Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book 9789048550388

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Old English Ecotheology

Environmental Humanities in Pre-modern Cultures This series in environmental humanities offers approaches to medieval, early modern, and global pre-industrial cultures from interdisciplinary environmental perspectives. We invite submissions (both monographs and edited collections) in the fields of ecocriticism, specifically ecofeminism and new ecocritical analyses of under-represented literatures; queer ecologies; posthumanism; waste studies; environmental history; environmental archaeology; animal studies and zooarchaeology; landscape studies; ‘blue humanities’, and studies of environmental/natural disasters and change and their effects on pre-modern cultures. Series Editor Heide Estes, University of Cambridge and Monmouth University Editorial Board Steven Mentz, St. John’s University Gillian Overing, Wake Forest University Philip Slavin, University of Kent

Old English Ecotheology The Exeter Book

Courtney Catherine Barajas

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: “Riddle 26,” Folio 107a of the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral MS 3501). Image reproduced with permission of the University of Exeter Digital Humanities and the Dean & Chapter, Exeter Cathedral. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 382 4 e-isbn 978 90 4855 038 8 doi 10.5117/9789463723824 nur 684 © C.C. Barajas / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2021 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

For my family



Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

9

Introduction: Early Medieval Earth Consciousness Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the Exeter Book Chapter Summaries

11 21 33

1. Old English Ecotheology Medieval and Modern Ecotheology Conclusions

43 49 68

2. The Web of Creation in Wisdom Poems Gnome(ish) Wisdom in Old English Poetry “The Web of Mysteries”: Poetic Entanglement in The Order of the World Mapping Kinship Connections in Maxims I Conclusions

73 77 81 88 97

3. Identity, Affirmation, and Resistance in the Exeter Riddle Collection Ambiguous interpretation in the Exeter riddle collection Birds’-Eye View: Riddle 6 and Riddle 7 Heroic Horns and Wounded Wood: Riddles of Transformation Conclusions

101 106 109 120 142

4. Trauma and Apocalypse in the Eco-elegies Environmental Trauma & Natural Depression in The Wanderer Apocalypse / Now: The Ruin Conclusions

145 149 161 175

5. Mutual Custodianship in the Landscapes of Guðlac A Home, Alone: Guðlac in the Wilderness Lessons in Early Medieval English Environmentalism Conclusions

179 185 197 205

Coda: Old English Ecotheology

209

Bibliography

219

Index

229

Index of Essential Old English Terms

231



Acknowledgments

This project owes so much to the hard work and patience of Erika Gaffney and the editorial board for the Environmental Humanities in Pre-Modern Cultures series. I could not have asked for a more thoughtful, generous, and engaging team to guide me through my first monograph. I also wish to thank the anonymous external reader for their work on the manuscript and valuable feedback. Thank you all for the attention and time you devoted to this project. Lastly, I’m grateful to Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar, who originally acquired the book, and Heide Estes, who first introduced us at Kalamazoo many years ago. Most of Old English Ecotheology was written in Spokane, Washington, and I am grateful to the faculty, staff, and students of Whitworth University for their support. In the summer of 2019, Whitworth’s Reid Writing Retreat offered me the time, space, and resources to complete a first draft of this book. My colleagues in the Department of English offered invaluable encouragement and advice throughout the process: I am especially grateful to Casey Andrews, Kari Nixon, and Allie Shook-Shoup. In addition, I am grateful to the faculty and students of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies program, especially Bendi Benson Schrambach, Stacey Moo, Corliss Slack, and Rachel Klade for their feedback on an early version of Chapter II. To my friends near and far: thank you for everything you have done to make my life easier over the past three years. I am especially grateful to Andy, Smokey, Elise, Kari, Daniel, Allie, and Will, who make Spokane feel like home; to Brice and Lindsey, for years of laughter; and to Macauley, my oldest and most patient friend. Finally: this book is dedicated to my family because neither it nor I would be here without their support. I could not be more grateful for the love and encouragement of my parents, John and Barbara Barajas, my sister and brother-in-law, Kelsey and Marshall Dworkin, my brother, Jack, and my grandparents, James and Dorothy Cowan. The spirit and memory of my grandparents, Medardo “Buck” and Amy Barajas, was a comfort throughout this process. I love you all more than I can say. Thank you for everything.



Introduction: Early Medieval Earth Consciousness Abstract The existential threat of environmental collapse loomed large in the early medieval English imagination. In particular, the work of Wulfstan, Archbishop of York and Ælfric of Eynsham pointed to the imminence of the apocalypse. Wulfstan explicitly attributed environmental collapse to human sin, while Ælfric urged the faithful to look hopefully to the post-apocalyptic establishment of a new Earth. The broad audience and didactic intent of these prolific and well-connected theologians makes their work a useful representation of English theology at the turn of the millennium. Similarly, the 10th-century manuscript called the Exeter Book—the largest, most diverse extant collection of Old English poetry, including religious lyrics, obscene riddles, and elegies—may serve as a representative of the contemporaneous poetic corpus. Keywords: environmental crisis, early English theology, manuscript studies, medieval manuscripts, Exeter Book

We live in a period of acute environmental crisis. When I began this project in the summer of 2017, large parts of my hometown of Houston, Texas were still underwater in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a devastating storm that claimed over 100 lives in Texas and Louisiana and disrupted thousands more. Scientists studying Harvey’s environmental impact have shown that human-caused “global warming made the precipitation about 15% (8%–19%) more intense,” in that hurricane than in previous years, and that climate change patterns “made such an event three (1.5–5) times more likely.”1 The next summer, the state of California erupted in wildfires, the worst in state history; again, over 100 people were killed, including six firefighters. Smoke from the 1

van Oldenborgh, et. al., “Attribution of extreme rainfall from Hurricane Harvey,” 1.

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_intro

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fires carried for thousands of miles across the Pacific Northwest, bringing muddy yellow skies to my new home of Spokane, Washington. A subsequent study in the journal Earth’s Future identified strong links between humancaused climate change and the increasing violence of California’s wildfires, once again in warning that these trends are “extremely likely to continue for decades to come.”2 In Texas and across the West, the environmental and financial devastation which followed these crises was a stark reminder of the precarious relationship between humans and our environs. And yet the spectacular violence of these environmental crises cannot overshadow the subtler systemic violence of environmental inequality; as I write in the first months of 2021, the deadly results of this inequality are impossible to ignore. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the reality that progress nearly always comes at the expense of environmental safety for the vulnerable communities that host our factories, transit systems, and infrastructure. In the United States, low-income communities are more likely than their wealthy counterparts to host “transportation networks, large highways […] a lot of traffic, or industrial activity” and are thus more likely to be exposed to deadly air and water pollution.3 Research on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) shows that long-term exposure to this type of air pollution increases the likelihood of health conditions like asthma and heart disease, which in turn lead to “increased vulnerability” to the coronavirus.4 Ongoing research by the American Public Media Research Lab shows that Black and Indigenous Americans are dying at higher rates than their white counterparts, and that “Pacific Islanders, Latino, Black and Indigenous Americans all have a COVID-19 death rate of double or more that of White and Asian Americans.”5 Like all who live through such turbulent times, we in the twenty-first century are apt to imagine that this particular conflation of environmental and social crises is uniquely apocalyptic. But, of course, an understanding of human influence on—and vulnerability to—the natural world is hardly a modern phenomenon. Two decades ago, at the dawn of the second millennium, the Australian environmentalist and theologian Norman Habel wrote that “we are now aware, as never before, that to survive as human beings on this planet we require more than human ingenuity.”6 The reason for this 2 Williams, et. al. “Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildf ire in California,” 892. 3 Bagley, “Connecting the Dots Between Environmental Injustice and the Coronavirus.” 4 Wu and Nethery, “Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States.” 5 See APM Research Lab, “The Color of Coronavirus” 6 Habel, “Introducing the Earth Bible,” 26.

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“new earth consciousness,” Habel suggested, was a growing awareness of the Earth as “a community of ecosystems that dazzle our comprehension in their delicacy, complexity and resilience.”7 Earlier still, environmentalist Rachel Carson’s foundational Silent Spring, published serially in The New York Times in 1962, argued that systemic pesticide use in American agriculture had resulted in a “chain of evil” in which human-made chemicals “through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, [and] sicken cattle.”8 Moreover, Carson warned, these human-made chemicals could, in turn, “work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells.”9 In 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “The Sensitive Plant,” which describes how an allegorical “garden, once fair, became cold and foul”, attributed widespread environmental collapse to human activity: “tis we, tis ours, are changed, not they.”10 As these examples and countless others suggest, an awareness of human influence on—and vulnerability to—otherthan-human neighbors appears across the Anglophone literary tradition. Vin Nardizzi has suggested that “the Middle Ages is the era where our ongoing ecological crisis first began.”11 In an article arguing for the relevance of medieval studies to the field of ecocriticism, Nardizzi suggested that medieval interest in the creation, regeneration, and human integration of environmental elements “constitutes a foundational form of ecotheory.”12 In the North Atlantic, the period c. 700-1100 BCE provides a particularly fruitful example: like their modern counterparts, the people of early medieval England experienced environmental change.13 Jennifer Neville notes that the years c. 400-800 saw “colder, stormier weather, rougher seas and more snow than that experienced previously, and worse weather than that experienced now” in the North Atlantic.14 The Old English poetic corpus 7 Ibid. 8 Carson, Silent Spring, 6. 9 Ibid. 10 l. 191, 370. See Woodcock, ed., Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley, 423-430. 11 Nardizzi, “Ecocriticism: Book Review Essay,” 113. 12 Ibid. 13 Throughout this book, I use the term “early medieval England” to describe the culture of what is now England from the time c. 700—1100 BCE, and “Old English” to describe their vernacular language. Historically, scholars of early medieval England have used “Anglo-Saxon” to describe both the society and the language. However, as the work of Mary Rambaran-Olm and others has shown, the term has, in recent years, been misappropriated by white nationalist groups seeking to identify “an imagined heritage based on indigeneity to Britain.” For that reason, I choose not to use the term in this book. See Rambaran-Olm, “Misnaming the Medieval: Rejecting ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Studies.” 14 Neville, Representations of the Natural World, 44.

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attests to these difficult environmental conditions, perhaps most vividly in The Wanderer and The Seafarer, which describe the travels of winter-cearig (“winter-sorrowful,” Wanderer l. 24) exiles on the is-cealdne sæ (“ice-cold sea,” Seafarer l. 14b).15 The environmental reality of life in the first half of the early medieval English period was largely cold and wet, and Old English poetry reflects the keen influence of those conditions on the imagination. In the latter half of the early medieval period (c. 900-1250), the North Atlantic saw a subtle but significant increase in temperatures, and this change, too, was keenly felt.16 Julian D. Richards has argued that rising sea levels in the North Atlantic, the result of glacial melt, led to a substantial loss of arable farmland in this period, and that the people of early medieval England actively adapted to meet this environmental challenge.17 Richards suggests that the environmental changes which transformed fields into non-arable fenland may be responsible for the popularity of infield-outfield agricultural techniques in early medieval Yorkshire.18 Kelly Marie WickhamCrowley has similarly suggested that the agricultural adaptations required to combat the emergence of “vast fens, islands, and reshaped coastlines” in this time “shaped the [early medieval English] imagination and response to landscape” as a dynamic system, rather than a static background.19 These practical and social responses to climate change suggest that the people of early medieval England were keenly aware of the influence of the natural world in their daily lives, and that they sought actively to adapt to widespread environmental change. Moreover, traumatic climate change is central to the foundation story of post-Roman Britain: research suggests that environmental change was “a likely factor in the arrival of the Angles, Saxons, and others in Britain after land loss on the continent.”20 Archaeologist Sonia Chadwick Hawkes has described these early migrants as environmental refugees, “boat people” fleeing to Britain following the loss of arable farmland on the continent.21 Nicholas Howe has suggested that the people of early medieval England saw this ancestral migration as “the founding and defining event” of their 15 Bjork, ed. and trans., Old English Shorter Poems, 2, 28. 16 See Hoffman, “Homo et Natura, Homo in Natura,” 16. 17 Richards, “Defining Settlements: York and Its Hinterland AD 700-1000,” 71. 18 Ibid. Inf ield-outf ield agriculture allowed early medieval farmers to tend one section of farmland, usually the closest to permanent structures, while allowing for natural tillage and revitalization of a second, more distant plot, which would frequently flood. 19 Wickham-Crowley, “Living on the Ecg,” 87. 20 Wickham-Crowley, “Living on the Ecg,” 86-87. 21 Hawkes, “Anglo-Saxon Kent,” 65.

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culture and “turned to it so that they might identify their common nature as a people.”22 Of course, no medieval texts attribute the migration patterns of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes to environmental change; nevertheless, the people of early medieval England may have intimated the significance of environmental factors in their ancestors’ choices. As Richard Hoffman notes, “although climate and weather certainly do not determine history, they set important framework conditions within which human activities—economic, cultural, political—had to take place.”23 If, as Howe suggests, the ancestral migration narrative is essential to understanding early medieval English culture, then so too are the environmental themes of collapse, adaptation, and restoration which attend that narrative. The intimacy of the early medieval English with patterns of environmental collapse, adaptation, and restoration—what we might, borrowing from Norman Habel, call an early medieval earth consciousness—is perhaps most evident in the apocalyptic work of the two great Old English theologians Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955—c. 1010) and Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (d. circa 1023).24 In the introduction to The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, the editors argue that medieval historical records “[point] unambiguously to a heightened and tense apocalyptic climate in the half century or so on either side of the turn of the millennium.”25 That both Ælfric and Wulfstan addressed the topic directly in multiple homilies suggests that the apocalyptic climate in early medieval England was particularly tense. Moreover, that both homilists identify environmental crises as evidence of the imminent apocalypse suggests that early medieval theology cannot be easily disentangled from early medieval earth consciousness. This book will argue for the existence of an Old English ecotheology, evident in the Old English poems of the Exeter Book, which anticipates by nearly a millennium Habel’s identification of a “new earth consciousness”. A brief review of the apocalyptic homilies of Wulfstan and Ælfric will demonstrate that, as in our own times, the existential threat of environmental collapse loomed large in the collective imagination of the early medieval English. For Wulfstan (Archbishop of York from 1002 to 1023), the apocalypse was a favorite topic: nine of his 21 homilies explicitly address the eschaton and “evil days.” In a homily on the book of Luke (Secundum Lucam), Wulfstan explicitly attributes contemporaneous environmental crises 22 Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, ix. 23 Hoffman, “Homo et Natura, Homo in Natura,” 17. 24 For a full biography of Ælfric and Wulfstan, see pages 21-26 below. 25 Landes, Gow, and Van Meter, eds., The Apocalyptic Year 1000, vi.

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to the spiritual and social sins of the English people. The accusation is leveled in no uncertain terms: leofan menn, clæne wæs þeos eorðe on hyre frumsceafte, ac we hi habbað syððan afylede swyðe 7 mid urum synnum þearle besmitene (“beloved people, this Earth was clean at its first creation, but we have since befouled it greatly and defiled it through our sins”.)26 This startling image of human-caused environmental destruction is followed by an explanation of the consequences for the human perpetrators: forðy us eac swencað 7 ongean winnað manege gesceafta (“therefore the whole of creation vexes and strives against us”).27 The homily suggests that humans have materially harmed the Earth through their sins, and, as a result of that harm, the other-than-human members of creation are led to resist and act against human interests. Significantly, though his reference text (Luke 21:5) describes apocalyptic signs in the sun, moon, and stars, Wulfstan’s depiction of environmental resistance is decidedly more local: heofone us winð wið þonne heo us sendeð styrnlice stormas 7 orf 7 æceras swyðe amyrreð; seo eorðe us winð wið þonne heo forwyrneð eorðlices wæstmas 7 us unweoda to fela asendeð (“heaven strives against us when it sternly sends us storms and destroys cattle and land; the earth strives against us when it withholds the fruits of the earth, and sends us too many weeds.”).28 Entries in the collection of historical chronicles known the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles attest to similar environmental crises—crop failure, mass mortality of livestock, and destructive storms—within living memory of Wulfstan’s audience. The invocation of contemporaneous environmental crises centers that audience in a crucial moment in ecological and sacred history: they are at once personally responsible for the environmental collapse preceding the apocalypse, and the unhappy generation doomed to suffer through the world’s end. For, significantly, Wulfstan’s eschatological homilies do not suggest the possibility of averting the apocalypse: the repeated refrain þeos woruld is fram dæge to dæge a swa leng swa wyrse (“this world is, from day to day, always the longer, always the worse”) is representative of his pessimistic view of the future.29 Rather than offering hope, Wulfstan’s homilies urge the faithful to change their behavior so that they can survive the collapse of their society and better prepare their souls for Judgment Day. Wulfstan 26 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 124. 27 See below for a full explanation of the term gescæfta, “creation.” 28 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 125. 29 This formula appears in three homilies: “De Antichristo,” “Secundum Lucam,” and “Secundum Marcum”; see Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 117, 123, and 137, respectively.

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begins his homily De Anticristo by urging the faithful to healdan þæt eow mæst þearf is to gehealdenne, þæt is, rihtne cristendom (“maintain that which it is most necessary for you to hold: that is faithful Christianity.”)30 Sin, he warns, is contagious: a weak Christian on synnum hine sylfne to swyðe befyleð oððon oðerne man on synna belædeð (“being in sin himself, too strongly befouls another man, or leads him to sin.”)31 The imminence of the end times makes this a particularly dangerous moment for sinful behavior to spread, because ælc þæra þe ongean þæt to swyðe deð oððon oðerne ongean þæt læreð þe his cristendome to gebyreð, ælc þæra bið antecrist genamod (“each of those who acts too strongly against [faithful Christianity], or else teaches against what [their] Christianity approves, each of those is called Anti-Christ.”).32 As in his accusation that human activity has “befouled” the once-clean Earth, Wulfstan is unapologetic in placing both the burden of sin and the responsibility for change in the hands of the people. Of course, as Bishop of London, Wulfstan had some institutional power, and he ends the homily with a call to action: nu is mycel neod eac eallum godes bydelum þæt hy godes folc warnian gelome wið þone egesan þe mannum is towerd, þe læs þe hy unwære wurðan aredode (“now there is also a great need for all of God’s priests to warn God’s people constantly against the horror that is coming to mankind, lest they be caught unawares.”)33 Wulfstan urges individual priests to educate their local communities so that the early medieval English collectively are able to resist the Antichrist when he his wodscinn widdast tobrædeð (“he spreads his deceitful madness widely.”)34 The stated purpose of this homily is to prepare early medieval English Christians for the imminent apocalypse. However, its effect is to restore rihtne cristendom: that is, to realign the behavior of the public in a way that corresponds with established Christian orthodoxy. For Wulfstan, the environmental and social collapse accompanying the apocalypse is unavoidable, but nevertheless necessitates a change in behavior so radical as to affect a restoration of “righteous” Christendom. The apocalyptic rhetoric of collapse and restoration f inds its fullest expression in the theology of Ælfric of Eynsham, who produced a substantial collection of vernacular homilies. Like Wulfstan, Ælfric is unequivocal about 30 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 116. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 117. 34 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 118.

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the imminence of the apocalypse: the Preface to his Sermones Catholici explains that he felt called to produce a collection of sermons in English because menn behofiað godre lare swiðost on þisum timan, þe is geendung þyssere worulde (“men have the strongest need of godly instruction in this time, which is the end of the world.”)35 However, unlike Wulfstan, Ælfric does not attribute the apocalypse to the sins of his contemporaries. Indeed, Ælfric’s homilies reveal little interest in assigning blame. Rather, he reframes the conversation to situate the coming apocalypse as a necessary (if painful) moment in salvation history, one which will ultimately lead to the creation of a new, better heaven and Earth after Judgment Day. While Wulfstan’s homilies exploit anxiety regarding contemporaneous environmental and social collapse as a way of urging change, Ælfric’s work seeks to assuage that anxiety by looking ahead to the restoration of peace in the creation of a new Earth. In his homily for the second Sunday in Advent, Ælfric addresses the topic of the apocalypse directly through his exegesis of Luke 21, the same chapter used in Wulfstan’s Secundum Lucam, discussed above. Ælfric acknowledges contemporaneous environmental collapse—oft eorðstyrung gehwær fela burhga ofhreas […] mid cwealme ond mid hungre we sind gelome geswencte (“often earthquakes in many places overwhelm many cities […and] with pestilence and with hunger we are frequently afflicted”)—but ultimately suggests that these are not the swutele tacna on sunnan, and on monan, and on steorrum (“clear signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars”) predicted as signs of the apocalypse in his reference text.36 Nevertheless, he admits that these local incidents of environmental collapse are signs that the apocalypse is swiðe gehende, and þearle swift (“close at hand, and very swift”), and, like Wulfstan, manipulates contemporary apocalyptic anxieties in order to urge social change: brucan þæs fyrstes ðe us God forgeaf, and geearnian þæt ece líf mid him (“make use of the time that God has given us, and earn that eternal life with Him”).37 The reference to eternal life is significant, for, in a crucial departure from Wulfstan, Ælfric’s apocalyptic theology does not indulge despair. Indeed, the homily calls for exactly the opposite emotional response: þa ðe God lufiað, hí sind gemánode þæt hí gladion on middangeardes geendunge, forðan þonne he gewít, ðe hí ne lufodon, ðonne witodlice hí gemetað þone ðe hí lufodon (“those who love God, they are exhorted to be glad at the ending of the world, for when that passes away, which they loved not, then 35 Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces, 108. 36 Thorpe, ed., Sermones Catholici, 610. 37 Thorpe, ed., Sermones Catholici, 618.

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certainly they will find that which they love”).38 The homily suggests that the end of this world is both an opportunity for change and, ultimately, necessary for the restoration of Godes rice (“God’s kingdom”) on Earth.39 Despite his exhortation for Christians to welcome the apocalypse, Ælfric could not have entirely ignored the anxiety about environmental collapse which Wulfstan invokes with such vigor; indeed, his dismissal of contemporaneous environmental crises as signs of the end times seems like a deliberate attempt to assuage those anxieties. In a similar vein, the homily ends with a reminder that, when the apocalypse comes, ne awendað heofon and eorðe to nahte, ac hi beoð awende of ðam hiwe ðe hi nu on wuniað to beteran hiwe (“Heaven and Earth will not turn to naught, but they will be changed from the form in which they now exist to a better form”).40 Ælfric explains that heofon and eorðe gewitað, and ðeah ðurhwuniað, forðan ðe hi beoð fram ðam hiwe ðe hi nu habbað þurh fyr geclænsode, and swa-ðeah symle on heora gecynde standað (“Heaven and Earth will pass away, and yet will continue, for they will be cleansed form which they have now by fire, and will yet stand forever in their new nature.”)41 In this new Earth, the sun will be seofonfealdum beorhtre þonne heo nu sy, and se móna hæfð þære sunnan leoht (“sevenfold brighter than it is now, and the moon will have the light of the sun”). 42 By insisting on not only the restoration, but also the improvement, of the Earth after apocalypse, the homily redirects anxiety about contemporaneous environmental collapse into anticipation for the restoration of a new, light-filled kingdom of God on Earth. Though some of their eschatological writings were produced after the ominous year 1000, the urgency of Wulfstan and Ælfric’s messages is a reflection of the apocalyptic and environmental anxieties brewing among early medieval English Christians for 50 years on either side of the millennium. 43 In this brief examination of the apocalyptic theology of Wulfstan and Ælfric, I have highlighted the rhetoric of environmental collapse and restoration in order to suggest an early medieval earth consciousness. Wulfstan’s homilies describe intersecting cycles of collapse—social sins leading to environmental collapse, leading in turn to social collapse—to urge the restoration of rightne cristendom (“righteous Christianity”) before the coming of the Antichrist. Ælfric’s homily on the same text takes the 38 Thorpe, ed., Sermones Catholici, 612. 39 Thorpe, ed., Sermones Catholici, 614. 40 Thorpe, ed., Sermones Catholici, 618. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 See the Introduction to Landes, Gow, and Van Meter, eds., The Apocalyptic Year 1000.

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long view of salvation history, redirecting apocalyptic anxiety into hopeful anticipation for the restoration of a new, better heaven and Earth after the destruction of Judgment Day. The work of both homilists reveals a keen interest in cycles of collapse and restoration, and suggests that social, ecological, and theological questions were inextricably bound in the early medieval English imagination. Although, of course, the words “ecology” and “environment” did not exist in Old English, the early medieval earth consciousness reflected in the theology of Wulfstan and Ælfric intersects in interesting ways with the modern field of ecotheology, which examines the relationship between religious worldviews and the degradation or restoration of the environment. Indeed, as the title of this book suggests, I believe it is possible to discern the existence of a distinct Old English ecotheology in the poetry of the Exeter Book, a tenth-century manuscript which constitutes the largest extant collection of Old English verse. 44 As a microcosm of Old English poetry, the Exeter Book offers a unique perspective on early medieval earth consciousness which speaks directly to our modern environmental crises. My reading of the homilies and exegeses of Ælfric and Wulfstan will show that many of the principles of modern ecotheology are reflected in their Old English theology. My reading of the poems of the Exeter Book will highlight reflections of these ecotheological principles within the manuscript in order to suggest that early medieval English thinkers were not only conscious of contemporaneous environmental crises, but also sought actively to address them. Throughout this project, I rely on the feminist hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval. 45 Early medieval England was, undoubtedly, a patriarchal and anthropocentric society: the texts produced by such a society necessarily reflect those ideologies. Nevertheless, it is possible to retrieve from these texts “unnoticed, suppressed, or hidden” ways of knowing and being with the Earth. 46 These twin hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval allow for what Habel calls “countercoherent” readings: “alternative readings of the text that both make sense—cohere—and challenge the dominant reading” of the Exeter Book. Ultimately, it is my hope that this project will demonstrate the mutual relevance of Old English literature and modern ecotheology and offer new (or, rather, very old) ways for modern Christians to think about their role in the environmental movement. 44 See Chapter I. 45 My understanding of this twin hermeneutics is indebted to the work of Scott-Baumann, Ricouer and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, especially 153-169. 46 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 39.

