write down everything that the Russians have written about, every sort of fight between heroes, as far as I know.2 From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?3

 1 This study was supported by funding from the AMICAL Consortium programme enabled by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an AUCA research grant, a fellowship for Digital Scholarship sponsored by Elsevier at the Scalinger Institute and Centre for Digital Studies, Leiden University, and a Tempus Public Foundation Fellowship. Spelling variants and names (e.g. Kirghiz / Kyrgyz, Qazaq / Kazakh, Radloff / Radlov) follow the familiar format for readability, and sources more available to an international readership have been cited. The following abbreviations are used below: NA – manuscripts accessed in the Collection of Rare Manuscripts of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic (some digitalized online via [accessed 16 December 2019]; for editions: KO – The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-Khan, ed. and trans. by Hatto; MWR – The Manas of Wilhelm Radloff, ed. and trans. by Hatto; SBC – Čaġateyev, The Šabdan Baatır Codex, ed. and trans. by Prior; SKK – Kara, The Semetey of Kenje Kara, ed. and trans. by Prior.  2 SBC, pp. 146–47 ll. 1–10.  3 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 111.

James Plumtree, American University of Central Asia Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives, ed. by S. C. Thomson, Medieval Narratives in Transmission, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 239–301  10.1484/M.MNT-EB.5.121610

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This chapter deals with Kyrgyz-language narratives concerned with the character Manas, stories that have, since their first recorded appearance in 1856, been crafted for a variety of audiences in a variety of media for a variety of purposes. An obvious outlier in a volume exploring storytelling and stories in and from the medieval west, this study is intended to provide a parallel of a living tradition with material from ‘past’ cultures and in doing so raise uncomfortable questions for medievalists. The difficulty in recognizing the shifting contexts and meanings of narratives told and retold in different times, the reliance on manuscript and printed sources for stories once completely oral, the oft-unrecorded influence politics has on the content and message of a performance, and on the adaptation, appreciation, longevity, and understanding of stories are all present in a living tradition that has been used to inform debates about classical, medieval, and contemporary narratives. The role of scholarship in creating the meaning of these narratives is also emphasized.4 This study places in context many significant and sizeable differences in variants of Manas narratives. In the 3,251 lines of transcribed Kyrgyz oral poetry, the product of a single performance in 1856, a young hot-headed warrior intent on making a name for himself is labelled by the mountain-dwelling characters (and performer) a ‘Sart’, a term used derogatorily for a dweller of the flatlands;5 he is, as in other nineteenth-century variants, of the semi-legendary Noġay ethnicity. At the time of writing, 2019, the character is instead Kyrgyz, subject to 500,566 lines in one variant, and synonymous with Kyrgyz culture and identity. To analyse this transformation, the main variants of the tradition by the major performers are examined in four chronological groupings: the mid-nineteenth century (1856–1869), the ‘Twilight Age’ (1870–1916), the Soviet period (1917–1991), and the Independence period (1992–).6 Each is examined via materialized products — written, audio records, and printed. Ironically, study of a versatile oral tradition is indebted to the fixed written word capturing a performance that has to adapt to the presence of a recorder,7 and each physical variant illustrates the living tradition at that moment. Scholarly focus on the epic genre has resulted in a privileging of a style less popular with live audiences — popular flyting-like competitions

 4 Selections of scholarship, acting as guides for fluctuations in focus, are available in Russian in Manas, ed. by Fomenko; sections are reprinted with English translations in Encyclopaedical Phenomenon of Epos ‘Manas’, ed. by Aliev and others. The thinking behind and approach taken in this chapter has been influenced by Brewer, Editing ‘Piers Plowman’; Treharne, Living Through Conquest; Warner, The Myth of Piers Plowman; Weiskott, English Alliterative Verse.  5 KO, p. 8, l. 262; for present usage, see McDowell, ‘“Death to Sarts”’, pp. 22–24.  6 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’; Van der Heide, Spirited Performance; Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’; Reichl, ‘Oral Epics into the Twenty-First Century’ all provide similar groupings; these somewhat fit the eras in Beyer, The Force of Custom, pp. 20–21; for grouping by performer, see Jumaturdu, ‘A Comparative Study of Performers of the Manas Epic’.  7 On this, see Hatto, ‘Textology and Epic Texts from Siberia and Beyond’, and Ready, ‘The Textualization of Homeric Epic’.

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have received less academic attention8 — and, in the contemporary period, with less written material to analyse, questions about the present vitality, value, and authenticity are prominent. Modern-day performances, often presented in formats atypical of the tradition (such as in front of non-Kyrgyz speakers, with jazz accompaniment9), are regarded as the dying embers of a tradition rendered obsolete by print and other technology, an ahistorical relic kept alive for ethnonationalistic purposes; all comments made with little reference to performance.10 A chronological perspective allows this period to be contextualized and its performances, if not appreciated, at least understood. Examined from its earliest known period, the epos becomes a multi-authored longue durée history. The variations reflect changes in performance and audience; the different aims and methods of collection chart both the complex relationship between oral performance and written text and, with increasingly literacy, responses to social change brought by colonialism. The varied purposes of storytelling become visible: models for future behaviour, escapism from the present, nostalgic depiction of the past; consolidation of small group identity; forging an imagined community; unique meanings, meanings arising from repetition; limits set with a canonical version, dissent permitted with ambiguous elements in an ‘evocative transcript’.11 Such features are shared in the attempts to produce a single ‘Epic of Manas’. This corpus, spanning a range of unique variants, shows, via its relation to the tradition, the aims, concerns, thoughts, and talents of individuals, each using an inherited network of stories, symbols, and discourse to understand, shape, and or escape their surroundings.

The Mid-Nineteenth Century (1856–1869) The first variants of Kyrgyz poetry were collected in the mid-nineteenth century by two foreign researchers independent of each other under the auspices of Tsarist Imperal ambitions in Central Asia. The Kazakh-born military officer Chokan Valikhanov (1835–1865) collected the aforementioned 3,251-line narrative featuring Manas while part of a reconnaissance mission gathering information on sparring Krygyz tribes. The German-born scholar Wilhelm Radloff (1837–1918) made two trips for linguistic samples. His hoard included 12,454 lines of poetry relating to Manas and his son, Semetey, and grandson, Seitek (for comparison, Beowulf is 3,182 lines; Iliad, 15,693; Odyssey,  8 A study of these performances, Coşkun, ‘Improvising’ makes this point at pp. 41–42.  9 The manaschi Doolot Sydykov, discussed later, has performed Manas onstage accompanied by the jazz ensemble Solenye Oreshki (named after the Dizzy Gillespie number ‘Salt Peanuts’).  10 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance and Reichl, ‘Oral Epics into the Twenty-First Century’ address these popular assertions sympathetically.  11 Humphrey, ‘Remembering an “Enemy”’, pp. 21–44, adapting a term from Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.

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12,110).12 These were collected for Russian and European audiences, not for the local Kyrgyz. These two foreigners, one employed to research, the other motivated by curiosity, recorded in writing a mid-nineteenth-century nomadic culture. Inside greyish yurts, a jomokchu (storyteller) would sit in the most honoured place (opposite the door) in a circle with the audience. To entertain the tribe — and plead, placate, and praise the local manap (chieftain)13 — the jomokchu would recraft a familiar story in performance. Typically seven-syllable lines, delivered in two near-identical sing-song melodies — one fast tempo for narration, one slower for dialogue — described by the researchers (but only studied later), occasionally using learnt formulas to pause or to move forward a narrative, were aided by gestures and, possibly, self-accompaniment with a musical instrument.14 Performers of shorter, extemporized pieces were called akyn, singers ırčı,15 though the categories were not fixed and some performers did variations of all the three. Positive and negative interjections from the audience could result in a change of direction, and competitions (aitïsh) required a jomokchu to outperform another improvising a section of the narrative chosen from the wide range of stories. Such knowledge and ability necessitated training. A talented youngster, learning from an established performer, sometimes a relative, received a lineage to a ‘school’ connected to geographical locations,16 and took on the role of a possessor and disseminator of knowledge, a gatekeeper and producer of a type of history intertwining heritage, memory and values when required to address contemporary concerns of a tribe, united by descent from an ancestor real or imaginary, accommodating a fluid membership as it followed yearly migrations. Sometimes the performer, too, would move — as a messenger and occasional propagandist.17 The jomokchu and audience shared beliefs and values as well as stories: Islam was dominant, albeit of a local syncretic nomadic variant with

 12 McKenzie, ‘Chokan Valikhanov’; Bailey, ‘A Biography in Motion’; Temir, ‘Leben und Schaffen von Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff ’; Popova, ‘Russian Expeditions to Central Asia’.  13 Prior, ‘High Rank and Power’, argues that the term appeared in dialogue with the Russians.  14 Hatto, ‘Epithets in Kirghiz Epic Poetry’; Vinogradov, ‘Melodies of Manas’ at pp. 458–71; Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 108; Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry, pp. 174–76. Tansuğ, ‘A Bibliographic Survey of Kazakh and Kyrgyz Literature on Music’, p. 202. For Manas melodies in a broader context, see Sipos, Kyrgyz Folksongs.  15 The meaning, and status, of ırčı has changed from indicating an improviser to someone who merely performs a remembered song; see Coşkun, ‘Improvising’, p. 39.  16 Kydyrbaeva, Skazitel’skoe mastervo manasči, pp. 12–64, has four geographical groupings: Čuy valley; Issyk-kul; Tienshan; and southern Kyrgyzstan; Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry, p. 85, notes that this omits the Xinjiang ‘school’. Further study of variants could measure, through tracing of shared phrases and features, the extent to which ‘schools’, or rather teachers, are a helpful category, and help measure the impact of modern events and borders on the spread of elements of the epos. On the co-existence of sacred and political geographies, see Artman, ‘The State and the Sacred’, pp. 343–45.  17 Coşkun, ‘Improvising’, p. 40.

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shamanistic characteristic — Arabic expressions are bowdlerized in Kyrgyz, Persian loanwords are present, local saints are mentioned, and, fittingly for illiterate nomads reliant upon horses, a Qu’ran is lovingly compared in size to a horse’s head.18 (The Kalmaks, the traditional enemy, though absorbing characteristics of different rival ethnic groups, were to the audience always the antithesis of the Krygyz: speaking in a strange language, infidels, riding with pork tied to their saddles.19) Performances could assume an otherworldly character, with the characters summoned into existence, and while agriculture and animal husbandry were becoming more typical, cattle raids still provided opportunities for heroism that could be memorized.20 Comparable narratives, roles, and traditions featured in other Central Asian tribes with linguistic and cultural similarities,21 and parallels have been noted, but not explained, with Burjat-Mongol and South-Turkic-Yakut-Mongolian traditions.22 Valikhanov and Radloff altered the nature of the Manas narratives. For the local Krygyz audience, it was another ‘rendering at one moment’ of a familiar narrative;23 for Valikhanov, it was evidence of an ancient past; for Radloff, mythical heroes cast into eighteenth-century disputes.24 Transcriptions, along with additional materials and comments put onto paper, allowed later readings of individual performances to exist. Fixity became an consideration, even many of the episodes frequently featured characters other than Manas (suggesting earlier narratives were being altered to accommodate a new hero),25 and terms like Sart and Krygyz, seemingly denoting whether a person was nomadic or settled (another blurry distinction), could confusingly become identifiers of ethnicity for later Tsarist ethnographers.26 In becoming texts, the performances became subjected to factors beyond the immediate audience.

 18 MWR: ‘duka’ for du‘ā ’ (p. 10, l. 129), Kıdır / Khidr (p. 8, l. 62), Baabedin / Baha-ud-Din Naqshbend (p. 10, l. 130), the horse comparison (p. 101, l. 136; compare to the use of a gyrfalcon, another status symbol, in SKK, l. 139), ‘Kulkuldabat kualdat’ (p. 20, l. 217) for Sura 112:1. Note also the non-canonical angel Sumıray’ıl in KO, p. 78, l. 2858. For a rejection of the label ‘superficial’ for such beliefs, see DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion, pp. 65–66.  19 MWR, p. 100, l. 709, p. 128, l. 1750. Regarding the (Sino-) Kalmaks, see Hatto, ‘Mongols in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Kirghiz Epic’, and Kara, ‘Kalmak’.  20 Hatto, ‘Germanic and Kirghiz Heroic Poetry’, retells the famous Keldibek story: promising no livestock would be stolen during his performance, the ground trembled as Manas and his horsemen appeared; the cattle rather went home by themselves; Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’.  21 Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry; Chadwick and Chadwick, The Growth of Literature, pp. 47–48 discusses the Kazakh Er Kökshü.  22 Schoolbraid, The Oral Epic of Siberia and Central Asia, p. 40; Chadwick and Chadwick, The Growth of Literature; Rinchindorji, ‘Mongolian-Turkic Epics’.  23 Phrase from Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, p. 3.  24 Hatto, ‘Kirghiz (Mid-nineteenth century)’, p. 323, notes ‘Kökötöy-khan’ and ‘Bok-murun’ associate Er Košoy with the Jahangir Khoja revolts in the 1820s.  25 Hatto, ‘Kukotay and Bok Murun’, pp. 569–70, suggests a historical context for the changes to the Bok-murun narrative (in his suggested common source).  26 Brower, ‘Islam and Ethnicity’, pp. 128–30.

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They are, for Western scholars, products of a ‘Golden Age’ of oral epics before Russian interference and literacy; for Soviets, rudimentary sketches that would become more substantial; for contemporary Kyrgyz university students, difficult unfamiliar texts featuring a character from the hero they thought they knew. A Singular Performance: The Memorial Feast of Valikhanov, 1856

During a fact-finding mission around Issyk-Kul concerning the Kyrgyz who had sent envoys to Russia to win support, Chokan Valikhanov, while among the Bugu tribe, probably with assistance from the chieftain Borombay, who had recently been given the Tsarist rank of lieutenant colonel,27 witnessed a performance by a jomokchu. The result was the first known transcription of Kyrgyz-language oral poetry: 3,251 lines in Arabic script narrating the power struggle following the death of khan Kökötöy; the intended successor, Bokmurun (lit. snot nose), after heading a migration to the memorial feast to which all — Muslim and infidel — have been invited, fails to inherit Kökötöy’s position (and a better name) because of the appearance of a rash young warrior Manas who overcomes the infidel Kalmak khan Joloy. In the account of the expedition printed in a Russian geographical journal, Valikhanov publicized the existence of stories of Manas and his son Semetey (which he labelled the ‘Illiad of the steppe’ and an ‘Odyssey’), sceptically noting the claim that three days were not sufficient to hear all their tales. Sharing the then-scholarly view of such productions as the creation of a folk culture rather than an individual, Valikhanov described the narratives as an encyclopaedia of Kyrgyz morals, geography, and history while omitting the name of the jomokchu.28 Seeing himself as witness to an antique survival, Valikhanov overlooked connections made by the performer. The story of aggressive memorial feast games was likely chosen by the probable jomokchu, Nazar Bolot uulu (1828–1893), as a comment on recent violence between the Bugu and Sarıbaġıš tribes over a game of ordo.29 (Tellingly, Bok-murun’s route in the narrative paralleled the recent migration pattern of the Bugu.30) While a Tsarist reconnaissance party was not a typical audience (nor, for that matter, can the performance said to be standard owing to a slowed pace to enable dictation),31 the transcribed text captured the jomokchu performing in the standard oral poetic fashion, crafting  27 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 6, and ‘High Rank and Power’, pp. 155–57.  28 The Zapiski Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva (1861) article was reprinted in Valikhanov’s complete works: Valikhanov, Sobranie sochineniĭ, ed. by Margulan.  29 Oral histories collected in 1949 from Nazar’s nephew and fellow storyteller Kayduu by Omor Erketanov in 1949, ‘Čokan jana belgisiz manasčilar’; discussed in Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 61–62. For tribal warring context: Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 137–38; Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, pp. 49–52.  30 On routes, see Hatto, ‘Die Marschrouten in der ältern kirgisichen Heldenepik’ and Prior, ‘Bok-murun’s Itinerary Ridden’.  31 Hatto, ‘Textology and Epic Texts from Siberia and Beyond’, p. 153.

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a story to suit a specific audience and patron at a specific moment of time. As the nomadic northern Kyrgyz tribes, exhausted by intertribal conflicts and threats from their settled neighbours, looked for support, the jomokchu subtly pleaded to the foreign Valikhanov for assistance: the first notable invited to the deceased khan’s memorial feast, Amet of Üyšün, a character not present anywhere else in mid-nineteenth-century Kyrgyz poetry, appears to be an archaic allusion to Valikhanov’s own Kazakh origins.32 In addition to striking out words that disagreed with his formal grammar and possibly inserting his native Kazakh into the text through mishearing,33 Valikhanov may have also unintentionally persuaded the jomukchu to alter the story. The migration in the transcript ended with the abode of an ancestral khan, a concept with which Valikhanov was familiar from recent Sinological scholarship. Wanting antiquarian knowledge of origins, he may have enquired about the place, and the jomokchu was willing to provide the information the patron wished to hear.34 Valikhanov’s early death prevented his intention to produce an edition of the text for scholarly — particularly linguistic — use, and influenced future understanding of Kyrgyz epic poetry. His Russian prose translation, though adhering closely to the parallel structure of the verse, added antiquarian details (and removed Islamic features), was posthumously published;35 the manuscript, probably a revised copy of the field transcription, was misplaced.36 With his essays quoting just three couplets, most knowledge of this variant came from his published impressions rather than the performance itself. The ‘Great Game’ unintentionally disseminated his views further when, owing to British fears of a threat to India by Russian expansion in Central Asia, an English translation of his travel narrative was published.37 Centenary commemorations of his early

 32 KO, p. 2 l. 12; as Hatto, p. 106, notes, Üyšün can refer to the earlier Kazakh Hoarde or to a branch of the Kyrgyz Solto tribe. Given the prominence of the character in the invitation list, the possibility that Valikhanov recorded a Kazakh term as a Kyrgyz one seems less likely than a performer trying to influence his audience.  33 KO, pp. 265–67 is an appendix of Kazakhisms; Valikhanov frequently deleted ‘bir’.  34 KO, p. 10, l. 349: ‘Tüpkü Kanga’; Hatto, ‘Kukotay and Bok Murun’, pp. 376–78, discusses Valikhanov’s knowledge of a 1851 publication by Bichurin (Father Hyacinth) that features Dugin, the abode of the Khan of the Eastern Türk.  35 Veselovskij’s Valikhanov’s complete works (pub. 1904); Hatto, ‘Kukotay and Bok Murun’ p. 344; Hatto, ‘Kirghiz Original of “Kukotay” found’, pp. 380–81; ‘kıbılaga baštatıp’ (l. 61: the direction of the Kaaba – westwards) was translated ‘na vostok’ (east): possibly influenced by his desire to find an pre-Islamic origin story in the epos resulted in khan’s burial, fitting with nineteenth-century Kyrgyz mores in the misplaced manuscript, being regarded as an ancient Turkic rite. Regarding Valikhanov’s attitudes to Islam, see DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion, p. 21, n. 11.  36 Botojarov, ‘Angliskoe izdanie ėposa “MANASA” (tekstologičeskie aspekty)’ and Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, disagree with Hatto’s arguments on the manuscript; a Kyrgyz trans­lation appears in Botojarov’s edition of Kökötöydün ašı, contained in his Köönörgüs muras.  37 Michell and Michell, trans., The Russians in Central Asia. The Michells assumed Valikhanov would have passed unnoticed; oral history (n. 27 above), remembering his Tsarist uniform, disproves their assertion.

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death resulted in the Kazakh academic Älkey Margulan (1904–1985) locating the misplaced transcription in the Leningrad Academy of Sciences in 1964.38 Margulan produced a Cyrillic transliteration of 885 lines (1971), and a Kazakh translation (1973); working from a photocopy, the London-based medievalist Arthur T. Hatto (1910–2010) published a critical edition with facing translation (1977).39 Kambaralı Botoyanov (1944–1994), a reviewer of Hatto’s edition, produced a version in modern Kyrgyz orthography, published posthumously in 1996.40 Despite this surge of scholarship, in the modern Kyrgyz university, local students recite — unattributed — Valikhanov’s claims while expressing near total unfamiliarity with the jomokchu’s text. The Epic of Many Parts: The Manas of Wilhelm Radloff, 1862, 1869

Wanting linguistic samples for his pioneering studies of Turkic languages, the Berlin-born Wilhelm Radloff collected, on two expeditions, a substantial corpus of Kyrgyz material that would influence understanding of oral cultures. In 1862, setting aside his German and Latin teaching in Barnaul (in Siberia), by the Tekes river among the Bugu — the same tribe Valikhanov had visited — he collected a number of narratives from an uncertain number of unnamed jomokchu. • ‘Almambet, Er Kökčo and Ak-erkeč (1,311 lines) / ‘How Almambet came to Manas’ (totalling 1,862 lines): the Kalmak Almambet coverts to Islam on the urging of the khan Kökčö,41 only to be accused of sleeping with Kökčö’s wife Ak-erkeč; Almambet opts to join the more reputable Manas.42 • ‘The Duel between Manas and Er Kökčo’ / ‘The marriage, death and return to life of Manas’ (totalling 2,686 lines): Manas, mortally shot with a musket by Almambet’s former khan, is brought back to life by the invocations of his Forty Companions; marrying the Tajik Kanıkey, Manas is poisoned by the Kalmak Kamaŋ-köz and Kökčo-köz, but is again brought back to life.43 • ‘Bok-murun’ (2,197 lines): a variant of the story Valikhanov collected earlier. • ‘Közkaman’ (2,540 lines): Manas’s loyal Kalmak Almambet nearly dies defending Manas as war is waged upon them by Közkaman, Manas’s paternal uncle abducted by the Kalmaks as a child, and his son, Kökčököz

 38 KO provides the shelfmark MS Leningrad Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., Oriental Archive. Razrjad II, opis’ No. 4, delo No. 36; for Margulan’s discovery and publications, see Hatto, ‘The Kirghiz Original’ and KO.  39 KO.  40 Botojarov, ed., Köönörgüs muras.  41 Examined in DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion, pp. 59–69; for a recent study, see Wintermann, Die Figure des Almambet im kirgisischen Manas-Epos.  42 MWR divides the episode into two named sections.  43 Similarly divided in MWR.