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Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the Exeter Book A comprehensive theory of “the natural world” in early medieval English literature and theology is beyond the scope of this project. Rather than considering the entire Old English corpus, this book will instead compare the poetry of the Exeter Book, which I will argue acts as a microcosm of the whole, to the theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan, who best articulate the unique theological concerns of the manuscript’s late tenth century context. These distillations of the corpora may seem unnecessarily simplistic: of course, Ælfric and Wulfstan could not claim ultimate orthodoxy, and the Exeter Book is not the whole of Old English literature. However, in what follows, I will suggest that the theological prominence of Ælfric and Wulfstan in the years on either side of the millennium and the significant weight of the Exeter Book in early medieval English studies justifies my reliance on these key figures and manuscript. As essential voices in the development of the English church, Ælfric and Wulfstan produced a body of work which offers unique insight into Old English theology in the decades on either side of the first the millennium. Similarly, as a microcosm of Old English verse and a material reminder of the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human lives in medieval literary production, the Exeter Book demonstrates the profound influence of that theology in the early medieval English imagination. Virtually nothing is known about Ælfric’s early life: we have no information about his family, and can only guess at a birthdate between 955 and 957. 47 We do know that he was educated in the Old Minster at Winchester under the supervision of Bishop Æthelwold, for throughout his career, Ælfric refers to himself as alumnus Æthelwoldi or Wintoniensis alumnus (“pupil of Æthelwold” or “pupil of Winchester”). 48 It is perhaps unsurprising that Ælfric would seek to attach his name to this particular Bishop and his center of learning: along with Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury and Oswald, Archbishop of York, Æthelwold was a key figure in the English Benedictine reform, the late tenth-century transformation of religious and intellectual life inspired by earlier monastic reforms on the continent.49 While Bishop of Winchester, Æthelwold authored the first English translation of the Rule of St. Benedict and drafted the key document of the English reform movement, 47 The most recent and thorough biography is Hill, “Ælfric: His Life and Works,” 35-65. 48 Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces, 7. 49 For a concise overview of the Benedictine reform and Æthelwold’s particular role, see Barrow, “The Ideology of the Tenth-Century English Benedictine ‘Reform’,” 141-154.

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the Regularis Concordia, which described and prescribed monastic life in England. The atmosphere of reform in Winchester had a dramatic impact on the young Ælfric: indeed, as Jonathan Wilcox has argued, “Ælfric can be seen […] as the most important literary and scholarly product of the English Benedictine monastic reform.”50 In 987, Ælfric took this revolutionary spirit with him to the monastery at Cerne Abbas, where, in addition to serving as munuc and mæssepreost (“monk and mass-priest”), he likely taught grammar to young monks.51 His years at Cerne Abbas seem to have been the most productive of Ælfric’s life: during this time, he wrote, among much else, two series of homilies known as the Sermones Catholici, three Latin textbooks, another series of homilies on The Lives of Saints, a treatise on the six days of creation called The Hexameron, and a vernacular translation of the first six books of the Bible.52 It is perhaps this remarkable productivity that led to his elevation, in 1005, to the abbacy of the new Benedictine monastery at Eynsham. As Abbot of Eynsham, Ælfric continued to write, most notably a Latin life of his old master Æthelwold and a translation of Bede’s De Temporibus, an introduction to Easter computation. Ælfric remained in his position as Abbot of Eynsham until his death in 1010. As this brief review of his biography suggests, Ælfric was a prolific scholar. For the purposes of this book, I’ll be focusing on just two of his foundational writings: the first series of the Sermones Catholici (finished c. 989) and The Hexameron (likely written c.991-1002). Together, these texts offer a unique insight into Ælfric’s theology and the earth consciousness which I have suggested permeated the early medieval English imagination. The remarkable number of extant manuscripts of the Sermones Catholici—according to Jonathan Wilcox, well over 30—is a testament to the popularity and prominence of these homilies in the early medieval English church.53 Evidence suggests that these homilies were f irst delivered to a mixed audience including laypeople and secular clerics in addition to Ælfric’s fellow monks: they therefore necessarily strike a unique balance between orthodoxy and popular expressions of faith. As Wilcox notes, throughout the Sermones Catholici Ælfric “pays close attention to received tradition to ensure that his writings are orthodox, yet explains issues in ways which his audience will most readily understand.”54 This first series “seems to be 50 Wilcox, ed. Ælfric’s Prefaces, 3-4. 51 Ælfric refers to himself as munuc and mæssepreost in a number of his prefaces: see Wilcox, ed. Ælfric’s Prefaces, 108. For Ælfric as a teacher, see Wilcox, ed. Ælfric’s Prefaces, 11-12. 52 Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces, 15. 53 Wilcox, ed. Ælfric’s Prefaces, 34. 54 Wilcox ed. Ælfric’s Prefaces, 20.

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addressed directly to the laity,” and it is not unreasonable to imagine other early medieval English priests reading these homilies over the course of a year in exactly the order Ælfric offers them. The first series of the Sermones Catholici, then, offers a direct perspective into the teachings of the English church in the late 10th century from one of its chief authorities. Similarly, Ælfric’s Hexameron, a treatise on the six days of creation, offers an authoritative overview of salvation history, detailing the fall of the rebel angels, the creation of Earth, and the temptation and expulsion from Eden, before finally ending with Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Five extant manuscripts of the Hexameron exist, suggesting that, while probably less popular than the Sermones Catholici, this text, too, may have circulated widely in early medieval England.55 Although the text purports to be a translation of an ancient text by St. Basil, internal evidence suggests that it “is by no means a literal translation […] but is partly original, partly compiled from that work, and from the commentaries of the Venerable Bede upon Genesis.”56 As this collection of sources indicates, Ælfric’s particular talent was in amalgamating a wide variety of authorities into his homilies in order to make theological truths accessible to his particular audience. Because the introduction to the Hexameron refers directly to homilies from the first series of Sermones Catholici, we can assume that his imagined audience includes the same mixture of laypeople, secular clerics, and fellow monks as that text.57 Again, the diverse nature of this audience makes the Hexameron a useful text for examining early medieval English theology in its popular and orthodox forms, directly from the mind of a leading figure in the Benedictine reform. As Jonathan Wilcox neatly summarizes, Ælfric’s homiletic work provides “the most substantial and clearest body of doctrine in Old English. He explains a whole range of aspects of the faith and also many other matters of the world around him.”58 In the last years of his life, Ælfric was in correspondence with the second major theologian on whom this book will rely: Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, one of the most influential political figures in early medieval England. Again, we know little about Wulfstan’s early life: like Ælfric, he was certainly a product of the Benedictine reform, though there is no evidence as to where he was trained. Our earliest extant record is of his ordination as Bishop of London in 996; unlike Ælfric, Wulfstan was deeply involved in local 55 White, Ælfric, 117. 56 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, v. 57 White, Ælfric, 116. 58 Wilcox, ed. Ælfric’s Prefaces, 20.

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politics. As Bishop of London, Wulfstan was witness to “a large number” of charters at meetings of the Witan, the political assembly which advised and formally elected early medieval English kings.59 Indeed, evidence suggests that some of the eschatological homilies Wulfstan wrote during this time may have been written for meetings of the Witan.60 His proximity to the Witan and presence as a witness to charters indicates that Wulfstan had a prominent place in early medieval London, as does an anonymous letter attesting to his reputation as one of the city’s most eloquent speakers.61 It is perhaps because of this reputation that, in 1002, Wulfstan was elevated to Archbishop of Worcester and York. As Archbishop, Wulfstan continued to write homilies, including two more thematic blocks on the tenets of Christian faith and archiepiscopal responsibilities.62 He also continued his political activities: evidence suggests that Wulfstan was “the trusted friend and advisor” of King Æthelred, to the extent that, starting in 1009, he authored a series of edicts in the king’s name.63 Wulfstan worked closely with Æthelred until the king’s death in April 1016. In November of that year, following the brief and tumultuous reign of the late king’s son Edmund, the Danish prince Cnut took the throne; at the same time, Wulfstan resigned the See of Worcester, transitioning permanently to York. Dorothy Bethurum has suggested that Wulfstan may have made this move in order “to act as counsellor to the brilliant young barbarian, now King of England.”64 Regardless of Wulfstan’s intentions, it is certainly true that he “left the very stronghold of learning and monasticism, Worcester, to work in a Danish city among a population imperfectly Christianized” at the height of his career.65 Equally certain is his success in his new role: Wulfstan worked closely with Cnut almost from the beginning of his reign, codifying the new king’s laws just as he had with Æthelred.66 Despite this close working relationship, it was during this period that Wulfstan wrote a series of homilies on “evil days,” including his most famous work, Sermo Lupi Ad Anglos, which deliberately references Danish invasions. Wulfstan remained Archbishop of York until his death in 1023. 59 See Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 59. 60 Gatch, Preaching and Theology, especially Chapter 3. 61 Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 58, n. 3 and 374. 62 For the division of Wulfstan’s homilies into thematic blocks, see Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 29-36. 63 Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 62. 64 Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 63. 65 Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 62-63. 66 Ibid.

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Although he authored a substantial number of legal texts, Wulfstan, like Ælfric, is best known for his homilies, and this book will focus on his theology as it appears in that body of work. There are eighteen extant manuscripts containing 21 homilies and a handful of letters written by Wulfstan; significantly, half of these manuscripts also contain theological texts written by Ælfric.67 Dorothy Bethurum’s authoritative edition of The Homilies of Wulfstan divides the corpus into four categories based on their primary theme: eschatology, the Christian life, and, archiepiscopal functions, and “evil days.” Each of these four categories of homily was produced for a specific purpose and audience; however, Milton McC Gatch suggests that the majority of these homilies “cannot be associated with liturgical occasions,” but were delivered in social contexts, such as meetings of the Witan or gatherings of clergy.68 This suggests that the primary function of Wulfstan’s homilies was not to encourage change in individual parishioners, but rather to affect systemic change across the whole of the English church. Indeed, the homilies demonstrate Wulfstan’s keen attention to “the problem of controlling a large element in the population that was very imperfectly assimilated into Christian institutions.”69 They therefore offer a unique perspective into the formation of early medieval English orthodoxy, as Wulfstan attempts to balance the Benedictine reform with the increasing influence of the Danes. Moreover, because most of Wulfstan’s eschatological homilies were written before the ominous year 1000, they provide a direct view into early medieval English apocalyptic thought. The collected homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan—a body of work produced c. 989-1014—thus offers a comprehensive perspective on English theology in the decades on either side of the first millennium. A number of qualities unite these two great theologians. Both Ælfric and Wulfstan wrote homilies on a wide variety of topics which, given the extant manuscript evidence, clearly circulated widely in early medieval England. In addition, both men also wrote a substantial amount of non-homiletic work, demonstrating the interconnectedness of theology with legal theory, grammar, pedagogy, and science. Finally, as products of the Benedictine reform, both Ælfric and Wulfstan belong to a long tradition of church reformers, and this tradition dramatically impacted their own calls for systemic change. Significantly, the differences between Ælfric and Wulfstan mean that, when taken together, their work covers nearly every aspect of early medieval English life. As I 67 For a complete review of the extant manuscripts, see Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 1-24. 68 Gatch, Preaching and Theology, 19 69 Bethurum, Homilies of Wulfstan, 72.

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suggested above, Ælfric’s homilies were designed for a mixed audience including the laity: by offering religious instruction in the vernacular, these homilies make the Church accessible to the individual who receives them regardless of social status. Wulfstan’s homilies, on the other hand, were likely delivered in political (rather than liturgical) contexts; their purpose was to urge the political figures who received them to enforce orthodoxy and strengthen the Church’s power in the face of imperfect assimilation. Together, then, the theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan could have reached all ranges of early medieval English society, from laypeople attending church on Sunday to meetings of the Witan in London. Indeed, it is precisely their broad audience and didactic intent that makes this body of work such a useful representation of English theology in the years immediately preceding and following the millennium: these homilies reveal the folk-traditions and social practices the Church sought to reform, the orthodoxy it sought to institute, and the ways in which these ideologies intermingled. In the previous pages, I have suggested that, although no single figure can claim absolute orthodoxy, the homiletic work of Ælfric and Wulfstan serves as a comprehensive representation of English theology in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries; the first chapter of this book will compare these homilies to the work of modern ecotheologians, arguing for the existence a specific Old English ecotheology. Subsequent chapters will demonstrate the influence of this Old English ecotheology on the poetry of the Exeter Book, a tenth-century manuscript which I similarly take as representative of the larger corpus of Old English poetry. To produce a comprehensive theory of “the natural world” in early medieval English literature and theology is beyond the scope of this project; however, as a microcosm of the myriad genres and thematic concerns which constitute Old English poetry, the Exeter Book can serve as a useful case study demonstrating the existence and prevalence of a specific Old English ecotheology. A brief review of the manuscript’s contents and history will demonstrate its usefulness to this project. Sometime before he died in the year 1072, Leofric, Bishop of Exeter commissioned a list of the manuscripts he planned to donate to the new library at Exeter Cathedral: among the many volumes listed is a mycel englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoðwisan geworht: “a great English book about various things, written in verse.”70 Modern consensus holds that this listing 70 Bishop Leofric’s donation list and various documents related to his bishopric now compromise folios 1-7 of the manuscript. For a complete list of contents and facsimile, see Chambers and Flowers, “The Preliminary Matter of the Exeter Book,” 44-54 and Lapidge, “Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England,” 33-89.

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can only refer to Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, the manuscript now known as the Exeter Book. The manuscript has remained in the care of Exeter Cathedral since Bishop Leofric’s death; in the centuries since its critical rediscovery in the early nineteenth century it has become one of the most important artifacts of early medieval England: the poems of the Exeter Book constitute approximately one-sixth of the Old English poetic corpus. However, for all the research and attention the Exeter Book has enjoyed, no modern description seems as apt as the original: a great book about various things written in English verse. Bishop Leofric’s eleventhcentury description emphasizes the manuscript’s most important feature: the number, diversity, and scope of its contents, unparalleled among the extant early medieval English codices. The Exeter Book is the largest and most diverse extant collection of Old English poetry: the manuscript contains a fairly even mix of secular and sacred poetry, representing a wide variety of generic forms and thematic concerns. While the classification of individual poems is f iercely debated, certain broad groups can be identif ied. The explicitly religious texts can be divided into three groups of doctrinal, personal, and ceremonial religious poetry.71 Each of these groups has a different function, as indicated by their titles: doctrinal religious poetry (including the poems Christ II [The Ascension], Christ II [Christ in Judgment], The Panther, The Whale, The Partridge, Almsgiving, Judgment Day I and Homiletic Fragment II) is an inherently didactic category, explaining and authorizing religious dogma through an amalgamation of scripture and the popular and patristic traditions.72 The personal religious texts (Guðlac A and B, Vainglory, and Juliana) provide exempla for Christian ways of living; these verse hagiographies are an essential part of the Old English literary tradition, as we shall see with Guðlac A. Finally, the ceremonial religious texts (Christ I [Advent Lyrics], The Descent into Hell, and Azarius) are drawn from liturgical practice, and use conventional Biblical imagery to “express the ineffable in accessible language.”73 The explicitly sacred poetry of the Exeter Book, then, performs a number of different functions; the diversity of this collection thus offers a wide variety of perspectives on Old English 71 The division of religious Old English poetry into doctrinal, ceremonial, and personal modes is proposed in Conner, “Religious Poetry,” 258-266. Conner, 266 also describes a fourth mode: the social, comprised of “not only the Old English elegies, but Widsith, Deor, often the riddles and, of course, Beowulf,” though he admits that these poems do not “necessarily even look like religious poetry.” Since convincing arguments have been made assigning each of these texts different (or multiple) generic forms, I’ve chosen not to include the category here. 72 Conner, “Religious Poetry,” 259-260. 73 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 385.

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theology and will provide a similarly wide variety of perspectives on the other-than-human members of the Earth community. Though Christian doctrine and the popular religious tradition inform most Old English texts, a number of poems in the Exeter Book are not explicitly religious in topic or theme, and these secular texts, too, represent a wide variety of generic forms. Among the oldest of these are the catalogue poems, including the texts now known as The Gifts of Men, Precepts, Widsith, The Fortunes of Men, and Maxims I.74 Muir notes that “it seems likely that the catalogues that are embedded [in these poems] contain some of the earliest surviving [Old English] poetry.”75 The addition of the poems Soul and Body II and The Order of the World might usefully expand this group to the somewhat looser category of wisdom poetry.76 The two most famous categories of secular poetry in the Exeter Book are the elegies—The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, Resignation and The Ruin—and the riddles.77 The emotional power of the elegies and the surprising modernity of the riddles has inspired a wealth of scholarship and criticism on both: indeed, much of modern Exeter Book scholarship has focused on texts from these two groups, and they are among the most frequently anthologized Old English poems.78 All told, the secular poetry of the Exeter Book is as diverse in form and content as the sacred poetry, and offers a similarly diverse perspective on the place of the other-than-human in the early medieval English imagination. The Exeter Book, then, is mycel (“great”) not only in the number of texts it contains, but also in the wide variety of generic forms and thematic concerns those texts engage, from devotional verse and hagiography to enigmatic wisdom poetry, elegies, and riddles. Though this variety makes the Exeter Book a useful tool for the exploration of any number of topics in the early medieval imagination, the manuscript reveals a particular interest in the patterns and forces of the natural world. As we shall see, the Exeter Book contains some of the most striking depictions of nature 74 Howe’s useful study of Old English Catalogue Poems includes in-depth analysis of each of these texts. 75 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 543. 76 These seven texts are among the wisdom poetry included in Bjork, ed., Old English Shorter Poems. As we shall see in Chapter II, these collections of gnomic thought are representative of the early medieval proclivity for mystery and ambiguity in verse. 77 Essential to the study of Old English elegiac verse is Klinck, Old English Elegies. The major edition of the riddles is Williamson, Old English Riddles. 78 For the riddles, see Chapter III; for the elegies, see Chapter IV

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in the Old English corpus, such as the notorious seascapes central to the emotional impact of The Wanderer and The Seafarer. The former poem’s description of hreosan hrim on snaw, hagle gemenged (“falling frost on snow falling, mingled with hail,” l. 48) can be read as a reflection of both the speaker’s emotional turmoil and the reality of winter in the stormy North Atlantic.79 In addition, roughly a third of the riddles engage some element of the natural world, giving voice to animals such as the badger (Riddle 15) and the cuckoo (Riddle 9), and explaining environmental topics such as severe weather (Riddle 1) and the phases of the moon (Riddle 29) in vivid detail. The vocal presence of the other-than-human in these riddles suggests an awareness of both the symbolic importance and lived experience of the rest of the Earth community. Depictions of the otherthan-human in these texts and elsewhere in the Exeter Book are more than a mere backdrop to human activity; they often constitute the emotional foundation of the text, and provide unique insight into attitudes towards the other-than-human in the early medieval English imagination. While it would be anachronistic to describe the Exeter Book as medieval “nature writing,” it is not an oversimplification to suggest that the manuscript as a whole reveals a latent desire on the part of multiple Old English poets to engage and give voice to the non-human as a result of early medieval earth consciousness. The Exeter Book is therefore a particularly useful place to begin an exploration of the impact of Old English ecotheology on early medieval English literature. In addition to serving as a microcosm of the corpus as a whole, the Exeter Book is also a material reminder of the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human life in early medieval England. The manuscript is, in many ways, an essential part of the Exeter Cathedral community. Assuming Leofric’s mycel englisc boc is, in fact, the Exeter Book as we now know it, the manuscript has been in Exeter since the late eleventh century. That the manuscript has remained in the care of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral for almost a millennium speaks to its profound importance to that community. The physical influence of that community on the manuscript is equally impossible to deny. Knife scoring on the manuscript’s original first folio (now fol. 8 recto) suggests that “at one time in its history the book was used as a cutting board.”80 A large ring-shaped stain on this same folio and extensive liquid damage to folios 8 recto to 12 recto may be the result of an accidentally spilt mug of beer, though other possible culprits, such 79 See Chapter IV below. 80 Krapp and Dobbie, eds., Exeter Book, xiv.

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as a glue- or ink-pot, have been proposed.81 The final fourteen folios of the manuscript (117 recto to 130) have suffered the most extensive damage: they were burnt through when a hot poker or some other fiery object came into contact with the manuscript’s exposed final folio. From a single small burn mark on fol. 117 recto, the damage expands exponentially, so that on fol. 126 and following the burned section stretches across the entire page, rendering much of these final poems unintelligible. In addition to this damage, significant gaps in the text of Christ A (The Advent Lyrics), Guðlac A, Juliana, The Partridge, and Riddles 20 and 40 suggest the loss of one or more folios in gatherings I, V, IX, XII, and XIV of the manuscript.82 It would be a mistake to read these losses as representative of a lack of care; rather, the intimate nature of much of this damage suggests that the manuscript was an important part of the monastic community at Exeter Cathedral. The very fact of the manuscript’s proximity to beer, ink- or glue-pots, fiery pokers, and knives speaks to its intimacy to human activity. Signif icantly, the Exeter Book speaks to its own importance within the Exeter Cathedral community in another important description of the manuscript. The text commonly called Riddle 26 gives voice to both the object of the manuscript and the animal sacrificed for its production. As an autobiography of the Exeter Book, Riddle 26 provides a record of the ways in which medieval manuscripts interacted with their communities. Indeed, Riddle 26 positions the manuscript as an essential part of a community comprising human and other-than-human spheres of activity. The first eleven lines of Riddle 26 describe in explicit detail the animal sacrifice required for manuscript production in the early middle ages: Mec feonda sum woruldstrenga binom; dyfde on wætre, sette on sunnan, herum þam þe ic hæfde. snað seaxses ecg, Fingras feoldan, geondsprengde speddropum ofer brunne brerd

feore besnyþede wætte siþþan, dyde eft þonan, þær ic swiþe beleas Heard mec siþþan sindrum begrunden. ond mec fugles wyn spyrede geneahhe beamtelge swealg

81 Krapp and Dobbie, Exeter Book, xiv-xv and Förster, “General Description of the Manuscript,” 56 both suggest a beer mug as the source of the damage; Muir, Exeter Anthology, 2 suggests a glue pot. 82 For complete foliation, see Muir, Exeter Anthology, 7-11.

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streames dæle stop eft on mec siþade sweartlast. (1-11a)83 A certain enemy took away my life, stole my strength in the world; after that he wet me, dunked me in water, took me out again, set me in the sun, where I lost all the hair that I had. After that the hard edge of the knife cut me, ground down with cinders.84 Fingers folded me, and the birds’ joy sprinkled worthy drops on me, often made tracks over the brown page, swallowed the tree-dye and a portion of the stream, stepped on me again, leaving dark tracks.

These lines make clear the complex series of physical and chemical processes which transform living beings into the vellum, ink, and quill necessary for manuscript production. In three half-lines animal is reduced to hide; the simplicity of the phrase feore besnyþede (“took away my life,” 1b) elides the violence of the act, as does the smooth transition from speaking animal to speaking hide in the caesura of line 2. The process of soaking, drying, shaving, scrubbing, and folding the hide (lines 2-5) requires a number of physical and chemical reactions which result in another transformation: hide into vellum, the first of many “raw materials” necessary for the production of this manuscript. The references to fugles wyn (“birds’ joy,” 8b, indicating a feather quill) and beamtelge (“tree-dye,” 9b, indicating ink made with oak galls) are a further reminder of this material animal sacrifice. Though we cannot know exactly how many calves, birds, and gall wasp larvae were necessary for the construction of this manuscript, the animal sacrifice would certainly have been immense: the Exeter Book is the largest of the four extant early medieval English poetic codices, measuring approximately 31.5 cm by 22 cm.85 Regardless of the exact numbers, it seems likely that, for an early medieval English audience, the description in Riddle 26 of the process of transforming hide into vellum would have brought into sharp 83 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 303-304. The translation is my own. 84 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 627-628 suggests that the phrase sindrum begrunden likely refers “to the use of powdered pumice in treating the surface of parchment.” 85 Förster, “General Description of the Manuscript,” 56.

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relief the material cost of the manuscript at hand. Bruce Holsinger has suggested that these lines would likely encourage medieval readers to “step back from the manuscript qua manuscript—a handwritten book produced by and for humans—and think instead about the manuscript qua animal, a stack of dead animal parts produced from and at the expense of animals.”86 The poem is an explicit reminder that human activity, such as manuscript production and the development of literature, cannot be separated from basic natural processes, and is in fact dependent on other-than-human beings for its very existence. Whereas the first half of Riddle 26 explores the ways in which human activity transforms animal into hide, hide into vellum, and vellum into book, the second half of the riddle inverts these roles, focusing instead on the ways in which humans are transformed by their encounters with the manuscript: Gif min bearn wera hy beoð þy gesundran heortum þy hwætran ferþe þy frodran. swæsra ond gesibbra, tilra ond getreowra, estum ycað lissum bilecgað fæste clyppað. (19-26b)

brucan willað, ond þy sigefæstran, ond þy hygebliþran, Habbaþ freonda þy ma, soþra ond godra, þa hyra tyr ond ead ond hy arstafum ond hi lufan fæþmum

If the children of men wish to enjoy me, then they will be the more sound and sure of victory, bolder in heart and blither in mind, wiser in spirit. They will have more friends, dear ones and kinsmen, faithful and good, upright and true, who will increase their honor and favor lay upon them goodwill and kindness, and in the grasp of love clasp them firmly.

These lines suggest that sustained engagement with the manuscript has profound and tangible effects on the human members of its community, such 86 Holsinger, “Of Pigs and Parchment,” 619.

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as increased happiness, spiritual growth, and deeper and more profitable relationships. Though Holsinger dismisses these lines as the manuscript “boast[ing] of its salvational utility,” the fact that this other-than-human being has the potential to materially and spiritually transform the humans around it suggests that, at each stage of its existence, the speaker is an important part of the spiritual community it describes.87 The Exeter Book then, is not only a microcosm of the vast potential of Old English poetry; it is an animal-object which quite literally cries out for ecotheological consideration. Because this project centers the poetry of the Exeter Book, my scope is necessarily limited, and I will not attempt to make universalizing arguments about the place of the Earth community in Old English literature generally. Similarly, because my arguments about the existence of an Old English ecotheology are limited to the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, they may not be applicable to earlier or later medieval ideologies. Nevertheless, it is my hope that these arguments may be usefully applied to readings of other early medieval texts, and that the mutual relevance of ecotheology and early medieval English studies may be further explored. The Exeter Book is a material reminder of the intimacy of human and other-than-human lives in early medieval England; this book will use the theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan and the poems of the Exeter Book to demonstrate that society’s awareness of their complicity in the “Earth crisis” and their desire to affect meaningful change.