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(the poisoners in the tale above, reappearing, with less archaic names); Manas heads to Mecca and prays to revive his Companions after being nursed by Kanıkey, who in a dream prophesizes the birth of their son, Semetey. • ‘The Birth of Semetey’ (1,078 lines): after the elderly Manas dies, Kanıkey flees with Manas’s mother, Čakan, and her newborn child, Semetey, to his maternal grandfather following threats from Manas’s father, Jakıp, and his two sons from another wife; Semetey returns to take back his father’s possessions, avoids consuming a poisoned cup of arak (an alcoholic drink) offered by Jakıp by passing it to an unfortunate dog, pitches his yurt where his father’s once stood, and captures after battle the fractious relatives; Kanıkey mutilates then kills Manas’s treacherous brothers, and Čakan does the same to Jakıp. • ‘Semetey’ (1,927 lines): angered by his father’s elderly Forty Companions who refuse to go raiding, Semetey slaughters them; two of their children, Kül-čoro (flower-companion) and Kan-čoro (blood-companion), raised by Kanıkey, become his new companions; with Kül-čoro’s assistance, Semetey successfully woos the already bethrothed Ay-čürök; in the following furore the tortured Kül-čoro remains loyal, Kan-čoro does not; Semetey is killed by Er Kıyaz, who takes the pregnant Ay-čürök; she repels advances on her and Semetey’s son Seitek, who grows up to wreak vengeance; Kanıkey mutilates Kan-čoro; Seitek pitches his yurt, like his father, where his grandfather’s stood. In 1869, among the Sarıbaġıš, Radloff collected • ‘The Birth of Manas’ (164 lines). And from the same jomokchu among the Solto tribe, on the single day Radloff collected two lengthy poems where Manas was not the main hero. • ‘Joloy Khan’ (5,322 lines): comic adventures of Manas’s frequent enemy and his son Bolot. • ‘Er-Töštük’ (2,146 lines): ‘the underworld adventures of an originally shamanic figure as filtered through fairy-tale epic’.44 Radloff halted a third, ‘Jügörü’, in performance, believing it to be a tired repetition of the previous two. During his second expedition, Radloff also collected shorter pieces including two laments: one for the Sarıbaġıš chieftain Jantay (d. c. 1867; 132 lines), the other for the chieftain Čokčoloy by his daughter (94 lines).

 44 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, p. 33.

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Radloff ’s work revealed how stories are created and used by oral-based communities. The repetitive phrases he chose not to omit revealed that the performed narratives were constructed in the moment, like a pianist improvising with memorized motifs. He connected this finding to contemporary debates about the Homeric authorship question and the Kalevala, and saw, in the completely oral pre-canonization stage of a storytelling culture, stories could similarly be treated like formulas: episodes connected to one character could easily be altered, if the audience agreed, to include another. Radloff became increasingly aware of the role of the audience. He was aware that his requests for slower diction and request for corrections interfered with capturing a typical performance. (His ‘double recital’ method, listening to a performance and taking notes, then asking it to be repeated verbatim so it could be copied, did little to help.45) He recognized the segments he appreciated differed from those the Kyrgyz audiences enjoyed. Variation was part of the pleasure of performance. Though he himself arranged the material in a chronological order, to emphasize the pre-written nature of his collected material, Radloff opted to view his stories about Manas as individual episodes rather than a complete narrative; the creation of an overarching single canonical version he believed should be the work of someone belonging to the culture, and predicted such task would occur when the Kyrgyz changed their semi-nomadic way of life. Radloff, like his predecessor, overlooked contemporary associations. The presence of the White Padishah, to whom Manas repeatedly pays homage, he regarded as a performer accommodating an assumed Russian spectator; any possible plea for assistance against threats from the Uyghurs and Chinese, or comment on Russians playing Turkic tribes against each other, went unheard.46 The shared phrases with the later collected lament for Jantay, a chieftain who received the rank of lieutenant colonel for assisting the Russians, moved Radloff to comment the latter appeared like an extract.47 These similarities, along with the appearance of Manas and other legendary heroes in the lament for Čokčoloy, in a genre that features a dialogue between the living and the dead alongside a stating of social roles and connections,48 reveals religious and communal positions while also showing the political value of shared narratives. Comparison of his variant of the memorial feast with Valikhanov’s is illuminating. Both variants contain an atypical location for the event. Valikhanov’s performer likely altered the place to flatter his patron’s antiquarian interests. Radloff, who collected his version of the Bok-murun narrative from a performer he was travelling with, was similarly  45 See the strictures of Radloff in Honko, Textualising the Siri Epic, pp. 177–79.  46 MWR, pp. 73–95 (endnote to l. 8 highlights later usage of the term in official correspondence); Hatto, ‘Jantay: A Kirghiz Lament for a Chieftain’; Chadwick in Oral Epics of Central Asia, p. 33, De Vries, Heroic Song and Heroic Legend, p. 158, and, romanticized, Wasilewska, ‘The Past and the Present’, pp. 85–86.  47 MWR, p. 67, ll. 7–18; Hatto, ‘Jantay: A Kirghiz Lament for a Chieftain’, l. 101.  48 Pritchard, ‘Creativity and Sorrow in Kyrgyzstan’.

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likely (unknowingly) flattered when Radloff ’s final destination was included as the site where the hero Manas would excel.49 Though Radloff was not to know the itinerary would differ in other respects in his Bok-murun variant collected independently of Valikhanov from the same tribe differed owing to contemporary conflicts changing the location of the Bugu,50 he might have noticed that the greedy grasping antihero, Joloy, typically Kalmak, was here ‘Khan of the Russians’, possibly a joke at Radloff ’s expense (and a comment on Russian expansionism).51 The stories he transcribed frequently have the warlike Manas interrupting episodes belonging to other characters, reflective of a period of heightened tensions between the Kyrgyz tribes, increased Russian settlement, and a China afflicted with uprisings. Fears of lost descendants, extinct tribal lines, and eradication are present in the stories concerning Manas’s son, Semetey.52 Social changes, which Radloff recorded during his second expedition, likewise appear in his transcriptions. The friendliness Radloff saw in the short poem he collected about Manas’s birth, which he believed was extemporized in response to a question he posed about the character’s origins, contains anger: the locations of Manas’s future raids are sites of recently constructed Russian settlements, remaking the narration into a provocative statement about the recent outlawing by Russian Imperal forces of the tradition of kazat (raiding). By contrast, the longer poetic tales, though using the same dictional tools as the Manas episodes collected previously,53 present resignation to Russian colonialism in their telling. ‘Joloy Khan’, ‘a satirical Rabelaisian mock-heroic’,54 is topsy-turvy: though the narrative likely contains a retelling of much earlier elements,55 heroes from contemporary stories are mocked (Manas receives the backhanded compliment that he is better than his father),56 and the titular character, reversing the previous norm, is here a Noġay Muslim (anti-)hero who fights the Kalmaks; the former values and old stories are inverted. ‘Er-Töštük’ features another response: a widespread Central Asian tale retold for escapist entertainment.57 The telling of stories indicate that the jomokchu had a range

 49 Prior, ‘Bok-murum’s Itinerary Ridden’, p. 259; Ready, ‘The Textualization of Homeric Epic’, p. 28, categorizes these as ‘unwitting inference’.  50 Hatto, ‘Die Marschrouten in der ältern kirgisichen Heldenepik’; Prior, ‘Bok-murum’s Itinerary Ridden’, p. 239.  51 MWR, pp. 164–66, ll. 139–45; a study of the presence of Russians in nineteenth-century Kyrgyz poetry is in preparation.  52 Hatto, ‘Kirghiz (Mid-nineteenth century)’, p. 323.  53 Ready, The Homeric Simile, p. 137.  54 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, p. 33.  55 Prior, ‘Fastening the Buckle’.  56 Hatto, ‘The Catalogue of Heroes and Heroines in the Kirghiz “Joloi-Khan”’, p. 250.  57 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, p. 33; DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion, pp. 236–43; Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry, pp. 135–36 and p. 290; Reichl, ‘Beowulf, Er Töštük und das Bärensohnmärchen’.

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of non-Manas material, and that they, and audiences, were tired of the claims and values the previously persuasive hero represented.58 Reception of Radloff ’s work has likewise been shaped by contemporary concerns. He arranged his materials to address debates regarding epics and folk culture: Manas episodes are rearranged to follow the chronology of the narrative; ‘Joloy Khan’ and ‘Er-Töštük’ become separate texts, with the occasional pieces following. The texts were published in Cyrillic, with additional letters designed by Radloff to depict Kyrgyz sounds not present in Russian, with Russian verse translation and a lengthy introduction; his German language edition appeared the same year.59 Though these works, designed for academic audiences far from the Kyrgyz themselves, led to a significant career at the Russian Academy and lasting influence via Milman Parry’s theory of oral-formulaic composition,60 Radloff ’s Russian followers in the academic discipline he founded were accused of pan-Turkism (and spying for Germany) during the pre-war Soviet purges. The valuing of the Soviet-era variants over Radloff ’s collection continued into the independence era, meaning local students express surprise at the variation of details and seeming sparseness when confronted with Hatto’s 1990 reediting and English translation of the material.61

The Twilight Age (1869–1916) A variety of contexts, collectors, and audiences are present in the next period of Manas-related material. The term ‘Twilight Age’ is used ‘for its transitional nature (leading into the classical period of folklorization under Soviet rule)’ and ‘because the relevant textual records are few and insufficiently studied’,62 in part because of the predominance of Arabic script (which ceased in the Soviet era) and antiquated recording devices. The material dating from the turn of the century has, like the parodic and escapist narratives collected in 1869 from which they arguably are connected, been overlooked in favour of the earlier transcriptions and the Soviet productions. This neglect has obscured the period’s radical changes, potential directions, and varied efforts to understand and develop an inherited tradition.  58 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’.  59 Radlovym, Obraztsy narodnoj literatury severnych tjurkskich plemen; Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der nördlichen türkischen Stämme; see Oral Tradition, 5 (1990), 73–90 for a translation by Gudrun Böttcher Sherman with Adam Brooke. For an early use of Radloff ’s material, see Vámbery’s Das Türkenvolk, pp. 272–76 and A török faj ethnologiai és ethnographiai tekintetben, pp. 330–34.  60 Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse; Foley, The Theory of Oral Composition.  61 MWR; ‘Although all the traditional episodes in this epic version are considerably abridged, while certain episodes are absent altogether’, Musaev noted that ‘this version is very important’, ‘The Epos Manas’, p. 291.  62 SKK, p. 6.

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The era’s material reflects social change. With the warlike Manas no longer finding an audience, the main character becomes Semetey.63 Previously the epitome of the wayward empty-headed son, Semetey is recast as an educated, highly-literate man. The message also changed: Semetey’s story, previously expressing fears of extinction, becomes escapist romance and domestic comedy. The settled status of the Kyrgyz under the Russians is indicated by changed features within the narratives.64 In addition to the appearance of Russian loanwords, less realistic, at times confused, itineraries show travel, a familiar feature for nomadic communities, becoming escapist for settled audiences; fantastical landscapes and supernatural elements show audiences separated from their stories.65 Formulaic disclaimers mentioning God — and, in one case, Manas — suggest growing scepticism towards the narrative content.66 More faith appears to be placed in Islam: in contrast to mid-nineteenth-century variants, Twilight Age versions use Islamic terminology with greater precision. This might indicate the greater religiosity of the performers (and evidence of their increasingly Islamic education), and be a sign of performers adapting material to suit the patron. For instance, the powerful chieftain Šabdan Jantayev (c. 1840–1912) was a substantial patron (and holder of the Tsarist military rank of lieutenant colonel) like his own father Jantay and the aforementioned Borombay; with a built house, a yearly pension, and commercial interests, Šabdan could afford to support Islamic schooling.67 Manas had been relegated to mere entertainment. Twilights, however, glow before becoming void. Narratives, for dramatic effect, or to remind settled audiences becoming less familiar with nomadic tales, include innovative flashbacks.68 Collectors, too, change. The first audio recording of a performance occurs (made by non-Kyrgz researchers less linguistically capable than Valikhanov and Radloff). In addition to performances and written variants being ordered, or enabled, by Tsarist policemen (usurping the patron network), local Kyrgyz collectors emerged.69

 63 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, p. 176 fn. 421, mentions an 1896 Qissah-i Saykal reputedly published at Kazan University in Arabic script. (In later Soviet variants, Saykal, the daughter of a Kalmak khan, dresses in male garb to fight; she is both a rival and love interest for Manas.) Though focused on Manas, it likely fitted the escapist romance tone of other Twilight Age variants.  64 Prior, ‘Sparks and Embers of the Kirghiz Epic Tradition’, p. 35.  65 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 39–40; n. 96 below.  66 SKK, p. 194, discussing Kenja Kara (God) and Tınıbek Japıy uulu (Manas), emending Bowra, Heroic Poetry, p. 41.  67 SBC, p. 44; Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 11; Akiyama, ‘Why was Russian Direct Rule’, and ‘Aspects of the Islamic Engagement’.  68 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 194–98; Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry, pp. 223–35.  69 Local literati and foreign scholars were not working in opposition. To counter the Russian settler view that the locals were like dogs, a letter in Sibirskaia gazeta 25 (31 March 1888), p. 6, signed ‘gramotnyi kirghiz’ (literate Kyrgyz) requested Russian and local language presses to publish studies by orientalist scholars so that the locals could see themselves as humans. Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient, p. 165. Suspicions regarding oral tales may explain why one (lost)

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Though on the periphery of the Jadidism movement, increasing elite access to an education that included writing — whether via a mullah who joined the tribe as a personal tutor, or lessons at a madrassa — resulted in a new literary class. Unlike foreign collectors who assumed the twilight of an ancient tradition, the Kyrgyz intellectual elite looked for new methods to disseminate material they regarded as valuable. The first printed Kyrgyz-language work for a Kyrgyz audience, ‘Story of the Earthquake’ (Qissa-i zilzila) by Moldo Qylych (1866–1917), was published in Ufa, an important centre for Tsaristsanctioned Islamic culture, by Ishenaaly Arabaev (1882–1933 or 1938), who had recently received a religious education in that city.70 With the exception of the publication details printed in Cyrillic, the small, coverless, eighteen page publication (16.1 cm × 12 cm), is presented like a Perso-Arabic-language publication: after the typical Arabic beginning Bismillah, ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim, the Kyrgyz-language poem, categorized using the Arabic label qissa (story),71 is printed in Arabic script (read right-to-left, spine on the right), arranged in columns ornamented with imitation manuscript border flourishes. Arabaev provided his own pedagogical-orientated preface, and advertised another printed work by Qylych (which never appeared); he followed this publication by printing a history of the Kyrgyz and a Kazakh-Kyrgyz primer.72 In collecting and presenting the work of older traditions in a new format, Arabaev was one of an emerging group of significant Krygyz figures who laid the foundations of a less tribally-focused Kyrgyz identity and the beginnings of a concept of a nation.73 Many of this group, the first generation educated in a literary and scholastic manner different from traditional orality, proved influential in the later Soviet period. Though the extent to which all of this influenced the form remains speculative, such a change in context likely altered a performer’s impression of the audience from the actual to the imagined.74 The presence of textual versions among the Kyrgyz population created potentially new experiences for the telling tradition. A transcribed performance has the ability to move from its original ‘live’ witnesses (that is, if an audience

 70

 71  72

 73  74

variant concerning Semetey and Ay-čürök was reported to be among documents relating to ‘national liberation movements’, Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 187–88. NA 6; regarding Moldo, see Svetlana Jacquesson, ‘Un barde kirghiz mal connu Chamïrkan uulu Kïlïtch’, and Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, pp. 124–32; For the workings of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, founded by Catherine II in 1788, see Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia, pp. 102–06. See Pellat and others, ‘Ḳiṣṣa’ for a detailed study of this term. SBC, p. 310, n. 15 notes that the title of the revised historical study contains a Persianlanguage pun; Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, pp. 151–52 discusses Arabaev’s Kazakh colleagues and the primer; apparent is Arabaev’s adaptation of established means to suit Kyrgyz-language material. Prior, ‘Heroes, Chieftains, and the Roots of Kirghiz Nationalism’, p. 84; Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, using Anderson, Imagined Communities. Note though the context and strictures of Khalid, ‘Printing, Publishing, and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia’. Ong, ‘The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction’.

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was present; an absent audience is a new possibility), allowing for personal connoisseurship and, potentially, silent reading. Written and printed variants allow re-performance to different audiences, and permit greater stability in the text of a narrative.75 The collection, collation, dissemination, and influence of the surviving material, among a population whose literacy was around 3.1 per cent,76 requires closer study. This neglect of this era is visible in the contemporary university classroom, where, although such material could be considered national history, Krygyz students find themselves less capable of dealing with the material than Afghan students given their lack of familiairity with the script. Setting the Text: the Semetey of Maldıbay Borzu uulu, c. 1899

A little book, 117 pages of yellowed paper (17 cm × 11 cm) bound in cotton-covered cardboard sewn together with twine, spine on the right, associated with Maldıbay Borzu uulu, contains c. 6,000 lines of Arabic script dated to around 1899 of two different narrative episodes concerning Semetey (pp. 1–46, 47–116),77 copied, seemingly, in the same hand. Differences in epithets, diction, and orthography suggest the two episodes to be the work of different performers, and imply Maldıbay was not the creator but rather a connoisseur who carefully copied the narratives. Though likely the oldest example of Kyrgyz writing on their epic poetry, it has received little scholarly attention and has not been published in full.78 Differences with the comparable Radloff variant indicate changes in audience appreciation. The book is a bridge between orality and writing: a work of literature displaying oral features.79 Format follows an Arabic-Persian manuscript arrangement. Pages are divided into two columns of seventeen lines; later, the columns become less visually distinct as three, sometimes four, poetic lines are written per ruled lines. The two tales are prefaced with a centred title, Qissah-i Sīmātāy bū turūr (This is the tale of Semetey), and the first concludes with a blank space and an empty folio page following the thrice-repeated word

 75 Reichl, Turkic Oral Epic Poetry, pp. 87–91, examines such readers in other Central Asian contexts; significant for Twilight Age manuscripts is the contemporary example in ‘Bisweilen sinken Erzähler bei einem anspruchslosen Publikum zu Vorlesern von Volksbüchern herab’, Jacob, Vorträge türkischer Meddâh’s, p. 6, n. 2.  76 Glück, ‘Sowjetische Sprachenpolitik’, p. 545, quoted in Korth, Language Attitudes towards Kyrgyz and Russian, p. 90.  77 NA 252 (NA 252a is an unbound facsimile).  78 A 1959 Cyrillic inscription provides the c. 1899 date; Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 295–315 describes the manuscript and provides an English summary. Öztürk, ‘Müşterek Doğu Türkçesi İmlasıyla Yazılmış Arap Harfli Metinlerin Çağdaş’, argues for an earlier date, less difference between the two texts, and lengths of 2,316 and 3,451 lines respectively. ‘Semetey eposunan üzündü’, ed. by Tölömüšev, and Hu and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader, pp. 44–49, provide partial editions.  79 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 196–97.

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‘tammat’ (finished). The qissa categorization fits with the pointed disclaimers questioning the veracity of the story that begin both variants.80 Reading is reflected in both stories — in the first, at Manas’s tomb, Semetey and his father’s friend, Bakai, read the entire Qu’ran; in the second, Semetey, being a mullah, reads a letter describing a route81 — leading to speculation on whether the manuscript reflects the content or the content reflects the manuscript. The first narrative concerns Semetey’s revenge on treacherous family members and reclaiming his status. Kanıkey, his mother, helpfully provides a retelling of his difficult upbringing, describes the appearance of his father and his Forty Companions (and horses) with reference to paintings he will see on the wall of his father’s tomb. These descriptions, with a list of possessions Semetey will recover, are around 300 lines (nearly a tenth of the poem), far greater than any previous list. This change perhaps indicates the greater liberty of a writer than an oral performer. In addition to modern elements, such as Semetey using a telescope, the version differs from Radloff ’s transcription. There is no indication that Semetey slew the Companions as in the Radloff variant. In the attempted poisoning scene, honey is offered rather than the alcoholic arak, likely for religious reasons, and Semetey merely tells Jakip he will offer it to dogs (rather than actually passing it to one), and Semetey thanks God, not Bakai who warned him, for his life. A metaphorical statement, an extinguishing of a fire, that in Radloff ’s variant indicated the eradication of a family’s descendants, is used literally, suggesting that earlier connotations (and contexts), had been forgotten.82 Maldıbay’s first variant concludes, not as in Radloff ’s with the women murdering the traitors, but rather, after the women have already accomplished the killings, with Semetey being bidden to eat and a celebration of Semetey’s reclaimed position and marriage to Čačıkey. Suggestive of the impact of Russian colonialism, the word used to measure Semetey’s domain is a Russian term used by Tsarist officials to divide Kyrgyz lands.83 Maldıbay’s second narrative concerns Semetey wooing Ay-čürök. Radloff’s variant had Semetey’s interest in another man’s betrothed presented sparsely; as if to remove possible condemnation, Maldıbay’s has the two promised to each other from birth, and Ay-čürök flirtatious and interested, instigating the romance by stealing Semetey’s falcon. The tone is comical, rather than hubristic. Semetey lends his exceptional horse, Tay-buurul, to his companion Kan-čoro, to act as a go-between. Kan-čoro, calling on the spirits of Manas, his Forty Companions, and the Twelve Imams (a feature of certain branches of Sh’ia Islam), crosses a difficult river; he engages in spirited parrying with Ay-čürök.

 80  81  82  83

Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 298 and 306. Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 302 and 309. Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 206–07, using Hatto, ‘Kirghiz (Mid-ninteenth century)’, p. 323. Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, p. 305, Kyrgyz ‘boluš’ for the Russian ‘volost’; on this term, see Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, pp. 69–75.

A Te lli ng Trad i t i o n

Semetey, mistakenly believing he has seen Kül-čoro kissing Ay-čürök through his telescope, angrily takes Kak-telki, his worst horse, comically wonders whether to strip (opting not to, given the maidens on the other side), and cries out to the popular saint Baabadin before jumping into the water (with a gargantuan splash owing to having leapt with fourteen horses). Struggling, Semetey is helped by the ghosts of his father and his Forty Companions, all under the watch (and help) of Ay-čürök. After flirting, their relationship is consummated on the steppe. The manuscript ends with Semetey swearing attachment to Ay-čürök (rather than his first wife Čačıkey). The changes suggest an audience desiring romance rather than hubristic heroes, and favouring domesticity over violence. Farewell Manas: The Farewell of György Almásy, 1900

In 1900, György Almásy, a former Austro-Hungarian civil servant transcribed the first known variant that includes the ‘Great Campaign’, in which Manas rashly raids Beijing. The jokmokchu was among the Bugu tribe, the same tribe that Valikhanov and Radloff had previously visited, located in Narik-kil. Almásy printed the 72-line poem depicting Manas bidding farewell to his son Semetey in Latin script, with a German translation, in 1912.84 The relationship of the brief text published by Almásy to the tradition is unclear. Though the ‘Great Campaign’ is an episode that would frequently be collected in the early Soviet period owing to it often being a showpiece of a performer’s repertoire, it is unclear if the version collected by Almásy is traditional or an innovation.85 In the Radloff variant, there is no farewell: Semetey is born after Manas dies from old age. In the other Twilight Age survivals, Semetey is the focus, not Manas. It is not apparent if this narrative is a late example of the mid-nineteenth century context, or an early indicator of a change from contemporaneous fashions. The difficulty of placing the variant is aptly represented in the difficulty of determining the location Almásy recorded in his translation as ‘Peking’. It is not certain whether the original place name mentioned by the performer referred to the geographically distant capital of China, or to a similar-sounding settlement closer to the Kyrgyz, or, symbolically, to a neighbouring region run by a rival.86 Almásy’s expeditions, pre-war Hungarian interest in Central Asia, and the motivation for collecting Manas material are currently being researched.87 Almásy, like his fellow foreign predecessors, felt himself as a witness to a living oral tradition under threat. Though noting that this Volksdichtung (folk  84 Almásy, ‘Der Abschied des Helden Manas von seinem Sohne Sėmetėj’.  85 Hatto, ‘Tradition and Change in the Kirghiz Manas’; Prior, ‘Twilight Age’, p. 237.  86 Regarding this location in earlier and later versions, see MWR, p. 619 and Prior, ‘SinoMongolica’, pp. 248–50.  87 Sántha, ‘Almásy és Prinz’; a study on Hungarian research on the epos, including a failed expedition, is planned.