Chapter Summaries The first chapter of this book will argue for the existence of an Old English ecotheology, exemplified by Ælfric and Wulfstan, which in many ways anticipates the tenets of modern ecotheology. In particular, I will suggest that work of Ælfric and Wulfstan affirms the “ecojustice principles” developed in the early 2000s by a collective of ecotheologians called the Earth Bible Team. Reading the homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan alongside the work of modern ecotheologians, I will demonstrate the existence of a distinct Old English ecotheology which anticipates by nearly a millennium the concerns raised by modern environmental crises. I will show that, like their modern counterparts, these early medieval theologians affirmed the intrinsic worth of the other-than-human elements of the Earth community 87 Holsinger, “Of Pigs and Parchment,” 621.

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as members of God’s creation. Like modern ecologists, they also affirmed the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings by suggesting kinship based on patterns of behavior. I will further show that early medieval English thinkers affirmed the ability of the other-than-human to cry out in praise and against injustice, and that their homilies warned that seemingly passive landscapes could actively resist human domination. My reading of these Old English homilies will suggest that the people of early medieval England believed that each element of the Earth community was created for a specific, divine purpose, though they also believed that purpose was unknowable. Old English homilies affirmed the mutual interdependence of human-and-other-than-human lives by condemning humanity’s failure to be faithful custodians of creation. Finally, I will suggest that the homilies of Wulfstan and Ælfric acknowledged the ability of the Earth community to not only resist but also survive the destructive effects of human activity. Nearly a millennium before the Earth Bible Team first articulated their ecojustice principles, the theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan reflected thoughtful consideration of the relationship between the other-than-human members of the Earth community and the Creator. Indeed, it is possible to discern in their work a distinct Old English ecotheology which, I will argue, is reflected throughout the Exeter Book. The second chapter of this book will suggest that active engagement with the mysteries of creation was an important goal of Old English wisdom poetry, and that these poems depend on an audience understanding of the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings. My reading of The Order of the World and Maxims I suggests that Old English wisdom poems anticipate modern ideas about the importance of diversity and exchange within ecosystems, and actively affirm the principle of interconnectedness by identifying kinship between human and other-than-human beings. Central to these poems is the image of the gesceaft (“creation”) as a divine and unknowable ecosystem, or, as the Order-poet calls it, the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries,” l. 15b). This second chapter shows that it is possible to read the wisdom poems of the Exeter Book as attempts to map out the web of mysteries and explore the messiness of the gesceaft in daily life. I argue that The Order of the World encourages active engagement with the other-than-human, demonstrating that the Order-poet suggests that sustained poetic adoration of creation is an appropriate method of praising the Creator. Similarly, I show that, by highlighting kinship connections between human and other-than-human members of the Earth community, the author of Maxims I affirms the interconnectedness of life on Earth. If The Order of the World encourages poetic engagement with that web as a

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way of understanding and praising the Creator, then Maxims I serves as an example of one such poetic attempt, writing a world in which non-human forces act in familiar, rather than entirely threatening, ways. As a genre intended for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge, wisdom poetry provides a unique glimpse into Old English ecotheology; my reading of The Order of the World and Maxims I suggests that early medieval English thinkers understood and affirmed the interconnectedness of the Earth community. The third chapter of this book turns to the Exeter riddle collection, which gives active and imaginative voice the non-human members of creation. I show that the riddles made space for active intellectual and spiritual engagement with the non-human natural world, and that, as such, they represent a crucial chapter in the history of environmental writing. My analysis of three thematic clusters of bird riddles (Riddle 6 and Riddle 7), horn riddles (Riddle 12 and Riddle 76) and wood-weapon riddles (Riddles 3, 51, and 71) demonstrates the flexibility of the genre for exploration of non-human identities and experiences. I show that the bird riddles exploit similarities between human and avian behaviors to encourage audience identification with the speaking birds and affirm the intrinsic worth of the non-human even when their actions make humans uncomfortable. This desire to assimilate human and non-human activity finds its fullest expression in the riddles of transformation describing horns: these riddles give voice to non-human beings celebrating their participation in the rituals which guide heroic culture. I argue that these riddles imagine a world in which non-human beings, like the humans who surround them, find pleasure and purpose in their work, despite removal from their natural state. However, I show that the final thematic cluster of riddles, those describing wood-weapons, reveals an uncomfortable awareness that conscription into human service is not always in the best interest of the non-human. As they detail the violence enacted on non-human beings in warfare, these riddles force the reader to confront their own complicity in the violence of heroic culture. In their insistence on the independent subjectivity, inherent worth, active voice, and purpose of the non-human natural world, the Exeter riddle collection anticipates many of the beliefs affirmed by modern ecotheologians and activists. Far from merely anthropomorphizing human concerns, the noisy animals, plants, and transformative objects of the Exeter riddle collection give voice to an active resistance to human exploitation of the natural world. The fourth chapter of this book offers a new take on the Exeter elegies, perhaps the most famous of all the texts in the Exeter Book. I argue that, like the wisdom poems, Old English elegies depict human activity as

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existing within a larger community of human and other-than-human beings, and identify a sub-category of Old English eco-elegies: lyrical attempts to describe the evolution of relationships within the Earth community across time. I suggest that these eco-elegies offered their early medieval English audiences a space to explore the ways in which relationships between individual elements of the Earth community have changed (and continue to change) across time. I begin the chapter with a discussion of the relationship between trauma, emotion, and the Earth community in The Wanderer. I argue that the poem offers its audience an exemplary portrait of natural depression, a pattern of exile, emotional trauma, and acceptance which relies on identification with the Earth community as a way of releasing earthly desires and fears. In examining the causes, effects, and proposed solutions to this natural depression in The Wanderer, this chapter demonstrates the emotional impact of other-than-human beings on the Old English elegies. My analysis of the pattern of natural depression in The Wanderer suggests that the poem affirms the modern ecotheological principle of mutual custodianship, anticipating the Earth Bible Team’s assertion that, in addition to food and shelter, “Earth has provided […] many other riches to sustain the body and the spirit of humanity.”88 The second part of this chapter removes humans from the picture entirely to consider The Ruin, a poem which is often dismissed as a “simple juxtaposition of a ruined city in the present with its time of vibrancy in the past.”89 Reading the poem within the apocalyptic mode, I show that The Ruin describes three discrete moments in the history of this unnamed city: presenting it alternately as a stable ecosystem, a community in crisis, and the site of a new creation. I argue that, as it juxtaposes three moments in the history of this community, The Ruin may attempt to alleviate apocalyptic anxieties by imagining a future in which the Earth responds to, but ultimately outlasts, the destruction of human societies described in elegies like The Wanderer. In this, it echoes the modern ecotheological principle of resistance, which suggests that although other-than-human beings can “suffer in sympathy with humans,” the Earth community as a whole is ultimately “a subject with the power to revive and regenerate.”90 Ultimately, I argue that these eco-elegies may have served to pacify audience anxieties about human relationships with the natural world by removing the audience from their social and temporal realities to consider the long view of Christian history. 88 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51. 89 Bjork, Wisdom and Lyric, xxii. See the Introduction above. 90 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 52-53.

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As they looked back to the story of Creation and forward the imminent eschaton, early medieval English writers and thinkers nevertheless sought aspirational examples of holy living in the present: the popularity of the saint’s life as a literary genre in this time speaks to this profoundly felt need for practical guidance. The fifth and final chapter of this book explores the verse hagiography Guðlac A, which describes the eponymous saints’ attempts to build and maintain a hermitage in the East Anglian fenlands. Reading Guðlac A against its Anglo-Latin counterpart, Felix’s Vita Sancti Guðlaci, my analysis of the poem shows that its primary concern is Guðlac’s relationships with the holy landscape on which he builds his hermitage and its other-than-human inhabitants. I argue that, despite the presence of demons on Guðlac’s arrival, the landscape in Guðlac A is presented as an inherently holy space deserving of the saint’s devotion, even as those forces challenge him for power and resources. The poem suggests that the work of Guðlac’s sainthood—and, perhaps, the work of any Christian in a time of environmental collapse—is sustained devotion to the Earth community without expectation of anything more or less than eternal life in heaven. Indeed, the poem suggests that the benefits of environmental sustainability extend beyond harmony on Earth to eternal salvation. Ultimately, I argue that, as an exemplum of Old English ecotheological living, Guðlac’s legend positions sustained devotion to God’s creation as both a viable path to salvation and the only possible hope for significant environmental restoration. I suggest that his hagiography imparts two important lessons to its early medieval English audiences. First, it offers a challenge to the concept of environmental “stewardship” of the Earth community in favor of a model of mutual custodianship calls for sustained and deliberate devotion to the created world for its own sake and as a manifestation of the Creator’s love and glory. Secondly, Guðlac’s lesson suggests that sustained engagement with the natural world even in the face of environmental crisis or collapse will be rewarded, in this life or the next. Guðlac’s insistence on the inherently holy nature of his hermitage—even as he faces down its demonic inhabitants—challenges us to rethink the dangerous modern environmental rhetoric of “the fight against climate change” or “the war on environmental collapse.” The multigeneric nature of this exploration of Old English ecotheology in the Exeter Book—including wisdom poetry (Maxims I and The Order of the World), riddles, elegies (The Wanderer and The Ruin) and hagiography (Guðlac A)—demonstrates the prevalence and power of the natural world in the early medieval imagination. In my reading of these poems, and indeed the manuscript as a whole, I hope to highlight ways in which Old

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English literature was shaped by the daily engagement with the non-human natural world. These earliest examples of the English literary tradition reveal conscious engagement with the natural world and a desire to map out the relationships between humanity and the rest of the Earth community. Indeed, I will show that the poetry of the Exeter Book rejects a strictly hierarchical theology, revealing instead an ecotheology which attempts to collapse the distance between human and natural spheres of activity by figuring humanity as an important and unique—but by no means dominant—part of the created world. Far from a mere backdrop to human experience and desire, the natural world is active participant in the drama and the emotional valence of these texts. The poems of the Exeter Book suggest an understanding of the intrinsic value of nature as an extension and representation of God’s glory, anticipating by over a millennium the work of deep ecologists such as Arne Naess, who argues for an environmentalism which does not consider “the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.”91 The corpus of Old English poetry will prove useful for exploring many of the questions posed by modern ecocritical theory: what is the place of humanity among the rest of creation? How do we impact the natural world, and what is its impact on us? How do we respond to environmental catastrophe? How have our responsibilities changed across time? In the century preceding the new millennium, as they grappled with apocalyptic fears and looked hopefully for the establishment of a new heaven and Earth, the people of early medieval England produced a corpus of poetry which, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, reflects the latent environmental anxiety of the 21st century. The poems of the Exeter Book reveal thoughtful and deeply personal engagement with the natural world, and may provide a model for shaping and responding to modern environmental rhetoric, guided as it so often is by emotional and personal appeals. I will show that the corpus of Old English literature—and the poetry of the Exeter Book in particular—relies heavily on environmental imagery and narratives, and reveals an interest in articulating the intricacies of the relationship between human societies and the natural world; it is therefore a significant potential source of study for ecocritical theorists. My study of the Old English ecotheory visible in these earliest examples of the English tradition establishes a baseline for analysis of later texts and provides a model for integration of cultural difference in shaping modern environmental rhetoric. In a political system which increasingly relies on the power of narrative and 91 Naess, “The Deep Ecological Movement,” 68.

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emotion—rather than the dissemination of scientific fact—in shaping public opinion, an exploration of these earliest environmental narratives may prove useful. Indeed, it is my hope that a clearer understanding of the history of man’s relationship with his environment may help illuminate the steps necessary to protect our shared future.

Bibliography APM Research Lab. “The Color of Coronavirus: Covid-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.” January 7, 2021. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www. apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race. Bagley, Kathryn. “Interview: Connecting the Dots Between Environmental Injustice and the Coronavirus.” Yale Environment 360, May 7, 2020. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://e360.yale.edu/features/connecting-the-dots-betweenenvironmental-injustice-and-the-coronavirus. Barrow, Julia. “The Ideology of the Tenth-Century English Benedictine ‘Reform’.” In Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter, edited by Patricia Skinner, 141-154. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Bethurum, Dorothy, editor. Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Bjork, Robert E., editor and translator. Old English Shorter Poems, Volume II: Wisdom and Lyric. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 32. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962; reprinted Boston: Mariner, 2002. Chambers, Raymond W. and Robin Flowers. “The Preliminary Matter of the Exeter Book.” In The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, edited by Raymond W. Chambers, Max Förster and Robin Flowers, 44-54. London: Percy Lund, 1933. Conner, Patrick W. “Religious Poetry.” In A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne, 258-266. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, edited by Norman C. Habel, 42-53. Sheff ield: Sheff ield Academic Press, 2000. Förester, Max. “General Description of the Manuscript.” In The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, edited by Raymond W. Chambers, Max Förster and Robin Flowers. London: Percy Lund, 1933. Habel, Norman C. editor. Readings from the Perspective of Earth. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2000.

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Hawkes, Sonia Chadwick. “Anglo-Saxon Kent, c. 425-725.” In Archaeology in Kent to AD 1500, edited by Peter E. Leach, 64-78. London: CBA Research, 1982. Hill, Joyce. “Ælfric: His Life and Works.” In A Companion to Ælfric, ed. Hugh Magennis and Mary Swan, 35-65. Leiden: Brill, 2009 Hoffman, Richard C. “Homo et Natura, Homo in Natura: Ecological Perspectives on the European Middle Ages.” In Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser, 11-38. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Holsinger, Bruce. “Of Pigs and Parchment: Medieval Studies and the Coming of the Animal.” Proceedings of the Modern Literature Association 124 (2009): 616-623. Howe, Nicholas. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. –––. Old English Catalogue Poems. Anglistica 23. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1985. Klinck, Anne. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. Krapp, George Phillip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. The Exeter Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record III. Morningside Heights: Columbia University Press, 1936. Landes, Richard, Andrew Gow, and David C. Van Meter, editors. The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950-1050. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Lapidge, Michael. “Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England.” In Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, edited by Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss, 33-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Muir, Bernard. The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, 2 vols. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000. Nardizzi, Vin. “Ecocriticism: Book Review Essay.” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 4 (2013): 112-123. Neville, Jennifer. Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Norman, Henry W. editor, The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Hexameron of St. Basil. London: J.R. Smith, 1849. Rambaran-Olm, Mary. “Misnaming the Medieval: Rejecting ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Studies.” History Workshop, November 4, 2019. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/misnaming-the-medieval-rejectinganglo-saxon-studies/ Richards, Julian D. “Defining Settlements: York and Its Hinterland AD 700-1000.” In Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, edited by Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and A.J. Minnis, 45-74. York: York Medieval Press, 2000.

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Roberts, Jane, Christian Kay, and Lynne Grundy, editors. A Thesaurus of Old English. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Thorpe, Benjamin Thorpe, editor. Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. London: The Ælfric Society, 1884. van Oldenborgh, Geert Jan et. al. “Attribution of extreme rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, August 2017.” Environmental Research Letters 12.12 (2017): https://doi. org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9ef2 White, Caroline Louisa. Ælfric: A Study of his Life and Writings. Boston: Lamson, Wolfe, and Company: 1898. Wickham-Crowley, Kelly Marie. “Living on the Ecg: The Mutable Boundaries of Land and Water in Anglo-Saxon Contexts.” In A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, edited by Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, 85-110. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Wilcox, Jonathan, editor. Ælfric’s Prefaces. Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994. Williams, A. Park, John T. Abatzoglou, Alexander Gershunov, Janin Guzman‐Morales, Daniel A. Bishop, Jennifer K. Balch, and Dennis P. Lettenmaier. “Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California.” Earth’s Future 7.8 (Aug 2019): 892-910. Williamson, Craig. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Woodcock, Bruce, editor. The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1994. Wu, Xiao and Rachel C. Nethery. “Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross-sectional study.” medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences, April 27, 2020. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://doi. org/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054502

1.

Old English Ecotheology Abstract The work of Ælfric and Wulfstan, produced in the shadow of the first millennium, in many ways anticipates the modern field of ecotheology, born in the years preceding the second. Like their modern counterparts, Ælfric and Wulfstan aff irmed the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings as members of an increasingly fragile Earth community. They affirmed the intrinsic worth of the other-than-human, and the ability of the Earth community to cry against injustice and resist human domination. Crucially, Ælfric and Wulfstan also explicitly condemn humanity’s failure to be faithful custodians of creation. Reading the medieval texts against the modern demonstrates the existence of an Old English ecotheology which anticipates many of the questions raised by the current climate crisis. Keywords: ecocriticism, environmentalism, ecotheory, early English theology, preaching, eschatology

The introduction to this book suggested that the apocalyptic theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan reflects an early medieval earth consciousness: an awareness not only of patterns of environmental collapse and restoration, but also of human complicity in and vulnerability to these environmental crises. Although the word ecology did not enter English until the late 19th century, the early medieval earth consciousness reflected in the theology of Wulfstan and Ælfric intersects in productive ways with the modern field of ecotheology, which examines the connections between religious worldviews and the degradation or restoration of the environment. As an academic discipline, ecotheology lies at the intersection of environmental and religious studies, interrogating the interrelationships—real and imagined—of human society, the other-than-human elements of the Earth community, and God. Ecotheologians explore a wide variety of environmental issues, such as the moral implications of environmental inequality, factory farming, or

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_ch01

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human-caused climate change, from the perspective of religious ethics.1 Among Christian ecotheologians in particular, an important goal is to address the “ecological complaint”: the accusation (leveled most famously by Lynn White, Jr.) that Christianity is responsible for modern environmental crises because its foundational texts, as codified in medieval Europe, insist that “it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.”2 Above all, ecotheology is a liberation theology seeking to identify and correct injustice in all its manifestations.3 To the best of my knowledge, the only book-length study of Old English literature which explicitly engages the field of ecotheology is Corrine Dale’s The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles. 4 Dale’s reading of the Exeter riddle collection offers ecologically centered readings of a collection of texts which have almost always been read through an anthropocentric lens, and her work has been essential to my thinking about Old English ecotheology.5 Her reading of the Exeter riddle collection reveals the texts’ sustained commitment to giving voice to the voiceless, an important environmental ethic in medieval and modern contexts. In addition to ecotheology, Dale’s book also engages the related f ield of ecocriticism, an earth-centered framework which considers the relationship between humanity and the other-than-human from a secular perspective. In addition to Dale’s essential work, there have been three other book-length attempts to provide ecocritical readings of early medieval English literature and culture. Jennifer Neville’s Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry is an invaluable resource for collecting and comparing depictions of nature in the corpus of early medieval English poetry; however, she ultimately argues that depictions of the other-than-human within the Old English corpus are “largely or entirely metaphorical.”6 More recently, the five chapters of Heide Estes’ Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Eco-Theory and the Environmental Imagination demonstrate the fruitfulness of “environmentally committed” readings of Old English texts, decentering human concerns and engaging with a diverse collection of ecocritical perspectives such as ecofeminism, post-colonial ecocriticism, critical animal studies, and object-oriented ontology.7 In addition, a recent doctoral dissertation by Ilse Schweitzer 1 See my discussion of ecotheology and Black liberation theology below. 2 White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” 1206. 3 Werbanowska, “‘There Is Hope in Connecting’,” 85. 4 Dale, The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles. 5 See Chapter III below. 6 Neville, Representations of the Natural World, 14-18. 7 Estes, Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes, 31.

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VanDonkelaar argues for an understanding of “Old English Ecologies” through sharp analysis of functional spaces such as the mead hall and grave across the Old English corpus.8 As this wealth of scholarship suggests, early medieval English texts are particularly responsive to environmental inquiry; moreover, as the introduction to this book suggests, insular theology in the decades on either side of the millennium explicitly engaged environmental questions. It is surprising then, that the framework of Christian ecotheology is not more frequently applied to readings of Old English poetry. Like ecocritical theory, ecotheology offers a vocabulary for articulating the value and intrinsic rights of the Earth community, and a framework for assessing humanity’s relationship to the other-than-human. Moreover, like ecocritical theory, ecotheology offers new perspectives on the monstrous forces, vociferous animals, and notoriously deadly land- and seascapes that permeate the corpus of Old English poetry. However, given the cultural dominance of Christianity in early medieval England, the vocabulary and theoretical framework offered by Christian ecotheology is even more well-suited to the study of Old English poetry than its secular counterpart. The goal of this chapter is to suggest that some of the tenets of modern Christian ecotheology are reflected in the work of the great early medieval theologians Ælfric and Wulfstan, and that these reflections constitute a distinct Old English ecotheology.9 Of course, the nature of modern scholarship and religious culture means that no modern ecotheologian can claim the level of authority enjoyed by Ælfric or Wulfstan. However, the work of the Earth Bible Team, a collective of ecotheologians active in the early 2000s, provides both a useful distillation of the assumptions and theoretical frameworks that guide modern ecotheology, and a compelling modern parallel. Like their early medieval English contemporaries, the Earth Bible Team worked in a moment of acute ecological crisis, at the turn of a new millennium: the stated goal of the collective’s first volume, published in the year 2000, was to initiate “a fresh discussion about how the Bible has played, and may continue to play, a role in the current ecological crisis faced by our planet.”10 In the introduction to this book, I suggested that the homilies of Wulfstan exploit environmental anxiety as a way of urging spiritual reformation, and that Ælfric’s work 8 VanDonkelaar, “Old English Ecologies: Environmental Readings of Anglo-Saxon Texts and Culture.” 9 For a justification of Ælfric and Wulfstan as representatives of Old English ecotheology, see the Introduction above. 10 Habel, “Editorial Preface,” 9.

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seeks to assuage that anxiety by looking ahead to the restoration of peace in the creation of a new Earth. Nearly 1000 years later, the Earth Bible team similarly set out to address “the crisis facing us” by producing a series of ecotheological essays exploring “the future of Creation, and the possibilities of Christian belief in the new millennium.”11 As a part of this project, the collective developed a set of six “ecojustice principles” articulating their essential ecotheological assumptions: these principles require a hermeneutic which “[moves] beyond a focus on ecological themes to a process of listening to, and identifying with, Earth as a presence or voice in the text.”12 The explicit goal of this work was to “take up the cause of Earth and the non-human members of the Earth community” in order to “[identify] with Earth in its ecojustice struggle.”13 Although this chapter will address each of the ecojustice principles individually, I reproduce them here as a unit as a reflection of their importance to this project and in honor of the collective work required for their development: 1. The Principle of Intrinsic Worth: The universe, Earth, and all its components have intrinsic worth/value. 2. The Principle of Interconnectedness: Earth is a community of interconnected living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival. 3. The Principle of Voice: Earth is a living entity capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice. 4. The Principle of Purpose: The universe, Earth and all its components are a part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place in the overall goal of that design. 5. The Principle of Mutual Custodianship: Earth is a balanced and diverse domain where responsible custodians can function as partners with, rather than rulers over, Earth to sustain its balance and a diverse Earth community. 11 Brady, “Preface,” 17. 12 Habel, “Introducing the Earth Bible,” 35. Emphasis original. 13 Ibid.

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6. The Principle of Resistance: Earth and its components not only suffer from human injustices but actively resist them in the struggle for justice.14

The original purpose of these ecojustice principles was to guide new readings of Biblical texts by exploring how a given text affirms or denies these principles; however, the framework and the approach of the Earth Bible series may also be usefully applied to the study of Old English poetry. Like Habel and the Earth Bible Team, modern scholars of early medieval England are “heirs to a long anthropocentric, patriarchal and androcendric” tradition of reading and interpretation.15 Moreover, like Ælfric and Wulfstan, Habel and the Earth Bible Team sought explicitly to explore the impact of human activity on contemporaneous crises, and to imagine new futures for human and other-than-human members of the Earth community. What new readings of Old English poetry are possible if, following Habel, we “relate empathetically” to the Earth as a subject, rather than attempting neutral analysis of Earth as an object? The four central chapters of this book will offer readings of Old English texts informed by these ecojustice principles; my hope is that these new readings will help us to “identify undercurrents from the perspective of the Earth that challenge the dominant anthropocentric voices” of these earliest examples of the English tradition.16 Reading the work of the Earth Bible Team against the homiletic work of Ælfric and Wulfstan, this chapter will argue for the existence of a distinct Old English ecotheology; subsequent chapters will demonstrate the significance of this Old English ecotheology to depictions of the Earth community in the poetry of the Exeter Book. In order to compare the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan to the modern ecojustice principles outlined above, we must first historicize the salient vocabulary, and consider how the people of early medieval England would have understood the rather broad term “the Earth community.” Jennifer Neville has argued that “the modern definition of the natural world as all that is external to humanity can be applied to Old English poetry,” with the caveat that “it is not possible to separate natural from supernatural phenomena” in the early medieval imagination.17 This definition relies on a 14 These principles were first outlined by Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 42-53. They appear at the beginning of each volume of the Earth Bible series as a reminder of the foundational beliefs guiding the series. 15 Habel, “Introducing the Earth Bible,” 33. 16 Ibid. 17 Neville, Representations of the Natural World, 2-3.

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dichotomy that separates humanity from (and therefore sets it in opposition to) all other natural and supernatural beings and forces, and the landscapes on which they exist. Certainly, the people of early medieval England acknowledged a distinction between human and other-than-human-life on Earth. However, within the context of early medieval theology, the more significant dichotomy seems to be that between the Creator and creation. In De Fide Catholica, a homily on the basic tenets of Christian faith, Ælfric reminds his audience that: Twa ðing syndon: an is Scyppend, oðer is gesceaft. He is Scyppend se ðe gesceop and geworhte ealle ðing of nahte. Þæt is gesceaft þæt se soða Scyppend gesceop. Þæt sind ærest heofonas, and englas þe on heofonum wuniað, and syððan þeos eorðe mid eallum ðam ðe hire on eardiað, and sǽ mid eallum ðam þe hyre on swymmað. Nu ealle ðas ðing synd mid anum naman genemnode, gesceaft […] forði ælc edwist þætte God nys, þæt is gesceaft; and þæt þe gesceaft nis, þæt is God. Two things exist: one is the Creator, and the other is creation. He is the Creator who shaped all things of nothing. Creation is that which the true Creator shaped. That is, first the heavens, and the angels that live in heaven, and then this earth with all those that inhabit it, and the sea with all those that swim in it. Now all these things are called by one name: creation […] therefore every being that is not God, that is creation; and whatever is not creation, that is God.18

The repetition in this passage establishes a clear dichotomy between the Scyppend (“Creator”) and the gesceaft (“creation” or “creature”) while clarifying the particulars of their relationship: the Scyppend is defined by His capacity to shape creation out of nothingness; the gesceaft is defined by its collective provenance as the work of the Creator. Here, Ælfric identifies heavenly and earthly bodies and their inhabitants as part of a unif ied gesceaft, which is set in opposition to the singular Scyppend. Elsewhere in the Sermones Catholici, Ælfric also uses the term gesceaft to describe individual components of creation: humans, animals, and fallen angels, but also the sun, the water Christ turned to wine, and the rocks that burst at the crucifixion.19 Monstrous entities, too, are labeled gesceaft, 18 Thorpe, ed. and trans, Sermones Catholici, 276. The translation is my own. 19 For these last two examples, see Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici 106 and 102, respectively.

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and situated within the larger whole: Ælfric writes that þa gesceafta ðe sind þwyrlice geðuhte, hí sind to wrace gesceapene yfel-dædum (“those creatures that are thought monstrous, they were created for the punishment of evil deeds.”)20 In other words, the Old English term gesceaft can be used to describe not only the whole of creation as a singular unit, but also the individual elements—natural, supernatural, human, animal, divine—which comprise that whole. Despite the claim that the people of early medieval England “did not have a word or expression for the modern conception of the natural world,” I argue that the term gesceaft usefully describes the known universe in the early medieval English imagination, or what we might now call “the natural world”—albeit from a distinctly Christian perspective, and with a healthy dose of monsters.21 The dichotomy Ælfric establishes in this passage between the Scyppend and the gesceaft belies the etymological intimacy of these two repeated terms, which are both drawn from the verb scippan, “to shape; form; create.” The sibilant assertion that þæt is gesceaft þæt se soða Scyppend gesceop (“creation is that which the true Creator shaped”) is not only a definition of the former term; it is also a reminder of the intimacy between Creator and creation, the only two ðing (“things”) that ultimately exist in the Christian worldview. Rather than setting humanity in opposition to the other-than-human, this perspective on “the natural world” aligns humanity with every other element of creation, including supernatural phenomena, by highlighting their most important similarity: a collective provenance as the work of a Creator God. Throughout this book, I will use the term gesceaft to refer to this historicized perspective of the Earth community as an entity which includes humans.

Medieval and Modern Ecotheology The six ecojustice principles listed above were developed as a part of the Earth Bible Team’s mission to “develop techniques of reading […] to discern and retrieve alternative traditions where the voice of the Earth community has been suppressed.”22 In addition to articulating the group’s basic ecotheological assumptions, these principles also “provide a basis for articulating the key questions we pose as we seek to read and 20 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 102. 21 Neville, Representations of the Natural World, 2. 22 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 38.

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interpret the Bible” from the perspective of Earth. 23 Does a given text uphold and affirm ecological convictions, or repress and deny them? How have traditional interpretations of this text affirmed or denied a specific principle? Such questions are used to “ascertain whether Earth is silenced, oppressed, or liberated” within a text not simply as an academic exercise, but rather “as a contribution to resolving a crisis that affects all members of the Earth community.”24 It is possible, given the relative significance of Christianity in the modern world, that challenging the long tradition of anthropocentric readings of Biblical texts may aid environmentalists’ efforts to transform the lived experience of the Earth community in the present. I have already suggested that the apocalyptic theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan reflects an early medieval Earth consciousness informed by natural cycles of creation, destruction, and restoration. In what follows, I will argue that shades of each of the six ecojustice principles developed by the Earth Bible Team are also visible in the Old English ecotheology of Ælfric and Wulfstan. Of course, these early medieval theologians inhabited a radically different worldview than the Earth Bible Team, and I suspect that neither Ælfric nor Wulfstan actively sought to interrogate environmental justice in the Bible. Nevertheless, I will show that each of these six ecojustice principles is reflected, to varying degrees, in key moments across their homiletic work, suggesting an Old English ecotheology which transcended the individual work of either man and in many ways anticipates the work of modern ecotheologians. That these environmental principles are reflected in homilies is no coincidence. As I have shown, the homilies of both Wulfstan and Ælfric refer to the material reality of environmental crisis in early medieval England in their apocalyptic exegesis, and both prescribe spiritual and social change in response to that crisis. Because these homilies are intended for the edification and improvement of the early medieval English people, they provide an “authorized” perspective on whatever subject they treat, and they offer insight into what unauthorized behavior or ideology the authors seek to contain. The spaces between the homily and the Biblical text—the additions, expansions, explanations that constitute exegesis—offer additional insight. Throughout this volume, my analysis of the ecotheology of the Exeter Book will refer to these ecojustice principles in their modern and medieval iterations. 23 Ibid. 24 Habel, “Introducing the Earth Bible,” 27.

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The Principle of Intrinsic Worth The universe, Earth and all its components have intrinsic worth/value. Given the etymological intimacy of the terms gesceaft and Scyppend, the first of the ecojustice principles may seem the farthest removed from early medieval English society: “Earth and its components have value in themselves, not because they have utilitarian value for humans living on the planet, nor because they are vehicles to reflect the Creator’s handiwork.”25 I have already suggested that Wulfstan and Ælfric used the other-than-human elements of creation as “vehicles” of God’s word in their eschatological theology; in chapter III below, I will argue that the Exeter riddle collection delights in exploring the “utilitarian value” of those same elements. Nevertheless, the principle of intrinsic worth—the assertion that Earth is “a complex of ecological systems” and that “all the components of those systems […] have worth because they are part of these systems”—is upheld in Old English ecotheology, especially in the work of Ælfric.26 Ælfric reflects on the goodness of other-than-human implicitly and explicitly in his Sermones Catholici and in the Hexameron. In his extended meditation on creation in the homily De Fide Catholica, Ælfric writes that God eallum gesceaftum anginn and ordfruman forgeaf, þæt hi beon mihton, and þæt hi hæfdon agen gecynd, swa swa hit þære godcundlican fadunge gelicode (“gave all creatures beginning and origin, that they might be, and that they might have their own nature, just as it pleased His divine dispensation.”)27 The assertion that eallum gesceaftum […] hæfdon agen gecyndu (“all creatures […] have their own nature”) implicitly suggests that God has considered the subjectivity of each of the other-than-human elements of creation, independent of their connection to humanity. Ælfric expands on this idea in the Hexameron, a theological treatise on the six days of creation which purports to be a translation of ancient text, but is in reality a mostly original piece.28 In a discussion of the types of birds shaped on the fifth day of creation, he writes that Ða fugelas soðlice ðe on flodum wuniað syndon flaxfote be Godes foresceawunge, ðæt hi swimman magon and secan him fodan. Sume beoð lang sweorede swa swa swanas and ylfettan ðæt hi aræcan him magon 25 26 27 28

Earth Bible Team “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 43. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 42. Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 276. Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, vii.

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mete be ðam grunde. And ða ðe be flæsce lybbað syndon clyferfete and scearpe gebilode ðæt hi bitan magon, on sceortum swuran, and swyftran on flihtre ðæt hi gelimplice beon to heora lifes tilungum. Truly, the birds that dwell in the waters are broad-footed by God’s [providence/contemplation], that they may swim and seek food for themselves. Some others are long-necked, like swans and ylfets, so that they may reach food on the ground. And those that live by flesh are cloven-footed and sharp-billed, that they may bite, though short necked, and they are swifter in flight so that they may be suited to the pursuits of their life.29

The details provided by Ælfric here implicitly suggest that each of these three species of birds is uniquely and perfectly shaped for its environment, without any indication of their connection to human lives. Rather, this passage is evidence that God has considered the agen gecynd (“own nature”) of the other-than-human members of the gesceaft: the physical attributes necessary for these individuals to survive (long necks, sharp bills) and thrive (webbed feet, swiftness in flight). Ælfric’s attention to anatomy in this passage reflects the loving attention he imagines accompanied the creation of these birds, which could only be achieved be Godes foresceawunge (“by God’s providence”). The Old English word foresceawung is glossed with the Latin consideratio (“inspection”) and contemplatio (“contemplation”) in early medieval manuscripts, and either definition would also fit here, for the point of this passage is to stress the care that God took in shaping these creatures for their specific environment.30 A similar passage on the sixth day, the creation of animals on land, provides more examples of perfectly shaped creatures, and repeats the assertion that ælc byð gelimplic to his lifes tilunge (“each is suited to the pursuits of their life”).31 The animal examples provided in the Hexameron implicitly suggest that God intentionally shaped the other-than-human elements of the gesceaft so that each is optimally suited for their individual place (literal and ecological) within that system. In the words of the Earth Bible Team, we might say that Ælfric’s text implicitly affirms the principle that each element of the systems created by God on land and sea has “worth because they are part of these systems.”32 29 30 31 32

Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 36. Bosworth-Toller, s.v. “foresceawung.” Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 16. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 43.

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Furthermore, the intrinsic worth of the other-than-human is explicitly affirmed twice in the Hexameron through God’s declaration that creation is “good.” In his analysis of the Biblical creation story, Michael Welker argues that that “God’s creative action corresponds in only a few ways to the pattern of causation and production” in Genesis 1 and 2.33 Rather than depicting God’s ability to produce matter out of nothingness, Welker suggests, the biblical creation narrative focuses instead on the results of “reactive experiencing and acting as God reacts to the presence of that which is created.”34 Thus, in the Hexameron, Ælfric writes that God reacts on the third day by rearranging the previously created Earth and sea: seo eorðe wæs æt fruman eall ungesewenlic, forðam ðe heo eall wæs mid yðum oferðeht (“the earth was at first completely invisible, because it was all covered over with waves”).35 After revealing the Earth from underneath the waves, God reacts again, in the process giving the Hexameron its first explicit affirmation of the principle of intrinsic worth: God sylf geseah ða ðæt hit god wæs (“God himself saw that it was good.”)36 The specificity of the verb geseah (from seón, “to see; perceive; discern”) necessitates a reading of this as a reaction to goodness, rather than a declaration of it. God does not make the gesceaft good, but rather finds it to be so. This phrase is repeated on the sixth day, when, having created all living things on earth, land and sea, God gesceawode ða ealle his weorc and hi wæron swyðe gode and se syxta dæg wearð swa geendod (“God then beheld His works, and they were very good, and so the sixth day was ended.”)37 In this second example, the intrinsic goodness of the weorc (“works”) is stated as a fact—a fact which God responds to by ending the day. It is significant that the plural is used in this second and final example: hi wæron swyðe gode (“they were very good”). In the first affirmation of intrinsic goodness, God reacts to seeing the Earth and sea in their fullness for the first time on the third day by seeing that they are good. In this second example, God reacts to seeing all living creatures, including humans, inhabiting and interacting with the Earth and sea, and the collective whole of creation is so good that He stops working, and indeed takes the next day for rest. These two examples bookend Ælfric’s telling of the creation story, and together affirm the ecotheological principle that “the whole Earth as a complex of ecological systems, and all the components of those systems […] have worth.”38 33 Welker, “What is Creation?” 60, emphasis mine. 34 Ibid. 35 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 10. 36 Ibid. 37 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 21. 38 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 43.

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The Principle of Interconnectedness Earth is a community of interconnected living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival. The biological understanding of Earth as a “complex of ecological systems” is further reflected in the second of the Earth Bible Team’s ecojustice principles. The principle of interconnectedness asserts that “every species and every member of every species are connected to others by complex webs of interrelationships.”39 Nor are humans exempt from this complex web: as global climate catastrophes have made all too clear, “humans, too, are dependent on the fields, the forests, the trees, the air, and the wide diversity of life that inhabits these domains.”40 Though it may seem obvious from a biological perspective, this view of the planet challenges the anthropocentric assumption of a human/nature dualism by refiguring humanity as a part of the complex web that constitutes the Earth community, rather than distinct from it. One way of illuminating these complex webs is by highlighting examples of kinship connections between human and other-than-human beings. For example, biblical scholar Kellyanne Falkenberg Wolfe rejects the idea that the creation story found in Genesis 1 and 2 gives Adam and Eve “mastery” over the other-than-human inhabitants of Eden, arguing instead that the text reveals the story of “human interconnectedness both with God and with the natural world.”41 Wolfe’s reading shows that, contrary to anthropocentric assumptions about human superiority in Eden “the human, formed of the dust of the ground, has material identity with soil, and with the trees that spring up from the soil.”42 In addition to their kinship with the non-living elements of creation, Wolfe argues that Adam and Eve are also connected to the animal inhabitants of Eden: because the first humans and their animal counterparts were both shaped from the dust of the earth, they share a “sibling-like relationship.”43 This ecotheological reading of Genesis 1 and 2 affirms the principle of interconnectedness by highlighting kinship networks within the divine “ecology of Creation.”44 In Old English ecotheology, the principle of interconnectedness is similarly affirmed primarily through suggestions of kinship between various elements of the divine ecology; in Chapter II below, I will argue that this is 39 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 44. 40 Ibid. 41 Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy,” 93-96. 42 Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy,” 47. 43 Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy,” 62-69. 44 Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy,” 98.

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a crucial interest of Old English wisdom poetry. I have already suggested that, for Ælfric, the most significant similarity between the human and other-than-human members of the gesceaft was their collective origin as the work of the Scyppend. The concept of an active relationship between the Scyppend and the other-than-human members of the gesceaft is repeated throughout the Sermones Catholici. In his homily for Palm Sunday, Ælfric uses Matthew 21, Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey, to suggest a kinship between the human disciples and the beasts of burden who accompany Christ into the city. His exegesis explains that: Cristes leorning-cnihtas cwædon, “Se Hlaford behófað þæra assena, and sent hi eft ongean.” Ne cwædon hí na “Ure Hlaford,” ne “Ðin Hlaford,” ac forðrihte, “Hlaford,” forðon ðe Crist is ealra hlaforda Hlaford, ægðer ge manna ge ealra gesceafta. Christ’s disciples said, “The Lord has need of these asses, and sends for them.” They did not say “Our Lord” or “Your Lord,” but, truthfully, “The Lord,” for Christ is Lord of all Lords, both of men and of all creatures. 45

The presence of the donkeys is necessary for the fulfillment of the prophecy that the savior would come “humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden” (Matthew 21:5). However, Ælfric’s exegesis of the phrase se Hlaford (“the Lord”) transforms these animals from voiceless objects used to transport Christ into the active subjects, alongside the human disciples, of His imminent sacrifice. Indeed, this passage suggests a kinship between disciples and donkeys as active companions of Christ in his final days. In highlighting an essential similarity between these two groups—their devotion to a shared Lord—Ælfric suggests kinship between human and other-than-human elements of creation. The principle of interconnectedness is similarly affirmed in the work of Wulfstan, who follows Ælfric in framing Christ’s death as a sacrifice for all of creation. In a homily on salvation history, Wulfstan writes that Christ for ealles middaneardes alysednesse, sylfwilles menniscness undergeng ðurh ðæt clæne mæden, Sancta Marian (“for the redemption of all of this Earth, of his own will received humanity through that pure maiden, Saint Mary.”)46 The term middangeard, literally translated “middle-Earth,” has a meaning very similar to gesceaft: in his treatise De Temporibus, Bede explains that 45 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 210. 46 Bethurum, ed. Homilies of Wulfstan, 151.

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middangeard is gehatten eall ðæt binnan ðæm firmamentum is […] seo heofon and sæ and eorðe synd gehatene middaneard (“all that is within the firmament is called middangeard […] the heaven and sea and earth are called middangeard.”)47 Framing the incarnation as an sacrifice for “all of this Earth” establishes a kinship between the human and non-human elements of the middangeard as recipients of that sacrifice. In his De Fide Catholica, inspired by Ælfric’s homily of the same name, Wulfstan repeats this idea, writing that Christ took on the incarnation for ealles mancynnes neode and for ealles middaneardes alysedness (“for the need of all of humanity, and for all this Earth’s redemption.”)48 Later in the same homily, he offers a new perspective on the same concept when affirming that Mary ðæt gebær, ða hit ðæs tima wæs, eallum middanearde to soðan helpe (“bore that [child], when it was time, to truly help all of this Earth.”)49 This statement adds another marker of interconnectedness between the various elements of the middan[g]earde as the collective recipients of Mary’s intervention. Crucially, however, even when a text affirms the principle of interconnectedness, it may still reflect anthropocentric ideologies in which “the rest of the Earth community, and Earth itself, have been regarded as inferior creations,” and this is often the case in Old English homilies.50 Ælfric’s homily for Palm Sunday, discussed above, refers to the donkey Christ rides into Jerusalem as stunt nyten, and unclæne, and toforan oðrum nytenum ungesceadwis (“a foolish beast, and unclean, and stupid compared to other beasts”) even as it affirms Christ’s sacrificial devotion to “all creatures.”51 Elsewhere, in the Hexameron, Ælfric writes that after the act of creation, God wolde þæt þa gesceafta gesawon his mærða and hine wurþodon a on wuldre mid him þa þe adgyt habbaþ, þæt syndon englas and men (“desired that the creatures saw His wonders, and that they should worship Him always in glory among those that had wits, that is, angels and humans.”)52 Here, Ælfric situates humanity as a part of collective group of worshippers including angels and the rest of the other-than-human elements of the gesceaft. However, even as he acknowledges the kinship between these groups as worshippers before God, he also reveals a hierarchy within that collective: þa þe adgyt habbaþ (“those who have wit”) are normally set apart from the non-sentient. These examples suggest that Ælfric’s ecotheology 47 48 49 50 51 52

See Cockayne, ed., Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft, 254. Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 158. Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 159. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 45. Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 208. Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 5.

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acknowledged the interconnectedness of all elements of the gesceaft, even if his anthropocentric imagination could not fully assimilate the actions of certain groups. The Principle of Voice: Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice. Acknowledging the interconnectedness of humans with other-than-human beings on Earth does not automatically negate anthropocentric thinking, and the third ecojustice principle calls for a commitment to seeking out “the voices of Earth—whether they are those of the various species inhabiting Earth or the voice of Earth itself.”53 Recovering the silenced voices of Earth is essential to the cause of ecojustice: as Shirley Wurst notes, “when we silence subjects […] we make them objects, unable to say how they are, why they are, who they are,” and thus unable to advocate for their own liberation.54 In Chapter III below, I will suggest that the Exeter riddle collection represents an early medieval attempt to give voice to members of the Earth community through first-person poetry. However, searching for the voice(s) of Earth also means rejecting the “differentiation between ‘voiced’ humans and the presumed ‘voiceless’ members of the wider Earth community” in favor of retrieving “the modes of self-expression or communication by Earth and non-human members of the Earth community [which] reflect their distinctive natures.”55 For example, in his reading of Genesis 9, God’s covenant with Noah, indigenous theologian Rev. Wali Fejo writes that “the language of Earth is like the body language of humans. Earth communicates in its own distinct way.”56 Fejo’s reading of the text describes the rainbow, which “comes from the Earth and returns to the Earth as a symmetrical arc,” as an iteration of the voice of Earth.57 Through the rainbow, Fejo writes, “the Earth says, ‘I am still intact. I am still reachable […] Listen. Stop. Let’s have a normal conversation about life together.’”58 Recovering the voice of other-than-human beings who have suffered as a result of human sin requires acknowledgment that “every action has a reaction, that our behavior has implications for 53 54 55 56 57 58

Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 46. Wurst, “‘Beloved, Come Back to Me’,” 87. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 47. Fejo, “The Voice of the Earth,” 144 Fejo, “The Voice of the Earth,” 145. Fejo, “The Voice of the Earth,” 144.

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other members of the Earth community.”59 Crucially, despite the fact that, as Wulfstan reminds us, the Earth was corrupted by human sin, the promise to never again to destroy the Earth is directed to all of creation: as Fejo notes “God makes the same personal promise to kangaroos and crocodiles, to turtles and beetles as to human beings.”60 The principle of voice calls for readers to “[relate] to the animals, birds, and other creatures on Earth as living subjects,” worth listening to, “not simply as mindless objects” to act upon.61 In the introduction to this book, I suggested that the homiletic work of Ælfric and Wulfstan frequently f igured natural phenomena such as astrological abnormalities, drought, and species collapse as messages requiring interpretation. In a homily for the second Sunday in Advent, for example, Ælfric acknowledges that oft eorðstyrung gehwær fela burhga ofhreas […] mid cwealme ond mid hungre we sind gelome geswencte (“often earthquakes in many places overwhelm many cities […and] with pestilence and with hunger we are frequently afflicted”), recognizing that his audience might consider these to be warnings of the imminent apocalypse.62 However, he redirects the audience away from these terrestrial signs to the conspicuous silence of the heavens, and urges them to wait for a different type of communication: the swutele tacna on sunnan, and on monan, and on steorrum (“clear signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars”) predicted as signs of the apocalypse in his reference text.63 In this homily, Ælfric is not merely attentive to the voice(s) of Earth; he actively encourages his audience to listen to, interpret, and distinguish between the messages communicated by the voice(s) of Earth. Indeed, the homily frames human response to contemporary environmental crises as conversation, a series of messages from the voice(s) of Earth open to human interpretation and response. In Christopher Manes’ terms, Ælfric presents the Earth as a “voluble subject” in conversation with humanity, rather than a “mute object.”64 Stars are particularly vociferous elements: in the same homily, Ælfric writes that sind eac sume steorran leoht-beamede, færlice arísende and hrædlice gewítende, and hí symle sum ðing níwes mid heora upspringe gebícniað (“there are also some stars, beamed with light, suddenly rising and quickly departing, and they by their uprising ever 59 Wurst, “‘Beloved, Come Back to Me’,” 103. 60 Fejo, “The Voice of the Earth,” 143 61 Ibid. 62 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 610. 63 Ibid. 64 Manes, “Nature and Silence,” 17.

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indicate something new.”)65 He insists that these astral messages are not the messages which will eventually precede the Antichrist—ne mænde Drihten ðas tácna on ðære godspellican witegunge (“The Lord did not mean these signs in the Evangelical prophecy”)—but does not dismiss their efficacy in communicating information.66 As he interprets their messages, Ælfric amplifies the voice(s) of Earth by bringing them into conversation with humans. Ælfric also amplifies the voices of the other-than-human outside of the context of interactions with the human. In the Hexameron, he suggests that other-than-human beings praise God in ways incomprehensible to humans, explaining that ne heriað ða wæteru mid nanum wordum God, ac ðurh ða gesceaftu ðe he gesceop wundorlice his miht is gesutelod and he byð swa geherod (“the waters do not praise God with any words, but through the creation which he has wonderfully shaped his might is made known, and he is praised in this way.”)67 Ælfric’s acknowledgment of the inscrutable voice(s) of Earth anticipates the Earth Bible Team’s assertion that “the various components of Earth may communicate their presence and intent through alternative forms of language we might call ‘Earth language.’”68 Regardless of human attention or intention, Ælfric suggests that the voice(s) of the Earth speak constantly in praise of the Creator. The Principle of Purpose: The universe, Earth and all its components are a part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place in the overall of that design. The first three ecojustice principles are primarily concerned with how humans understand the other-than-human: how we assess value, contextualize interrelationships, and receive the voice(s) of Earth. The principle of purpose turns away from the human perspective to consider the Earth community as a whole. This ecojustice principle asserts that Earth is “a complex of interacting ecosystems” and that “all the pieces of these ecosystems form a design and reflect a direction.”69 For Ælfric and Wulfstan, who lived and worked in a monastic context, both design and direction were, of course, divine: Ælfric was explicit about the purpose of creation in a homily for 65 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 610. 66 Ibid. 67 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 24. 68 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 47. 69 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 48.

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Ascension Sunday, writing that ealle gesceafta ðeniað heora Scyppende (“all of creation serves their Creator”).70 Modern ecotheologians suggest that it is quite the other way around, and that the direction behind the design of Earth’s ecosystems is to “sustain life in all its diversity and beauty.”71 For example, John Olley’s reading of Genesis 9 suggests that “there is no separation or hierarchy” between Noah’s family and the surviving animals in the postdiluvian covenant with God, but that “the covenant is with all ‘flesh’, with ‘the Earth’.”72 For Olley, the “unequivocally egalitarian” nature of the covenant is evidence that God’s “dynamic cosmic design” is to protect life on Earth, despite human violence. Olley argues that, because the initial cause of the Earth’s destruction was human sin, including sins against the other-than-human, “continuation of human and animal life and of the earth depends on God’s ‘covenant’ made equally with all parties.”73 He calls for an understanding of “all creatures as partners in God’s covenant,” and concludes that “it is God’s intention to keep together the rich biodiversity of Earth.”74 From this perspective, the “dynamic cosmic design” of the Earth community is to sustain that community. The concept of sustainability is in fact connected to the principle of purpose: as the Earth Bible Team notes, modern interest in “understanding the design of Earth’s life systems is motivated not only by those who revere Earth […] but also by those who, out of self-interest, seek to create a ‘sustainable society’ in the future.”75 In the introduction to this book, I suggested that Wulfstan and Ælfric used apocalyptic rhetoric in their homilies to encourage radical social change in their communities. Chief among these rhetorical strategies was an emphasis on the imminent collapse of this Earth and, in Ælfric’s case, hopeful rumination on the new heaven and Earth to come. Crucially, Wulfstan and Ælfric agree on the ultimate impossibility of understanding the mysteries of God’s purpose for creation. In his homily on salvation history, for example, Wulfstan anticipates audience confusion that the infant Christ could also be the Creator God: nu is mænig ungelæred man þe wile þencan hu þæt beon mæg se þe gescop on fruman ealle gesceafta, þæt he wearþ þus late geboren (“now there are many unlearned men who will question how it may be that the One who shaped all creation in the beginning, was born thus lately.”)76 70 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 300. 71 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 49. 72 Olley, “Mixed Blessings for Animals,” 137. 73 Olley, “Mixed Blessings for Animals,” 139. 74 Ibid. 75 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 49. 76 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 151.