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poetry) could be found not in manuscripts but in any nomadic aul (village) performed by an Īrči (singer), he listed anachronistic elements — revolvers, telescopes, and binoculars — that appeared in tales of the distant past despite having only recently reached the steppe. He predicted that the content would change further owing to the increasing influence of Islam. The foreign Almásy regarded such alterations as evidence of decline; for contemporary local audiences, they may have been signs of vitality. Pressing Concerns: Tınıbek Japıy uulu’s Semetey, c. 1902

The 184-page Semetey (measuring 16.5 cm × 12 cm), c. 3,600 lines, c. 1902, printed in Arabic script in Moscow in 1925, has two contexts: that of the performer from the Bugu tribe, and that of the publisher, the aforementioned Ishenaaly Arabaev. Tınıbek’s narrative differs from the Semetey Radloff collected and from the second Maldıbay Borzu uulu variant. Ay-čürök, fleeing in the form of a swan from potential suitors, flies to Manas’s mausoleum, pays respects to her future father-in-law. She then enters Semetey’s camp, and bickers with his wife, Čačıkey. Though Čačıkey urges Semetey’s companion Kül-čoro to prevent Semetey’s falcon being released, Ay-čürök manages to lure the bird away (while she is in the form of a swan). Though Kül-čoro and Kan-čoro seek out Ay-čürök in order to return the falcon, Kül-čoro becomes a wooer on Semetey’s behalf. As in Maldıbay’s variant, a telescope appears, and Semetey’s crossing of the river is depicted comically: having loaned out his powerful horse, Semetey becomes a laughable figure for the women observing his difficulties. In contrast with Maldıbay, where Semetey and Ay-čürök consummate their relationship on the steppe, in Tınıbek’s variant, the location is in a yurt set aside for guests. The story ends abruptly when Ay-čürök, having returned to her father’s yurt, rejects Semetey’s advances and urges him to return to Čačıkey. Tınıbek’s Semetey, seemingly ordered by the Russian Narin district police chief, shares Twilight Age features. In comparison to mid-nineteenth-century itineraries, Ay-čürök’s flight routes are somewhat incoherent, indicating the escapist nature of narrated travel.88 The more specific (and accurate) religious terminology includes Islamic ritual objects. Physical objects are described at greater length. In addition to dream sequences, the non-linear narrative moves backwards and forwards in time. Even the aforementioned telescope has a back-story — Tınıbek explains that Kanıkey hid it in her girdle when Semetey’s brothers were stealing his inheritance — suggesting an increasing need to explain plot holes. Given the uncertainty regarding Tınıbek’s literacy and the production of a text, it is difficult to assert the extent to which such features were the result of writing.

 88 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, p. 216, also notes that her second flight makes more sense.

A Te lli ng Trad i t i o n

New questions are prompted by the survival of Tınıbek’s Semetey in printed form. The route the variant took to publication is unclear, though noticeable lacunae suggest that the path was not perfect. Comparison with Arabaev’s earlier edition of Moldo Qylych’s Qissa-i zilzila (1911) is illuminating. Both, in Arabic script (with snippets of Cyrillic),89 were printed outside of Kyrgyz territories. Semetey, printed with twenty lines to a page in a single column, lacks any ornamentation other than black horizontal lines, and has no Bismillah opening (which the religious Tınıbek might have included). This is evidence of Arabaev, having earlier tried to create a Kyrgyz reading audience with his Jadid-influenced edition of Moldo Qylych, trying to do the same with the Soviet Central Nationalities Press in Moscow.90 As before, his attempt was too early. As his use of the word ‘serial’ indicates, Arabaev wanted to spur interest in a fuller version that never appeared. The abrupt cliff-hanger ending he introduced to Tınıbek’s text announced a new aspect to the ‘text’ of the epos: the role of the editor in shaping original material to engage with a new audience — the commercial market. Future events made Arabaev’s historically specific attempt seem out of place. The copy held in the Academy of Sciences, which is missing pages, is bound, with a spine on the left, in a cover belonging to another epic.91 Later events would result in the work being reprinted, transliterated into Latin script, in Nazi Berlin in 1943 with the same purpose of forming a cultural identity.92 Ironically, criticisms of Arabaev’s publication appeared in a later edition of Tınıbek’s Semetey, printed in Cyrillic as part of the millennial celebrations in 1994 when the wide audience anticipated and desired by Arabaev was in fact attained.93 A Bad Record: Belinskii’s Cylinders of Kenje Kara’s Semetey, 1903/1904

A Russian research group led by Aleksandr Belinskii made the first recorded performance in the winter of 1903/1904. Wanting to collect ethnographic material, they recorded a variant of Semetey in Pishpek (then capital of Russian Turkistan; now Bishkek) on six wax cylinders containing 240 lines lasting over 17½ minutes. A local police colonel facilitated the performance of Kenje Kara (1859–1929) of the Bugu tribe (whom Radloff and Valikhanov had visited), accompanying himself on a kıl kıyak. At various times in his life, Kenje Kara

 89 The aforementioned Qissa-I zilzila has the publication details in Russian in Cyrillic; Arabaev’s edition of Semetey has these in Arabic (and an advertisement for the publisher in Russian).  90 Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, examines Arabaev.  91 NA 78, bound in En Kychtyy.  92 Manas, ed. by Bet-Alman; Hu and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader, pp. 313–31, and see below in this chapter.  93 Manas, ed. by Sarypbekov.

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was an epic singer, a fiddler, and a performer of laments for the aforementioned chieftan Šabdan Jantayev, making the category of performer unclear.94 The cylinders record Kenje Kara’s ability to adapt. The famed performer, said to be able to tell the same tale for over forty days and nights, pares down the narrative to what he considered necessary. Metrically longer lines are used to emphasize details and quickly announce a change of episode, and expressions shared with other variants of the tale show a performer crafting anew.95 The setting, promptly mentioned, is deliberately indistinct and otherworldly.96 Semetey is presented with his telescope, failing to observe an approaching group; Kül-čoro crosses a difficult river on Semetey’s loaned horse to gather information. Kenje Kara proceeds with events that typically occur earlier: Ay-čürök pitching her tent by the bank, and discussion of her dream. Verbal sparring, present in other variants, is absent here, likely because the episode occurred as the cylinders were being changed; more deliberate is Kenje Kara’s omission of ‘s/he said’ phrases and complex formula, in a conscious shortening of the material. Perhaps because of the unfamiliar foreign audience, Kenje Kara has a poor man’s daughter interpret Ay-čürök’s dream, and, by ending with Ay-čürök stating Semetey will appear, omits the comedy of Semetey crossing the river, perhaps to make him more heroic. These altered elements reveal the adaptability of the material, and the choices a performer like Kenje Kara could make. The cylinders, awkwardly recorded in an official Russian building, reveal how the strains of performance influence a performer. The need to clear his throat occasionally explains interjections and new clauses. A repeated description of the river Kül-čoro’s crossing is due to Kenje Kara, realizing a higher scale is required for the scene, beginning anew (an acceptable occurrence in reciting which is not possible on the page). The halting of his performance nearly every three minutes to change cylinders, and his increasing familiarity with the format of recording, explains the appearance, and subsequent disappearance, of narration recapping what had immediately occurred. In one four-line passage, Kenje Kara appears to sing a slightly amended couplet; the explanation is possibly due to recommencing after being halted for the needle to be cleaned. Material absent in this variant may be due to technological issues, but may indicate Kenje Kara’s increasing awareness of his audience and a desire to conclude quickly.97

 94 SKK, p. 3.  95 In SKK, Prior notes ‘Massed like camels’ humps’ (l. 87), describing a river’s rapids, appears in three other variants of Semetey by other performers, while the horse’s later ‘trembled like a quail’ (l. 123) ‘appears to be Kenje Kara’s alone’; cf. Ready, The Homeric Simile, p. 144.  96 The Andijan mountain pass at the start of Kenje Kara’s performance ‘has not revealed itself on maps’, Köy-kap, the Kyrgyz variant of Kūh-i Qāf, which later becomes ‘the boundary of the world of men and the world of peris and monsters’ here ‘simply put, he has traveled a long way’, SKK, pp. 111–12. See also Prior, ‘Travels of Mount Qāf ’, esp. pp. 436–40.  97 SKK, p. xviii discusses the artificial nature of the performance.

A Te lli ng Trad i t i o n

The cylinders record a telling encounter between Imperialist collectors and a local performer. Most of Kenje Kara’s audience lacked the linguistic abilities of previous foreign collectors; the recording, fittingly, concludes with a voice seeming to stutter over the pronunciation of Kenje Kara’s name.98 Boris Smirnov (1881–1951), the group’s artist, describes the performance in animalistic terms, presenting Kenje Kara as gullibly horrified when hearing his voice played back (repeating ‘Shaitan!’). Smirnov however could only understand Kenje Kara’s performance later via a Russian translation said to be by the group’s Kazakh translator, Atey-bey. In addition to appearing to mistake the Kyrgyz word keregesin (the lattice frame of a yurt) for the Russianism kerebet (bedstead), the translation diverges from the performance, though such alterations arguably indicate a literate audience’s desire to rationalize features of an oral performance. Where Kenje Kara ended with Ay-čürök’s dream being elucidated, the translation features an account that will occur later in the overarching narrative, set in the past tense. While showing an awareness of the larger narrative, the products of performance also testify to misunderstandings between the performer and the audience.99 Like other Twilight Age variants recording an anomalous performance for posterity, the cylinders long languished unappreciated. Though currently held in the Phonograph Archive of the Institute of Russian Literature at Pushkin House in St Petersburg,100 they formerly resided in the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences in the same city. One Kyrgyz scholar, unable to make sense of the recording, published a back-translation into Kyrgyz of the garbled Russian published by Smirnov.101 Decades later, assisted by modern technology and an international scholarly community, Daniel Prior produced a critical edition of what he labelled a ‘performance’ rather than a ‘text’, with the recording, a transcription in Latin script with facing English translation, and contextual material. Presented thus, Kenje Kara’s performance in difficult circumstances becomes an example of the tradition, the creation of an individual for a specific audience, and an insight into a unique historical moment. Out of Steppe: The Šabdan Baatır Codex by Musa Čaġateyev, c. 1910

A small volume, fifty-three folios of lined pulp paper (11.5 cm × 13.7 cm), sewn together on the right-hand side onto a cardboard cover itself covered with cloth, whence the epigraph of this chapter is taken, is a collection of Kyrgyz verse in Arabic script (in black, red, and purple ink), dedicated to the aforementioned manap Šabdan Baatır (baatır, hero), chieftain of the  98 SKK, p. 82 leaves this phrase untranslated.  99 Smirnov, V stepiakh Turkestana; reprinted, with translation, in SKK (noting, p. xiii, that Smirnov donated an album of images to the historical museum in Frunze in 1949).   100 SKK prints the shelfmark as Cylinders 3000–3305.   101 Mamıtbekov’s ‘Oktyabr’ revolyutsiyasına čeyin Manas eposun jıynoonun jana izildöönün tarıkhı’, discussed in SKK.

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Sarıbaġıš (whom Radloff had visted in 1869).102 Around 1910, the poet, Musa Čaġateyev, of whom little is known, consciously prepared the material to be read. The work survives in a later copy by Belek Soltonoyev (1878–1938), a notable Kyrgyz literati.103 For this study, the work is significant for its pointed criticism of narratives concerning Manas. In common with other Twilight Age products, Čaġateyev’s work is transitional. The subjects of raiding and violence — a defence against a Kalmak incursion in 1846, horse-stealing and Buddhist temple ransacking in 1864 — are traditional topics of oral poetry. (To which is added, in a different metre by an unknown poet another staple: a versified sanjıra (genealogy) of the Sarıbaġıš elite.104) Formerly familiar features, such realistic itineraries, appear alongside more contemporary characteristics like telescopes. Comparing legendary figures to contemporary ones, a typical feature in spoken poetry, becomes a refashioning of past social codes for modern times in writing. Čaġateyev laments that Kyrgyz heroes are being forgotten while the actions of the Manas are being sung: the foreign Noġay and his friend Almambet, Čaġateyev declares, are no match for his Kyrgyz patron Šabdan and his colleague Bayake. Čaġateyev’s stated wish for his work to be published among the Kyrgyz by Arabaev, who was beginning to print Kyrgyz-orientated publications, and to be sung like Manas expresses this oral-print duality.105 Though politicization of earlier narratives is also common in oral poetry, the idea of print attempted to use traditional forms to propagate a pan-tribal Kyrgyz identity, repeatedly reiterating Kyrgyz rather than individual tribal identity, based on recent memories, in an optimistic attempt to forge a nation.106 Though unsuccessful, the intention and value of Čaġateyev’s work was later noted. Belek Soltonoyev’s copying of the poems indicates the increasing interest of the emerging Kyrgyz literati class in traditional materials. The details, however, were problematic. A pencilled box encloses Čaġateyev’s complaint concerning Manas’s ethnicity, and the word Noġay written over,107 and, in the post-independence period, the manuscript was kept, little studied, in the short-lived National Centre of Manasology and Artistic Culture. Students using Daniel Prior’s scholarly edition (2013) have responded to Čaġateyev’s   102 NA 80 (reproduced in facsimile in SBC).   103 Soltonoyev’s handwriting was identified and recorded on the manuscript by Kayum Miftakov (of whom, see below); SBC, p. 326; for Soltonoyev, see Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, pp. 172–85.   104 For a study of a later sanjıra, see Salk, Die Sanjïra des Togolok Moldo; for contemporary, see Light, ‘Kyrgyz Genealogies and Lineages’.   105 SBC, p. 146, ll. 48–51.   106 Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, pp. 111–12; Prior, ‘Heroes, Chieftains, and the Roots of Kirghiz Nationalism’, p. 84; SKK, pp. 314–15; Printing in a vernacular language to address a supposed community is, following Anderson, a feature of nationalism; Čaġateyev’s work, therefore, is a revealing example of a premature effort. For a later work by Čaġateyev, see Prior, ‘A Qırghız Verse Narrative of Rebellion and Exile’.   107 NA 80, f. 40v (SBC, p. 457).

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dismissal with surprise. The later interference with a rare written source reveals to them the creation of a distinct Kyrgyz national identity that Čaġateyev strove for, albeit with Manas at the centre at the expense of his chosen heroes.

The Soviet Period (1917–1991) The Soviet Period brought immense changes to the context, collection, and reception of Kyrgyz epic poetry. Two substantial versions are representative: a 180,378-line biographical account of Manas by Sagımbay Orozbakov (1867–1930), and a version by Sayakbai Karalaev (1894–1971) of the whole trilogy — Manas, his son Semetey, grandson Seitek — totalling 500,533 lines.108 The scale of this change is apparent in comparison of these versions of the Manas narrative with variants collected by Radloff.109 Radloff 1. Birth of Manas 2. Almambet’s march 3. Fight with Kokcho 4. Manas’s marriage to Kanykei 5. Koketei’s funeral feast 6. Kezkoman’s conspiracy 7. Manas’s death

Orozbakov 1. Birth and childhood of Manas 2. Manas’s and Koshoi’s march to Kashgar 3. Manas’s march to Central Asia 4. War against the Afghan Shooruk 5. Almambet’s coming to Manas 6. Manas’s marriage to Kanykei 7. Manas’s march to the North 8. War against the Afghan khan, Talku 9. Manas’s march to the West 10. Manas’s passage to Talas 11. War against Aigankhan 12. Kezkoman’s conspiracy 13. Koketei’s funeral feast 14. Khans’ conspiracy 15. Great Campaign 16. Semetey’s birth 17. Manas’s pilgrimage to Mecca 18. Manas’s last march, his death

Karalaev 1. Birth and childhood of Manas 2. Manas’s meeting with Koshoi 3. Second Chinese march against Manas 4. Koshoi’s march to Kashgar 5. Manas’s passage to Talas 6. Manas’s leaving his father 7. Search for relations 8. Ajibai’s coming to Manas 9. War against khan Alooke 10. War against the Afghan khan Shooruk 11. Bakai’s marriage 12. Story about Akbalty and Chubak 13. Chubak’s march to Bukhara 14. Manas’s marriage to Kanyeki 15. Khan’s conspiracy 16. Great Campaign, Manas’s death 17. Kanykei’s flight to Bukhara

  108 Jumaturdu, ‘A Comparative Study of Performers of the Manas Epic’, pp. 292–93, provides the numbers.   109 Adapted from Rakhmatullin, ‘Plot Peculiarities of Manas Versions’, pp. 294–95.

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Such works, and such changes, are the product of their time. Violence resulted in an overturning of the social order, and the storytelling tradition. An attempt in to conscript the Tsar’s Central Asian subjects for labour brigades in the war against Germany sparked a revolt.110 Tit-for-tat massacres of Russian and Kyrgyz communities, a brutal suppression by Tsarist forces, resulted in a sizeable Kyrgyz migration to the Afghan Pamirs and Xinjiang.111 This turmoil is articulated in the story of an unnamed Kyrgyz performer who, having fled to China, found support from Kalmak patrons after changing the Manas narratives to focus on a Kalmak hero.112 Poetry was a means of survival and a method of remembering.113 The Bolshevik Revolution brought further change. Prominent Kyrgyz intellectuals, including the Jadids (who had formerly supported conscription), supported the movement in order to overthrow Imperial rule.114 Though the path to becoming a Soviet Republic in 1929 was rapid and confused,115 the korenizatsiya policy — of ‘rooting’ Bolshevik authority in non-Russian groups by promoting their culture and language — would have lasting effects. Traditional akyns composed stanzas praising Lenin.116 Linguistics and new alphabets were used to create new literate communities capable of striving for more advanced stages of Communism.117 Literacy drives were used to win support. Volunteer teachers in ‘red yurtas’ in nomadic camps helped raise literacy rates to 16.5 per cent in 1926.118 A reading audience was created. The first Kyrgyz-language newspaper appeared in 1924; the first Krygyz short story in 1926; the first novel in 1937.119 These drives coincided with the ideological attacks on the former Kyrgyz ruling class. As a consequence, traditional oral performers increasingly lost their social position and means of support, and emerging state institutions took the role of cultural guardians and patrons. As Radloff had predicted, the collection and arrangement of the material changed. Ishenaaly Arabaev, the aforementioned publisher of a Kazakh-Kyrgyz primer, managed, as a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Kara-

  110 Brower, ‘Kyrgyz Nomads and Russian Pioneers’.   111 For Kyrgyz orature in the Pamirs, see Dor, Chants du Toit du Monde; for Manas specifically, see his ‘Un fragment pamirien de Manas’.   112 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 23 provides strictures and comment regarding this example provided by Tynystanov at the 1935 Frunze conference.   113 Duishembieva, ‘From Rebels to Refugees’.   114 Khalid, ‘Nationalizing the Revolution in Central Asia’, esp. pp. 151–53.   115 Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Province (1924), Kirghiz Autonomous Province (1925), status of Republic (1926), official Soviet Republic (1929); Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, pp. 78–84.   116 Vinogradov, ‘The Akyns Sing of Lenin’; ‘Kandaĭ ayal tuudu ѐken Lenindeĭ uuldu’, in praise of Lenin’s birth, in Satyldanov, Chygarmalar zhyĭnagy, pp. 217–18.   117 Smith, ‘The Eurasian Imperative in Early Soviet Language Planning’.   118 Glück, ‘Sowjetische Sprachenpolitik’, p. 543 in Korth, Language Attitudes, p. 90.   119 Respectively Erkin too (‘Free Mountains); Kasymaly Bayalinov’s Ajar, a tragic tale of a woman’s suffering in the events of 1916; Tügölbay Sïdïkbekov’s Keng-Suu.

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Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast, to create a ‘territory’ for the Krygyz by using newspapers and education to propagate a supposedly distinct linguistic and cultural ‘Krygyz’ identity against the views of several notable Communists who viewed Kyrgyz and Kazakhs as the same people.120 To aid this, Arabaev also headed an Academic Center, later the National Academy of Sciences, which facilitated research on Kyrgyz topics — including Manas.121 Old Jadidists could work within the imposed framework of Soviet dominance. In addition to collecting notable materials, including a roughly 2050-line Semetey from Baiymbet Abdrakhmanov (a.k.a. ‘Togolok Moldo’, ‘Learned Roundface’, 1860–1942), Kayum Miftakov (1882–1948/1949), a Baskhir schoolteacher-turned-school-inspector, played an important role in classifying Kyrgyz materials (and isolating Manas from other now ‘lesser’ epics).122 Much Manas material collected during this period was either the standard showpiece, the ‘Great Campaign’ in which the hero raids Beijing, or the hero’s birth.123 Miftakov, who warned his colleagues not to record performers who learnt materials from books, delegated to the Kyrgyz schoolteacher Ibirayim Abdirakhmanov (1888–1967) the greater task of collecting not mere episodes but a complete account of Manas, Semetey, and Seitek. The result was Orozbakov’s 180,378-line variant of Manas’s full life. Orozbakov began with the birth of Manas and continued in a linear biographical fashion. As with the ordering, Orozbakov’s use of Kyrgyz in place of Noġay may be the design of the performer, or the influence of Miftakov. Orozbakov may have been consciously placating his former-Jadidist patron. Recasting the narratives as history, Orozbakov included recent theories and terminology relating to the Kyrgyz past in his version, associating the character Manas with events 1100 years ago.124 His own Muslim faith may explain the emphasis on Islamic features in his new overarching narrative: to explain Manas’s later invasion of China, Orozbakov has Manas make a pilgrimage to Mecca to give thanks for the birth of his son Semetey, thereby justifying his absence to explain a Chinese attack.125 Abdirakhmanov transcribed performances by Orozbakov in

  120 Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’; Chokobaeva, ‘Frontiers of Violence’, pp. 91–105. For Kazakh complaints, see Ubiria, Soviet Nation-Building in Central Asia, pp. 104–05; for context, Sabol, ‘The Creation of Soviet Central Asia’.   121 Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’, p. 263.   122 NA KF 68(262) collected 31 July 1922 (filed under ‘folklore’ owing to the majority of this manuscript being non-Manas related). The ‘lesser’ Kyrgyz epic ‘Kojojash’ was first collected by Miftakov in 1923; Aitpaeva, ‘The Triad of Crime, Punishment, and Forgiveness’, examines the variants.   123 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 236–37.   124 Falev, ‘Kak stroitsja karakirgizskaja bylina’; in Uzbek in Bilim üchaghi 1; Bernshtam, ‘Epoch the Kyrgyz Epic Manas’ (regarding the ‘Great Campaign’, see pp. 414–24); for several historical ‘layers’, Auezov, ‘Time of the Epos Manas’ Origin’; for context, see Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, pp. 29–31; Orozbakov, Manas, ed. by Musaev and Akmataliev, p. 467. Prior, ‘Sino-Mongolica’.   125 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, pp. 103, 147–48.

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Arabic script over four years, making corrections that blurred the boundary between collection and collation. The two travelled to the centralized Scientific Committee (then in Tashkent) for funding in 1924, where, as representatives of old Kyrgyz culture, they were rebuffed by the younger Kyrgyz apparatchik Khusain Karasayev (1902–1997).126 Consequently, Orozbakov, who like other Twilight Age performers was known for his Semetey, died with only Manas complete. Official changes in Soviet attitudes towards folklore in the 1930s further altered the tradition. Though hardline Kyrgyz Communists saw Manas stories as lingering relics of feudalism, the epos was seen as a chance to merge local values with Soviet doctrine: one performer, Almabek Toichubekov (1888–1969), educated in Moscow, reputedly did so by attributing a Five Year Plan to Manas.127 New terminology appeared: significantly, manaschi, a reciter of Manas, replaced jomokchu. With the removal of old forms of patronage, manaschis, increasingly claiming to be called in dreams to assert their abilities,128 were influenced by the increasing institutionalization of performance. Sovietsupported aitïsh competitions differed from their predecessors: whereas previously performers would spar with their opponents, Soviet manaschis prepared their sections in advance with no on-stage interaction. Following an official diktat, folk artists — including Manas performances — were required to be presented on a stage in a popular theatre detached from the audience.129 Plucking fresh talent from rural areas and funding their studies in the capital, State-run Olympiads and celebratory festivals, all, while stressing Soviet support and changing the system of patronage, had the effect of spreading a northern Kyrgyz storytelling tradition into the south.130 (This drive, and Soviet pushes for gender equality, may explain the emergence of a small number of female performers.131) While learning the craft appears to have continued in the traditional manner,132 some older performers found new means of support. Moldobasan Musulmankulov (1883–1961) was hired by the Kyrgyz State Theatre, and the formerly impoverished Sayakbai Karalaev received a monthly salary as the first official manaschi of

  126 Though younger, Karasayev shared a similar educational background: Duishembieva, ‘Visions of Community’ pp. 137–38.   127 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 148; for comparison, see Miller, ‘The Image of Stalin in Soviet Russian Folklore’; Ziolkowski, Soviet Heroic Poetry in Context.   128 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 36; Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, pp. 119–29 argues for earlier dates for vocation dreams.   129 Iğmen, Speaking Soviet with an Accent, p. 100.   130 Iğmen, Speaking Soviet with an Accent, pp. 91 and 169, n. 26; for comparison: Ubiria, Soviet Nation-Building, pp. 163–65.   131 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 312, makes this suggestion discussing the career of Seidene Moldokova (1922–2006) and attitudes toward female performers, while noting the absence of legends concerning any earlier predecessors.   132 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, pp. 131–32, describes the apprenticeship of Kaba Atabekov (1926–2008).

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the Frunze Philarmonia.133 Both were also assisted by the drive to produce a complete version of the Manas epos, with Musulmankulov producing a Semetey (1935–1936) and a Manas (1944–1945), the latter with the help of Abdirakhmanov, who also aided Karalaev’s version of all three generations. Realizing that written versions were becoming central, the aforementioned Togolok Moldo wrote his own version of Manas and Semetey (1936–1941).134 The written variant was, at length, becoming the chosen form. The Soviet involvement also resulted in new adaptations of the narratives, scholarship, and a return to politicization. Soviet culture with local colour provided escapism from the brutal task of collectivizing nomads.135 For some locals, such interest was a means to continue developing the imagined nation. At around the same time as academic conferences argued for the value of the epos,136 Ai-churek, the first Kyrgyz-language opera — a Semetey adaptation with Western music and orientalist trappings — was being staged.137 Translation of ‘folk’ material into Russian saw similarly hybrid productions: writers, often unfamiliar with the original language, rewrote literal translations to fit Soviet folk aesthetics and ideology for a safe source of income; for local ‘folk’ artists, it was a chance to be feted and given funded access to the upper echelons of Moscow. For Kyrgyz intellectuals like Kasym Tynystanov (1901–1938), working with Manas under the guise of critiquing the pre-Soviet past was a means of promoting Kyrgyz culture when their own work had been banned.138 A Russian translation of Manas in its entirety was desired. The previously unsupportive Karasayev was a keen promoter of Orozbakov’s variant139 — it was complete, and the representative of the old ways was safely dead. Two talented Russian linguists working on the material, Yevgeny Polivanov (1891–1938) and Semyon

  133 Iğmen, Speaking Soviet with an Accent, pp. 105–07, examines the role of centralized theatre in this period.   134 Musaev’s ‘The Epos Manas’, pp. 291–93 provides details. Musulmankulov: 43,102-line Semetey, Latin script 1935–1936, 51,718-line Manas, Cyrillic script, 1944–1945; Togolok Moldo, Manas, 53,045 lines, and Semetey, 1936–1941. NA 65, a sizeable volume of Musulmankulov’s later Manas collected in 1944, contains pages of different sizes collated together; Cyrillic script. NA 1, a volume of Togolok Moldo’s Manas, is slightly larger than a standard exercise book (cf. Orozbakov and Karalaev, discussed below) in Arabic script. A published edition of Moldo’s trilogy, and the first volume of Musulmankulov’s Manas, appeared among a spate of publications in the 2010s (see ‘Prezentaciya’); revealingly, the transliterator of the Moldo text from Arabic script into Cyrillic described the action as translation into Kyrgyz (see ‘V Kyrgyzstane’).   135 First Secretary Belozki wanted an opera house, theatre, and concert hall in the provincial city of Bishkek for this purpose. Khazanov and Shapiro, ‘Contemporary Pastoralism in Central Asia’, records the effects of collectivization.   136 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, pp. 23–24 discusses the notable 1935 Frunze conference featuring Tynystanov, Polivanov, and Mukhtar Auezov.   137 Frolova-Walker, ‘National in Form, Socialist in Content’ (on Ai-churek, pp. 349–52); Kyz-Zhibek, the first Kazakh opera (1934), was also based on an oral epic.   138 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, pp. 21–22.   139 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 21.

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Lipkin (1911–2003), could also produce their own versions: the former capable of improvising Kyrgyz epic poetry, the latter writing a children’s novella concerned with Manas.140 Because national movements were regarded as a means of developing communism, and because such groupings were easier to suppress than pan-Turkic and pan-Islamic coalitions, such involvement was permitted (subject to a later purge). The increasing value attached to the epos is visible in the 1938 Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, which, following Valikhanov, praised the Manas epos as comparable with the Iliad.141 Interest in folklore, categorization, history, linguistics, Marxist-Leninism, and textual analysis meant a shift away from the staples of the audience’s interest and the individual performer,142 removing ownership from the audience and the teller. In a period where important patron-like intellectuals such as Arabaev, Soltonoyev, and Tynystanov were murdered in purges, such views may have helped performers who seem to have avoided such fates.143 The Second World War saw the formerly oral narratives refitted for mechanical reproduction and designed to engage different audiences. Desiring support from all ethnicities, local cultures and traditions were further supported. Along with other Central Asian heroes mobilized for the war effort, Manas appeared in Kyrgyz-language material for the troops and publicized in international bulletins.144 (For similar purposes, under the auspices of the Nazi Reich-supported Turkestan National Committee, Arabaev’s edition of Tınıbek Japıy uulu’s Semetey was republished in the Soviet-suppressed Latin alphabet in Berlin in 1943.145) With literacy rates in 1939 at 79.8 per cent, and lamenting a delay in the production of more substantial and scholarly editions,146 Abdirakhmanov published the ‘Manas Series’ (1940–1942), a set of eleven small pocket volumes containing individual episodes of the Manas epos by individual performers (including Togolok Moldo, Orozbakov, and Karalaev),   140 Simonato and Sériot, eds, Polivanov Evgenij, p. 15; Leont’ev, Rojzenzon, and Xajutin, ‘The Life and Activities of E. D. Polivanov’, p. 29; Smith, ‘The Eurasian Imperative in Early Soviet Language Planning’, pp. 168–70; Lipkin, Manas Velikodushny; later memoirs, Lipkin, ‘Bukharin, Stalin i Manas’; see also n. 148 below.   141 Bilinsky, ‘Education of the Non-Russian Peoples’, p. 85, provides context (and references: vol. 38, pp. 8–9).   142 Pegg, ‘Ritual, Religion and Magic’, provides a comparative example.   143 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 36.   144 Dyer, Iasyr Shivaza, p. 39; Van der Heide, ‘Epic as Arena’, p. 69; ‘Central Asian Folklore’, Information bulletin of the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 4.101 (12 September 1944), p. 8.   145 Manas, ed. by Bet-Alman, the probable pseudonym of Satar Almanbetov (1917– c. late 1950s); extracts from the introduction are printed, with English translation and comments, in Hu and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader, pp. 313–31. Awareness, and study, of this publication of a Kyrgyz manaschi in Nazi Berlin using a Soviet-published Arabic-script text, is, given its overtones, marginal; see Koychiev, ‘Sogysh maalyndagy akyn-zhazuuchylardyn tagdyrynan’ for a recent attempt to inform about, and address, this legacy.   146 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, pp. 27–29 examines Abdirakhmanov’s pointed preface to the first volume.

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with Abdirakhmanov and Miftakov among the editors. Low production costs, partly due to wartime restrictions, led to broad dissemination. A large Kyrgyz reading audience could now individually engage with a performer’s text in new ways such as annotation and rereading.147 Translation allowed for new audiences and allusions. Lipkin, seeing Exodus in Manas, found an opportunity to safely discuss Jewish issues.148 When the playwright Joomart Bokonbaeva (1910–1944) was killed in a car accident scouting for film locations, the most mechanical and modern of the arts was denied its own version of Manas.149 The post-war period produced another type of Manas text: the previously-desired, ideologically-acceptable, canonical variant. Numerous Turkic epics, despite having only recently been restored to cultural significance (via Russian translation), were condemned as holding views contrary to Soviet values. Unfortunately for Manas, one traditional enemy, the Chinese, had recently embraced Communism.150 Though plans to celebrate the supposed 1100 years of Manas in 1947 did not materialize, an unexpected defence was mounted against insinuations appearing in newspapers attached to the Kyrgyz Communist Party against the Russian translation.151 Three hundred participants from Central Asian Soviet academies met in June, 1952, to debate whether the epic was nationalistic. All presentations were in Russian (bar Abdirakhmanov’s delivery in Kyrgyz). The Kazakh scholar Mukhtar Auezov (1897–1961) calmly defended a tradition first studied by another Kazakh by presenting an acceptable response: being the work of the people for the people, Manas was not nationalistic, and problematic features could be removed from an acceptable ‘assembled’ (kurama) variant published in Kyrgyz and Russian. Khusain Karasayev readily agreed.152 After quoting the Literaturnaya Gazeta’s demand for an expurgated Manas, an American commentator astutely quoted the job description of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth: ‘produce garbled versions — definitive texts they were called — of poems which had become ideologically offensive but which, for one reason or another, were to be retained in the anthologies’.153 Aware of the politicized debates about the relationship between Russia and Central Asia (including the annexation and

  147 A copy of Manastyn balalyk chagy, ed. by Abdirakhmanov, owned by Zhuma Konushbaev, a Russian-educated Kyrgyz village doctor (kindly shared by his granddaughter Aijamal Sarybaeva), shows annotations to a performance he likely did not witness. Early publications regarding Manas, accessible via , are listed in Musaev, ‘The Epos Manas’, p. 280 and discussed in Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, pp. 190, 198, 228, 322.   148 Schoolbraid, The Oral Epic of Siberia and Central Asia, pp. 126–27, lists the wartime translations (and reviews); Manas: kirgizskii epos Velikii pokhod, trans. Lipkin, et al.; Murav, Music from a Speeding Train, pp. 304–07.   149 Dallet, ‘Historical Time’; Mowell, ‘Political, Economic and Historical Foundations’.   150 Smith and others, Nation-building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands, pp. 71–72; Bennigsen, ‘The Crisis of the Turkic National Epics’.   151 Prior, Patrons, Party, Patrimony, p. 48 describes these two substantial volumes.   152 An indication that the decision was likely reached in advance.   153 Wolfe, ‘Operation Rewrite’, p. 55, quoting Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

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1916), pan-Turkism, and pan-Islamism,154 a bowdlerized four-volume version of the whole trilogy, compiled by Orozbakov and other hands (attributions to performer or revising poet-editors are unclear) was produced with the assistance of Abdirakhmanov.155 (He had already attempted his own version of the epos.156) Though the final product was, like the earlier transcriptions of Valikhanov and Radloff, regarded as the work of (unnamed) people for the people, to be on the safe side, Frunze held a conference instigating research on Krygyz minor epics, and Pravda printed a Russian translation of the Kyrgyz poem as ‘The Russian Language’, in which a mountain dweller expresses joy in being able to use the language of Lenin and Pushkin (and Marx and Engels in translation)157 With an increasingly urbanized population (and a 98 per cent literacy rate158), the potential influence of this variant is significant.159 This context had an impact on the official archive: manuscripts, such as the aforementioned variants collected by Maldıbay Borzu uulu, were obtained from family inheritors during scientific expeditions by scholars and placed in the Academy collection. The Soviet period substantially altered the creation and reception of Manas narratives. State institutions replaced the social hierarchies that had supported performers; less certain patronage, allied with a focus on literacy, resulted in a lengthy canonized version that committed to paper the entire narrative of a Kyrgyzified Manas and his offspring; Russian translations and scholarship had made it a subject less associated with the performer and more with the Kyrgyz people; contemporary politics enabled an acceptable variant. Such debates reappeared when the Kyrgyz Academy of Science, aware of the small scholarly value of the kurama version, began producing critical editions of Orozbakov and Karalaev under the tutelage of the noted novelist (and previous apartment

  154 Tillett examines the 1953 Frunze and 1954 Tashkent conferences on these issues, The Great Friendship, pp. 175–93.   155 Manas (2 vols, 1958), Semetey (1959), Seitek (1960), general ed. B. M. Yunusaliev.   156 NA 184 is his handwritten version of his own Semetey from 1947. Different sized groups of paper are bound together in a 31 cm × 17 cm cover. Though the contents suggest fixity, several pages (pp. 172, 199, 255, 387) feature a curious intervention: paper of a darker shade glued to cover an amount of text from a single line to nearly a whole page (and the insertion of a similarly coloured sheet, with text only on one side). Held to the light, the covered passages are visible. The motivation, and authority, behind such censorship is unclear. As Radloff predicted, someone inhabiting the culture akin to a Lönnrot would attempt such work; this version, however, did not receive codification with print. Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 138, discusses his history of performing.   157 Beksultanova, ‘Small Epics’, pp. 174–75, mentions the conference without my insinuation; for the Pravda poem, see Parry, ‘Soviet Asians’, p. 39.   158 Glück, ‘Sowjetische Sprachenpolitik’, p. 545 in Korth, Language Attitudes, p. 90.   159 According to Busa, ‘Up Close’, the manaschi Nazarkyl Seydrakmanov (1951–) noted that while he received a dream-calling when he was eight, it was when he was later asked by elderly men in his village to read aloud the recently published version of the trilogy that he discovered his talents.

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block neighbour to the latter) Chingitz Aitmatov.160 Another Soviet Kyrgyz novelist, Aaly Tokombaev (1904–1988), reiterated the complaint concerning the pan-Islamic and nationalist content.161 However, financial constraints had already resulted in lengthy passages replaced with prose summaries, though not before the woodblock illustrations, by the ethnically-German Kyrgyz artist Theodor Herzen,162 created visual imagery that would later be reused in a variety of media. By 1985, there were sixty-five variants of the entire story in the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences,163 an unthinkable and — as Radloff prophetically noted — an unnecessary situation. The tumultuous politics of the Soviet era, and the products of such turmoil, continue to shape the tradition in the independence period. The Great Dictator: Sagımbay Orozbakov, Manas, 1922–1926

NA 208, from 1926, illuminates the process by which Sagımbay Orozbakov produced a complete account of the life of Manas between 1922 and 1926. A faded floral-motif cardboard binding covers a sizeable number of small school exercise books (22.5 cm × 17.9 cm) seemingly glued together. Though one booklet, embossed with the CCCP hammer and sickle, is strikingly white, most of the paper has faded. In a variety of coloured ink, in two columns of Arabic script on both sides of the page, sometimes with 28 lines, others 44; occasionally, the writing is perpendicular to the printed lines. Intermittent lines of dots connect a line written vertically in the margins to the column, an indication that the likely scribe, Ibirayim Abdirakhmanov, corrected eyeslip; in one case, a whole page has been removed. The labour involved, and the difficult circumstances, are apparent. The extent to which Orozbakov’s biography of Manas, recorded in these school exercise books, reflect the norm is an understated question. Though his background was typical for a pre-Soviet era performer — studying the tradition under a respected predecessor (Tınıbek Japıy uulu) and being well rewarded by chieftains prior to 1916 — contemporaries noted his idiosyncrasies and deviations from the agreed narrative. At an aitïsh in Xianjiang in 1917, where he had fled, a judge noted that the skilful Orozbakov had Manas in the wrong geographical location, and suggested too much consumption of fermented mare’s milk and fatty food by the performer explained Manas’s troops meandering itinerary.164 Such comments call into question the extent to which the lengthy variant recorded by Abdirakhmanov is traditionally   160 Orozbakov, 4 vols; Karalaev, 5 vols; on Aitmatov-Orozbakov housing, Lilley, Have the Mountains Fallen?, p. 120.   161 Ro’i, ‘The Soviet and Russian Context’, p. 137.   162 These were later reprinted with brief comments in Manas: The Epic Vision of Theodor Herzen, ed. by Prior.   163 Jumaturdu, ‘A Comparative Study of the Performers of the Manas Epic’, p. 291.   164 Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 191–93, translates and discusses the memoirs of Balbay Mamay

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accurate. Though similarities have been noted between his text and other performers,165 the sheer size of his variant is telling. The mid-nineteenth century Kökötöy / Bok-murun episodes, at 3,251 and 2,197 lines respectively, are much smaller than Orozbakov’s over 13,000-line variant.166 Such scale is explainable. The collector, wanting material for folkloric, narrative, and cultural study, is happy for the performance to extend beyond its previous limit. The performer, subject to economic difficulty owing to social upheavals having removed the context of performance that sustained him, is happy to oblige. This situation is added to by the absence of an audience: parts that would require no explanation are expounded at length (such as the origin of the Great Campaign), and digressions are allowed to occur (such a detailed description of a khan’s lengthy menagerie, likely inspired by a visit to Tashkent Zoo during the failed attempt to receive funding). Subsequently, the product is an intermediary — part-oral, part-written: battle scenes with general impressions and focus on each individual combatant; monsters, presented in a realistic manner, side-statements of veracity;167 details, digressions, lists, material from elsewhere, seemingly taken from written sources but included in oral performance.168 Too digressive for linear reading, too long and intricate for oral performance, the produced narrative could in no manner represent the norm or conventions of either. Orozbakov’s lengthy variant also changed the perception of the narratives. Using a typical topos in which the performer asserts his position in creating the narrative, Orozbakov not only tellingly used the word for writing to claim authorship, but also replaced the category qissa (story) with tarıkh (history).169 His recasting of the narrative episodes featuring Manas as a versified biography forged the material into a semi-nationalistic record. Though vocabulary from other languages (and ancient terminology recently reprinted in contemporary scholarship) and distant locations were included for exotic effect, Orozbakov also presented formerly mythical locations as actual geographical features,170 and the semi-legendary Noġay ethnicity for Manas is replaced with the

 

         

regarding the competition with Jüsüpakun Apay (d. 1920), another student of Tınıbek Japıy uulu; Belek Sotonoyev’s criticism of Orozbakov should also be noted. 165 Musaev ‘The Epos Manas’, pp. 291–93 sees similarities in texts by performers also taught by Tınıbek Japıy uulu (Togolok Moldo) and those who were not (Moldobasan Musulmankulov), and notes Abdrakhamov’s own version is similar; Jüsüpakun Apay, his Xianjiang competitor, was also mentored by Tınıbek. 166 Prior, ‘Sino-Mongolica’, pp. 231–32. 167 Bowra, Heroic Poetry, pp. 41, 58–59, 175–76, 232–33, 360. 168 Hatto, in his MWR, pp. xiv–xv and Essays on Medieval German and Other Poetry compares Orozbakov to Wolfram von Eschenbach, discussed in Christoph Witt’s contribution to this volume. 169 Orozbakov, Manas, ed. by Musaev and Akmataliev, p. 137 (without line numbers): ‘Gakka […] okusan’; on tarıkh, see De Blois and others, ‘Taʾrīk̲h̲’. 170 Prior, ‘Sino-Mongolica’, p. 240 on ‘tarsa’; Prior, ‘Travels of Mount Qāf ’, pp. 437–39 on Köykap (see n. 91 above).