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Rather than offering an explanation, Wulfstan assures the audience that nis æfre æniges mannes mæþ þæt he þa godcudnesse asmeagan cunne; ac us is þeah mycel þearf þæt we aa habban rihtne geleafan on God ælmihtigne þe us ealle gescop and geworhte (“it is never within the power of any man that he should be able to fathom the divine nature; but there is nevertheless great need for us that we should always have true belief in God almighty, who created and wrought us all.”)77 Wulfstan cannot explain the mysteries of creation; however, he can point to those mysteries as evidence of God’s greatness and the necessity of true faith. Ælfric echoes the sentiment in a homily for the first Sunday after Easter: in an attempt to explain the mysteries of the resurrection, he writes that God worhte Adam of láme. Nu ne mage we asmeagan hú hé of ðam láme flæsc worhte, and blod bán and fell, fex and næglas. Men geseoð oft þæt of anum lytlum cyrnele cymð micel treow, ac we ne magon geseon on þam cyrnele naðor ne wyrtruman, ne rinde, ne bógas, ne leaf: ac se God þe forðtihð of ðam cyrnele treow, and wæstmas, and leaf, se ylca mæg of duste arǽran flæsc and bán, sina and fex. wrought Adam of loam. Now we cannot fathom how from that loam he made flesh and blood, bones and skin, hair and nails. Men often see that from one little seed comes a great tree, but we can see in the seed neither root, nor rind, nor boughs, nor leaves: but the same God who draws forth a tree from the seed, and fruits, and leaves, may raise from the dust flesh and bones, sinews and hair.78

In this passage Ælfric, like Wulfstan, does not offer a concrete explanation for the mystery of creation; rather, he draws a connection between the incomprehensible creation of humanity from nothing and the equally incomprehensible (but more immediately observable) creation of a tree from a seed. In addition to signaling the interconnectedness of creation, this comparison acts as a reminder of the wondrous unknowability of the Earth’s ecosystem(s). Although both Wulfstan and Ælfric assert that God’s purpose(s) for creation cannot be fully understood, Ælfric does suggest that specific elements and systems within the Earth community were designed by their creator for a specific purpose. In the Hexameron, Ælfric writes that the sun and 77 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 152. 78 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 236.

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moon were created ðæt hi todælan magon dæg fram nihte, and hi beon to tacne, and tida gewyrcon dagum and gearum (“that they may separate the day from the night, and that they may be signs, and appoint the seasons of days and years.”)79 Ælfric’s primary concern here is the usefulness of the stars to human lives and activity; nevertheless, this statement affirms the principle that every element of the Earth community was created for a specific purpose. Ælfric’s faith in these systems is complete: in the same chapter of the Hexameron, he notes that sæd tima and hærfæst, sumor and winter, cycle and hætu, dæg and niht ne geswicað næfre (“seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, cold and heat, day and night do not at any time desist”) and that these cycles will remain in place ða hwile ðe ðeos woruld wunað swa gehal (“as long as this world remains thus whole.”)80 Again, Ælfric’s acknowledgment of the purpose of these systems—to determine harvest, regulate seasons, and separate day from night—affirms the idea that each element of the Earth community has a specific purpose within that community. Ælfric makes a similar argument about the plants that sprung from the Earth on the third day of creation. He writes that God het ða eorðan ardlice spryttan growende gærs and ða genan wyrta mid heora agenum sæde to menigfealdum læce-cræfte and ða wyrta sona wynsumlice greowon mid menigfealdum blostmum mislice gebleode. God het hi eac spryttan ðurh his godcundan mihte menigfealde treowcynn, mid heora wæstmum mannum to ofætan and to oðrum neodum […] mid healicum cederbeamum and mid manegum wudum on hire widgilnysse, mid æppelbærum treowum and mid orcgeardum and mid ælcum treowcynne mid heora agenum wæstmum. commanded the Earth immediately to sprout forth growing grass, and the green herbs, with their own seed, for the manifold arts of the physician; and the plants then sprung up pleasantly, with many blossoms, diversely colored. God also, through his divinity, commanded it to produce many kinds of trees, with their fruitfulness, for the fruit of men, and for other needs […] with high cedar trees, and with many forests over [Earth’s] immense space, with apple-bearing trees, and with orchards, and with every kind of tree with their own fruits.81 79 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 12. 80 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 12-14. 81 Norman, ed. and trans., Hexameron, 10.

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Here again, Ælfric’s primary concern is the utility of the other-than-human for human purposes, namely herbs and seeds for medicine and fruits for sustenance. However, this passage also acknowledges other purposes, such as beauty; the double alliteration of the phrase menigfealdum blostmum mislice gebleode (“many blossoms, diversely colored”) neatly mirrors this attention to aesthetics. Similarly, the individual references to types of trees and the group reference to ælcum treowcynne mid heora agenum wæstmum (“all kinds of trees with their own fruits”) reflects a delight not only in the unique purpose of each tree, but also in the wide diversity of those trees, each designed to produce its own fruit. Certainly, by highlighting the human-specific purposes of plants and trees, this passage reflects an anthropocentric perspective; nevertheless, the passage also hints at other possible purposes, such as beauty and the continued reproduction of diverse species. Indeed, even as Ælfric’s ecotheology privileges human experience, it does so while acknowledging the specific purpose of the other-than-human elements of the Earth community. The Principle of Mutual Custodianship Earth is a balanced and diverse domain where responsible custodians can function as partners with, rather than rulers over, Earth to sustain its balance and a diverse Earth community. Anthropocentric patterns of thinking are so pervasive that they have even infiltrated the language of the modern environmental movement; calls to “save the environment” or “f ight environmental change” may seem Earth-centered, but, as ecofeminist Clare Palmer has noted, they actually reveal “a strong sense of humanity’s separation from the rest of the natural world.”82 Palmer argues that rhetoric which frames “the environment” as an entity external to humanity—rather than framing humanity as one element of the Earth community—accommodates a whole host of anthropocentric ideas: “that the natural world is a human resource, that humans are really in control of nature, that nature is dependent on humanity for its management.”83 These anthropocentric ideas converge in the concept of stewardship, which figures humans as stewards (from the Old English stig-weard: stig, “hall” + weard, “guardian”) of the otherthan-human elements of the Earth community. In her essential critique of stewardship, Palmer shows that modern usage of the term often frames 82 Palmer, “Stewardship” 77. 83 Palmer, “Stewardship,” 77-78.

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God as “a rich man who has handed his riches over to humanity to use to greatest advantage” or “an absentee landlord, who has put humanity in charge of his possessions.”84 Within these frameworks, the other-thanhuman is denied any agency, and instead reduced to “possessions” for humanity to manage and consume. Palmer concludes that “stewardship is an anthropocentric ethic which considers it to be better not only for humans, but for the rest of the world, for nature to be managed and made fruitful by human standards.”85 As an alternative to the anthropocentric concept of stewardship, the Earth Bible Team offers the model of “mutual custodianship.” Whereas stewards guard and manage resources so that they can be used most effectively, custodians are caretakers, responsible for tending and supporting the subjects of their care. The concept of mutual custodianship acknowledges that, by providing “food, shelter, beauty, and many other riches to sustain the body and the spirit of humanity,” Earth and members of the Earth community have always served as “the custodians of human beings.”86 Although she doesn’t identify it as such, theologian Kellyanne Falkenberg Wolfe has shown that the model of mutual custodianship is visible in Genesis; her reading of the text argues that although “humans are necessary for the fullest possible fertility of the soil,” they are also “servants of the soil, created from it and dependent on it for continued life.”87 The idea that humans are not only “interconnected with other species and ecosystems” but actually “dependent upon these systems for survival” is incompatible with the concept of stewardship, which depends on human separation from and power over the Earth community.88 In contrast, the principle of mutual custodianship asserts that all members of the Earth community, including humans, should “function as partners, rather than rulers, to sustained a balanced and diverse Earth.”89 Central to this mutual partnership is recognition of “the contribution[s] of [our] partners in the Earth community”—from the food we eat to the oxygen we breathe—and attention to our “natural kinship with members of the Earth community.”90 Overall, the principle of mutual custodianship offers a useful alternative to the problematic concept of environmental stewardship by replacing the rhetoric of “use” with the 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

Palmer, “Stewardship,” 73-74. Palmer, “Stewardship,” 82. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51. Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy,” 96. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51. See also Palmer, “Stewardship,” 77-81. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 50. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51.

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rhetoric of “care,” and acknowledging the mutual dependence of human and other-than-human members of the Earth community. Despite the term’s linguistic origins, the concept of stewardship is also problematic within the context of Old English ecotheology. In early medieval England, a stig-weard (“steward,” literally “hall-guard”) was responsible for the management and protection of land and resources in their lord’s absence; the concept of environmental stewardship similarly figures God as “an absentee landlord who has put humanity in charge of his possessions.”91 Crucially, as Clare Palmer notes, the authority of the steward relies on the complete absence of the landlord: “perceptions of stewardship have great difficulty in accommodating the idea of God’s action or presence in the world.”92 However, as I have shown, early medieval English Christians not only understood God to be present in the world, but actively identified environmental crises as divine retribution or communication. Moreover, the idea that humans could ever truly be in control of the other-than-human is antithetical to the humility at the core of Old English ecotheology: Ælfric and Wulfstan both suggest that the mysteries of the gesceaft are ultimately unknowable to all but the Scyppend.93 The concept of stewardship, which relies on an absent or inactive God, is thus incompatible with early medieval English theology, which assumes God’s active presence in the world. However, the model of mutual custodianship offers a more useful framework for thinking about the relationships between human and otherthan-human elements of the Earth community in Old English ecotheology. In Chapter V of this book, I will argue that the poem Guðlac A presents a moving portrait of mutual custodianship: the eponymous saint’s sustained devotion to his eorðlice eðel (“earthly home”) is what earns him entry to the eðel ece (“eternal home”). More typical of Old English ecotheology, however, are condemnations of humanity’s failure to be faithful custodians of creation. In his eschatological homily Secundum Lucam, for example, Wulfstan writes that clæne wæs þeos eorðe on hyre frumsceafte, ac we hi habbað syððan afylede swyðe 7 mid urum synnum þearle besmitene (“this Earth was clean at its first creation, but we have since befouled it greatly and defiled it through our sins”.)94 This troubling accusation—that humanity has directly contributed to the destruction of the Earth through sin—is 91 Palmer, “Stewardship,” 74. 92 Ibid. 93 As we shall see, this assumption of unknowability is also central to the wisdom poems of the Exeter Book. 94 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 124.

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followed by a startling depiction of the Earth community’s response: seo eorðe us winð wið þonne heo forwyrneð eorðlices wæstmas 7 us unweoda to fela asendeð (“the earth strives against us when it withholds the fruits of the earth, and sends us too many weeds.”)95 Wulfstan’s assertion that members of the Earth community are capable of “befouling” and “withholding from” one another affirms the mutual interdependence of that community by demonstrating how the actions of one can impact all. Moreover, it suggests that the “contribution[s] of [our] partners in the Earth community” should not be taken for granted, but may be recalled at any time. The homily thus offers a negative example of mutual custodianship: environmental crises such as crop failure, mass mortality of livestock, and destructive storms are figured as the result of humanity’s failure to maintain “a balanced and diverse Earth community.”96 The Principle of Resistance: Earth and its components not only suffer from injustices at the hands of humans, but actively resist them in the struggle for justice. The ecotheology of Wulfstan’s homily Secundum Lucam suggests that the other-than-human members of the Earth community have the ability not only to resist humans by withholding produce, but also to act against human interests by sending weeds. The last of the Earth Bible Team’s ecojustice principles, the principle of resistance, affirms the belief that the Earth community is “a subject with the power to revive and regenerate” in the face of injustices caused by “human exploitation and short-sighted greed.”97 Although the Earth Bible Team acknowledges that this framework is modeled after “the struggle of social groups for justice,” they do not acknowledge its significant debt to the work of Black liberation theologians such as James H. Cone. In his essential essay “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” Cone write that “the logic that led to slavery and segregation in the Americas, colonization and Apartheid in Africa, and the rule of white supremacy throughout the world is the same one that leads to the exploitation of animals and the ravaging of nature.”98 Black liberation theology, the “product of a fighting spirituality derived from nearly four hundred years of black resistance,” is foundational to the rhetoric of injustice and oppression at the heart of the 95 96 97 98

Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 125. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 50. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 53. Cone, “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” 36.

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principle of resistance.99 As Marta Werbanowska has argued, “the broadly understood logic of domination is the shared root of racial oppression as well as environmental exploitation.”100 Applying this logic of domination to the concept of ecojustice, the principle of resistance suggests that otherthan-human beings on Earth constitute an oppressed community, and that members of that community actively seek ways to survive and resist their human oppressors. I have already suggested than Wulfstan’s eschatological homily Secundum Lucam affirms the principle of mutual custodianship by stressing the interdependence of the human and other-than-human members of the Earth community. This same homily also affirms the principle of resistance when Wulfstan writes that, because of human sin, seo heofone us winð wið þonne heo us sendeð styrnlice stormas 7 orf 7 æceras swyðe amyrreð; seo eorðe us winð wið þonne heo forwyrneð eorðlices wæstmas 7 us unweoda to fela asendeð (“heaven strives against us when it sternly sends us storms and destroys cattle and land; the earth strives against us when it withholds the fruits of the earth, and sends us too many weeds).101 Here, Wulfstan suggests that the other-than-human members of the Earth community are able to act against the interests of their human counterparts, and that they may do so as an act of resistance. Ælfric offers a variation of this idea in his homily for Easter Sunday, when he suggests that other-than-human elements of creation acted in resistance to the crucifixion: seo sunne oncneow, þa þa heo wearð aðystrod on Cristes ðrowunge fram mid-dæge oð nón; stanas oncneowon, þaþa hí toburston on heora Scyppendes forðsiðe (“the sun acknowledged [Him], when it was darkened at Christ’s passion from mid-day to the ninth hour; the stones acknowledged Him, when they burst at their Creator’s departure.”)102 The context of this assertion is important: Ælfric describes these acts of resistance as a part of a lengthy passage on how the sæ (“sea”), sunne (“sun”), stanas (stones), and eorðe (“earth, ground”) responded to various events in the life of Christ. He offers these anecdotes as a means of denigrating the Jewish people, who he claims did not “acknowledge” Christ. Ælfric repeats this description of active resistance—and the accompanying antiSemitic comparisons—nearly word-for-word in his homily for Epiphany.103 These celebrations of other-than-human resistance to the injustice of the 99 Cone, “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” 38. 100 Webanowska, “There is Hope in Connecting,” 85. 101 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 125. 102 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 228. 103 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 108.

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crucifixion are inextricable from Ælfric’s anti-Semitism: they position the arleasum Iudeiscum (“impious Jews”) as less perceptive and justice-oriented than other members of the Earth community.104 However, this comparison also affirms the principle that other-than-human members of the Earth community may actively resist injustice. The principle of resistance also affirms the strength of the other-thanhuman to survive oppression, and this, too, is affirmed in Old English ecotheology. In his homily for the second Sunday in Advent, Ælfric explains that, unlike many of their human counterparts, the other-than-human-elements of the Earth community will survive the destruction of the apocalypse: ne awendað heofon and eorðe to nahte, ac hi beoð awende of ðam hiwe ðe hi nu on wuniað to beteran hiwe (“heaven and Earth will not turn to naught, but they will be changed from the form in which they now exist to a better form.”)105 Not all humans will survive the apocalypse, Ælfric assures us, but the Earth community as a whole gewitað and ðeah ðurhwuniað, forðan ðe hi beoð fram ðam hiwe ðe hi nu habbað þurh fyr geclænsode, and swa-ðeah symle on heora gecynde standað (“will pass away and yet will continue, for they will be cleansed from the shape which they have now by fire, and will yet stand forever in their new nature.”)106 This description of the Earth community’s transformative abilities affirms the principle that Earth’s ecosystems “have a remarkable capacity to survive, regenerate, and adapt to changing physical circumstances.”107

Conclusions In the previous pages, I have suggested that the Old English ecotheology exemplified by Ælfric and Wulfstan anticipates many of the ideologies associated with modern ecotheology. In particular, I have argued that shades of each of the six ecojustice principles produced by the Earth Bible Team are visible in the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan. Like their modern counterparts, these early medieval theologians aff irmed the intrinsic worth of the other-than-human elements of the Earth community. They affirmed the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings 104 For more on Ælfric’s anti-Semitic views, see Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England, especially “Part Four: Ælfric, Anti-Judaism, and the Tenth Century,” and “Anti-Judaism in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints,” Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999): 65-86. 105 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 618. 106 Ibid. 107 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 53.

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by suggesting kinship based on patterns of behavior. They believed that other-than-human beings were able to cry out in praise and against injustice, and warned that seemingly passive landscapes could actively resist human domination. They believed that each element of the Earth community was created for a specif ic, divine purpose, though they also believed that purpose was unknowable. They affirmed the mutual interdependence of human-and-other-than-human lives by condemning humanity’s failure to be faithful custodians of creation. Finally, they acknowledged the ability of the Earth community to not only resist but also to survive the destructive effects of human activity. Nearly a millennium before the Earth Bible Team f irst articulated their ecojustice principles, the theology of Ælfric and Wulfstan reflected thoughtful consideration of the relationship between the other-than-human members of the Earth community and the Creator. Indeed, it is possible to discern in their work a distinct Old English ecotheology which anticipates each of the principles outlined above, with the gesceaft standing in for the Earth community. In the remaining chapters of this book, I will argue that the Old English ecotheology of Ælfric and Wulfstan is reflected in the poetry of the Exeter Book. Although this book is organized according to genre, it could also have been organized according to the ecojustice principles outlined above: the first chapter suggesting that The Order of the World affirms the principle of purpose, the second, that Maxims I affirms the principle of interconnectedness, and so on. However, the goal of this project is not to prove that the medieval poets responsible for these texts are ideologically aligned with the Earth Bible Team, but rather to suggest that the modern principles belong to a long tradition of Christian ecotheology which also includes Ælfric, Wulfstan and the communities responsible for the production of Exeter Book. I have already suggested that, just as the Earth Bible Team wrote in response to the “new earth consciousness” of the year 2000, the homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan respond directly to the environmental crises of their time. In what follows, I will show that the early medieval earth consciousness that emerged in the years preceding the apocalyptic year 1000 is reflected throughout the poems of the Exeter Book, and argue that these poems reflect a distinct Old English ecotheology. This is not to suggest that the poems of the Exeter Book represent a direct response to Ælfric and Wulfstan, or that the manuscript as a whole should be read as a collection of ecotheological poetry; rather, the prevalence of ecotheological themes throughout the Exeter Book is a testament to their significance in the early medieval imagination.

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Bibliography Cone, James H. “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” Crosscurrents 50 (2000): 36-46. Bethurum, Dorothy, editor. Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, s.v. “foresceawung.” Accessed August 20, 2020, http://bosworthtoller.com/11355. Dale, Corrine. The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel, 42-53. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2000. Eaton, Heather. “Ecofeminist Contributions to an Ecojustice Hermeneutics.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel, 54-71. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2000. Estes, Heide. Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Fejo, Wali. “The Voice of the Earth: An Indigenous Reading of Genesis 9.” In The Earth Story in Genesis, edited by Norman C. Habel & Shirley Wurst, 140-146. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Habel, Norman C, editor. Readings from the Perspective of Earth. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. –––. “Introducing the Earth Bible,” in Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel, 25-37. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Manes, Christoper. “Nature and Silence.” In The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, 15-29. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Neville, Jennifer. Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Norman, Henry W. editor. The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Hexameron of St. Basil. London: 1849. Olley, John. “Mixed Blessings for Animals.” In The Earth Story in Genesis, edited by Norman C. Habel and Shirley Wurst, 130-139. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Palmer, Clare. “Stewardship: a Case Study in Environmental Ethics.” In The Earth Beneath: A Critical Guide to Green Theology, ed. Ian Ball, Margaret Goodall, Clare Palmer, and John Reader, 67-87. London: SPCK, 1992. Scheil, Andrew P. “Anti-Judaism in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints,” Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999): 65-86. –––. The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

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Thorpe, Benjamin, editor and translator. Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. London: The Ælfric Society, 1884. VanDonkelaar, Ilse Schweitzer. “Old English Ecologies: Environmental Readings of Anglo-Saxon Texts and Culture.” Ph.D. diss., Western Michigan University, 2013. Welker, Michael. “What is Creation? Rereading Genesis 1 and 2.” Theology Today 48 (1991): 56-71. Werbanowska, Marta. “‘There Is Hope in Connecting’: Black Ecotheology and the Poetry of Lucille Clifton.” ISLE 26 (2019): 83-96. White, Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207. Wolfe, Kellyanne Falkenberg. “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy: an Ecocritical Reading of the Eden Story, Joel, and Jonah.” Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, 2011. Wurst, Shirley. “‘Beloved, Come Back to Me’: Ground’s Theme Song in Genesis 3?” In The Earth Story in Genesis, edited by Norman C. Habel and Shirley Wurst, 87-104. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

2.

The Web of Creation in Wisdom Poems Abstract Active engagement with the mysteries of creation was an important goal of Old English wisdom poetry; these poems require audience understanding of the interconnectedness of the Earth community. Exploring kinship connections between human and other-than-human beings, they anticipate modern ideas about the importance of exchange within ecosystems. The Order of the World encourages active engagement with the other-than-human as a means of praising the Creator. Maxims I, in turn, serves as an example of one such poetic attempt, imagining a world in which non-human forces act in familiar, rather than entirely threatening, ways. The Order of the World and Maxims I suggests that early medieval English thinkers understood and affirmed the interconnectedness of the Earth community. Keywords: Gnosticism, proverbs, muse, vision, ecosystems

In the first chapter of this book, I suggested that the homiletic and exegetical work produced by Ælfric and Wulfstan in the decades on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000 reveals an early modern earth consciousness which anticipates many of the tenets of modern ecotheology. For Ælfric, the creation story was not an anfealdan gerecednisse (“simple narrative”), but rather, a complex accounting of how se Ælmihtiga Scippend geswutelode hine sylfe þurh þa micclan weorc (“the Almighty Creator made Himself known through His mighty work”).1 In a homily for the first Sunday after Easter, Ælfric writes that He worhte Adam of láme. Nu ne mage we asmeagan hu he of ðam láme flæsc worhte, and blod, bán and fell, fex and næglas. Men geseoð oft þæt of anum lytlum cyrnele cymð micel treow, ac we ne magon geseon on 1

Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces, 117.

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_ch02

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þam cyrnele naðor ne wyrtruman, ne rinde, ne bogas, ne leaf: ac se God þe forðtihð of ðam cyrnele treow, and wæstmas, and leaf, se ylca mæg of duste arǽran flæsc and ban, sina and fex. [God] made Adam of clay. Now we may not examine how He made flesh from that clay, and blood, bones and skin, hair and nails. Men often see that from one little seed comes a mighty tree, but we may not see in that seed the roots, nor the bark, nor the boughs, nor the leaves: but the same God that draws forth a tree from the kernel, and fruits, and leaves, may raise from the dust flesh and bone, sinews and hair.2

In this passage, Ælfric identifies a kinship between the first human and a great tree by highlighting shared traits, such as the complexity of their final forms (drawing an eerie parallel between bones and boughs, hair and leaves) and the surprising simplicity of their origins. The most important similarity is the impossibility of these transformations: both Adam and the tree are representative of God’s incomprehensible creative power. The kinship connections identified by Ælfric in this passage affirm the principle of interconnectedness, the second of the six ecojustice principles developed by the collective of modern ecotheologians known as the Earth Bible Team. The principle of interconnectedness builds on the work of modern biologists in asserting that “every species and every member of every species are connected to others by complex webs of interrelationships.”3 Ælfric’s meditation on the creation of Adam and of trees affirms this principle by highlighting kinship connections between human and other-than-human beings on Earth. Similarly, Ælfric’s repeated use of the Old English term gesceaft (“creation”) to describe the Earth community as a singular entity reflects his understanding of the interconnectedness of human and otherthan-human lives. Across Ælfric’s Sermones Catholici, humans, animals, and all members of the Earth community are presented collectively as a part of the micclan weorc (“mighty work”) of this gesceafta. 4 And yet, as I have suggested, the people of early medieval England were keenly aware of the fact that they did not live in perfect harmony with the rest of the Earth community. Then, as now, negative interactions between human and other-than-human beings ranged from the merely annoying to the downright deadly. Navigating these interactions necessitated an 2 3 4

Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 236. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 44. See Chapter I, pages 44-46.

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understanding of the “complex webs of interrelationships” which constitute the Earth community, including humanity’s place within that community.5 In this chapter, I will argue that it is possible to read the wisdom poems of the Exeter Book as attempts to map out these complex webs and explore the messiness of the gesceaft in daily life. If, as I have suggested, the Exeter Book serves as a representative example of the Old English corpus as a whole, then the two poems now known as The Order of the World and Maxims I might similarly be considered representative of that corpus’ most enigmatic genre: wisdom poetry.6 One of the oldest genres of Old English literature, wisdom poetry represents an amalgamation of religious teachings, cultural practices, and received literary and oral traditions. Attempts to map out connections between human and other-than-human beings within these poems may therefore reflect a “popular” alternative to the monastic orthodoxy of Ælfric’s work. Indeed, because they “embody the accumulated knowledge of the [early medieval English] on certain subjects,” wisdom poems offer perhaps the most direct insight into the place of the non-human in the early medieval English imagination.7 As distillations of “what is known” about the gesceaft in particular, poems such as The Order of the World and Maxims I provide concrete—if sometimes contradictory—evidence for fantasies about the interconnectedness of the Earth community in the early medieval imagination. As Old English poets wrestled with the environmental and theological problems of their day, they produced texts which reveal an idealized vision of creation in harmony, blurring the lines between desire and reality. These Old English wisdom poems therefore present a useful starting point for my exploration of Old English ecotheology in the Exeter Book. In this chapter, I will argue that the image of the gesceaft (“creation”) as a divine and unknowable ecosystem—a searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries,” Order 15b)—is central to the ecotheology which permeates The Order of the World, Maxims I, and the rest of the Exeter Book. My reading of these two poems suggests that active engagement with the mysteries of creation was an important goal of Old English wisdom poetry, and that that engagement was built on the understanding that human activity is inextricably interconnected with the influence and desires of other-thanhuman beings. I show that The Order of the World and Maxims I anticipate 5 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 44. 6 The latter poem is also sometimes called “the Exeter Maxims” to distinguish it from the Cotton Maxims, a similar collection of gnomic wisdom found in London, British Library MS Cotton B i. 7 Bjork, Old English Shorter Poems, xiii.