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present-day Kyrgyz. Orozbakov appears to have used the Manas narrative to address the situation of his fellow Central Asians under Russian control: in depicting a possible brotherhood between the Muslim Kyrgyz and the infidel Kalmaks, Orozbakov presents a pan-Turkic identity. Along with his strident pan-Islamism (another feature he seems to have introduced into the tradition), Orozbakov may have introduced such a radical feature for a traditional reason: to appease his new patron, the Jadid-educated Miftakov.171 Ironically, these very innovations led to Orozbakov and Manas being regarded as representative of the old values of pre-Revolution Kyrgyz society contrary to Soviet ideology. Orozbakov’s variant was shaped by economic factors. Disillusioned by the absence of financial support, his health deteriorated rapidly. The appearance of a river-crossing scene in his account of Manas’s Great Campaign may be due to his awareness that he would not be able to commit to posterity the Semetey for which he was renowned.172 The tortuous publication history of his Manas, replete with emendations, omissions, and unfinished editions, is presented in the Soviet section above. Despite the significance of this version, the first reputedly complete edition only appeared in 2010.173 The ‘Last Manaschi’: Sayakbai Karalaev, Manas Trilogy, 1935–1947

NA 90 is a bound collection of exercise books (17.5 cm × 20 cm) containing, in just one column, Kyrgyz transcribed in the Latin alphabet. The volume is part of Karalaev’s trilogy — Manas, Semetey, and Seitek — totalling 500,556 lines; the first to be completed, it is often mistakenly assumed to be the Manas tradition itself. The individual booklets, with their individual staples (and remnants of the torn-off covers) retained, were previously fashioned together by the five holes created on the left margin; as in a standard Russian volume, the spine is on the right. The opening page, containing twenty-three lines, features several strikethroughs, rewritten lines, and corrections. On the end flyleaf, facing an unremoved cover, is pasted a folded sheet containing the contents in Cyrillic. The impression given is that the contents will be presented more fittingly at a later date. Karalaev was, in many respects, the acceptable Orozbakov. Owing to poverty, he had to work for the local beys around Issyk-Kul. Around the age of sixteen, having learnt the tales from his mother, he began performing. Refusing Tsarist conscription, he fled to China. He enlisted with the Communists, fighting first the Whites in the Civil War and then the Basmachi, and returned to run a collectivized village. Whereas Orozbakov, whose radical reworking of the Manas narrative saw him being regarded as a symbol of unwanted feudal

  171 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 15; Prior, ‘Sino-Mongolica’, pp. 250–52.   172 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, p. 20.   173 Orozbakov, Manas, ed. by Musaev and Akmataliev.

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traditions, Karalaev, who reputedly recited Manas to the confused ears of his Russian fellow soldiers,174 could be regarded as in step with the Revolution. He was financially supported as the official manaschi at the Frunze Philharmonia. Like other performers of his generation, though known by the Soviet-era term manaschi, he was more truly a jomokchu who could tell a range of tales. He had the skill to craft lengthy narratives, creating texts that could easily be several stand-alone shorter poems (such as the first-person telling of Almambet),175 resulting in his Er-Töštük (12,316 lines) being 10,170 lines longer than Radloff ’s variant,176 and his Manas Trilogy eighteen times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. Many of the similes that appear more than once in his Manas, which hypothetically could show shared influences with other performers, do not appear in the products of his nineteenth-century predecessors.177 This ability to adapt was an asset: he reached new audiences in the new media of radio and film.178 In public, he performed the role of a Soviet manaschi: displaying his Soviet awards; attending events wearing Kyrgyz garb while his colleagues wore suits; recorded reciting in an idyllic rural setting; photographed at the Academy of Sciences with his Manas, Semetey, and Seitek volumes in front of the card index. Just as Orozbakov’s innovations paradoxically placed him as representative of the old guard, Karalaev’s new role and use of modern media earned him the epithet the ‘Last Manaschi’. Karalaev’s long trilogy, while seemingly representative of an early tradition, is, like its predecessors, reflective of its creator, its context, and its intended (or imagined) audience. Like Orozbakov’s Manas narrative, his version is an oral-literary hybrid (with multiple formulaic sequences but with names altered). In addition to length (a feature that Karalaev might himself be mocking when he praises a warrior-bard for being able to rhapsodize about a tent’s trappings for a whole noon), his sizeable version differs from his comparable predecessor Orozbakov in a number of ways.179 While Orozbakov’s Manas repeatedly goes into battle with an army (and concludes with a surrender), Karalaev’s hero, when not in the habit of killing an opposing force in their hundreds one-on-one, typically fights accompanied by his Forty Companions. (The ‘Great Campaign’ is the exception.) While both manaschis present Manas in a lengthy narrative that features the fantastical as a national hero (with Karalaev claiming, from the start, that his role is to liberate and unite), politics and patriotism is more present in the latter’s version. Karalaev repeatedly stresses the cruel tyranny of the Kalmaks and the Chinese, and this feature influences his characterizations.

  174 Lilley, Have the Mountains Fallen, p. 121.   175 Bowra, Heroic Poetry, pp. 356, 439.   176 Aventures merveilleuses, trans. by Boratav, is a translation into French of a composite text of the two versions (with additional sections for coherence).   177 Ready, The Homeric Simile, p. 81.   178 Heroic Songs of Manas makes available 1969 Kyrgyz Radio recordings; Hatto, ‘Kirghiz (Midnineteenth century)’, p. 303; Manasci, dir. by Shamshiev.   179 Bowra, Heroic Poetry, p. 415; Rakhmatullin, ‘Plot Peculiarities of Manas Versions’.

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The once-heathen Almambet, in Orozbakov’s version, is born uttering the name of the Prophet foreshadowing his conversion; Karalaev’s character opts to follow Manas for political reasons owing to disputes with the Chinese rulers. The conspiracy of Kezkoman, while relegated to a reminiscence in Karalev’s version of Semetey, is similarly presented as a Chinese plot. As with Orozbakov, this version, when read or studied, is frequently read without comment on the creator or his time. Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan frequently views the tradition through Karalaev, and Karalaev through the Soviet prism. A quotation from his version, comparing the taming of a hawk to the uniting of tribes, has appeared on banknotes, in articles (celebrating the independence anniversary, ethnic diversity), in presidential speeches (State Flag Day, Independence Day), to announcements by the MVD Academy that trains ‘internal troops’;180 an intended reference to a pre-Soviet past that loops back to a Soviet context. A recent biographic feature film, Sayakbay – Homer of the 20th Century pointedly uses the frame story featuring Chingitz Aitmatov, based in Moscow in the film, returning to understand traditional Kyrgyz culture embodied by Karalaev.181 Though the sheer size of his output, and the regularity of his appearance, has made assessment and categorization difficult, Karalaev’s successful career in the Soviet period positioned him, and the period, as representative of the tradition. An academic edition of the trilogy, begun in 1992, soon after independence, appeared in 2010–2013.182

The Independence Era (1991–) With no significant historical dynasty or empire to legitimize the new country and distinguish it from the recently collapsed Soviet Union, the first elected president Askar Akayev (1944–) opted to use Manas to create the sense of a nation.183 A quickly organized millennial celebration, featuring academic conferences, tourism drives, and publications of variable quality, revived Soviet era art connected to the narratives while actual oral performances were relegated to small events labelled as ‘musical-ethnographic’.184 Building   180 Düysheev, ‘Kurama jıyıp jurt kılgan, Manas!’; Kabylbekov, ‘Kulaaly taptap kush kyldym, kurama zhyǐyp zhurt kyldym…’; in Kyrgyz (State Flag Day, 3 March 2017), Atambaev, ‘Prezident Almazbek Atambaevdin’; in Russian (Independence Day, 31 August 2017), Atambaev, ‘Mir, soglasiye i stabil’nost’; Abaevna, ‘Sez üyrönüp jatyksyn’; the use of Manas on banknotes is a subject in itself.   181 Dir. by Abdyjaparov.   182 Karalaev, Manas, ed. by Zhaunakova and Mamytov; Semetey and Seitek, ed. by Zhaunakova.   183 Gullette, The Genealogical Construction of the Kyrgyz Republic, pp. 137–55; Tchorev, ‘Historiography of Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan’; Murzakulova and Schoeberlein, ‘The Invention of Legitimacy’; Smith and others, Nation-building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands, pp. 144–47; Kinzer, ‘A Legendary Hero Guides a Reborn Kyrgyzstan’.   184 Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony, pp. 29–31; Thompson and others, ‘Kyrgyzstan’s Manas Epos

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on this, Akayev, asserting that Manas was to the Kyrgyz what the Bible was for Christians, sketched out in his own speeches and publications the ‘Seven Principles of Manas’: the modern aims of national unity, international friendship, national development through hard work and knowledge, humanism, tolerance, environmentalism, and strengthening of Kyrgyz statehood.185 Reportedly claiming that these should be observed like the five duties of Islam, Akayev had printed versions, in which, tellingly, the Kyrgyz is less coherent than the Russian, distributed in schools, painted on roadside billboards, and learnt by rote; an author of a Soviet-era teaching guide for the epic produced an exegetical version of these ‘Principles’, connecting quotations from the Soviet variants with Akayev’s speeches.186 Sites loosely associated with Manas, including a proposed theme park-like Manas Aïil stage on the outskirts of Bishkek, were heavily funded.187 Though Akayev was keen to present Manas (and himself) as a unifier of different people, the promotion of a Krygyz-language epic in a linguistically mixed and ethnically diverse country was seen as one element in the outbreaks of interethnic violence that subsequently occurred.188 The assumption, by local and foreign commentators, that the epic is fixed, as if bound to continue ethnic division, is frequent. The legacy of this policy of Akayev, who was overthrown in a revolution, is visible in the many references made to Manas during the events that led to the overthrow of his successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev (1949–).189 The epic’s hero continues to be used to address questions of identity in times of political and economic turmoil. ‘Manas Studies’, a state-required and ill-defined subject, means that most students can recite the ‘Seven Principles’, unaware of its recent origin and generally identifying it as the epic itself. When extracts are examined, they are typically read without historical context, to present ahistorical themes about identity — national, religious, and gendered

       

 

Millennium Celebrations’; the hagiographer Narendra Kumar, lists the projects, President Akayev of Kyrghyzstan [sic], pp. 16–23; Tchoroev, ‘Historiography of Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan’, p. 367, judges; Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 305 (and p. 166), and ‘Remembering Manas’; Bunn, ‘Time as Told’. 185 Akayev, Kyrgyzskaya gosudarstvennost’ i narodnyi epos Manas. 186 Karagulova and Megoran, ‘Discourses of Danger and the “War on Terror”’, pp. 45–46; Megoran, Nationalism in Central Asia, p. 88; Ismailova, ‘Curriculum Reform in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan’, p. 284. 187 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 288; Jacquesson, ‘A Power Play Among the Kyrgyz’, pp. 222–27; Laruelle, ‘Kyrgyzstan’s Nationhood’. 188 Straube, ‘Pro and Con Manas’; Coşkun, ‘Improvising’, p. 163; Mostowlansky, ‘Making Kyrgyz Spaces’, pp. 253–54, describes the use of Manas in another country to calm tensions; Laruelle, ‘The Paradigm of Nationalism in Kyrgyzstan’; Fedorenko, Central Asia: From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism, pp. 13–15; Megoran, ‘Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan’; Tishkov, ‘“Don’t Kill Me, I’m a Kyrgyz!”’, esp. p. 148 on imitating actions; Smith, Stories of Peoplehood, p. 1; Mellon, ‘Myth, Legitimacy and Nationalism in Central Asia’, pp. 142–43; Zakharov, Law, and Shmidt, ‘Central Asian Racisms’, pp. 141–42. 189 Kojobekova, ‘The Discourses of Romanticism and Heroism in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan’; Shishkin, ‘The Land of Perpetual Revolution’.

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— under the guise of tradition.190 The replacement of a statute symbolizing Freedom (which had itself replaced a statue of Lenin) in Ala-Too square with a statue of Manas suggested the forward-looking future had been replaced with a constructed imagined past. Manas became increasingly placed in the blurred categories of history, ethnicity, and nation. Some, romanticizing the pre-Russian past, have revived formerly-suppressed genealogical studies; some, looking for a fixed identity, have uncovered an ancient tribal identity (albeit one first mentioned by Orozbakov); others, seeing the authority of Manas to be lacking in the present day, speculate online that Manas is the proper pronunciation of the Egyptian ‘Menes’; others, perhaps influenced unknowingly by Lipkin’s translation, claim the Kyrgyz are descended from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel — a belief that has its own performers, Isachi, who tell in a manner similar to manaschi the life of Jesus (Isa).191 A vigilante group, ‘Kyrk Choro’, taking its name from Manas’s Forty Companions, seemingly oblivious to the varied backgrounds of Manas’s followers (and wives), harass civic groups, ethnic minorities, and ethnic Kyrgyz women they consider insulting to Kyrgyzness.192 The top-down attempt to centre Manas in post-Soviet Kyrgyz society has resulted in it being used to legitimize a range of modern concerns about status and identity in a more globalized context. Disagreements between contemporary manaschis about elements of the epos confirm that a single perspective was never fixed.193 Each performer negotiates with politics as they engage with the market. The presence of Manas on banknotes is an apt image for how the epic has been shaped by commerce. Herzen’s woodblock prints, adapted to appear on billboards, bus stops, notebooks, stamps, plov plates, pictures burnt on bark, and character names branded on bottles of brandy and vodka show their supposed marketability.194 The narratives themselves have been presented in other non-oral sellable forms (novellas, films, ‘simplified’ prose versions, anime comics, and, with UNESCO funding, a ‘motion comic’) often in the guise of making the ‘message’ accessible for the younger generations, and translations (including a two-volume English version from the Russian which Akayev liked

  190 Blakkisrud and Abdykapar kyzy, ‘Female Heroes in a Man’s World’.   191 Ismailbekova, Blood Ties and the Native Son, p. 24; Jacquesson, ‘Genealogies as Craft’, p. 112, contextualizes Menes; Pelkmans, ‘“Culture” as a Tool and an Obstacle’, pp. 893–94; Radford, Religious Identity and Social Change, p. 163, n. 16 notes the use of the title ‘rabbi’ rather than ‘pastor’; both Pelkmans and Radford note the work of the American missionary Risbek / Richard Hewitt, author of Manas Lost & Found, np. and Ak Kalpak.   192 Freedom House, Freedom in the World, p. 381; Marat, The Politics of Police Reform, pp. 103–04; Sadyrbek, Legal Pluralism in Central Asia, p. 112.   193 For instance, for divergent views as to the role Islam should play, if any, in the epos (and in Kyrgyz identity), and the association with Tengrism, see Van der Heide, Spirited Perfor­ mance, pp. 148–49 (for comments of Atabekov and Bakchiev), and Artman, ‘The State and the Sacred’, pp. 302–03 (for Zamirbek Bayalinov and Sydykov); for context, see Artman, ‘Nation, Religion, and Theology’.   194 Orlova, ‘Kyrgyzstan Plans to Prohibit Naming Alcohol after Heroes of Manas Epic’.

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to gift).195 Print previously conferred a stamp of authority on a manaschi,196 and acceptability of new performers; now the marketplace is another patron for performance. Independent funds from local industries have acted like patrons to produce editions of their local performers.197 To assert prestige, the manaschi Talantaaly Bakchiev (1971–) published at his own expense an edition that publicized both the academic value of his work (and explains his views on the tradition) and his familial connection to Karalaev; though a performer and a scholar (holding the equivalent of a doctoral thesis), his recently published university textbook on Manas is intended to both further appreciation of the tradition and provide a source of income.198 The balance between innovation and canonicity has been made topsy-turvy by the Soviet requirement of a fixed narrative. Tellingly, when Bakchiev performed an episode he claims he received in a dream — the funeral feast of Manas — in a competition, he was penalized for deviating from the accepted narrative; his variant became acceptable when he discovered in the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences earlier versions of the episode, and after he published his own variant.199 The power of print, and money, allowed Ayköl Manas, Bübü Mariyam Musa-qyzy’s ten-volume purported revelations from the first manaschi, to be accepted by some institutions as teaching material despite being criticized by scholars and manaschis as a fabricated hodgepodge of material in atypical meters and rhyme.200 The free market has prompted a free-for-all.

  195 Zhakypbek, Teniri Manas; Manas: Kara söz menen, ed. by Jusupov; see also the Uzbek translation, Jusupov, Manas: Qirg’iz xalq dostoni; Zhakiev, Geroicheskiy epos kyrgyzov ‘Manas’ (and later Kyrgyz edition ‘Manas’: Kyrgyzdardyn baatyrdyk éposi); Abdryakhmanova, ‘Kyrgyz Manas Epic Visualized through Motion Comic and Mobile Application’ (of the Memorial Feast/Bok-murun narrative); Manas, Semetey, Seitek, ed. by Mysaev, measuring 6.5 cm × 10 cm; Tales of Manas, trans. by Baimatova; Kinzer, ‘A Legendary Hero Guides a Reborn Kyrgyzstan’ likely refers to Manas, trans. by May (via his Russian wife, Lyudmila Serosanova, from the Russian version of Orozbakov; see Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 89); regarding Uyghur literature, Thum, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, particularly pp. 163–209, sites biographical novels as the logical successor to the tazkirah genre in Uyghur literature; study of Kyrgyz equivalents may be illuminating — and research of this understudied material is in preparation.   196 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 225 discusses Kaba Atabekov’s wish for his hand­written variant to be published by the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences; an earlier variant, NA 247, containing crossings out (and the first two pages glued together) was collected in 1962. Recent editions of historic variants (see ‘Prezentaciya’) typically have a small print run (500 to 1,000 copies) and a price substantially higher than most publications, limiting their distribution.   197 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 224, mentions a partial edition of Mambet Chokmorov’s version funded by the chairman of a local agricultural firm.   198 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 225; Bakchiev, Almambettin jomogu; Bakchiev’s thesis is Kyrgyzskie èpicheskie skaziteli; his textbook, Manasovedenie: Uchebnoe posobie dlya vuzov.   199 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance, p. 306; Bakchiev, Manastin Ashi; compare Ready, The Homeric Simile, p. 103. Bakchiev’s self-fashioning is visible in NA 927, a typed A4 transcript, Cyrillic script in a single column, each page signed in the bottom left corner with an embellished tughra-like signature.   200 Reichl, ‘Oral Epics into the Twenty-First Century’, p. 339 discusses Ayköl Manas and the responding criticism Uluu “Manas” jana anyn fal’sifikatorloru, ed. Alakhan and Abakirov.

A Te lli ng Trad i t i o n

Assessing who counts as a manaschi, the quality of a performance, and who has ownership, is complex. On a global scale, UNESCO recognized China’s application for Manas to be granted Intangible World Heritage for its Kyrgyz minority in 2009, causing a hurried response from Kyrgyzstan being also granted the status in 2013; international funding became available, but both, disputing the quality of the other, do little work with each other.201 On an individual level, the potential status and financial rewards of being a manaschi, and the availability of printed versions, has created a controversial new type of manaschi: the ‘manaschi from the book’ who, in contrast to the ‘real’ manaschi who improvises, merely recites a memorized variant. (Such repetitions of earlier variants, though often regarded as evidence of the decline of the tradition, can also be interpreted as a need for fixity in a time of social upheaval — and a sign of the effort endured for a source of income.) Though hypothetically anyone who claims to have received a ‘calling dream’ is a manaschi, authenticity is emphasized. Rysbek Jumabaev, who has performed in the British Library and whose version of the ‘Memorial Feast’ appears on a Smithsonian recording, stresses the ‘received’ nature of his narratives, claims lineage to Karalaev, mentions mystical beliefs, and dismisses those who learnt materials in books as ‘Philharmonia manaschis’; his time studying acting at a Moscow theatre school is underemphasized.202 Since the traditional means for testing talent, the aitïsh, follows the Soviet format of little interaction between the performers and the audiences, such judgements may say more about social prejudices than any scholarly assessment. In a manner akin to Karalaev’s own experience, modern manaschis have to assume various roles in order to forge a successful career as a performer. Though the products of these performers are numerous, the quality is disputed, the intended audiences unclear, and the future, as before, uncertain. In addition to publications, weeklong aitïsh are hosted, sometimes broadcast live, and videos abound online — including performances by preschool children recorded reciting at length, often imitating video performances of established manaschi.203 Though the potential audience is limitless, the manaschi can find themselves performing in an artificial yurt alone in front of intense light and unmanned camera equipment.204 Disagreement over whether the post-Soviet period shows a resurgence, a dying glow, an artificial imitation,

  201 The documents are accessible online at and [accessed 16 December 2019].   202 Levin with Süzükei, Where Rivers and Mountains Sing, pp. 188–98 and p. 257, n. 22; Gullette, The Genealogical Construction of the Kyrgyz Republic, p. 153; Music of Central Asia.   203 Bunn, ‘Time as Told’, discusses the two-year-old Ali Beg.   204 For an account of a modern performance by Shaabai Azizov during the commemoration of the 140th anniversary of Valikhanov’s transcription, see Prior, ‘The Twilight Age’, pp. 245–53; for a typology of recitations and discussion of ‘récitations-fleuves’, see Bruley, ‘L’épopée de Manas’, pp. 460–77.

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or simply another adaptation of the tradition continues, often with little justification provided.205 The content, at times a bland repetition of supposed Kyrgyz values and greatness with little narrative, is increasingly financed by well-intentioned foreign organizations oblivious to the content, context, and ethnonationalistic viewpoint. With international funds, one local research foundation, keen to stress a unique kyrgyzchyluk (Kyrgyzness), distributed to schools three DVDs of over twenty-five hours of footage telling the entirety of Manas’s life by different performers performing outdoors without any audience.206 Promoting a less canonical element, the United Nations Development Programme was eager to tweet ‘Manaschy is telling episodes from a famous epos #manas where #kyrgyz #nomads were caring about the #environment’.207 Wishing to continue the tradition of ‘the first rappers’, schools have been established offering substantial scholarships to train future manaschi; the effect of this education, which features study of the Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh, is currently uncertain.208 As with the previous contexts of the Kyrgyz oral epic tradition, in addition to the cliché that it continues to appear on the verge of extinction, its greatest vitality — the ability to adapt and change to suit a different contexts, patrons, and politics — might render it very different in future from its original form. The (Re)birth of Manas: Variants by Talantaaly Bakchiev and Doolot Sydykov (2017)

Aware of the lack of research on contemporary performers, requiring materials for the state-required Manas Studies, the Analyzing Kyrgyz Narratives (AKYN) Research Group was founded in 2017 at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Bishkek.209 The first project, to investigate the methods of composition in performance (and address claims of memorization), involved recording two manaschis performing on three separate occasions the same section of the narrative, the birth of Manas, for comparative purposes. (The first Manas study, seemingly, to study a performer’s variants.) The two willing

  205 Van der Heide, Spirited Performance and Reichl, ‘Oral Epics into the Twenty-First Century’, are sympathetic.   206 Usubalieva-Gryshcuk, ‘Ancient Epic Goes Digital’, p. 42; Aitpaeva, ‘Kyrgyzchylyk’ notes the similar existence of kazakchilik, tatarchilik, turkmenchilik, and uzbekchilik; regarding the Aigine Cultural Research Center, see Mostowlansky, ‘Kyrgyz-Muslim-Central Asian?’.   207 September 2 2018 [accessed 16 December 2019].   208 Kinzer, ‘A Legendary Hero Guides a Reborn Kyrgyzstan’, contains the quotation and examines one such school in Osh.   209 Requiring easily available English-language material, typically either May’s or Elmira Köçümkulkïzï’s translation, [accessed 16 December 2019] was used; the absence of Kyrgyz text, and the obscuring of features of oral poetry, also made it difficult for the students (Kyrgyz and non-Kyrgyz) to appreciate and enjoy.