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modern ideas about the importance of diversity and exchange within ecosystems, and actively affirm the principle of interconnectedness by identifying kinship connections between humans and other-than-human beings. I will further argue that these poems suggest that humanity’s inability to fully comprehend—let alone control—the mysteries of the created world is in fact one of the things that makes creation so wondrous. In his homily De Fide Catholica, Ælfric writes that nán man ne mæg fullice embe God sprecan, þonne we furðon þa gesceafta þe he gesceop ne magon asmeagan, ne areccan (“no person can speak fully concerning God, for we cannot even investigate or explain the creations that He has created”): the wisdom poems of the Exeter Book attempt to explain the interconnectedness of these creations even as they, like Ælfric, acknowledge the impossibility of that task. I begin this chapter with a brief exploration of the place of wisdom poetry and associated forms such as maxims and gnomes in the Old English literary tradition. I argue that the maxim as a form of knowledge transmission is closely related to the Old English riddling tradition. Ultimately, I suggest that Old English wisdom poetry is marked by dual interest in articulating lived experiences and consciously exegetic structure. The first major section of this chapter focuses on The Order of the World, an adaptation and expansion of Psalm 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God”) which echoes Ælfric’s call for adoration of the created world as a manifestation of God’s majesty. I argue that the emotional core of Order is the poem-within-the-poem, which serves as an example of the kind of praise of creation Ælfric and his contemporaries encourage. However, the emphasis in The Order of the World on secrecy, discovery, and meditation suggests that deliberate and sustained engagement with the non-human must be an active part of that adoration, in addition to the production of poetry. Even as it models this process of intentional engagement with and meditation on the natural world, The Order of the World nevertheless asserts the impossibility of full human understanding of the intricate searo-runa gespon (“the web of mysteries,” l.15b) which constitutes creation. Indeed, the structure of the poem—in particular, the speaker’s preface to the poem-within-the poem which serves as his exemplar—emphasizes the importance of the process, rather than product, of engagement with the non-human. If The Order of the World testifies to the necessity of attempting to untangle the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries”) that constitutes creation, then Maxims I, the poem at the heart of the second section of this chapter, demonstrates just how messy that work can be. Maxims I is a three-part collection of gnomic verse amalgamating Christian doctrine, prescriptive

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adages concerning human activity, and descriptions of natural patterns. I argue that one effect of the poem may have been to alleviate anxiety about the violence of the other-than-human members of the Earth community: as the poem reframes common environmental conflicts, it attempts to ameliorate or idealize human relations with non-human actors. I show that the poem’s juxtaposition of competing spheres of activity requires the audience to consider common conflicts in a new light, moving beyond their expectations of a human/non-human binary. The poem thus encourages its audience to think creatively about their encounters with and connections to the other-than-human members of creation. As with The Order of the World, the structure of Maxims I mimics the ecosystems it describes: careful study of the details of the outwardly disparate maxims and gnomes which comprise the poem reveals complex connections, illuminating and clarifying details of individual sections. The Order of the World and Maxims I challenge their audiences to identify and explore the individual threads of the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries”) that constitutes creation, and to find new ways of understanding and describing human interactions with an increasingly hostile natural world. Ecotheologian Timothy J. Burberry has argued that one way to resist anthropocentric thought is to take “a truly global perspective—one in which ‘the world’ is the entire ecosphere, not just human society.”8 The Order of the World and Maxims I anticipate this global perspective in their attempts to figure “the world” as a continuous—if not always coherent or peaceful—ecosystem. These poems, some of the oldest of the English tradition, reveal a poetic impulse to reconcile the early medieval experience of life on an island at the edge of the world with the Christian belief in the interconnectedness of the gesceaft.

Gnome(ish) Wisdom in Old English Poetry Like all texts in the Exeter Book, the two poems now known as The Order of the World and Maxims I lack formal titles in their manuscript context; the generic classification of “wisdom poetry” is a similarly modern invention. One significant shared trait within this generic group is the sense that these poems don’t really feel like poems: the texts under this banner generally lack the emotional depth, vivid imagery, and intimate narration common to Old English elegies, riddles, and epics, and as a result modern scholarship tends 8

Burberry, “Ecocriticism and Christian Literary Scholarship,” 190.

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not look favorably on the genre.9 In their edition of the Exeter Book, Krapp and Dobbie lament the fact that the two parts of The Order of the World “do not hang together very well” and that “the entire poem is very loosely organized”; they similarly complain that Maxims I “gives the impression of a mass of unrelated materials gathered from a number of sources” rather than a single coherent text.10 More recently, Robert E. Bjork admits that these “simple catalogs of common wisdom” have “largely been greeted in our day with audible yawns,” but nevertheless suggests that these poems “become more compelling when understood in the context of Old English gnomic and proverbial literature.”11 These modern editorial assessments point to perhaps the most important unifying feature of Old English wisdom poetry as a genre: a critical desire to historicize the contexts and sources of these poems in order to make them “more compelling”—or perhaps more comprehensible. When Maxims I was first published in J.J. Conybeare’s 1862 Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry as “A Gnomic Poem,” the editor justified his title by comparing the text to “the gnomic poetry of the Greeks.”12 The traditional study of Latin rhetoric and grammar in early medieval England would certainly have included discussion of sententia, a figure closely related to Aristotle’s gnome.13 Definitions and examples of sententia appear in Pseudo-Cicero’s Rhetorica ad Herennium and Isidore’s Etymologies, two of the most popular classical rhetorical texts in early medieval England.14 The Rhetorica ad Herennium defines sententia as “a saying drawn from life, which shows concisely either what happens or ought to happen in life,” and provides a number of examples.15 The Etymologies likewise defines the figure as “an impersonal saying,” and lists over 30 types, such as the imperative (“go and take action, son; call the west winds, and glide on your wings,” Virgil, Aeneid 4.223) and the prohibitive (“neither sow hazel among the vines, nor reach for the highest shoots,” Virgil, Georgics 2.299).16 Like the Aristotelian original, these definitions suggest that gnomes are used primarily to prescribe and describe human activity. 9 As far as I know, the only published book-length study of Old English wisdom poetry is Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning. Also of note is an unpublished dissertation by Carl T. Berkhout, “A Critical Edition of the Old English Gnomic Poems.” 10 Krapp and Dobbie, Exeter Book, xli, xlvi. 11 Bjork, ed., Old English Shorter Poems, xv. 12 Conybeare, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 205. 13 Murphy, “The Function of Gnomic Generalizations in Old English Poetry,”28 notes that sententia “is recognized by Quintilian as the exact Latin equivalent of γνώμη (gnome).” 14 Gneuss, “The Study of Language,” 75-105. 15 See Cicero: Rhetorica ad Herennium, 289. 16 Barney et. al., eds., Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 76-77.

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Although the early medieval English seem not to have had a term meaning gnome or sententia exclusively, they frequently used two terms which fit the definitions given in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Etymologies. First among these is cwide (also cwyde, from the verb cwidian, “to speak”) meaning “the expression of a thought […] a saying, proverb”; the term is used as a gloss to sententia three times in Adhelm’s De Laude Virginitatis.17 Ælfric uses cwide throughout his homilies in reference to other patristic texts in addition to the direct word of God, suggesting that the term also carried an explicitly exegetical or didactic connotation for early medieval English audiences. The word giedd (also gyd or gid, “song, poem, proverb, riddle”) is often used interchangeably alongside cwide, as in Riddle 47: se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol (“the worm swallowed up the song of man—a thief in the night—the illustrious thoughts and its strong foundation,” 3-5a). These lines mourn the loss of the wera gied (“the song of man”) and þrymfæstne cwide (“the illustrious thoughts”) as both sources of knowledge and records of lived experience, suggesting the importance of the maxim as a form of acquiring and disseminating knowledge. The term is also used selfreferentially, as in Riddle 55 (nu me þisses gieddes ondsware ywe, se hine on mede wordum secgan hu se wudu hatte: “now show to me the answer to this riddle, the one who through strength can say what this wood is called,” 14b-16) and The Wife’s Lament (ic þis giedd wrece bi me ful geomorre, minre sylfre sið: “I sing this song about myself, very sad, about my own experience,” l. 1-2a). In these examples, the use of the term giedd draws attention to the formalities of poetic genre, suggesting, once again, the self-conscious literary nature of the maxim within the Old English poetic corpus. Indeed, the very fact that giedd may be translated as both “maxim” and “poem” suggests that the gnomic mode is integral to the Old English poetic tradition, and that the production of poetry and the transmission of knowledge were closely tied in the early medieval imagination. The Old English adaptation of the classical forms of sententia and gnome into cwide and giedd suggests that Old English wisdom poetry is marked by its dual interest in the articulation of the knowledge of lived experience and a consciously poetic exegesis. Moreover, in contrast to their classical counterparts, early medieval English poets clearly felt free to employ maxims to describe the non-human natural world: Joseph E. Price has shown that Old English poems employ gnomes related to the behavior of plants, animals,

17 These glosses can be found in Napier, Old English Glosses, 119, 146, 169.

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atmospheric and seasonal forces, and geographical features.18 As we shall see, both The Order of the World and Maxims I contain gnomes related to the activities of other-than-human beings. This poetic expansion of the purview of gnomic verse to include the behavior of the natural world underscores the importance of the other-than-human in the early medieval imagination. Synthesizing classical and insular traditions, the Old English maxim might be defined as a general statement describing the nature of all things as they are or ought to be, intended to encourage exegesis or meditation even if the statement itself lacks an explicitly didactic or moral purpose. In his study of gnomes and maxims in the Old English literary corpus, James E. Murphy locates four categories of poem which employ the gnomic mode, and notes that “there are very few Old English poems that do not belong to one or another of these four categories.”19 Paul Cavill’s survey of the corpus likewise identifies the gnomic mode within the traditions of Old English heroic, debate, and dialogue poetry.20 The work of Murphy, Cavill and others has shown that gnomes perform a number of functions within the Old English tradition: they organize thought and human experience, codify ethical and social mores, and make value judgments and generalizations about human activity.21 A less commonly addressed function of gnomes in Old English poetry is cognitive: Old English maxims are, by their very nature, enigmatic, and encourage creative interpretive thought. T.A. Shippey, noting “the [early medieval English] predilection for mystery” has suggested that “the gnomic poems, like riddles, were offered as sportive tests, to prove [one’s] capacity for uncovering moral truth.”22 Murphy, similarly, notes that, like the Exeter riddle collection, these gnomic poems “not only list items in the world, they attempt to find unlooked-for patterns in its fabric.”23 Old English wisdom poems like The Order of the World and Maxims I, then, do more than simply reveal the wisdom early medieval English poets valued and the secrets they hoped to pass on to the next generation; as “sportive tests” designed to encourage creative thinking, these poems also enable modern readers to experience the process of exegesis, exploration, and understanding inherent to Old English wisdom poetry. Reading these wisdom poems deliberately as “sportive tests” may offer insight into the types of creative thinking 18 See Price, “Some Aspects of the Gnomic Elements in Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” 167-68, 172. 19 Murphy, “Gnomic Generalizations in Old English Poetry,” 132-33. 20 Cavill, Maxims in Old English Poetry, 3. 21 Cavill, Maxims in Old English Poetry, 11-24 provides an exemplary analysis of the wider function of gnomes in Old English literature. 22 Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning, 19. 23 Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Book Riddles, 26.

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patterns the people of early medieval England used, valued, and sought to transmit. My analysis of The Order of the World and Maxims I is built on the assumption that, far from “a mass of unrelated materials,” these poems represent a deliberate challenge to an audience seeking actively to uncover moral and natural truths, and “to find unlooked-for patterns” in the interconnectedness of the Earth community.

“The Web of Mysteries”: Poetic Entanglement in The Order of the World Despite Krapp and Dobbie’s unease with its structure, I submit that the poem now known as The Order of the World is quite easily divided into two parts. The poem begins with a direct address (l. 1-37) exhorting the audience to explore the sero-runa gespon (“web of mysteries,” l. 15) that constitutes creation; the second, longer section of the poem (l. 38-end) provides an example of the type of here-spel (“noble narrative,” l. 37) that might result from this kind of exploration. The opening lines of The Order of the World make this connection between natural wisdom and creative production explicitly clear. These lines are most often translated as an imperative, as in Bjork’s edition of the poem: Wilt þu, fus hæle, wisne woð-boran fricgan felageongne biddan þe gesecge cræftas cyndelice þa þe dogra gehwam bringe wundra fela (1-7)

fremdne monnan, wordum gretan, ymb forðgesceaft, sidra gesceafta cwichrerende, þurh dom godes wera cneorissum.

Resolve, eager one, to greet the stranger, the wise singer, with words, to ask the much-traveled one about the created world, bid that he should tell you about the living and moving natural powers of the spacious creations, which every day through the judgment of God bring many wonders to the human race.24 24 Bjork, Old English Shorter Poems, 83.

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The direct nature of this translation suggests an ongoing conversation between the speaker and reader: the speaker urges the audience to begin the process of discovery by asking a third, divine figure to join this conversation on “the created world”—as Bjork translates forðgesceaft in line 3b—and all the natural wonders it includes.25 In light of this translation, the here-spel which follows serves primarily as a didactic exemplar of poetic creation, modelling strategies for the acquisition, organization, and presentation of wisdom for literary purposes. And indeed, the poem is often read this way: Ruth Wehlau, for example, has described Order as “a poem about poetry, a kind of Old English poetic manual in brief,” while Brian O’Camb calls it a “didactic exercise in poetic formalism […a] poem about poetic creation.”26 Certainly, the self-referential use of terms such as gieddingum (“songs/ gnomes/maxims,” 12a), word-hordes cræft (“craft of the word-hoard,” 19b), and here-spel (“noble” + “narrative/discourse,” 37a) suggests an authorial interest in poetic creation. And yet, the repetition of six variations of the crucial term gesceafta (“creation”) throughout The Order of the World—twice in the opening lines—complicates any reading which ignores the poet’s significant interest in the material creation of human and other-than-human beings in favor of poetic production. Moreover, as is so often the case in Old English literature, slight differences in the translation of these opening lines can lead to significant shifts in meaning, prohibiting altogether any reading which exclusively considers poetic (rather than material) creation. If, for example, the initial verb wilt is translated as a question rather than an imperative, and if the term forðgesceaft in line 3b is translated as “the world to come” rather than “the created world,” then the tone of the opening lines changes dramatically: Wilt þu, fus hæle, wisne woð-boran fricgan felageongne Biddan þe gesecge cræftas cyndelice þa þe dogra gehwam bringe wundra fela (1-7)

fremdne monnan, wordum gretan, ymb forðgesceaft? sidra gesceafta cwic-hrerende, þurh dom godes wera cneorissum!

25 Similarly, Liuzza, Old English Poetry, 64 translates forðgesceaft as “vast creation.” 26 See Wehlau, “Rumination and Re-creation,” 65 and O’Camb, “Exeter Maxims, The Order of the World, and the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry,” 410.

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Do you wish, eager one, to greet the stranger, the wise singer, with words, to ask the widely traveled one about the world to come? Pray them to speak about the spacious creation, its natural powers, living and breathing, which every day through the judgment of God bring many wonders to generations of humans.

The term forðgesceaft carries the sense of “the world to come” in a number of Old English poems, including the wisdom poem Maxims II, also known as the Cotton Maxims: in Bjork’s own translation, that poem concludes with reminder that is seo forðgesceaft digol and dyrne; drihten ana wat (“the shape of the future is dark and hidden; the Lord alone knows it,” 61a-62).27 Here in The Order of the World, the parallel usage of forðgesceaft (“the world to come”) in line 3 and gesceafta (“creation”) in line 4 establishes a connection between knowledge of creation in its present and future states. In this translation of the opening lines, then, rather than simply encouraging action, the speaker poses a question and offers a solution: do you want to know about the world to come? Then you need to investigate the cræftas cyndelice (“natural powers,” 5a) of this world: that is, the wundra (“wonders/ miracles/miraculous works,” 7a) which God has established in the Earth community. If, as Ruth Wehlau and Brian O’Camb suggest, The Order of the World is a “poem about poetry,” then it offers a radical new justification for poetic production: in addition to acting as praise for God’s majesty in the present, intentional engagement with the Earth community through poetry may also offer clarity about the future of life on Earth. If, as I have suggested, Ælfric’s meditation on the new heaven and Earth suggests that the future state of the world was of particular interest to Old English poets and theologians, then this assertion that sustained attention to the gesceaft could illuminate the forðgesceaft may have been particularly appealing to audiences on either side of the ominous year 1000. As the Earth Bible Team noted a millennium later, interest in untangling the interconnectedness of life on Earth is often motivated “by those whom out of self-interest, seek to create a ‘sustainable society’ in the future.”28 The Order-poet reinforces the connection between the study of creation and knowledge of the world to come a few lines later, noting that the natural world has always acted as a messenger for those who þurh wisdom 27 Bjork, Old English Shorter Poems, 179. 28 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 49.

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woruld ealle con behabban on hreþre (“through wisdom knows how to comprehend the whole world in his heart,” 9-10). In the past (gearu iu, “in days gone by,” 11a), humans shared this natural wisdom through the exchange of gieddingum, (“songs/riddles/proverbs,” 12a).29 However, the poem suggests that the time when sharing this kind of natural wisdom was common—when humans cuþon ryht sprecan (“knew how to speak rightly,” 13b) about searoruna gespon a gemyndge mæst monna wiston (“what the best of mankind knew of the web of mysteries,” 15b)—has long passed. The Order of the World may be productively read as encouragement to restart this practice of engaging searoruna gespon (“the web of mysteries”) through the exchange of natural wisdom. Indeed, this introductory section of the poem ends with an explicit call to action: Forþon scyle ascian, deophydig mon, bewritan in gewitte fæstnian ferðsefan ne sceal þæs aþreotan þæt he wislice (17-22)

se þe on elne leofað, dygelra gesceafta: wordhordes cræft, þencan forð teala; þegn modigne, woruld fulgonge.

Therefore, they should ask, whoever lives in strength, the deeply meditating one, about the secrets of creation: inscribe in the mind the craft of the word-hoard, secure the mind to think as they should; nor should he weary, the noble-minded retainer, of engaging wisely and wholly in the world.

These lines call for extended meditation on the mysteries of the created world as a way of answering the speaker’s opening question about the forðgesceaft (“world to come,” 3b). The references to writing in line 19—bewritan (“inscribe”) and wordhordes cræft (“the craft of the word-hoard”)—do allow for a reading of the poem as a kind of “Old English poetic manual,” as Wehlau and O’Camb suggest.30 However the emphasis on strength (elne, 17b) and the warning against weariness (ne sceal þæs aþreotan, “nor shall he weary,” 21) suggests that, in addition to poetic creation, this engagement may also be physical. These lines suggest that exploration of the dygelra 29 See my discussions of maxims and gnomes above. 30 Wehlau, “Rumination and Re-creation,” 65; O’Camb, “Exeter Maxims,” 410.

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gesceafta (“the secrets of creation,” 18b) is the key to a courageous life, the result of deep meditation, and most importantly, an ongoing and perhaps exhausting process of engagement with the created world. Crucially, this is not a call to conquer or dominate creation; indeed, despite their insistence on the importance of natural wisdom, the speaker begins the next section of the poem by claiming that full knowledge of the gesceaft is ultimately beyound human comprehension: Nis þæt monnes gemet þæt he mæge in hreþre furþor aspyrgan to ongietanne: (27-30)

moldhrerendra, his heah geweorc þonne him frea sylle godes agen bibod.

It is not in man’s ability, of those who move upon the Earth, that he may in his heart explore that exalted work further than the Lord gave him to understand: God’s own commandment.

The alliterative reference to humans as moldhrerendra reinforces the fundamental distinction Ælfric identifies between the Creator and His creation, which explicitly includes humans. Indeed, these lines suggest that, as a part of the heah geweorc (“exalted work”), humans can never truly understand the created world in any form beyond that which we are explicitly given: creation itself. Why, then, given the apparent impossibility of fully understanding the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries,” 15b) would the Order-poet call for continued engagement with the created world? As is so often the case in Old English literature, the answer lies not in the difficult present, but in the hoped-for future. The speaker claims in the following lines that the reward for sustained engagement with the non-human will be that us se eca cyning on gæste wlite forgiefan wille þæt we eaðe magon upcund rice forð gestigan (“the eternal king will give us a beautiful spirit so we may easily ascend from here into the kingdom above,” 32b-35a). Given the apocalyptic anxieties widespread in early medieval England, I think it likely that readers might see this as an echo of Wulfstan’s argument that the study of scripture could prepare the faithful for the apocalypse, even if they could not prevent it. Within the context of Old English ecotheology, then, The Order of the World may be read as a call for poetic praise of the gesceaft (“creation”) not only for the purposes of worshiping the Creator, but also as a way of understanding the forðgesceaft (“the world to come”).

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Given this reading, the poem-within-a poem (which begins Hwæt, on frymþe gescop fæder ælmihtig, in line 38) may serve as an example of the kind of text the first half of the poem encourages. As an exemplar of active and humble engagement with the wonders of the gesceaft, this mini-text provides a consciously constructed glimpse of creation in the early medieval imagination. Echoing Ælfric, the poem-within-the poem begins: Hwæt, on frymþe gescop heah hordes weard, sæs sidne grund, þa nu in þam þream heaþ ond hebbaþ (l. 38-42)

fæder ælmihtig, heofon ond eorðan, sweotule gesceafte, þurh þeodnes hond þone halgan blæd.

Listen: in the beginning the Father almighty, the high guardian of the hoard, shaped heaven and earth, the broad bottom of the sea, the manifest creation that now in those three regions through the prince’s hand exalt and raise up holy praise.

Although they list the “three regions” of the created world in the chronological order of their creation, these lines suggest that the created world acts as a singular entity reflecting the Creator’s glory. As a sign of divine creativity, the sweotule gesceafte (“manifest creation,” 40b) of the heavens, earth, and sea serves as both the subject of praise and the praising subject: the poem praises the non-human members of creation even as it acknowledges that that same creation is itself singing out in praise to its Creator. Nor are humans excluded from this description of creation: stressing the interconnectedness of the gesceaft, the poet continues Forþon eal swa teofanade, æghwylc wiþ oþrum; stiþe stefnbyrd, missenlice gemetu Swa hi to worulde dryhtnes duguþe lixende lof fremmaþ fæstlice (43-50)

se þe teala cuþe, sceoldon eal beran swa him se steora bibead þurh þa miclan gecynd. wlite forþ berað ond his dæda þrym, in þa longan tid, frean ece word

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Therefore, He joined all together, the One who knows everything, each to the other; all had to bear strict direction, just as the captain commands, according to their various degrees, through that mighty nature. So they bear forth beauty to the world, these warriors of the Lord, and the glory of his deeds, splendidly, songs of praise in that long period, faithfully performing the Lord’s eternal word.

As in the homilies of Ælfric, these lines largely reject the human/nonhuman binary in order to stress the unity of Creation as a manifestation of God’s miclan gecynd (“mighty nature,” 46b). Just as Ælfric insists that twa ðing syndon: án is Scyppend, oðer is gesceaft (“two things exist, one is the Creator, and the other is Creation”) these lines elide the “various degrees” of the humans, animals, plants, and other beings on Earth, instead f iguring all of creation as dryhtnes duguþe (“warriors of the lord,” 48a) working in unison to spread His beauty and glory.31 Drawing on themes from Psalm 19, these lines suggest that the ability to speak, praise, and evangelize does not lie solely with humanity, but that each individual member of Creation praises the Creator in their own way. As with the homilies of Ælfric, these lines affirm the principle of interconnectedness by identifying kinship connections between human and other-thanhuman beings. The use of terms such as teofanade (“joined,” 43a) and stiþe stefnbyrd (“firm direction,” 45a) alongside the poet’s stress on the unity of creation suggests that humanity is more firmly enmeshed in the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries,” 15a) than previously acknowledged. The poet’s f inal assurance that ne waciað þas geweorc, ac he hi wel healdeð (“these works do not weaken, but He holds them well,” l. 86) further affirms the interconnectedness of the Earth community by suggesting that these connections are eternal. The Order-poet describes but does not attempt to untangle the messiness of this system: rather, they present an example of how a poet might seek to engage the non-human through a poetic demonstration of the interconnectedness of the Earth community. Ecofeminist Val Plumwood has argued that an essential goal of ecocriticism is to “understand and affirm both otherness and our community in the earth.”32 She suggests that the “human/nature dualism has distorted our view of both human 31 Thorpe, ed. and trans, Sermones Catholici, 276. 32 Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 137.

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similarity to and human difference from the sphere of nature”.33 In other words, insisting on the separation of human and natural spheres of activity suggests that there can be no overlap, no blurriness, no true cooperation between those groups. She argues that rejection of this kind of dualism is central to “forming a web of continuity” across life on Earth.34 For Plumwood, this is a largely political endeavor: by affirming humanity’s place within—rather than above—the natural world, she breaks down the dualistic assumptions which, she suggests, allow for narratives of human dominance over nature. The assertion in The Order of the World that humans cannot fully understand the mysteries of creation anticipates Plumwood’s argument that humans are not ultimately masters of nature, but rather inseparable from it, and affirms the interconnectedness of the Earth community. For a concrete example of how one Old English poet used this poetic model in an attempt to articulate humanity’s place in the searo-runa gespon, we turn to perhaps the most complex of the Exeter Book’s wisdom poems: Maxims I.

Mapping Kinship Connections in Maxims I Like The Order of the World, Maxims I has long been criticized for its apparent lack of structure: Krapp and Dobbie complained that the poem “gives the impression of a mass of unrelated materials […] assembled by the compiler more or less mechanically, with no attempt at selection or logical arrangement.”35 Although the structure of Maxims I is, as we shall see, deliberately complex, it is possible to identify organizational patterns: like The Order of the World, this poem also begins with a direct address introduction connecting gnomic wisdom and poetic production: Frige mec frodum wordum. Ne læt þinne ferð onhælne, degol þæt þu deopost cunne. Nelle ic þe min dyrne gesecgan, gif þu me þinne hyge-cræft hylest ond þine heortan geþohtas. Gleawe men sceolon gieddum wrixlan (1-4b) Ask me with wise words. Don’t let your mind be hidden, 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Krapp and Dobbie, The Exeter Book, xlvi-vii.

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or keep secret that which you know most profoundly. I won’t tell you my secret if you hide from me the power of your mind, and the thoughts of your heart. Wise men should exchange sayings/riddles/songs.