A Te lli ng Trad i t i o n

manaschis, both included in Kyrgyzstan’s successful UNESCO Intangible World Heritage bid, were the aforementioned Talantaaly Bakchiev and Doolot Sydykov (b. 1983). With Bakchiev, time constraints were set (in part to practice the recording process, and, with the third recording longer, partially to examine he expanded the narrative); with Sydykov, none were imposed. The recordings, made in AUCA in front of a small audience, and transcripts are being made available online.210 The material revealed much about the performers’ methods.211 To quickly assess whether the Parry-Lord theory of oral-formulaic composition was applicable to this material, the transcriptions were run through plagiarism-spotting software. Both, rather than reciting a memorized text, composed in performance a new variant using their own stock phrases. Bakchiev’s repeated lines contained longer words than Sydykov’s, and his first two performances contained a number of shared multiple line sections that occurred at the same stage of the narrative being told. Given Bakchiev’s familiarity with performing to foreign audiences in timed slots, while Sydykov’s career has focused on local audiences (with less attention on time), this distinction suggests length and audience may have as much significance as narrative in which formulas and stock sections are used. The transcripts also revealed the legacy of previous printed variants. Both performers used elements existing from earlier variants. Bakchiev incorporated in one of his performances a section from Orozbakov, a performer who had died several decades before he was born. Sydykov, in all three of his performances, uses a two-line description of an ominous sign whose first line is the same as that used by Karalev, while the second line, describing its colour, differs from that used by his Soviet predecessor. This use shows two contemporary manaschis using a predecessor to recreate an earlier type of pre-Soviet performance. The legacy of the Soviet period however was present in comments made by the performers: Sydykov expressed concern that the versions he recorded would differ; Backhiev inquired whether AKYN wanted the repetitions removing. These statements reflect the former favouring of a textual canonical version over variation in oral performance. With Bakchiev, the discovery troubles the assumption that textual similarities can be used to infer influences: since he repeatedly credited the manaschi Shaabai Azizov (1927–2004) as his mentor, stated that Karalaev appeared in his dream calling, and asserted he had not learnt by memorizing,212 the Orozbakov passage Bakchiev used shows that textual connections may only record some influence not acknowledged (or even known) by the performer. Sydykov’s use of an altered phrase from Karalev’s   210 [accessed 16 December 2019]; recordings: Kamila Baimuratova; transcriptions: Alymkan Jeenbekova; the Audiovisual recordings have been archived as HU OSA 437-1-21 at [accessed 20 October 2020].   211 Plumtree, ‘A Kyrgyz Singer of Tales’; Plumtree and Jeenbekova, ‘Replicating the Birth of Manas’.   212 Reichl, ‘Oral Epics into the Twenty-First Century’, p. 334.

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version suggests, perhaps, the existence of an anxiety of influence in an oral performer in the shadow of a printed text. Aware of the presence of the earlier fixed version, the modern oral performer has to both follow the predecessor while striving to be unique. A proposed textual database of all possible variants would be able to establish further relationships between different generations of performers, assist in assessing the methods manaschis use to perform (and see whether a performer’s characteristics change with age and experience), examine the extent of improvisations — or deviations — from a ‘canonical’ narrative, and help measure the influence that printed versions (particularly the Soviet-era variants) had on performance. Preliminary computer-assisted textual analysis is tentatively revealing differences both between manaschis, and between orality and print, and, in doing so, revealing how a performer adapts to a different medium.213 Further study could potentially clarify the impact of literacy and print upon an oral tradition.

Conclusion: Post-Soviet, Post-script? Repeated attempts to collate, and canonize, an overarching version of the Manas narrative has not rendered oral performance obsolete; rather, such versions provide material for contemporary performers — just like their predecessors — to refashion as deemed fit to cater for their patrons and listeners. While study of manuscripts can give the impression that the stories are approaching fixity, the tentative findings of the AKYN research group similarly show the traditional methods of oral composition adapting to suit new audiences and new contexts. To a medievalist dealing with manuscripts — caveat lector. Earlier chapters in this volume have examined the creation of communal identities, rationales behind repeating and altering an inherited story, purposes for continuing and changing symbolism, the expression of emotion, the influence of scholarship on the collection and consideration of the material, and methods of teaching the narratives to performers and students. Narratives like Beowulf that exist only in a single manuscript, and cycles like the Arthuriad being rearranged, are similarly scrutinized by scholars to find evidence — linguistic, cultural, religious, historical — of other voices, endlessly addressing questions of content and worth, while readers — searching for past values, escaping the present, or seeking a future — reengage in the transformative enjoyment of the story. The story that gets told using the same   213 Plumtree, ‘Computer-Assisted Analysis of Manas Narratives’ show how type-token analysis of the six AKYN transcriptions show two groupings correlating with the two performers, suggesting ‘authorship’ of oral performances can be identified in this manner. A work in progress, comparing the AKYN transcripts with variants Bakchiev himself prepared for print, likewise revealed two distinct groups that suggest the medium influences the nature of the text (and that this could, potentially, be measured), and reveals a contemporary performer adapting the text to suit the audience requirements of different media.

A Te lli ng Trad i t i o n

words on two separate occasions is, in its own way, not the same story with the same meaning. Each time we return, we find it the same but different; such is the life of a story. The contemporary status of Manas, in an environment that is both increasingly more interconnected with the global world and prone to retreats into an imagined past, provides striking parallels with continuations and adaptations of western medieval tales. Questions of authority, authenticity, and accuracy mix with ideology, ownership, and identity. Stories, be they repetitions or recrafted in traditional form or in other mediums, are the means to understand worlds nearby, immediate, once, past, and future. Each contemporary performance, like each earlier variant, features decisions by the performer in what to repeat, recraft, and reject. In addition to showing how different generations have responded to their surroundings via adaptations of narratives, the stories have also shown how they have adapted in order to continue. Readers of this chapter pondering the question of what Manas has to do with medieval stories, finding themselves echoing Alcuin’s earlier question about Ingeld and Christ, will see similar answers: attempts, through one’s own agency and associations, to understand. Scholars, mistakenly assumed to be lofty and detached like caricatures of medieval monks, have, with their various affiliations and intentions, greatly shaped Kyrgyz epic poetry, creating the categories that made Manas the ‘main’ hero of the ‘main’ epic. Various methods of recording likewise altered the content and form of the stories, transforming it in ways that some, like Radloff, had predicted. The existence of Manas in other languages, in other media, outside of the traditional metrical text, is an attempt to connect the old with the new, to adapt, to adjust, to continue — like a modern adaptation of a medieval narrative, judged both by contemporary standards and contrasted to the past. Careful study of this feature, free of shorthand judgements of worth and value, will help understand the reasons for such recreations — both in the present and the past.

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Appendix: Manas in China, a Great Campaign? Similar influences and pressures — political, social, and cultural — have affected the Manas storytelling tradition among the Kyrgyz minority in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. As with Manas in Kyrgyzstan, the role of the performer, the increased focus on text, and the political use of the epic, have been shaped by contemporary events and ideologies. Modern differences have, perhaps, obscured the shared features and similar histories of the Xinjiang and mainland Manas traditions. The aforementioned Tınıbek Japıy uulu taught Eshmat Manbejtüsüp (1880–1963) and Jüsüpakun Apay (d. 1920), the latter indirectly influencing the most famous Xingjiang figure Jüsüp Mamay (1918–2014).214 Though presently labelled manaschis, these performers, like their pre-Soviet and Soviet counterparts, were jomokchus able to perform a range of material. The textual sources, however, vary: though both Manbejtüsüp and Mamay performed Er-Töštük, only Mamay’s was recorded (and later published). Institutionalized fieldwork collecting such products, analogous to Soviet-era drives, started however later in the 1950s. The amount collected (currently around eighty versions of the epic) and the focus (textual, rather than performance) is comparable to that of their neighbours.215 The material provokes awkward questions: can Xinjiang be considered a distinct branch of the tradition, a continuation of an earlier school, and, given the remoteness of the location, a ‘purer’ form free from foreign influence? The dearth of studies on Kyrgyz communities in China,216 and materials created, collated, and commented upon in a similar manner to their Kyrgyzstan counterparts, makes the answers to these questions frequently reliant upon assumption (and prejudice). As in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, contemporary history has shaped the Xinjiang Manas corpus. In the early 1960s, Manbejtüsüp produced versions of Manas, Semetey, and Seitek; only the last two, totalling 11,070 lines, survived the Cultural Revolution to be published much later in 2003.217 After an entire version of the epic by Mamay was reputedly destroyed during the Revolution, the performer produced a second variant. This version, 234,500 lines, published 1984–1994, included in addition to the typical Manas, Semetey, and Seitek, later generations: Kenenim, Seyit, Asylbacha and Bekbacha, Sombilek, and Chigitey.218 While these later generations have frequently been dismissed as innovations in Kyrgyzstan, in Xinjiang, they are considered canonical.   214 Ying, ‘The Bard Jusup Mamay’; indirectly via his brother Balbai.   215 Jumaturdu, ‘A Comparative Study of the Performers of the Manas Epic’; Bamo and Chao, ‘Documenting Living Oral Traditions’, p. 274; the Institute of Ethnic Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Xinjiang Folklorist Society currently have around 80 versions.   216 Kokaisl, ‘Kyrgyz Minorities in China’, provides an overview.   217 Manbetjüsüp, Semetey.   218 Mamay, Manas, ed. by Noruz and others; an extract with translation is printed, albeit in the

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Orozbakov’s rival in the famed 1917 competition, Apay, was said to have told the epos up to five generations (that is, to Seyit). A critic present at Orozbakov’s performance, Ebrayin Akunbe, had his eight-generation version of the epos collected in prose by Balbay Mamay, Jusup’s older brother, who edited the text as he saw fit. Jusup based his variant on a three-generation version by Jusup Ahong and the later sections he versified from his brother’s edition of Akunbe’s telling.219 Though Mamay’s variant contains ‘idiosyncrasies’,220 features of Mamay’s published variant are comparable to printed versions in Kyrgyzstan. Regarding ‘historical accuracy’, a rhymed introduction states that, owing to entertainment purposes, it is half true and half fiction. In addition to Mamay’s own stated receptiveness to written variants by other performers, the work shows a text produced to be read: little sign of oral-formulaic composition has been noted.221 Recently, the survival of the earlier, reputedly destroyed, variant was announced. This early Mamay version of the entire epic was said to be around 570,000 lines — pointedly larger than Karalaev’s famously long version.222 Careful study may reveal much about Mamay’s construction methods and the shaping of the material, making an illuminating comparison for the Soviet-era productions. Study of contemporary performers would also reveal parallels with the use of Kyrgyz oral poetry to address questions of identity (one scholar noted a performer in Xinjiang wore typical clothing when recorded in 1989, and ‘national clothes’ — and a mobile ringtone of the opening ‘Ey’ interjection of Manas — when recorded in 2011).223 Popular comment, however, seems focused upon national bragging about size and authenticity. The epos is a divisive issue rather than a shared bond between these Kyrygz communities.224 Such disputes are connected with current international politics and domestic concerns. Ownership of Manas is a controversial subject in Kyrgyzstan. Though Western and Turkish interest is regarded positively,225 Chinese interest is seen as suspect. Desire for soft power on the international

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section ‘Pre-Literary Language’, in Hu and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader, pp. 3–20. Satybaldy Aaly (1933–2006), born in Kök-Terek in Xinjiang, produced a different, and seemingly unique, variant, telling of fifteen ancestors of Manas, published in China in 2011 (see Jusupjan, ‘Kytaidagy Manas aiy’). Unlike Mamay, from the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture, Aaly was from the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. Ying, ‘The Bard Jusup Mamay’, pp. 230–31; Reichl, ‘Oral Epics Along the Silk Road’, pp. 61–62; in another context, Ready, ‘The Textualization of Homeric Epic’, p. 38. Reichl, ‘Oral Epics Along the Silk Road’, p. 62. Reichl, ‘Oral Epics into the Twenty-First Century’, p. 336–38 discusses extracts from Mamay. Liu, ‘57 wan hang “manasi”’. Reichl, ‘Oral Epics Along the Silk Road’, p. 63, discussing Sart-aqun Qadïr (1942–2014). Parham, ‘“Rightful” versus “real” Homelands’, pp. 268–69; now see Jacquesson, ‘Claiming Heritage’, and Bruley, ‘L’épopée de Manas’. Turkish interest requires further comment, particularly as it contains comparable features — including novelizations, comics, and statues: İnan, Manas destanı; Oktay, Manas destanı; Kenarlı and Özer, ‘Kurtulmuş, Manas Heykeli’nin açılışına katıldı’.

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stage and for national unity led to China nominating Manas for UNESCO Intangible World Heritage status alongside Mongolian Khöömei singing, Tibetan opera, and the Uyghur Meshrep festival.226 UNESCO’s acceptance of the nomination, which underplayed (if not omitted) any mention of the tradition in Kyrgyzstan, in 2009 resulted in an application from Kyrgyzstan that underplayed (if not omitted) any mention of the tradition in Xinjiang. For Kyrgyzstan, international recognition allays fears of economic submission to an increasingly resurgent China. For China, such acknowledgement is recognition of China’s sovereignty over their minorities. In 2015, ‘Epics’, the first volume of the Encyclopedia of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage, featured ‘Three Epics of China: Gesar, Jangar, and Manas’.227 A press release asserted that the arrangement fitted a ‘harmonious but different’ framework, an expression from Confucius’s Analects promoted as a concept for modern China.228 The new phrase ‘China’s three great epics’ has replaced the earlier ‘three great epics of China’s ethnic minorities’,229 erasing Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kyrgyz ownership while appropriating (and Sinifying) their culture. The same year the volume appeared, Bai Gengsheng, Secretary of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, situated Manas as ‘Silk Road literature’ following the proposal of the grand geopolitical ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative.230 In 2017, two days after the Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech claiming these three epics as ‘passed down’ by Chinese civilization (and mangling the pronunciation of Gesar),231 an opera based on Manas was performed at the Beijing Tianqio Theatre. For sympathetic supporters in Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s attendance was evidence that Kyrgyz culture was spreading; for the critical, it was sign of a new vassal status. As with other periods discussed in this chapter, the role of the patron is significant. Amid Chinese media reports of an unveiling of expensive new equestrian statues of Manas and his Forty Companions (each standing on a gargantuan book featuring — in Chinese characters — their name),232 promotion of the official variants and the novelization of the Mamay variant (in Chinese, Kyrgyz, and English versions),233 there are claims that the ‘more integrated’ version of Manas in China promotes ethnic harmony by preserving the culture by providing a monthly stipend to performers.234        

226 227 228 229

         

230 231 232 233 234

Tomczak, ‘Is China a Model Member State of UNESCO’, p. 313. Encyclopedia of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage, ed. by Feng. Yi, ‘First Encyclopedia’. I am grateful to Bruce Humes for discussing this point; the three epics likewise appear as ‘Chinese folk culture’ in Xiang, ‘Folk Culture’, p. 303); Ying, ‘Wo guo san da ying xiong shi shi bi Jiao yan jiu’. Bai, ‘Si lu wen xiang he mei xin sheng’. ChinaDaily, 22 March 2018. ‘Pamyatnik Manasu i ego soroka voinam v Kitae’. Regarding the last: He and Chun, Legend of Manas, trans. by Zhang. ‘Epic of Manas: The history of Kirgiz in Xinjiang’, CCTV, 23 May 2018; ‘70 years on, China’s Xinjiang embraces future with vitality, stability’, Global Times, 25 September 2019.

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Integration, however, has a different connotation in Xinjiang. Since 2014, under the guise of responding to religious extremism, ‘re-education camps’ in the region hold substantial numbers of the local ethnic minorities. On 31 May 2019, an international media outlet reported that the grandson of Jüsüp Mamay, Turgunaly Tursunaly, who had been studying at the Kyrgyz National University in Bishkek, returned to Xinjiang Province for what his department expected to be short trip in October 2018.235 This brief appearance in Bishkek was followed by a return to Xinjiang in 2019. AKYN had hoped to record him to compare his performances to those of his grandfather and contemporary performers in Kyrgyzstan. After a lengthy period of silence, Tursunaly was interviewed on Kazakh television attending the Bishkek run of the Chinese opera on Manas; he praised the performance and the Chinese treatment of the epic. It is unclear to what extent his actions are restricted or coerced. As with the telling of any story, the words a performer speaks fit the time, the narrative, and the patron; such words may illustrate the complex, taut, and difficult relationship an individual performer has in the time that they inhabit.

  235 Bunin, ‘Kyrgyz Students Vanish into Xinjiang’s Maw’, Foreign Policy, 31 March 2019. Turgunaaly Tursunaaly is entry 2738 in the Xinjiang Victims database at ; others include Aaly Suiunbai (1014) a scholar and Manas reciter, Asanaly Kalil (1032), a Manaschi and teacher in Arabaev Kyrgyz State University, and Mambetturdu Mambetakun (2617), a Manas scholar.

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Works Cited Archived Audiovisual Recordings Budapest, Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Digital Archive of Cultural Heritage, HU OSA 437-1-21 [accessed 29 January 2021] Manuscripts

(NB some manuscripts are accessible via ) Bishkek, National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic, NA 1 —— , NA 6 —— , NA 65 —— , NA 78 —— , NA 80 —— , NA 184 —— , NA 247 —— , NA 252 (and 252a) —— , NA 927 —— , NA KF 68(262) Primary Sources Nineteenth-century variants Collected by Valikhanov

Köönörgüs muras: ‘Manastın’ ‘Kökötöydün ašı’ epizodunun Č. Valikhanov jazdırıp algan variantı, ed. by K. Botoyarov, completed by T. Čorotegin (Bishkek: Kyrgyzstan-Soros/Aibek, 1996) KO The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-Khan (Kökötöydün ašı): A Kirghiz Epic Poem, ed. and trans. by A. T. Hatto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) Nineteenth-century variants Collected by Radloff

MWR The Manas of Wilhelm Radloff, ed. and trans. by Arthur T. Hatto (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990) Radloff, W., Proben der Volkslitteratur der nördlichen türkischen Stämme, vol. 5, Der Dialect der Kara-Kirgisen (St Petersburg: Commisionäre der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1885) Radlovym, V. V., Obraztsy narodnoj literatury severnych tjurkskich plemen, vol. 5, narečie dikokamennych Kirgizov (St Petersburg: Commisionäre der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1885)

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(NB some early publications are accessible via ) Almásy, Georg von, ‘Der Abschied des Helden Manas von seinem Sohne Sėmetėj: aus dem karakirgisischen Epos Manasdın kısası’, Keleti Szemle, 12 (1911–1912), 216–23 Bakchiev, Talantaaly, Almambettin jomogu (Karakol: Akil, 1995; repr. Bishkek: KugBer, 2012) —— , Manastin Ashi (Bishkek: Turar, 2011) —— , Three variants of the Birth of Manas at [accessed 16 December 2019] SBC Čaġateyev, Musa, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History: Edition, Translation and Interpretations, with a Facsimile of the Unique Manuscript, ed. and trans. by Daniel Prior (Leiden: Brill, 2013) Dor, Rémy, ‘Un fragment pamirien de Manas’, Central Asiatic Journal, 26 (1982), 1–55 SKK Kara, Kenje. The Semetey of Kenje Kara: A Kirghiz Epic Performance on Phonograph with a Musical Score and a Compact Disc of the Phonogram, ed. and trans. by Daniel Prior (with the assistance of Ishembi Obolbekov in transcribing the Kyrgyz text) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006) Karalaev, Sayakbai, Manas, Semetey, Seitek, 5 vols (Frunze [Bishkek]: Kirghizstan basmasi, 1984–1991) —— , Manas, ed. by Ainek Zhaunakova and Arkarbek Mamytov (Bishkek: Turar, 2010) —— , Semetey, ed. by Ainek Zhaunakova (Bishkek: Turar, 2013) —— , Seitek, ed. by Ainek Zhaunakova, 2 vols (Bishkek: Turar, 2013) Mamay, Jüsüp, Manas, ed. by Usenali Noruz, Asanbay Matyly, Manbetasan Ergi, Orgacha Kedirbay, Dolkun Turdu, and Toktobubu Isak, 18 vols (Urumqi: People’s Publishing House, 1984–1994) Manas: Kȯkȯtȯĭdu̇ n ashy. Tynybek: Semeteĭ baatyrdan bir bȯlu̇ m: ėpos, ed. by Raïkul Sarypbekov (Bishkek: Ala-Too, 1994) Manas (2 vols), Semetey (1959), Seitek (1960), general ed. B. M. Yunusaliev (Frunze [Bishkek]: Kyrgyzmambas, 1958–1960) Manas: (‘Manas’ dastaninin ulandisi Semetej den bir bölüm), ed. by S. Bet-Alman (Berlin: Millij Türkistan Komitetinin, 1943) Manbetjüsüp, Eshmat, Semetey (Kizilsuu: Kirghiz Publishing House, 2003) Orozbakov, Sagımbay, Manas Epos (Frunze [Bishkek]: Kirghizstan basmasi, 1978–1982) —— , Manastyn balalyk chagy, ed. by I. Abdurakhmanov (Frunze [Bishkek]: Kyrgyzstan mamlekettik basmasy, 1940) —— , Manas: Kyrgyz elinin baatyrdyk eposu, Sagymbai Orozbakovdun varianty boiuncha, ed. by S. Musaev and A. Akmataliev (Bishkek: Khan-Teŋir, 2010) ‘Semetey eposunan üzündü’, ed. by M. Tölömüšev, Ala-Too, 4 (1988), 133–40 Sydykov, Doolot, ‘Three variants of the Birth of Manas’ at [accessed 16 December 2019]

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Adaptations and Translations He, Jihong, Chun Yi, Legend of Manas, trans. by Zhang Tianxin ([Beijing]: China Intercontinental Press, 2011) İnan, Abdülkadir, Manas destanı (İstanbul: Millî Eğitim Basımevi, 1972) Jusupov, Kengash, Manas: Qirg’iz xalq dostoni, tr. Tursunboy Adashboev (Toshkent: Chülpon Nashriëti, 1995) Köçümkulkïzï, Elmira, The Kyrgyz Epic Manas, online at [accessed 16 December 2019] Lipkin, Semyon, Manas Velikodushny: povest ([Leningrad]: Sovetskii Pisatel, 1947) Manas, trans. by Walter May, 2 vols (Moskva/Bishkek: Kirghiz Branch of International Centre ‘Traditional Cultures and Environments’ / Publishing House ‘Door’, 1995) Manas: Kara söz menen, ed. by K. Jusupov (Bishkek: Chief Editorship of the Kyrgyz Encyclopedia, 1995) Manas: kirgizskii epos Velikii pokhod, trans. by S. Lipkin, L. Pen’kovskii, and M. Tarlov (Moskva: Gos. izd-vo khudozh. lit-ry, 1946) Manas, Semetey, Seitek: Kyrgyzsti baatirdik epos: Kara söz menen, ed. by C. Mysaev (Bishkek: Bishkek, 2003) Oktay, Osman, Manas destanı, illustrations by Denge Animasyon, 2 vols (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1991) Tales of Manas: Kyrgyz Epos, trans. by Akylay Baimatova ([np]: [np], 2018) Zhakiev, B., Geroicheskiy epos kyrgyzov ‘Manas’ (v risunkakh), illustrations by Zamir Ilipov (Bishkek: Arcus for Roza Otunbayeva Initiative International Public Foundation, 2016) —— , Manas’: Kyrgyzdardyn baatyrdyk éposi (süröttö) (Bishkek: Arcus for Roza Otunbayeva Initiative International Public Foundation, 2019) Zhakypbek, Ashym, Teniri Manas (Bishkek: Kyrgyzstan, 1995) Recordings Heroic Songs of Manas: Saiakbai Karalaev (1894–1971) (PAN 2054, 2007) Music of Central Asia, vol. 1, Tengir-Too Mountain Music of Kyrgyzstan (Smithsonian Folkways SFW40520, 2006) Films Shamshiev, Bolotbek, dir., Manasci (Kyrgyzfilm, 1965) Abdyjaparov, Ernest, dir., Sayakbay – Homer of the 20th Century (Studio Ernest Abdyjaparov and Sayakbay International Fund, 2017)

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[accessed 16 December 2019] Bailey, Scott C. Matsushita, ‘A Biography in Motion: Chokan Valikhanov and his Travels in Central Eurasia’, Ab Imperio, 1 (2009), 165–90 Bakchiev, T. A., Kyrgyzskie èpicheskie skaziteli (Bishkek: Print-Èkspress, 2015) —— , Manasovedenie: Uchebnoe posobie dlya vuzov (Bishkek Altyn Tamga, 2019) Bamo, Qubumo, and Genjin Chao (with John D. Niles), ‘Documenting Living Oral Traditions: China’s Institute of Ethnic Literature’, Journal of American Folklore, 129 (2016), 270–87 Beksultanova, Chinara, ‘Small Epics as an Important Element of Oral Epic Creativity of Kyrgyz People’, in Oral Traditions and Epics of Central Asia, ed. by Seong-Yong Park (ICHCAP: Jeonju, 2016), pp. 167–78 Bennigsen, Alexandre A., ‘The Crisis of the Turkic National Epics, 1951–1952: Local Nationalism or Internationalism?’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 17 (1975), 463–74 Bernshtam, A., ‘Epoch the Kyrgyz Epic Manas Origin’, in Encyclopaedical Phenomenon of Epos ‘Manas’, ed. by S. Aliev, R. Sarypbekov, and K. Matiev (Bishkek: Glavnaya redaktsiya Kyrgyzskoĭ Èntsiklopedii, 1995), pp. 401–25 Beyer, Judith, The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) Bilinsky, Yaroslav, ‘Education of the Non-Russian Peoples in the Soviet Union’, Comparative Education Review, 8 (1964), 78–89 Blakkisrud, Helge, and Nuraida Abdykapar Kyzy, ‘Female Heroes in a Man’s World: The Construction of Female Heroes in Kyrgyzstan’s Symbolic NationBuilding’, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 25 (2017), 113–36 Botojarov, K., ‘Angliskoe izdanie ėposa “MANASA” (tekstologičeskie aspekty)’, Fol’klor: poetika i traditsija (1982), 211–22 Bowra, C. M., Heroic Poetry (London: Macmillian, 1952) Brewer, Charlotte, Editing ‘Piers Plowman’: The Evolution of the Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Brower, Daniel, ‘Kyrgyz Nomads and Russian Pioneers: Colonization and Ethnic Conflict in the Turkestan Revolt of 1916’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 44 (1996), 41–53 —— , ‘Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan’, in Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917, ed. by Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 115–37 Bruley, Julien, ‘L’épopée de Manas: étude historique, patrimoniale et ethnographique’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Lille, 2019) Bunin, Gene A., ‘Kyrgyz Students Vanish into Xinjiang’s Maw: Musicians, Folklorists, and Storytellers Disappear after Being Forced Back to China’, Foreign Policy 31 March 2019, [accessed 16 December 2019]

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Yi, Xing, ‘First Encyclopedia of Chinese Intangible Heritage Released’, ChinaDaily, 16 June 2015, [accessed 16 December 2019] Ying, Lang, ‘The Bard Jusup Mamay’, Oral Tradition, 16 (2001), 222–39 —— , ‘Wo guo san da ying xiong shi shi bi Jiao yan jiu’, Institute of Ethnic Litera­ ture CASS, 3 April 2014, [accessed 16 December 2019] Zakharov, Nikolay, Ian Law, and Maya Shmidt, ‘Central Asian Racisms’, in PostSoviet Racisms, ed. by Nikolay Zakharov and Ian Law (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2017), pp. 129–84 Ziolkowski, Margaret, Soviet Heroic Poetry in Context: Folklore or Fakelore (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2013)

301

Index

Abbo of Fleury: 20 Abdirakhmanov, Ibirayim: 263–69 Manas Series: 266 Er-Töštük: 247–50, 272, 282 Abdrakhmanov, Baiymbet: 263 Semetey: 263 absolutism: 76 abstraction: 44 in imagery: 221, 233 abuse of power: 21, 125 of workers: 125 Academy of Sciences, Asiatic Museum: 259 Achior: 116 acting: 40–44, 97, 124, 277 for actors see men adaptation studies: 32 adaptations: 33–48, 54–59, 61–67, 115–16, 240–58, 265, 272–81 for admirers see men Ælfric of Eynsham: 110–11, 115–27 Letter to the Monks of Eynsham: 110 Æthelbert: 138, 146–47 Æthelred II: 74–80 age: 15 youth: 31–32, 57, 61–62, 64, 66, 96, 113–15, 119, 124, 161, 164, 188, 204, 208–09, 214–16, 240–44, 271 middle age: 61, 65, 280 old age: 61–62, 65–67, 100, 255, 263

Ahong, Jusup: 283 AHRC: 37 Ai-churek: 265 Aitmatov, Chingitz: 273 Ak-erkeč: 246 Akayev, Askar: 273–75 Seven Principles of Manas: 274 Akunbe, Ebrayin: 283 alcoholic beverages arak: 247 brandy: 275 mead: 46, 54 vodka: 275 Alcuin of York: 13–15, 110 De laude Dei: 110 Epistolæ: 13 Aldhelm: 110–27 De Virginitate: 110, 114, 118–22 Carmen de Virginitate: 114 Alexander the Great: 25, 203–17 Alexanders saga: 203–17 algorithms 42, 46 Alison, the Wife of Bath: 14–15 Allan, Syd: 55 alliteration: 37, 59, 225 Almambet: 246, 260–61, 273 Almambet, Er Kökčo and Ak-erkeč: 246–72 Almásy, György: 255–56 Volksdichtung: 256 altars: 145–49, 164–68 alterity: 24, 124–25 Alþing: 204, 211

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i n dex

ambiguities: 25–26, 33–46, 76–81, 122, 178, 181–85, 192, 197, 223–26, 233–34, 241 American University of Central Asia, Analyzing Kyrgyz Narratives Research Group: 278–80 Anand, Astrid: 55–56 Beowulf: 55–56 Andersen, Hans Christian: 126 Angelica: 100–04 for angels see boys for Anglo-Norman see languages Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: 82 Anglo-Saxon hoards: 64 animal husbandry: 243 animal instincts: 182–84 and the taming thereof: 182, 273 animals birds: 78, 226–28, 232, 256 as depictions on artefacts: 226–28, 232 dogs: 25, 161, 177–96, 247, 254 horses: 90, 104, 205, 243–60 wild: 180–83 see also creatures for anime comics see media anonymity: 20, 71–73, 80, 98–99, 110–11, 120, 127, 164–68, 226, 232–33 antagonists: 41 anti-female literature: 158, 164 anti-Icelandic satire: 203 Antonsson, Haki: 212 anxieties: 110–12, 121–22 Apay, Jüsüpakun: 282–83 appropriation: 67, 233, 284 Arabaev, Ishenaaly: 252, 256–57, 260–66 for Arabic see languages archaeological studies: 64, 175, 189, 196

archbishops: 91, 96, 144, 148 archery: 206–15 arches: 148–49 architecture: 22, 135–49 American: 169 Italianate: 143 medieval: 141–49, 159–60 Victorian: 14–43 Ariosto, Ludovico: 88–105 The Frenzy of Orlando: 88, 98 Aristotle: 159, 211 Poetics: 159 armour: 64, 79, 90, 103, 207, 222–27 arrogance: 99, 121 art history: 143–44, 153 artefacts: 176–81, 191–97, 222–29 see also animals as depictions on artefacts Arts and Humanities Research Council: 31 asceticism: 162 Ashurst, David: 210–17 Asian tribes Bugu: 244–49, 255–57 Burjat-Mongols: 243 Kalmak: 243–49, 260–62, 271–72 Kyrgyz: 245, 249 Sarıbaġıš: 244–47, 260 South-Turkic-YakutMongolians: 243 Assandun, Battle of: 74 assonance: 89, 93, 98 Assyria: 109, 116, 180 Atey-bey: 259 Aude: 94–100 for audio recordings see media Auezov, Mukhtar: 267 Austin, J. L.: 158–59 authority: 21, 76–83, 134–47, 164, 169, 262, 275–76, 281 authorship: 21–23, 43, 57–59, 115, 135–37, 164–68, 203–17, 248, 270

index

autobiographies as self-relation: 222 aventiure: 180–84 Ay-čürök: 247–59 Azizov, Shaabi: 279 Bakai: 254–61 Bakchiev, Talantaaly: 276–80 Baker, Nick G.: 25 Bakiyev, Kurmanbek: 274 banishment: 116 banknotes: 273–75 baptism: 148, 205 Baptist, John the: 149 baptisteries: 141–48 bards: 272 Barker, Howard: 111, 123–27 Barking: 112 Barnaul, Siberia: 246 Barthes, Roland: 159 basilicas: 163 battles: 37–40, 72–82, 89–92, 207–15, 247, 270–72 Bauman, Richard: 87, 97 Bayake: 260 beauty: 82, 95–101, 109–21, 164, 182, 204–11, 231 Bede: 24, 133–49, 163 Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: 133–39 Vita Sancti Cuthberti: 163 bedrooms: 120–24 beheadings: 109, 123 Beijing Tianqio Theatre: 284 beliefs pagan: 91, 101, 114–16, 135–37, 208–12 religious: 19, 110, 133–53, 248–85 shamanistic: 22, 243, 247 Belinskii, Aleksandr: 257 Bentley, John Francis: 141–44 Beowulf (character): 13–14, 35–48, 56–67, 117

Beowulf: 13–23, 31–48, 53–67, 71, 117, 176–95, 221–33, 241, 280 Bethulia: 109–25 Bingham, Jerry: 55–56 Beowulf: 55–56 for birds see animals birth: 164, 247–78 Birth of Mana, The: 247 Birth of Semetey, The: 247 Bishkek/Pishpek: 257, 274, 278, 285 for bishops see men Bismillah: 252–57 bleikir akrar: 203–17 blood: 35–41, 78–82, 94–95, 115–19, 144, 165, 207–13 Boiardo, Matteo Maria: 88, 97–105 Roland in Love: 88, 97–102 Bok-murun: 244–49, 270 Bokonbaeva, Joomart: 267 Bolot uulu, Nazar: 244 Borzu uulu, Maldıbay: 253–68 Botoyanov, Kambaralı: 246 Bourdieu, Pierre: 162–66 The Berber House or the World Reversed: 162 boys as slaves: 125, 136 as angels: 136 Brandr: 203–08 for brandy see alcoholic beverages Breca: 37 Bridge, George: 146 British Library: 33, 59 brotherhoods: 271 for brothers see men Bryer, Theo: 23 for buckles see armour and artefacts for Bugu see Asian tribes for Burjat-Mongols see Asian tribes Byzantium: 141–49, 204–05

3 05

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i n dex

Čaġateyev, Musa: 259–61 Šabdan Baatır Codex: 259–61 Čakan: 247 calligraphy, scribal: 59 Canterbury: 133–47, 165 Carolingian-Arthurian court: 101 Carroll, Bill: 55–56 Carruthers, Mary: 19, 123 Carver, Martin: 64 Catholic revival: 141 Catholicism: 24, 134–53, 141 celibacy: 162–64 Central Asia: 241–78 Ceorlas: 35–37 Chaldean history: 111 chansons de geste: 89–92 for La Chanson de Roland see Song of Roland chapels: 135–53, 168 character identification: 38, 102–04 character models: 38–42 characterisations: 41, 119, 225–29, 272–80 Charlemagne: 87–102 chastity: 111–18 Châteauroux-Venice 7 Roland: 88 Châtillon, Walter of: 204–09 De Alexandreis: 204–10 Chaucer, Geoffrey: 15, 21–22, 176 The Canterbury Tales: 15, 21 House of Fame: 176 Chernuble: 89–90 Chieffo Raguin, Virginia: 162 chieftains: 22, 204, 213–15, 242–69 China Federation of Literary and Art Circles: 284 for Chinese see languages Christ: 14, 210, 224, 275, 281 as a beautiful being: 158, 231 as a harrower of hell: 212 as an icon: 139–40, 148–49, 165 as a king: 138–39, 145

as a son: 145 as a sacrifice: 145, 158 Christian symbolism: 137, 141–43, 208 Christianity: 111, 134–36, 147–53, 204–08 church missions: 24, 133–50 Church buildings: 94, 133–36, 142–45, 152, 157–67 Catholic: 24, 134 English: 24, 133–36, 140–53 Icelandic: 204, 215 Irish: 134–35 Roman: 135–40, 144–45, 151–53 cinematography: 40 cities: 73, 109–21, 139–52, 209, 216, 252 Civil War, Chinese: 271 Classe, Sant Apollinaire: 144 classrooms: 21–23, 31–48, 56, 66, 93, 253 Clauditte: 179–97 Clayton & Bell: 145 Clayton, Mary: 115–22 clerks: 14–15, 160–67, 216 Cnut the Great: 23, 71–83 Cochrane, Jamie: 207 Čokčoloy: 247–48 Coldingham Priory: 163 Coldingham, Geoffrey of: 161 collars: 25, 179–96 colours: 40, 64, 94, 145, 181, 269, 279 comedy: 119, 251, 254–56, 258 for comic books see media commemorative verse: 35, 76, 212–15 comments, authorial: 13, 40, 102, 113, 248–49 communal activities: 23, 36, 71–81, 230 communal identities: 73, 82–83, 280

index

communism: 83, 262–71 for companions see God for computer games see media conflicts: 14, 76, 114 intertribal: 245–49 Confucius: 284 Analects: 284 conquests: 74–83, 109, 163, 204–12 constructivist theories: 32 contamination: 116 conversion: 133–53 corn(fields), pale: 25, 203–17 corpses: 81, 91, 104, 117 court poetry: 23, 35, 71–83, 212–15 see also education, courtly courtly love: 100–01, 181–94 courtly reading: 99, 177 for cowards see men creative freedom: 14, 87, 110 creative writing: 34–48, 233 creatures: 39, 121, 151, 225–34 see also animals crimes: 161–66, 205 murder: 44, 72, 103–04, 204–14, 247–54, 266, 272 rape: 118–21 stealing: 109, 118–23, 206, 254–60 crucifixions: 150, 158 crusades: 93, 150 cults: 165 cultural reality: 175–76 cultural tagging: 180–82 culture: 32, 47–48, 137, 160–68, 175–90 Byzantine: 143–49 early medieval English: 60–66, 109–11, 120–23, 133–36, 140, 157–70, 221–33 Franco-Italian/Franco-Venetian: 93–98 Hebrew: 116–25 Jewish: 116

Kyrgyz: 240–84 Neo-Byzantine: 144 Norse: 203 pop: 41–48, 53 post-Enlightenment: 17 Soviet: 265 Cuthbert’s shrine: 157 for Cyrillic see scripts d’Este, Isabella: 99 Darius, King of Persia: 208 Dark Ages: 53 DC Comics: 56 death: 25, 62–67, 92–99, 125, 150, 178–95, 208–17, 244–61 decasyllabic lines: 89 decorative objects: 22, 113, 140, 221–34 defeat: 35–37, 61, 74, 101, 109–14, 216–17 Denmark: 61–62, 71–74, 205 Derrida, Jacques: 222 Desert Fathers: 162 digitisation: 33 Discordia: 176 discourse: 14, 57–58, 99, 159, 168, 241 for distractions see women dog leashes: 25, 178–97 for dogs see animals domestication: 112, 183 dominance Islamic: 242 male: 76, 83, 168 Soviet: 263 doorways: 144 dragons: 55, 61–66 for drama see media dramatization: 41 draugar: 207, 212 dreams: 36, 125–26, 209–16, 247, 256–79 Dronke, Ursula: 217

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Duel Between Manas and Kökčo, The: 246 duels: 99–101, 246 Duggan, J.J.: 96 Durendal: 89–90 Durham: 157–69 Durham Cathedral: 149–50, 158–69 Eadgar: 72 Eadmer of Canterbury: 133 for early modern English see languages ecclesia: 167 ecclesiastical contexts: 133–53 Eco, Umberto: 53–54 Edlich-Muth, Miriam: 13 Edmund, King: 20, 74, 149–65 education: 32–46, 262–64, 278 courtly: 182–84 Islamic: 251–52 Egyptians: 116, 125, 275 Ehkunat: 179–96 Eiríkr the Red: 205 ekphrasis: 223–31 Elfaraskáld, Þorkell: 212 Eliade, Mircea: 19 Eliot, T. S.: 21 elsewhere: 17–18 Emeloth: 161–67 Emma of Normandy: 80–81 emotional reception: 88 emotional responses: 24, 87–93, 97, 104–05 enamelling, cloisonné: 222–25 Encyclopedia of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage: 284 Engels, Friedrich: 268 enigmas: 121–23 enigmatic encounters: 33 entertainment: 16, 54–67, 100, 242–83 environments, virtual: 44

Epic of Gilgamesh: 278 Epic of Manas: 239–85 equations: 42 Er Kıyaz: 247 escapism: 16, 241–65 eschatology: 136, 148–53 excommunication: 166 expansionism: 249 experimentation: 48, 189 extinction, fears of: 251 Eyrbyggja saga: 213 for faith see beliefs fame: 67, 203–17, 258, 283 family, abandoning one’s: 254 for famine see hunger feasts: 109–24, 163, 244–77 Felski, Rita: 159 female ingress: 160–66 female pollution: 164 female presence: 39–40, 162, 165 Feragu: 101 Ferrara: 99 festivals: 264 Uyghur Meshrep: 284 feudalism: 264, 271–72 fiction: 15–25, 102, 175–96, 211, 283 filmmaking: 34–48 for films see media Flateyjarbók: 81 Fleming, Juliet: 187 flyting: 240 folk tales: 61 food: 20, 109–25, 269 Foote, Peter: 205 Ford, John: 66 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: 66 foundation stones: 142, 152 Frank, Roberta: 72, 213 French, Katherine L.: 167 Friar in The Canterbury Tales: 15

index

for friends see men Frunze Philharmonia: 265–72 Gabriel: 96 Gaiman, Neil: 124 game characters: 42–47 game design: 42–44 Ganelon: 93 gaps in stories: 96, 123–25 Gardeviaz: 25, 179–97 Geatland: 36–37, 61–62 Geats: 37, 67 Gem, Richard: 134 gemstone letters: 177–96 gender binary roles: 160–62, 167–69 equality: 264 relations: 122 representation: 33, 41 Gengsheng, Bai: 284 Genius: 21–22 genre: 55, 71, 88, 111, 175–78, 248 geometry: 160, 222–33 for German see languages gift-giving: 181–83 God: 95, 112, 117, 251 as authority: 18, 122, 164 as carer for souls: 91–93, 254 as companion: 95, 183 as earthly being: 118–19 as lord: 95, 102, 138, 176 as priestly apparition: 209 as punisher: 164 as restorer: 95–96, 210 gold: 14, 79, 95, 116–23, 145–52, 158, 206, 222–30 Gondul: 213 Gonzaga, Francesco: 96 good and bad: 115, 122, 168 good stories: 24, 111, 124–26 Gotschall, Jonathan: 126 Gower, John: 21

Confessio Amantis: 21 Grail romances: 176–78 Great Soviet Encyclopaedia: 266 Greece: 208–09 Gregorius: 176 Grendel: 14, 35–49, 55–64, 117–19, 230 grieving: 89–99, 113, 179 Griffith, Mark: 118 Grœnlendinga saga: 205–14 group identities: 73–82, 241–43, 275 Gummere, Francis: 58–60 Gunnarr: 25, 203–17 habitus: 166 Hagia Sophia (Constantinople): 144, 150 hagiography: 19–20, 114–15, 141–51 hair, locks of: 206–10 Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway: 203 Hamer, Andrew: 205, 210 handmaidens: 109, 117–19 Haraldr: 74 for harrowers see Christ Hastings, Battle of: 92 Hatto, Arthur T.: 246–50 Hauksbók: 214–15 Haydock, Nicholas: 40 Heany, Seamus: 47, 62–63 heartbreak: 96 Hebrews: 109–25 Helisend: 165 Heorot: 62–67, 119 here-and-now: 17–19 hermits: 178 heroism: 35–37, 82, 101, 137, 221 heroes: 14, 18–25, 33, 36–37, 56–67, 99–102, 204–16, 230, 239–81 heroic victories: 14 heroines: 24, 109–22 Herzen, Theodor: 269–75