The central theme of these lines is the search for, transmission, and expression of knowledge: the “multiplication of terms concerning knowledge and wisdom” such as frodum wordum (“wise words”), deopost cunne (“know most profoundly”), dyrne (“secret”), geþohtas (“thoughts”), gleawe (“wise”) and gieddum (“songs, riddles, sayings”) makes this exegetical focus clear.36 The use of the verb frige—essential to the conventional riddle formula frige hwæt ic hatte (“say what I am called”)—also suggests that these opening lines may have been intended as an invitation to creative interpretive thought in the vein of the riddling tradition, just like the opening lines of The Order of the World.37 The use of the word hyge-cræft in line 3a suggests that the work of the poem is training the mind to discover hidden connections in this seemingly random collection of gnomes. The final exhortation gleawe men sceolon gieddum wrixlan (“wise men should exchange sayings/riddles/ songs,” 4b) makes clear the circular nature of this sort of interpretive thought, which gives access to the wisdom and experience it requires. Indeed, as Berkhout notes, this final half-line “is, in fact, an example of the kind of information that should be exchanged.”38 Given the poem’s focus on the other-than-human, we might also say that Maxims I is an example of the kind of active engagement with the Earth community that the Order-poet encourages. The language of Maxims I, like The Order of the World, follows Ælfric’s elision of difference between human and non-human members of creation, presenting creation instead as a coherent—if not always cooperative—system. Across the poem, repetitive vocabulary and syntax in descriptions of human and other-than-human activity highlights kinship connections between members of the Earth community. For example, the repeated use of variants of the verb atemian (“to subdue, tame”) in reference to human and animal activity draws an unexpected link between humans and horses. The 36 Murphy, “Gnomic Generalization in Old English Poetry,” 138. 37 The formula frige hwæt ic hatte is used four times in the Exeter Book, in riddles 14 (l. 19b), 16 (l. 10b), 26 (l. 26b), and 27 (l. 15). See Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, 47, 49, 55, and 56, respectively. 38 Berkhout, “A Critical Edition of the Old English Gnomic Poems,” 90.

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first variant is used in reference to the education of young men (læran sceal mon geongne monnan […] oþþæt hine mon atemedne hæbbe: “a young man must be taught until he has been well tamed,” 45a-46b) and then again in reference to the breaking of a horse (til mon tiles ond tomes meares cuþes—“a good man keeps in mind a good and a tamed horse,” 140-41b). In this instance, the repetition of “atemian” derivatives across two sections of the poem suggests that men and horses are (or ought to be) trained in similar ways. The identification of this kinship connection affirms the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human members of the Earth community. Moreover, the very structure of Maxims I points to the interconnectedness of the gesceaft it describes: the second and third sections of the poem, for example, each begin with a cluster of gnomes contained in discrete half lines: Forst sceal freosan, eorþe growan, wæter helm wegan, eorþan ciþas. (70-73b)

fyr wudu meltan, is brycgian, wundrum lucan

Frost shall freeze, fire melt wood, earth grow, ice form a bridge, water wear a helmet, wondrously lock away the earth’s seeds. Ræd sceal mon secgan, leoþ gesingan, dom areccan, (137-139)

rune writan, lofes gearnian, dæges onettan.

One should give counsel, write down mysteries, sing songs, earn praise, pronounce judgments, hasten while it is day.

The syntactic construction of these two introductory sections is remarkably consistent; both employ a series of brief gnomes ending with infinitives, only the first of which contains the crucial finite verb sceal. Although they treat very different subjects—the first being a description of the patterns of nature, and the second a prescriptive outline for social and intellectual behavior—these two sections are united in their use of grammatical parallelism across multiple half-lines. As with the repeated use of atemian

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derivatives, the parallel structure of these sections subtly connects these two spheres of activity, suggesting that similar rules govern the behavior of human and other-than-human beings. The structure of the poem thus quite literally models the kinship connections it seeks to describe. Indeed, identification of these kinship connections is central to the poem’s organizational structure and its perspective on the Earth community. Robert Di Napoli has described the poem as a “chain of associations” connected by what he calls “conceptual pivots”: words, phrases, or ideas through which the poem shifts from one idea to the next.39 These conceptual pivots act as a stepping stone between topics, pointing to the next maxim while clarifying details of the previous. DiNapoli uses lines 22-26 of the poem as an illustrative example: Ræd sceal mid snyttro, til sceal mid tilum. sceal wif ond wer bearn mid gebyrdum. leafum liþan, (22-26)

ryht mid wisum, Tu beoð gemæccan; in woruld cennan Beam sceal on eorðan leomu gnornian.

Counsel must come with wisdom, the righteous with the wise, virtue must come with the virtuous. Two are mates; a woman and man must bring forth into the world a child through birth. A tree on earth must lose its leaves, mourn its branches.

This excerpt is comprised of three discrete sets of maxims: the first, in lines 22-23a, describes the ideal behavior of just and wise men; the second, lines 23b-25a, explains how children are brought into the world; the third, lines 25b-26, endows a barren tree with specific and concrete emotion. This random string of associations is made less random in DiNapoli’s reading; he writes that [The poet] first establishes a sequence of plausibly juxtaposed pairings: ‘good counsel’ with ‘foresight’, ‘justice’ with wisdom’ and the tautological pairing of ‘virtue’ with the ‘virtuous’. These […] pairings set up his mention of ‘the two’ in his next clause, which in turn points towards a completely different pairing, the sexual union of a man and a woman that generates 39 Di Napoli, “World of Wonders,” 60.

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new life on earth. From one perspective, he appears to be suggesting a metaphorical association between the fruitfulness of physical engendering and the moral and practical fruitfulness of his more abstract couplings. But he is able to use the generative aspect of that metaphor’s second term as a conceptual pivot, by means of which he can proceed to his next item, the tree, as an image of pure generation, associated however, through the loss of its leaves with the mortality that is a necessary concomitant to any earthly generation. 40

DiNapoli’s reading of the text, then, moves from abstract pairings (counsel/ wisdom, virtue/virtuous) to a concrete and explicitly fruitful pair (man and woman) and then to a singular fruitful being (the tree). These conceptual pivots require the audience to identify kinship connections between seemingly disparate images and ideas, and to understand that there are similarities between men and trees, and that those similarities are worth exploring. Significantly, the mourning tree and the mated pair in this passage share more than mere generative potential: Susan E. Deskis has shown that the image of the mourning tree in Old Norse-Icelandic poetry often “involves the representation of a bereaved parent as the trunk of a tree, while the deceased children are symbolized by leaves or branches.”41 However, the explicit comparison between human and tree in Maxims I does more than just foreshadow the discussion of infant mortality which follows five lines later; it also reminds the audience that, as sure as men and women bring children into the world, no living thing can escape death. This memento mori also looks back to the opening lines’ comparison between eternal God and His mortal creation. And indeed the narrator makes this clear in the lines immediately following: Fus sceal feran, ond dogra gehwam middangeardes. (27-29b)

fæge sweltan ymb gedal sacan

The one ready for death must go, the doomed one die, and every day fight against the separation from all this Earth. 40 Ibid, emphasis mine. 41 Deskis, “The Gnomic Woman in Old English Poetry,” 139.

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The adjectives fus (“ready for death”) and fæge (“doomed”) are used across the Old English corpus to describe humans and animals, animate and inanimate objects alike; they act here as another reminder of the universal nature of mortality on Earth. These lines connect human and other-than-human rituals and discourage the privileging of human experience in poetic discussion of life and death. 42 The conceptual pivot of the mourning tree collapses the distance between human activity and that of the other-than-human, and figures humanity as one part of God’s creation, ultimately as vulnerable to loss and sorrow as a simple tree. Significantly, this conceptual pivot relies on an equivalence between the different types of gnomes which comprise the poem: in this case, those prescribing human activity and those describing the activity of other-than-human beings. I have argued that the poem’s introduction, like the introduction to The Order of the World, explicitly recalls the riddling tradition, encouraging creative critical engagement with the text in an active exchange of wisdom. DiNapoli’s conceptual pivots, then, are more than just an organizational tool: they constitute the foundation of the poem itself. For Maxims I to be anything other than an arbitrary collection of “what is known” requires an audience willing to explore the intricate connections between seemingly unconnected gnomes and, it follows, seemingly unrelated images or ideas. 43 The work of the poem, as its opening lines suggest, is in the unraveling of these conceptual pivots, and consideration of their significance to the individual images or ideas they connect. As the poem describes ideal and actual patterns of behavior across the Earth community, it also maps out connections between human and other-than-human beings. The structure of Maxims I may thus be said to aff irm the modern ecotheological principle of interconnectedness, the idea that individual elements within an ecosystem are intricately connected through systems of exchange, even if those connections are not immediately apparent to outside observers. Though the connections between individual gnomes within the text of Maxims I are not always immediately apparent, careful study of the arrangement of the poem reveals a web of conceptual pivots. The significance of individual gnomes—the heart of the poem itself—is only really clear once we understand these conceptual pivots and the kinship connections they reveal. I conclude this chapter by examining one moment 42 Taylor, “Heroic Ritual in the Old English Maxims,” 395. 43 The presence of nearly 100 riddles alongside Maxims I in the Exeter Book suggests that our scribe expected that this particular audience was up to the challenge. See Chapter III for more.

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in the poem which considers the implications of human entanglement in the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries,” Order, l. 15). The mourning tree passage discussed above is not the only place in Maxims I where humans are explicitly compared to trees. Lines 92-98 of the poem, the famous “Frisian wife” passage, further connect women and wood: Scip sceal genægled, leoht linden bord; Frysan wife biþ his ceol cumen agen æt-geofa, wæsceð his warig hrægl liþ him on londe (92-98)

scyld gebunden, leof wilcuma þonne flota stondeð; ond hyre ceorl to ham, ond heo hine in laðaþ, ond him syleþ wæde niwe, þæs his lufu bædeð.

A ship must be nailed, a shield bound, the light linden board. The welcome one is dear to the Frisian wife when the boat stops; his ship has come and her husband is home, her own provider, and she leads him in, washes his dirty clothes and gives him new garments, lies with him on land as his love bids.

This passage is often read as a natural progression of the description of queenly duties preceding it in lines 83b-91; Susan Deskis, for example, suggests that the passage represents “a corresponding norm for a wife of non-royal status.”44 However, I argue that the most important comparison in this passage and the lines which follow is not between royal and common women, but rather between the Frisian wife and the natural elements which immediately impact her life and the maritime activities of her husband. Insisting on the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human spheres of activity—rather than isolating and reading the women together before turning to an entirely new topic, the sea—opens up new interpretations of both set of gnomes. The somewhat jarring transition between the description of manipulation of raw material into common objects used by the Frisian sailor (the transformation of the linden wood board into scip and scyld in lines 92-93) and the description of the Frisian wife which follows requires, once again, 44 Deskis, “Gnomic Woman in Old English Poetry,” 142.

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a conceptual pivot comparing wood and women. In this case, both the linden tree and the Frisian wife are put into the service of the sailor, who is nevertheless dependent on their assistance. The sailor cannot travel without a ship, nor he can he defend himself without a shield: he relies on the flexibility and protective qualities of the leoht linden bord even as he manipulates it from its natural state into one more useful for his purposes. Similarly, though the sailor provides food and possibly income for his wife, he relies on her to wash and repair his clothes, and to provide the comfort at home which he has missed at sea. The intimate give-and-take of the description of the sailor and his wife in the second half of the passage softens the violence of the verbs genægled (“nailed”) and gebunden (“bound”) in line 92, and challenges the narrative of male dominance of the rest of the world. Women and wood, the poem suggests, are not always at the mercy of the men they seem to serve. After a brief interlude lamenting the faithlessness of women more generally, the poet returns once again to the subject of the Frisian sailor and his wife, though the tone is somewhat darker here: hwonne him eft gebyre weorðe, ham cymeð gif he hal leofað mere hafað mundum (103b-105)

nefne him holm gestyreð, mægð agen wyn.

when the chance comes to him [the sailor] again he comes home, if he lives safely, unless the waves restrain him, the sea has in its hands the maiden’s own joy. 45

Here again, humanity’s presumed dominance over the natural world comes into question: the active imagery of the phrases him holm gestyreð (“the waves restrain him”) and mere hafað mundum (“the sea has in its hands”) explicitly suggests that the timing and ease of the sailor’s return are not entirely in his hands, but rather dependent on the active forces of the Earth community and the willingness of the other-than-human to release him back to his wife’s embrace. However, this is not an entirely intimidating scene; as Carl Berkhout notes, “agen wyn as an epithet for the sailor is anticipated in agen æt-geofa” (“her own provider”) in line 96 of the poem.46 The parallel 45 Though disagreement persists as to the exact meaning of this final half-line, I follow Krapp and Dobbie and Berkhout in transposing a few characters in the manuscript’s original mægð egsan wyn to read mægð agen wyn. 46 Berkhout, “Critical Edition,” 106.

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phrasing here identifies important kinship connections between the Frisian wife, her husband, and the sea; the intimacy of the relationship between the husband and wife is imposed on the somewhat scarier—though no less significant—relationship between sailor and sea. Just as the Frisian wife liþ him on londe (“lies with him [the sailor] on land,” l. 98), so here the waves embrace him under the sea. Justin T. Noetzel has suggested that watery landscapes in Beowulf act as an “unholy and uncanny reflection of solid land,” an eerie mirror of the human community at Heorot. 47 Similarly, the sea in this excerpt of Maxims I acts as an alternative domestic space, another home to return to with a different—though no less passionate—kind of embrace. The emphasis on kinship connections in this passage means that the sea is depicted as both an active participant in the drama of the sailor’s journey and an alternative source of intimacy: another important relationship to nurture. The intricate strands connecting the Frisian wife, her husband, and the holm (“waves”) on which he sails may suggest a desire to alleviate the anxieties associated with sea travel. By reframing the sea’s deadly grasp as a shadowy reflection of a loving embrace on land, the poem presents a gentler alternative to the stark loneliness of an anonymous death at sea. However, what makes these lines remarkable is the way in which they collapse the distance between human and natural spheres of activity to pre-lapsarian levels. The work of ecotheologians such as Kellyanne Falkenberg Wolfe suggests that, following the exile from Eden, human (and especially feminine and domestic) activity was severed from and thrown into conflict with other-than-human lives: in the post-lapsarian world, “each character is relegated to a particular sphere, with conflict and oppression occurring at the borders of each sphere where residents of different domains come into contact.”48 The loss of a husband and provider to the sea seems a reasonable consequence of this exile from the sacred ecosystem. And yet, it is possible to read a powerful sense of longing in these lines. By framing the waves’ embrace as an alternate homecoming under the sea, the poem imagines reintegration into the sacred ecosystem after death. Wolfe has suggested that Genesis 3:19—“you are dust, and to dust you shall return”—can be read as “the promise of rest in and reconciliation with the estranged earth”; this passage may similarly imagine surrender to the sea’s embrace as a kind of ecological reconciliation. 49 Framing death at sea as a kind of homecoming 47 Noetzel, “Monster, Demon, Warrior,” 110. 48 Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy,” 89. 49 Wolfe, “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy”, 100.

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may have helped to ameliorate anxiety about sea travel by lessening the perceived threat of the sea. My reading of the poem reflects an Old English ecotheology which affirmed the interconnectedness of the Earth community, largely anticipating the work of Val Plumwood and other ecofeminists who seek to dispel ideas about masculine dominance of the natural world in favor of a more inclusive perspective on the interconnectedness of the Earth community.

Conclusions My analysis of the wisdom poetry of the Exeter Book suggests that affirming and exploring the interconnectedness of the created world may have been an important goal of Old English poets. Faced with increasingly dramatic environmental change in the years approaching the millennium, the authors of these poems frequently engaged the non-human members of creation through their work. As a genre intended for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge, wisdom poetry provides a unique glimpse into Old English ecotheology, and suggests that early medieval English thinkers understood and affirmed the interconnectedness of the Earth community. The Old English poetry of the Exeter Book suggests an environmental philosophy guided by a search for continuity even in the face of conflict. I have argued that The Order of the World encourages active engagement with the natural world as a manifestation of divine creativity: the Order-poet suggests that sustained poetic adoration of creation is an appropriate method of praising the Creator. Moreover, echoing Ælfric, the Order-poet speaks to both the inherent goodness of the created world and the its ability to call out in praise of the Creator. In an important departure, however, The Order of the World not only encourages devotion, but actively models it, with the poem-within-the-poem serving as an exemplary exploration of the natural world. I have also argued that Maxims I provides an example of poetic exploration. The various gnomes which comprise Maxims I are intricately interconnected, describing the ideal and actual activity of a wide variety of human and non-human actors. The use of conceptual pivots within and between these gnomes encourages the audience to think creatively about the connections between ordinary things, such as the relationship between husband and wife, the manipulation of natural materials into useful objects, and the perils of sea travel. By highlighting kinship connections between human and other-than-human members of the Earth community, the author of Maxims I affirms the interconnectedness of life on Earth.

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Together, The Order of the World and Maxims I reflect the Old English ecotheology articulated so clearly in the homiletical work of Ælfric and Wulfstan. Like the Old English homilists, the authors of these poems present the gesceaft (“creation”) as a series of interconnected systems crafted by a loving Creator. These texts also anticipate the work of modern ecotheologians such as the Earth Bible Team, who argue that “Earth is a community of interconnected living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival.”50 The wisdom poems The Order of the World and Maxims I both figure the created world as a deeply entangled web. The Order of the World encourages poetic engagement with that web as a way of understanding and praising the Creator, while Maxims I, an example of one such poetic attempt, writes a world in which non-human forces act in familiar, rather than entirely threatening, ways. These poems suggest that articulating the intricate webs which connected the divine ecosystem may have been an important concern for early medieval English poets. The modern environmental movement might similarly benefit from highlighting the kinship connections between human and other-thanhuman beings as a part of their efforts to combat environmental crises. Until we acknowledge that humans depend on the other-than-human elements of the Earth community, we cannot address our vulnerability to those forces. The example of these Old English wisdom poems suggests that highlighting kinship connections is an important part of this process. My next chapter turns the Exeter riddle collection, a group of texts which give voice to the other-than-human beings at the end of those connections.

Bibliography Barney, Stephen A., W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, editors. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Berkhout, Carl. “A Critical Edition of the Old English Gnomic Poems.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Notre Dame, 1975. Bjork, Robert E., editor. Old English Shorter Poems Volume II: Wisdom and Lyric. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 32. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Burberry, Timothy J. “Ecocriticism and Christian Literary Scholarship.” Christianity and Literature 61 (2012): 189-214. Cavill, Paul. Maxims in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999. 50 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 24.

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Cicero: Rhetorica ad Herennium. Translated by Harry Caplan. Loeb Classical Library 403. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964. Conybeare, John Josias. Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Edited by William Conybeare. London: Harding and Lepard, 1826. Deskis, Susan E. “The Gnomic Woman in Old English Poetry.” Philological Quarterly 20 (1994): 133-149. Di Napoli, Robert. “World of Wonders: The Shaping of Reality in Maxims I.” The Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 2 (2006): 57-68. Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, edited by Norman C. Habel, 42-53. Sheff ield: Sheff ield University Press, 2000. Gneuss, Helmut. “The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England.” In Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, edited by Donald Scragg, 75-105. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003. Krapp, George Phillip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. The Exeter Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III. Morningside Heights: Columbia University Press, 1936. Liuzza, R.M., editor and translator. Old English Poetry: An Anthology. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2014. Murphy, James Elby. “The Function of Gnomic Generalizations in Old English Poetry.” Ph.D. dissertation, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1972. Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Book Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. Napier, Arthur S. Old English Glosses, Chiefly Unpublished. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900. Noetzel, Justin T. “Monster, Demon, Warrior: St. Guðlacand the Cultural Landscape of the Anglo-Saxon Fens.” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 45 (2014): 105-131. O’Camb, Brian. “Exeter Maxims, The Order of the World, and the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry.” Philological Quarterly 93.4 (2014): 409-433. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 2003. Price, Joseph E. “Some Aspects of the Gnomic Elements in Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Tennessee, 1967. Shippey, T.A. Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English. Cambridge: Brewer, 1976. Taylor, Paul B. “Heroic Ritual in the Old English Maxims.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969): 387-407. Thorpe, Benjamin. Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. London: The Ælfric Society, 1884. Wehlau, Ruth. “Rumination and Re-creation: Poetic Instruction in The Order of the World.” Florilegium 13 (1994): 65-77.

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White, Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207. Wilcox, Jonathan, editor. Ælfric’s Prefaces. Durham Medieval Texts 9. Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994. Williamson, Craig. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Wolfe, Kellyanne Falkenberg. “Creation, Crisis, and Comedy: An Ecocritical Reading of the Eden Story, Joel and Jonah.” Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 2011.

3.

Identity, Affirmation, and Resistance in the Exeter Riddle Collection Abstract The Exeter riddle collection imagines voices for the Earth community. The bird riddles (6 and 7) exploit similarities between human and avian behaviors to affirm the intrinsic worth of the Earth community even when it makes humans uncomfortable. The horn riddles (12 and 76) give voice to other-than-human beings celebrating their participation in heroic culture: these riddles imagine that animal-objects find pleasure and purpose in their “work”, despite removal from their natural state. However, the wood-weapon riddles (3, 51, and 71) reveal an awareness that conscription into human service is not always in the best interest of the other-than-human. These thematic clusters suggest an interest in the inherent worth, active voice, and purpose of the non-human natural world. Keywords: animal studies, animal consciousness, corvids, weaponry

In her recent volume on The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles, Corrinne Dale argues that the collection provides “an ethics of human-nature interaction,” rather than any explicit attempt at nature poetry, as Stopford Brooke once suggested.1 Whereas Aldhelm’s Anglo-Latin enigmata, a nearcontemporaneous collection of riddles, “may show the careful attention to nature of a naturalist,” Dale suggests that the Exeter riddle collection reveals instead “a particular interest in the natural origins of [human]made objects.”2 Reading the riddles alongside modern ecotheological texts, as I have done with the wisdom poems, Dale identifies a “programme of resistance to anthropocentrism in the Exeter Book riddle collection.”3 1 Dale, Natural World, 4, quoting Stopford Brooke, English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest, 96. 2 Dale, Natural World, 5 3 Dale, Natural World, 25

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_ch03

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Acknowledging the long tradition of anthropocentric readings of the riddles, Dale’s book seeks “to negotiate these readings, understand their reasoning, and seek alternative methods of understanding […] in order to examine what is usually overlooked”—that is, the other-than-human actors in these riddles.4 Jennifer Neville has suggested that early medieval English audiences, too, sought multiple simultaneous readings for their riddles: she shows that “continuing the interpretive process past an initial answer” was an essential part of the Old English riddling tradition in and beyond the Exeter Book.5 Neville suggests that, for the original early medieval English audience of Riddle 7, for instance, “recognizing the cuckoo is merely the beginning of the story,” the first step in identifying a broad “interpretive space that is not necessarily bound to be filled.”6 Within this complex interpretive space, she argues, Riddle 7 can be read simultaneously as social commentary on the practice of fostering and as an allegorical representation of the devil’s temptation of the spirit. Crucially, however, Neville suggests that “the game that it presents to its audience […] does not end with any ‘solution’.”7 Rather, the reward of the riddle is the creative journey through multiple possible interpretations. As Dale has it: “it is precisely the ambiguity, the complex relationship between dual meanings, that is the joy of metaphor and of riddles” for medieval readers.8 The significant ecocritical work published on the Exeter riddle collection by scholars like Neville and Dale is a testament to both the collection’s resistance to anthropocentric readings and the delight that early medieval English audiences took in ambiguity and interpretation. In the previous chapter, I argued that it is possible to identify a similar “program of resistance” in the wisdom poetry of the Exeter Book.9 Poems such as The Order of the World and Maxims I require an audience willing and able to think creatively about the kinships connecting human and other-than-human beings. I have suggested that these wisdom poems reflect an Old English ecotheology which affirms the interconnectedness of the Earth community, and that mapping out kinship connections between various members of 4 Dale, Natural World, 19 5 Jennifer Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 431. 6 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 446, quoting Perniola, Enigmas, trans. Christopher Woodhall, 10. Throughout this chapter, I follow the numbering found in Williamson’s critical edition of The Old English Riddles though I will include the corresponding Krapp-Dobie number in the footnotes. Williamson’s Riddle 7 is Krapp-Dobie’s Riddle 9. 7 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 446. 8 Dale, Natural World, 22 9 Dale, Natural World, 25.

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that community may have been an important concern for early medieval English audiences. I have argued that, in their insistence on the importance of mapping out the searo-runa gespon (“the web of mysteries, Order l. 15) that constitute the Earth community, these wisdom poems anticipate the second of the Earth Bible’s ecojustice principles, which affirms that “Earth is a community of interconnected living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival.”10 Indeed, I have suggested that the work of interpreting these wisdom poems requires an understanding of that interconnectedness. In this chapter, I will suggest that the Exeter riddle collection reveals a profound interest in understanding and amplifying the lived experience of the other-than-human beings at the end of those connections: the plants, animals, and minerals who, alongside their human neighbors, constitute the Earth community. My first chapter suggested that, while The Order of the World claims that no human can truly understand the mysteries of creation, Maxims I hints at the possible subjectivity of waves and wood. In this chapter, I will argue that, although it would be impossible for any human, medieval or modern, to ever truly understand the lived experience of a cuckoo or a tree-turned-shield, the riddles open up productive space for exploration of the impact of human activity on our other-than-human counterparts. As an anthology of embodied experiences, the Exeter riddle collection affirms and amplifies the independent subjectivity and voice of all types of beings. The process of reading the riddles is an act of radical resistance to anthropocentric thought in and of itself: as Dale notes, “reader performance [of the riddles] can act as an aid, a medium of expression, for what would otherwise be silent figures” in the early medieval English imagination.11 As they detail the varied experiences of the other-thanhuman, these purposefully intimate depictions of animal, plant, and mineral beings affirm the modern ecotheological belief in the intrinsic worth and purpose of every member of the Earth community, and in that community’s ability to speak in celebration or against injustice. Crucially, the Exeter riddle collection does not present a coherent ecotheology; rather, groups of riddles within the collection offer up multiple perspectives on the influence of human activity and desire on other-than-human beings. I begin this chapter with a brief exploration of the organization and authorship of the Exeter riddle collection, arguing that the probability of multiple authors attests to a widespread interest in other-than-human 10 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 24. 11 Dale, Natural World, 65

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identity in the early medieval imagination. I show that the early medieval English understanding of riddles was fundamentally different from our own, and outline the early medieval reading practices which guide my analysis of the texts. Because finding a solution was not the primary focus of the Old English riddle tradition, this chapter will not parse the text to justify my solutions. Rather, I will provide the riddles in full and offer my readings as a demonstration of the possibility of ecotheological readings across the collection. My analysis of the Exeter riddle collection begins with two bird riddles—Riddle 6 (usually solved as nightingale) and Riddle 7 (usually solved as cuckoo)—which affirm the modern ecotheological principle of intrinsic worth by attributing complex histories, relationships, and emotions to otherthan-human beings.12 I argue that the use of intense emotional language throughout these riddles would likely evoke empathy from their original audience, leading to an emotional connection between human reader and avian subject. The bird riddles force audiences to confront and affirm the independent subjectivity and intrinsic worth of their other-than-human neighbors, even when it makes humans uncomfortable. Riddle 6 gives human voice to an already raucous songbird in what I argue is a deliberately comic attempt to justify and even celebrate the birds’ interruption of monastic silence. I show that, as it gives voice to the joy the nightingale feels in sharing its song, Riddle 6 inspires empathy for the inevitable annoyances of the natural world, potentially serving as an outlet for human frustration. As I noted above, Riddle 7 has been read as a social commentary on the practice of fostering.13 However, I show that the riddle encourages audience identif ication with the cuckoo chick, and not the foster-mother or her neglected biological children, and that the speaker describes the species’ seemingly parasitic nesting practices with gratitude, rather than disgust or guilt. Together, these two riddles present birds’-eye views of familiar situations which actively invert anthropocentric thought by affirming the independent subjectivity of the non-human natural world. The second half of this chapter turns to a group of riddles within the Exeter collection which describe transformative objects: animals and plants taken from their “natural” state and transformed into instruments for human use. Like the wisdom poems, these riddles of transformation stress the interconnectedness of the Earth community by demonstrating the extent to which human activity relies on the labor and bodies of other-than-human 12 Riddle 6 is K-D Riddle 8; Riddle 7 is K-D Riddle 9. 13 See Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 436-439.