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i n dex

Heslop, Sandy: 159 Hilgert, Markus: 180–82 hilts: 195, 230 Hinds, Gareth: 23, 53–67 The Collected Beowulf: 23, 53–67 historical media studies: 175 historicity: 133, 141 Hlíðarendi: 203–15 Hœnsna-Þóris saga: 212–14 Holofernes: 109–25 Holy Cross: 139–49 Holy Family: 145 Holy of Holies: 142 homecoming: 205–17 homeland, renouncing one’s: 209 homilies: 109–27 honesty: 122, 157 honey: 254 honour: 72–74, 92–104, 205–16 Horace: 159 Epistle to the Pisos: 159 for horses see animals Hough, Graham: 102 How Almambet Came to Manas: 246 Hrothgar: 14, 55–61, 230 humiliation: 121 hunger: 116–17, 122 hunting: 181–93 Hustevedt, Siri: 17 hypermetric lines: 121 hypertext, electronic: 17, 53 for Icelandic see languages iconography: 25, 57–58, 140–53, 223–33 for icons see Christ identity, national: 261 Iliad: 239–41, 266–78 illustrations: 38–64, 269 for imagery see abstraction Imams, Twelve: 254 immorality: 100

impersonation: 96 impotence: 15, 217 improvisation: 35–44, 242–66 indestructability: 182 India: 245 infidelity; 243–44, 271 infinity: 18–25, 126 inheritance: 134–53, 241–80 Inner Farne: 161 innocence: 118–23, 164 inscriptions: 25, 64, 146–47, 175–96, 230–53 for insular script see scripts interments: 165, 206–07 for intruders see women for Īrči see singing/songs ironic narratives: 35, 102–03, 115–25 Iser, Wolfgang: 123 Íslendingadrápa: 213 Israel, Lost Tribes of: 275 Issyk-Kul: 244, 271 for Italian see languages Italian Renaissance: 98–99 Jadidism: 252, 263 Jakıp: 247 James Powell & Sons: 145 Jankyn: 14–21 Jantay: 247–58 Jantayev, Šabdan: 251–58 Japıy uulu, Tınıbek: 266–51 Semetey: 266–51 jealousy: 103, 204 Jeenbekov, Sooronbay: 284 Jerome: 111–20 Vulgate Bible: 111–20 Joloy Khan: 244–50 for jomokchu see storytelling Jones, Chris: 33 jongleurs: 89–98 Josephus: 209 Jewish Antiquities: 209

index

Judith, Old English poem: 111–27 Judith of Bethulia: 24, 109–27 Judith of Flanders: 157–67 Jügörü: 247 Jumabaev, Rysbek: 277 Memorial Feast: 277 Jutes: 72 Kak-telki: 255 for Kalmak see Asian tribes Kamaŋ-köz: 246 Kan-čoro: 247–56 Kanıkey: 246–56 Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast, Revolutionary Committee: 262–63 Kara, Kenje: 257–59 Karalaev, Sayakbai: 261–83 Manas Trilogy: 271–73 Karasayev, Khusain: 264–67 Kazakhs: 245–85 Kemp, Wolfgang: 159–60 kennings: 80, 207, 213–14 the creation of: 35–37 the translation of: 224 Kent: 133–50 Kiening, Christian: 188 kingdoms: 62, 74–75, 137–38 for Knútr inn ríki Sveinsson, see Cnut the Great Knýtlinga saga: 71–78 Kökčo-köz: 246 Kökčo, Khan: 246 Kökötöy, Khan: 244–70 konungasögur: 71 kosher food/kashrut: 109–16 Közkaman: 246 Közkaman: 246 Kül-čoro: 247–58 Kyrgyz Communist Party: 267 for Kyrgyz see languages and Asian tribes

Kyrgyz State Theatre: 264 Kyrgyzification: 268 Kyrgyzness: 275–78 for ladies see women lamentations: 92–104, 178, 192–94, 247–66 Landnámabók: 205–15 languages Anglo-Norman: 89 Arabic: 243–69 Chinese: 284–85 early modern English: 187 German: 241–69 Icelandic: 71–79, 207–11 Italian: 88–101 Kyrgyz: 240–85 Middle High German: 177–87 Old English: 25, 35–48, 59–60, 110–22, 223–34 Old French: 89–102 Old Norse: 35, 71–76 Russian: 240–76 for Latin see scripts laughter: 14, 88–103 Le Guin, Ursula: 15, 124–26 legal sentences: 204–06 Lenin, Vladimir: 262–75 lettering: 58–60 letters: 57–59, 99, 110, 177–97, 211, 230, 250–54 Levinas, Emmanuel: 124–27 Levine Gera, Deborah: 112 Leyerle, John: 47 Libellus de Ortu Sancti Cuthberti: 164 Liðsmannaflokkr: 23, 71–83 liðsmenn: 73–82 liminality: 22 Lindisfarne: 149–50 Lindsay, Morlette: 31, 37 Lipkin, Semyon: 265–75 literacy: 31–33, 137, 186–96, 241–80

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i n dex

literary representations: 176, 191 literature: 32–43, 71, 175–96, 221–32, 253 anti-female: 158 Arthurian: 177–78 banned: 265 the transmission of: 53 Literaturnaya Gazeta. 267 Liuzza, Roy M.: 67 living traditions: 26, 240 locus amoenus: 210 London Knowledge Lab: 31, 42 Lönnroth, Lars: 203–11 for lords see God Louviot, Elise: 19 love as cause for madness: 88–104 familial: 92–93 romantic: 94–104, 157, 178–96 as vanquisher: 100 Lucas, Peter: 118 ludo-dramatic qualities: 33 lying: 20, 36, 115 Macedonia: 203–17 madness, insanity: 100–04, 158–62 see also love Magnússon, Árni: 217 for maids see women male hegemony: 167 ‘male-gaze’: 39 Malmesbury, William of: 133 Mamay, Jüsüp: 282–85 Man of Law: 21 for manap see chieftains Manas: 239–85 Manas: 26, 239–85 Manas Studies: 274, 278 for manaschis see storytelling Manasses: 125 Manbejtüsüp, Eshmat: 282 manuscript fragments: 177–94

manuscripts London, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv (second part): 54, 66 Harley MS 208: 13 Bishkek, National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic NA 1: 265–68 NA 6: 252 NA 65: 265 NA 78: 257 NA 80: 260 NA 184: 268 NA 247: 276 NA 252 (and 252a): 253 NA 927: 276 NA KF 68(262): 263 marble: 24, 133–53 Margulan, Älkey: 246 Marriage, Death and Return to Life of Manas, The: 246 marriages: 125, 163–64, 205, 217, 246–61 unhappy: 100, 204 Marx, Karl: 268 Marxist-Leninism: 266 masculinity: 119, 223–28 Massey, Doreen: 160, 170 material culture: 175 materiality: 24, 152, 176–96, 223 maturing: 161–62 Maud: 165–67 for mead see alcoholic beverages mead-halls: 46, 54 meaning: 14–25, 97, 122–26, 207–10, 223–34, 240–50 creating of: 23–25, 58, 180, 193, 231, 240 material preservation of: 142–43, 160, 178–97 Mecca: 247–63

index

media anime comics: 275 assets: 42 audio recordings: 240, 251 comic books: 23, 54–64, 159 computer games: 31–47 constraints: 47 drama: 31–48 films: 33–48, 159, 272–75 history: 175, 187 novelizations: 283–84 picture books: 33 television programmes: 33, 54, 115, 285 mediation: 20–24, 105, 152, 160 megalomaniacal rulers: 109 memorials: 123, 141–53, 244–47 memory: 13, 38, 87, 98, 242 men as actors: 40–41, 277 as admirers: 96, 102, 114 as bishops: 96, 144–50, 163–68, 203–04 as brothers: 74–81, 94–96, 204–15, 247–83 as cowards: 81 as friends and comrades: 36, 89, 204–11, 254–60 as kings: 20, 46, 67, 71–83, 94–96, 138–47, 163–68, 203–10 as leaders: 19, 36–46, 74–77, 109–21 as lovers: 99–104, 178–95 as monks: 13, 21, 110, 139, 157–68, 281 as patrons: 168, 264–71 as princes: 36, 66, 72, 82, 145, 211–12 as servants: 119–21, 138, as travellers: 82, 245–48 as victims: 120 as virgins: 158–62 as warriors: 22, 36, 46, 55–66, 75–82, 89–100, 204–13, 221, 240–44, 272

menstruation: 164 mental resolve: 76–77 for meres see water metalwork as a medium for storytelling: 221–34 as ornamented art: 140 metamedia: 43 metamorphoses/transformations: 25, 226 metaphors: 40, 54, 82, 143, 177–94, 224–26, 254 Meulengracht-Sørensen, Preben: 205 for Middle Ages see periods for Middle High German see languages Midgley, Mary: 18 midsummer: 204 Miftakov, Kayum: 263–71 migration: 242–62 for minne see courtly love minorities, ethnic: 240–85 mise-en-abyme: 176–77 misogyny: 15, 24, 158–68 Mission, Augustinian: 24, 133–46 missionaries:135, 208, 275 MissionMaker software: 34–47 mnemonic techniques:187 models, 3D: 38–42 monasteries: 163–67 for monks see men morals: 21, 100, 112–15, 210, 244 for mosaicists see women mosaics: 22–24, 133–53 for mothers see women Mullins, Juliet: 112 multimodality: 31–32 for murder see crimes Murray, Janet: 43 Musa-qyzy, Bübü Mariyam: 276 Ayköl Manas: 276 Musulmankulov, Moldobasan: 264–70

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i n dex

narratives, foundation: 24, 133–44 National Centre of Manasology and Artistic Culture: 260 National Curriculum: 33, 48 naves: 145–52, 165–68 Neal, Derek G.: 22 for Neo-Byzantine see culture Nerval, Gerard: 122 Neville, Alice and Ralph: 165 Nibelungenlied: 71 Njáll: 204–17 Njáls saga: 25, 204–17 Noġay: 239–70 nomads: 242–78 Norway: 203–17 nostalgia: 25, 233, 241 for novelizations see media Nowell Scribe A: 59 for nuns see women for nurses see women O’Neill, Cecily: 37–38 Odyssey: 241–44, 272 Ólafsson of Grunnavík, Jón: 217–20 for Old English see languages for Old French see languages for Old Norse see languages Old Testament: 114 Oliver: 90–95 omens, ill: 205 omissions in adaptations: 135, 192, 258–71 onomatopoeia: 63, 115 operas: 265–85 Oppen, George: 83–85 Of Being Numerous: 83–85 orality: 176, 185 delivery: 13–17, 187–89, 241–83 transmission: 26, 53–54, 211, 229, 240–83 oratories: 14–15 Orchard, Andy: 37

Orient: 182, 265 for ‘Orlando furioso’ see Ariosto, The Frenzy of Orlando for ‘Orlando Innamorato’ see Boiardo, Roland in Love ornaments, bodily: 112 Orozbakov, Sagımbay: 261–83 Orwell, George: 267 otherness: 17–18, 150 Óttarr svarti: 71–76 Knútsdrápa: 72–74 ottava rima: 98, 102 outlawry: 204–06, 249 for Oxford Roland see Song of Roland Ozias: 116–17 Panther, The: 230 for pagan see beliefs paganisms: 116, 208 pain: 25, 179–95 painting: 40, 64, 139–47, 224, 254–74 Pamirs: 262 pan-Islamism: 205–66 pan-Turkism: 205–66 papacy: 135–47 Parry-Lord theory: 279 Parry, Milman: 250 Parzival: 25, 176–95 past, glorification of the: 232 patriotism: 217, 272 patron requests: 92–93, 248–51, 280 for patrons see men and women patterns: 40, 117, 161, 244 on artefacts: 140, 222–34 peacekeeping: 55, 61 pedagogy: 23, 32–36, 252 performability: 88 periods: sixth century: 25, 135–52, 222–27

index

seventh century: 25, 110, 163, 222–27, 234 eighth century: 54 tenth century: 110 eleventh century: 33, 54, 83 twelfth century: 14, 110, 164–65, 174, 203 thirteenth century: 71, 88, 93, 164, 177, 203–14 fourteenth century: 164 fifteenth century: 88–98, 166–68 sixteenth century: 87–88, 164–67 nineteenth century: 32, 134–53, 240–72 early medieval: 24–25, 64, 71, 83, 109–24, 133–52, 157–63, 221–33 early modern: 87, 135, 175–87 Independence (in Kyrgyzstan, 1992–): 240–78 Middle Ages: 53, 71, 93, 176–90 Soviet (in Kyrgyzstan, 1917–1991): 240–83 Twilight Age (in Kyrgyzstan, 1870–1916: 240–77 PGCE, Post-Graduate Certificate of Education: 32–47 phonosymbolic verbs: 63 for picture books see media piety: 157 see also religiosity pilgrimages: 165, 261–63 for pilgrims see women pillars: 143–45 playfulness: 32–40, 102, 149 pleasure: 48, 88–102, 116–26, 223–34, 248 plot development: 54–57, 64–65, 180, 194 plot holes: 256 plural subjects: 83 poems, unfinished: 88 poetics: 24, 122–27, 192

poets/poetry: 13–26, 35–48, 71–83, 89, 98–105, 109–27, 216, 221–34, 239–81 poison: 246–54 politics: 71–83, 104, 134–36, 161–68, 217, 233 as influences on stories: 240, 248–84 Polivanov, Yevgeny: 265–66 Poole, Russell: 75–80 portraits: 61, 104, 140–49 possessions: 115, 157, 247–54 power: 15–21, 39–48, 73–81, 96–101, 118–26, 135–53, 159–69, 232, 244–83 see also abuse praise-poetry: 72–74 praying: 95, 109, 163–64, 180, 247 prestige: 144–52, 223, 276 pride: 194, 204–10 Prince of the Apostles: 145 for princes see men printing, woodblock: 269–75 Prior, Daniel: 259–60 procedurality: 23, 42–47 proletariat: 83 promised lands: 210 prose: 71–82, 110–22, 204–07, 245–83 prosimetric chronicles: 71 Proverbs: 113 public readings: 87, 100–04 punishments: 165–66 pupils: 32–48, 211–17 Pushkin House, Phonograph Archive: 259 Pushkin, Alexander: 268 Qu’ran: 243, 254 for queens see women Qylych, Moldo: 252–57 Story of the Earthquake: 252

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316

i n dex

Radloff, Wilhelm: 244–53 raiding: 74, 149–50, 243–63 for rape see crimes Ravenna, San Vitale: 144 re-education camps: 285 re-workings of texts: 57, 124, 271 reception aural: 17, 135, 223 visual: 93–105, 159, 162, 177, 250–68 reflections on the self: 34, 66, 83, 123 on stories: 19, 254 Reginald of Durham: 161–65 relations, teacher-pupil: 47–48, 211 for religion see beliefs and rituals religiosity: 110, 133–53, 248–85 religious history: 133 Renoir, Alain: 40 repetition: 19, 79, 121, 134, 161, 241–48, 277–81 resurrections: 164, 207 retellings: 14–24, 34–47, 53–67, 76, 105, 110–26, 133–45, 215, 221–26, 249–54 revenge: 35, 89, 254 Revolution, Bolshevik: 262–82 Reynolds, Barbara: 102 rhetorics: 15, 82, 119–22, 158, 188, 229–33 rhyme: 88–98, 276–83 for Rhymed Roland see Châteauroux-Venice 7 Roland riddles: 159, 223–32 Rites of Durham: 164–68 rituals: 22, 36 religious: 19, 166–68, 256 Rodgers, Patrick: 145 Rogers, Theresa: 37–38 Roland: 87–105 for Roland rimé see ChâteaurouxVenice 7 Roland romance epics: 88, 97–105

romanitas: 136 romanization: 140 Rome: 133–51 Roncevaux, Battle of: 89–91 Rose, Gillian: 160 Feminism and Geography: 160 roundels: 144 rule, Imperial: 262 for runes see inscriptions Russia: 205, 239–76 for Russian see languages for sacrifices see Christ sagas: 25, 71–81, 203–17, 224, 239 Saint Andrew’s Chapel: 150–51 Saint Augustine: 134–53 Saint Baabadin: 255 Saint Benedict of Aniane: 163 Saint Cesarius: 163 Regula ad Monachos: 163 Regula S. Ferreoli: 163 Saint Cuthbert: 163–68, 149–50, 157–62 see also Cuthbert’s shrine Saint Edward: 145 Saint Godric of Finchale: 165 Saint Gregory: 133–53, 216 Saint Paul: 152, 210 Saint Peter: 143 Saint Sebastian: 20 Saint Thomas Beckett: 152 Saint-Bertin, Goscelin of: 133 Saints Gregory and Augustine Chapel: 135–52 sanctity: 118, 150–53, 169 for Sarıbaġıš see Asian tribes Sayakbay – Homer of the 20th Century: 273 Schleif, Corine: 167 Schionatulander: 178–96 for scop see poets scorn: 79–80, 99, 117

index

scribes: 15, 58–66, 98, 215, 269 scripts Arabic: 244–69 Cyrillic: 246–76 fixed and linear: 44 insular: 59 Latin: 255–71 Scripture: 109–21, 149 seascapes: 151 seafaring: 208, 215 secondary schools: 23, 31–47 for seduction see women Seitek: 241–82 for self see reflections self-control: 113–18, 183 self-harm: 103, 178, 195 Semetey: 239–82 semiotics: 47, 57, 136, 168 Septuagint: 112–13 settings, otherworldly: 258 severed heads: 103, 109–25 sex: 122, 211 lust: 114, 120–21, 158–63 sexualised women: 39–55 violence: 120–22 Shakespeare, William: 48 Macbeth: 18 for shamans see beliefs Sh’ia Islam: 254 ships: 36, 64, 205–13 sieges: 74–82, 109–13 Sigmundr/Sigemund: 14 Sigune: 25, 178–96 silence: 24, 87, 119–23, 253, 285 simulations: 43–44 Sinfjo̧tli/Fitela: 14 singing/songs: 13, 37, 76, 93, 98–102, 207, 239–42, 256 Khöömei: 284 Sinification: 284 Sinology: 245 Sir Thopas: 22

for sisters see women for skaldic verse see court poetry for skalds see poets skirmishes: 74 for slaves see boys sleep: 101, 109, 206 slut-shaming: 114 Smirnov, Boris: 259 Solomon’s Temple: 142 Soltonoyev, Belek: 260–66 Song of Roland: 88–93 sorrow: 88–102 source material: 15, 55–57, 117 source study: 35–42, 66, 121, 205 for South-Turkic-YakutMongolians see Asian tribes Soviet Central Nationalities Press: 257 speech bubbles: 58 spontaneity: 35, 39 St. Petersburg: 259 stained glass: 145 Stanbury, Sarah: 162 static resources: 42–46 statues: 275–84 for stealing see crimes stone walls: 80–82 storying: 16 storytelling: 16–26, 31–48, 65, 71–105, 109–27, 136–42, 158–59, 177, 194–97, 215, 221, 233–34, 240–82 non-linear: 43–44, 150, 193, 256, 270 strangers: 18–23, 117, 216, 243 Sturluson, Snorri: 213–14 Poetic Edda: 71 Skáldskaparmál: 213 stylistic features: 37, 60–64, 228 Sullivan, Louis: 169 Summoner: 15 Sungeova: 158, 167 Sutton Hoo: 64–69, 222–28

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i n dex

Sveinn tjúguskegg Haraldsson, King: 74 Sveinsson, Einar Ólafur: 109–17 Svínfelling clan: 204 Sydney University: 31 Sydykov, Doolot: 278–79 Symeon of Durham: 157–63 Libellus de Exordio: 157–63 synagoga: 167 tactics, battle: 78 Taillefer: 92 Tay-buurul: 254 teaching: 20–23, 31–48, 56–66, 125, 211, 246–80 Tekes river: 246 telescopes: 254–60 for television series see media temporality: 17, 135–51, 159, 177, 193–97 territories: 119, 157–60, 257–63 thirst: 116 timelessness: 14–20, 159, 224, 233 Titurel: 25, 175–97 Toichubekov, Almabek: 264 Tokombaev, Aaly: 269 Tolkien, J.R.R.: 38–40 Townend, Matthew: 74–76 trade: 182 translations of relics: 150–51 of texts: 33–39, 58–66, 81, 88, 102, 110–18, 179–86, 203–10, 245–75 see also kennings trauma: 20, 92 for travellers see men truth: 36, 207, 283 re-shapings of: 14–16 Tsarism: 241–71 Tudor, Victoria: 165 Turkestan National Committee: 266 Tursunaly/Turgunaly: 285

Twelve Peers: 89–92 for Twilight Age see periods Tynystanov, Kasym: 262–66 Þangbrandr: 208 Þorkell inn hávi: 75–81 Ufa: 252 Ullkell/Ulfcetel: 76–78 un-/reliability: 13–14, 111 unconsciousness: 109, 126 understandings, socio-cultural: 32 UNESCO: 275–84 United Nations, Development Programme: 278 Universal Church: 135–53 universities: 31–42, 244–85 University College London, Institute of Education: 31 unknowns: 61, 122, 149 upbringing, familial: 254 user interaction: 42 Uslan, Michael: 55–57 Beowulf: Dragon Slayer: 55 Uyghurs: 248–84 Üyšün, Amet of: 245 Vagao: 119–21 Valdísarson, Haukr: 213 Valikhanov, Chokan: 241–68 valkyries: 80–82, 213 van der Rohe, Mies: 169 vassalages: 179, 284 vaults: 146–51 Venice, Saint Mark’s: 144 for verse see poetry vices: 114 for victims see men and women for victories see heroism video art: 53 Vikings: 77–80, 110, 149–50 see also raiding Villamonte, Ricardo: 55–57

index

Vinland: 205 violence, interethnic: 274 for virgins see men and women virtues: 111–14, 181–90 Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus: 169 De architectura: 169 vocalizations: 87 for vodka see alcoholic beverages von Würzburg, Konrad: 176 Der Trojanische Krieg: 176 wars: 20, 76–83, 92–93, 118–23, 203, 246–71 see also World War, Second warrior-skalds: 79 for warriors see men water: 35–41, 64, 116, 167, 255 wealth: 67, 95, 115–25, 168, 204 weapons: 64,75 bows and arrows: 20, 193, 206–14 Webster, Leslie: 64 Weir Schultz, Robert: 150 Westminster Cathedral: 134–53 White Padishah: 248 for widows see women widows, Jewish: 124 Widsith: 233 Wife of Bath: 14–15, 21 Wiglaf: 61 Winifrede de L’Hôpital: 142–51 winning God’s favour: 183 for wives see women Wolfram von Eschenbach: 25, 175–97 Parzival; Titurel: 175–97 women as distractions: 164 as girls: 115–21, 157–61, 164 as intruders: 165 as ladies: 80–82, 99, 119–20 as maids: 55, 79–81, 109–19, 165, 255

as mothers: 35–46, 61–64, 96–99, 119, 163, 205–08, 230, 254, 271 as mosaicists: 145, 152 as nuns: 112, 163 as nurses: 163, 247 as observers of battles: 81 as patrons: 96 as pilgrims: 165 as queens: 163, 179–91 as seductresses: 110–23 as sexualised objects: 39–55 as sisters: 95, 163, 179, 208 as storytellers: 81 as victims: 61–64, 118–23 as virgins: 112–22, 145 as widows: 80, 109–24 as wives: 14–22, 55, 80, 96, 158–65, 206–14, 246–76 workshops: 31–48, 223 world views: 47 World War, Second: 266 Xi, Jinping: 284 Xinjiang: 262, 282–85 York: 13–21, 110 zoomorphisms: 222–34

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Medieval Narratives in Transmission: Cultural and Medial Translation of Vernacular Traditions

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Title in Series Medieval Romances Across European Borders, ed. by Miriam Edlich-Muth (2018)