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beings. Some of these riddles of transformation, such as the paired horn riddles Riddle 12 and Riddle 76, imagine a world in which other-than-human beings are not passive participants in human activity, but rather find purpose in their “work,” despite their conscription into human service. The suggestion that these non-human beings, like their human counterparts, take joy and pride in their participation in heroic culture is a uniquely Old English reflection of the modern ecotheological principle that “Earth and all its components are a part of a dynamic cosmic design” and that every member of creation “has a place in the overall of that design.”14 Despite this literally anthropocentric worldview, I argue that these riddles reflect a desire to claim space within early medieval heroic culture for other-than-human beings. However, other riddles reflect an uncomfortable awareness that not all transformative objects are so willing to be conscripted. The wood-weapon riddles—Riddle 3 (usually solved as shield), Riddle 51 (usually solved as battering ram), and Riddle 71 (usually solved as spear or arrow)—attest to the suffering of non-human beings in preparation for, during, and after their service in human warfare. These riddles demonstrate the concrete negative effects of the interconnectedness of the gesceaft (“creation”) and give voice to the suffering of non-humans as a result of human violence. I argue that they therefore anticipate and affirm the modern ecotheological principle that creation is “capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.”15 Collectively, these riddles of transformation reflect both an awareness of human culpability for non-human suffering and an imaginative longing for a world in which non-humans are joyous participants in heroic culture. My analysis of these three groups of bird riddles, horn riddles, and wood-weapon riddles will suggest that the Exeter riddle collection as a whole reveals a keen interest in the independent subjectivity, inherent worth, and active voice of non-human beings, anticipating the work of modern environmentalists and ecotheologians. My comparison of these three thematic groups to modern nature documentary series like Planet Earth (2006, 2016) and Our Planet (2019) will show that, despite Dale’s assertion that “writers and readers of past texts would not have faced the same concerns as we do today,” early medieval audiences sought to understand their non-human neighbors through narrative in the same way as their modern counterparts.16 My goal is not to develop a universal argument about the role of the non-human within the Exeter riddle collection, but 14 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 24. 15 Ibid. 16 Dale, Natural World, 19.

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rather to explore the Old English ecotheology underlying these depictions of other-than-human beings and bodies celebrated, used, and abused in heroic culture.

Ambiguous interpretation in the Exeter riddle collection Before turning to the three thematic groups of bird, horn, and wood-weapon riddles, a brief note on the collection as a whole. The Exeter riddle collection is actually comprised of three separate collections: the first group, containing Riddles 1-27, 28a, and 29-57, appears on folios 101 recto to 115 recto; the second, smallest group, containing Riddle 28b and Riddle 58, appears on folios 122 verso to 123 recto; the third group, containing Riddles 59-91, concludes the Exeter Book on folios 123 verso to 130 verso.17 Between these three blocks of riddles are two interludes containing eight and three poems, respectively. Although, like most of the manuscript, the Exeter riddle collection offers few clues as to authorship and dating, Peter Orton’s analysis of the collection has convincingly demonstrated a number of differences between the first and third blocks of riddles which suggest that they were composed by at least two separate authors.18 While all of the riddles in the first block use “first-person form for riddles with single or simple solutions [and] thirdperson for riddles with multiple or composite solutions,” the third block has no such organizing principle, combining first- and third-person riddles in an “apparently haphazard distribution.”19 In addition, while the first block of riddles contains “short sequences of texts identifiable by stylistic or thematic repetitions,” such as the sequence of four speaking birds in Riddles 5-8, the third block of riddles “contains no similar internal sequences or patterns.”20 Ultimately, Orton concludes that the first block constitutes the “kind of serial cohesion that might well indicate the working habits of a single poet,” while the third block reveals a “general disorganization” and “air of provinciality” suggesting the work of at least one other, apparently less skilled riddler.21 In addition, Orton suggests that repeated solutions in the first and third blocks indicate that “most, if not all” of the riddles in block 3 were “probably inspired by riddles available to the poet in some existing 17 Williamson, Old English Riddles, xxvi. 18 Orton, “The Exeter Book Riddles,” 161. 19 Orton, “The Exeter Book Riddles,” 152-153, 160. 20 Orton, “The Exeter Book Riddles,” 161-162. 21 Orton, “The Exeter Book Riddles,” 161.

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version of the block 1 series.”22 In other words, the first block of riddles are likely the oldest, and were compiled by a skilled, organized riddler; the third block was compiled at a later date, in a less organized manner, and was likely inspired by the extant riddles in the first block. Although Orton’s analysis of the first and third block of riddles opens up fascinating possibilities for further consideration of the authorship, compilation, and circulation of Old English riddles, this chapter will not seek to explicitly compare individual riddles across the three blocks of the Exeter riddle collection. Rather, assuming Williamson and Orton are correct in attributing the collection to multiple authors, I will use thematic similarities across the two main blocks of riddles to demonstrate the extent to which ecotheological concerns penetrated the literary imagination of early medieval England. That at least two early medieval English writers used the genre of the riddle to explore the identities and experiences of other-than-human beings suggests that this may have been a cultural, rather than an individual, interest. Although, as Williamson notes, the authors of these riddles were “lovers of nature […] and careful observers of the world about them,” not all of the riddles are drawn from personal observation.23 Dieter Bitterli has shown that “the Riddles were not produced in a cultural vacuum, but emerged from an intellectual milieu of monastic literature and Latin book-learning.”24 Moreover, Bitterli notes that the riddles “also participate in the indigenous tradition of vernacular poetry, exemplified in the very heroic and ‘elegiac’ pieces” for which the Exeter Book is most famous, such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer.25 The Exeter riddle collection thus represents the conscious integration of lived experience, literary tradition, and continental and insular learning. These riddles, then, like the wisdom poems, offer an especially well-informed glimpse into early medieval thinking about the non-human natural world. However, the enigmatic and ambiguous nature of Old English riddles makes this collection a refraction—rather than a true reflection—of life in early medieval England. As Neville notes, there is a “fundamental difference between the [early medieval English] expectations of these texts and our own, modern expectations of riddles.”26 While modern readers understand riddles in simple terms as “questions with answers […] a simple two-part, open-and-shut 22 Ibid. 23 Williamson, Old English Riddles, 12. 24 Bitterli, Say What I Am Called, 4-5. 25 Bitterli, Say What I Am Called, 5. 26 Neville, “The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights,” 124.

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structure,” the Exeter riddle collection offers no solutions, “no authority to validate any solution or to terminate the process of interpretation.”27 Indeed, the modern fascination with proposing and rejecting solutions to the riddles is ultimately anachronistic for, as little as we know about the Exeter riddle collection, we can be sure that finding a single solution was not a part of their reception in early medieval England. As Jennifer Neville notes, “we know that the compiler of the manuscript did not intend solutions to be given, because they are not there” but also because “no [early medieval English] readers of the manuscript saw fit to fill in what is, for the modern reader, a perceived absence by supplying solutions in the form of marginal annotations.”28 Neville argues that it is precisely this lack of authority or “solution” which made the riddles so intriguing for early medieval audiences: “the failure to find a single ‘inner click’ ensures the success of the text in inspiring an interpretive process that is not terminated too soon.”29 For early medieval English audiences, the goal was not to “solve” the riddle specifically, but rather to open up “a broad interpretive space” in which they could explore new perspectives on familiar beings, objects, and situations.30 Like the wisdom poems, the Exeter riddle collection required its audience to make creative connections between seemingly unconnected things. Rather than the simple question-and-answer structure expected of modern riddles, the Exeter riddle collection offers “interrogations of appearances, displacements of the familiar, and radical distortions of the known,” requiring extended creative engagement with the creature or creatures being described.31 Throughout this chapter, I will present each of the riddles in its entirety before providing my reading of the poem in order to mimic the interpretive space produced by these early medieval English reading practices. Although my readings are necessarily guided by specific “solutions,” I will not attempt to prove these or reject any others; rather, I will offer Earth-centered readings made possible by both this broad interpretive space and the Old English ecotheology revealed in the homiletic work of Ælfric and Wulfstan. My readings of the riddles are, of course, not the only ones possible, and my goal is not to suggest that these riddles necessitate Earth-centered readings. Indeed, the riddles actively resist such easy identification. However, by demonstrating the possibility of Earth-centered readings for multiple riddles across the collection, 27 Ibid. 28 Neville, “The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights,” 123. 29 Neville, “The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights,” 138. 30 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 446. 31 Neville, “The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights,”139.

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I hope to show that the Exeter riddle collection, like the wisdom poems, reveal a profound interest in the experience of other-than-human beings which in many ways anticipates the rhetoric of modern environmental movements.

Birds’-Eye View: Riddle 6 and Riddle 7 Early in the Exeter riddle collection there is a cluster of four first-person riddles which are generally taken as descriptions of birds: Riddle 5, usually solved as swan, Riddle 6, usually solved as nightingale, Riddle 7, usually solved as cuckoo, and Riddle 8, usually solved as barnacle goose.32 Each of these avian autobiographies is remarkable in its own way, and as a collection they demonstrate the flexibility of the riddle as a genre, even given a restricted subject matter. Because my primary interest in this chapter is the interaction of human and other-than-human beings within the riddles, I limit my discussion here to Riddle 6 and Riddle 7, both of which explicitly evoke human emotions and history in their narratives, albeit in very different ways. Following the silent grace of the swan in Riddle 5, the speaker of Riddle 6 cries out raucously for our attention: Ic þurh muþ sprece wrencum singe, heafodwoþe, healde mine wisan: Eald æfensceop, blisse in burgum stefne styrme; siteð swigende. þa swa scirenige hlude onhyrge, wilcumena fela

mongum reordum, wrixle geneahhe hlude cirme hleoþre ne miþe. eorlum bringe þonne ic bugendre stille on wicum Saga hwæt ic hatte, sceawendwisan hæleþum bodige woþe minre.

I speak through my mouth with many voices, sing in modulated tones, frequently change my head-voice, cry out loudly, 32 K-D Riddles 7-10. For more on Riddle 5, see Meaney, “Birds on the Stream of Consciousness,” 120-52 and Kitson, “Swans and Geese in Old English Riddles,” 79-84. Brooke, The History of Early English Literature was the first to identify Riddle 8 as “barnacle goose,” and little has been written on the riddle since then.

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stick to my ways: to shout, and not to conceal my voice. Old singer of the evening, I bring to earls bliss in the cities, when to the citizens I direct my voice: still in their homes, they sit silently. Say what I am called, who, like a minstrel, loudly imitates dramatic songs, proclaims to the people many welcome tidings with my voice.

Neville and Williamson have shown that the references to mongum reordum (“many voices”) and wrencum singe (“sing[ing] in modulated tones”) in the riddle’s opening lines echo descriptions of the nightingale in Pliny’s Historia naturalis, a text known to have circulated in early medieval England.33 In addition, as Mercedes Salvador Bello and others note, the speaker’s selfdesignation as æfensceop provides another clear hint towards his identity: like the old English word nihte-gale (“nightingale”), this compound combines a temporal element (æfen, “evening”) with an element indicating creative production (sceop, “poet”).34 The emphasis in these modern solutions on intertextuality and written wordplay is strange, because this is a remarkably aural riddle. Indeed, given the emphasis on sound in the opening lines, it almost doesn’t matter which species of bird we identify (wood pigeon, jay, jackdaw, and thrush have all been suggested) as long as we agree that the speaker is a songbird of some kind, for above all else, the speaker of Riddle 6 identif ies as a singer.35 The relentless repetition in the poem’s opening lines of first-person verbs concerning the production of sound—sprece (“speak,” 1a), singe (“sing,” 2a), crime (“cry out,” 3b), and hleoþre (“shout,” 4b)—makes it clear that the speaker’s ability to regulate the tone and volume of his voice is central to his identity. Indeed, the assertion in line 4 that for the speaker to healde mine wisan (“stick to my ways”) they must hleoþre ne miþe (“shout and not conceal [my voice]”) indicates that silence is antithetical to his nature: this raucous noise is simply a manifestation of the creature’s natural behavior. The phrase mine wisa, a catch-all term meaning something like “my ways” or “the way I am,” is used throughout the Exeter riddles to explain the behavior of other-than-human beings. In some instances, these behaviors 33 Williamson, Old English Riddles, 126-127. 34 See Salvador Bello, “The Evening Singer of Riddle 8 (K-D),” 57-58. The masculine compound also identifies the speaker as male. 35 For an overview of modern solutions to this riddle see Williamson, Riddles, 126-128.

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are directly tied to human activity: for example, the speaking horn of Riddle 76, who celebrates his participation in human rituals, boasts that god is mine wisa (“my ways are good,” 11b).36 Elsewhere, the wisa of other-than-human beings conflict with human needs and desires, as in Riddle 71, when a tree, transformed by humans into a weapon, bitterly laments that human conscription onwendan mine wisan (“changed my ways,” 5b). In these examples and throughout the collection, the speaking being justifies its actions (or resistance to action) by attributing it to mine wisa. These self-aware accounts of mine wisa can be read as a reflection of Ælfric’s assertion that God shaped all of creation according to their agen gecynd (“own nature”).37 If, as line 4 of Riddle 6 suggests, noisiness is inherent to the speaker’s wisa, and if, as Ælfric’s ecotheology asserts, God was intentional in the shaping of His creation swa swa hit þære godcundlican fadunge gelicode (“so as it seemed good to His divine dispensation”), then the songbird’s relentless singing can be read as yet another remarkable sign of the diversity and wonder of that creation.38 Indeed, mine wisa might be used in place of agen gecynd; both affirm the Creator’s interest in the intrinsic worth of the other-than-human. By presenting the songbird’s joyful noise as a part of a holy and wholly intentional design, Riddle 6 preempts any possible objections to this joyful noise by explaining why the speaker chooses hleoþre ne miþe (“to shout, and not conceal my voice,” 4b): because that’s the way God made him. Crucially, this is not merely a justification of the noisy bird’s behavior, but an active celebration of the nightingale’s talent. It is clear that the nightingale takes pride in his role, describing himself in decidedly heroic language as an eald æfensceop (“ancient singer of the evening,” 5a). The nightingale also claims to influence human emotion (eorlum bringe blisse in burgum: “I bring delight to earls in cities,” 5b-6a) and action (hælþum bodige wilcumena fela: “proclaims to the people many welcome tidings,” 10b-11, a reference to the early medieval belief that the nightingale acted as a harbinger of spring).39 The active noise of the speaker—ic bugendre stefne styrme (“I direct my voice to the citizens,” 6b-7a)—stands in remarkable contrast to the conspicuous silence of the citizens themselves, who siteð nigende (“sit silently,” 8a) in their homes. 40 The nightingale (and, by extension the 36 K-D Riddle 80. 37 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 274. See my Introduction above. 38 Ibid. 39 The nightingale as a herald of spring is described in Pliny’s Naturalis Historia. See Williamson, Old English Riddles, 158. 40 I follow Tupper and Trautmann in reading MS nigende as a scribal error for swigende, as the image of humans sitting in silence balances and contrasts the noise of the first lines of the

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audience) cannot truly know how these city-dwellers receive this nightly concert, for, crucially, Riddle 6 does not offer the bugendre (“citizens,” 6b) the opportunity to respond to the songbird with celebration, annoyance, or indifference. Rather, the deliberate silencing of human voices in favor of the songbird’s charmingly self-congratulatory autobiography leaves the audience no choice but to accept the speaker’s assertion that it is in his nature (mine wisa) to sing, and that his song brings blisse (“delight,” 6b) to all who hear it. Eliding any possible opposition to the speaker’s narrative or identity, Riddle 6 affirms the independent subjectivity and interiority of the songbird as an individual capable of making decisions, affecting the emotions and activities of others, and developing a clear sense of self as distinct from others. This interest in the identities and experiences of other-than-human beings reflects Ælfric’s insistence on the Creator’s attention to each member of His creation. Indeed, the speaker’s celebration of the songbird’s talents echoes Ælfric’s claim in De Fide Catholica that God eallum gesceaftum anginn and ordfruman forgeaf, þæt hi beon mihton, and þæt hi hæfdon agen gecynd, swa swa hit þære godcundlican fadunge gelicode (“gave all creatures beginning and origin, that they might be, and that they might have their own nature, so as it seemed good to His divine dispensation.”)41 One possible effect of the riddle for the manuscript’s original audience may have been to transform a common annoyance for the monastic community at Exeter—birdsong interrupting sleep, service, conversation, contemplation, transcription, and/ or prayer—into a charmingly personal (or, rather, animal) affair. Those of us fortunate enough to live in climates that allow sleeping with windows open know that birdsong can be both a peaceful lullaby or, when heard early in the morning, an annoying alarm. However, by justifying the bird’s joyous noise as mine wisa, the riddle absolves the speaker of responsibility for the occasional annoyance of its song, and acts as a gentle reminder to the human audience that their habits, desires, and activities are not the only ones God considers. Indeed, the riddle can be read as an assertion of the right of even the noisiest of songbirds to sing, and an affirmation of the speaker’s desire, reflected in his projection of emotions on to humans, to bring joy to others. The riddle therefore anticipates the modern ecotheological principle that “the universe, Earth, and all its components have intrinsic worth/value” even if that value is not immediately visible to humans and even when it poem. Williamson, following Krapp and Dobbie, reads this word as a variant of hnigende, from hnigan, “to bow.” For an overview of the debate, see Williamson, Old English Riddles, 157-158. 41 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 274.

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actively interferes with human comfort. 42 For the monastic community at Exeter, this riddle may have been a somewhat comic reminder of the place of the human in the divine ecosystem: one created being among many loved by the Creator. Like many Old English riddles, Riddle 6 ends with a challenge: saga hwæt ic hatte (“say what I am called,” 8b). Peter Orton has shown that 37 percent of the Exeter Book Riddles contain “a more or less explicit challenge to the reader.”43 However, what makes this example particularly significant is that, as noted above, the speaker named himself in line 5a: eald æfensceop, “ancient singer of the evening.” As I have already suggested, this clever compound identifies the speaker by combining a temporal element (æfen, “evening”) with an element indicating creative production (sceop, “poet”). Whereas, in other riddles, the formula saga hwæt ic hatte presents the final challenge to the reader seeking a solution, in this instance it may be read as a call for affirmation of the “solution” the speaking songbird has already provided. In other words, it may be a command, rather than a question. As Neville has shown, early medieval English audiences understood riddles as more than simply questions with solutions; it is possible that the challenge in these lines, then, is not to identify the nightingale, but to affirm its own self-identification as the eald æfensceop, with all the joyful noise that it entails. Moreover, the subtle reference to the nightingale as harbinger of spring (wilcumena fela “many welcome tidings,” 11a) in the final line of this riddle asserts the nightingale’s ability to influence human activity as well as emotion. The process of engaging Riddle 6—reading it aloud, perhaps in a dramatic fashion, discovering a solution, and finally saying the speaker’s name—requires the audience to affirm the actions, identity, and subjectivity of the nightingale. 44 Riddle 6 explicitly addresses the interaction of humans and other-thanhuman beings, affirming the intrinsic worth of the other-than-human beings and giving voice to the independent subjectivity and desires of the nightingale . The next riddle in the Exeter collection also features a speaking bird, but with a significant difference. Unlike Riddle 6, Riddle 7 (usually solved as cuckoo) makes no reference to the speaker’s interactions with humans. Instead, it exploits the similarities between the cuckoo’s parasitic nesting habits and the human habit of fosterage, affirming the independent 42 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 24. 43 Orton, “Authorship and Transmission,” 139. 44 In my experience, it is practically impossible to read the poem aloud—in Old or Modern English—without modulating your voice along with the joyous speaker.

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subjectivity of other-than-human beings even when their actions move beyond annoyance to what humans might describe as cruel. Mec on þissum dagum fæder ond modor; ealdor in innan. welhold mege heold ond freoþode, snearlice oþþæt ic under sceate— ungesibbum wearð Mec seo friþemæg oþþæt ic aweox, siþas asettan; suna ond dohtra

deadne ofgeafun ne wæs me feorh þa gen, Þa mec ongon wedum þeccan, hleosceorpe wrah, swa hire agen bearn, swa min gesceapu wæron— eacen gæste. fedde siþþan widdor meahte heo hæfde swæsra þy læs þy heo swa dyde.

In those days they left me for dead, my father and mother; there was no spirit in me yet, no life within me. Then someone, a very loyal woman, began to cover me with clothing, protected and cherished me, wrapped me in protective garments as generously as for her own children, until under that bosom—just as I was made— among those who were no kin of mine, I was given great life. The protectress fed me then, until I grew up, and could set out on wider journeys; she had fewer dears, sons and daughters, because she did that. 45

As I noted in the introduction to this chapter, Jennifer Neville has read Riddle 7 as a social commentary on the practice of fostering, arguing that the text “presents its audience with a distorted but recognizable image of a human social situation”: human parents leaving their children to be raised in the homes of other families.46 For Neville, the poem’s final line is an admission of the “disruptive potential of fosterage” in early medieval English society.47 She suggests that the fostering metaphor cannot “explain away the gap between 45 The masculine adjective deadne in line 1 indicates that the speaker of this text is male. 46 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 438. 47 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 436.

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what should happen—devoted care for the mother’s own offspring—and what does happen—fatal neglect” and that “such a yawning gap calls out for explanation.”48 Ultimately, Neville argues that the monastic context of the Exeter Book allows for “a spiritual, didactic response” to this gap, and offers another parallel reading of the riddle as an allegory for the devil’s nurturing of sinful thoughts in the soul. 49 Neville’s thoughtful reading of Riddle 7 acknowledges that, as I have shown, early medieval audiences aff irmed and sought to map out the connections between their actions and the actions of other-than-human beings. It also acknowledges the useful ambiguity of the riddle collection as a whole, and its tendency to encourage multiple readings rather than a single “solution.” However, this reading of the riddle as a commentary on the fosterage system nevertheless relies on the application of human moral expectations—“what should happen”—to non-human activity, and, crucially, Riddle 7 does not explicitly condemn the cuckoo’s parasitic nesting practices at any point. Regardless of how disturbing these practices may have been to medieval (or, indeed, modern) audiences, the riddle exploits the language of human relationships and similarities between human and animal behavior to enable its audience to identify emotionally with the decidedly non-human experience of the cuckoo chick. Because, as I will show, Riddle 7 presents the cuckoo’s experience as overwhelmingly positive, it ultimately affirms the quirks of the species’ nesting habits, even as it acknowledges the potential for human dismay at the collateral deaths of other chicks. This affirmation of the speaker’s experience relies on audience identification with the cuckoo, and the opening lines of Riddle 7 evoke pity for the speaker by using the explicitly human language of fæder ond modor (“father and mother,” 2b). The presence of statutes providing for foundlings in the late-7th century laws of Ine attests to the tragic reality of child abandonment in early medieval England; however, regardless of how common the practice was, the very fact that these laws exist suggests that medieval audiences would likely have found the idea of abandoning infants as troubling as their modern counterparts.50 Indeed, Riddle 7’s Exeter Book neighbor The Fortunes of Men attests to the joy and pride early medieval English parents took in their children:

48 Neville “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 439. 49 Neville “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 441. 50 See Attenborough, The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, 45.

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Ful oft þæt gegongeð, þætte wer ond wif bearn mid gebyrdum tennaþ ond tætaþ […] Fergað swa ond feþað giefað ond gierwaþ. (1-4a, 7-8a)

Old English Ecotheology

mid godes meahtum, in woruld cennað ond mid bleom gyrwað, fæder ond modor,

It often happens, through the might of God, that a man and a woman bring into the world a child through their union, and adorn them with colors, encourage and make them glad […] So they carry them forth on foot, the father and mother, providing for them and preparing them.51

That this warm, nurturing image of parenthood is the starting point of a catalogue of the ways in which humans live and die suggests that it represented a recognizable ideal for its original early medieval English audience. And indeed, as Mary Dockray-Miller has shown, early medieval representations of motherhood celebrated above all else the “protection, nurturance, and training of children”: precisely the attributes lauded in The Fortunes of Men and conspicuously absent in the first few lines of Riddle 6.52 For the monastic community at Exeter, the depiction in Riddle 6 of parents abandoning children may have been particularly heart-rending, given the common practice in medieval England of sending young children to the Church as oblates.53 Bede was famously sent to the monastery of St. Peter in Monkwearmouth-Jarrow at the age of seven, and his Ecclesiastical History suggests that the practice of separating young children from their families to be raised in religious communities was not uncommon.54 There is little evidence for the emotional state of these oblates during or after this family separation, but it seems likely that the experience was as traumatic for medieval children as it is for their modern counterparts. It seems possible that some of the brothers at Exeter—perhaps even the scribe or compiler of the Exeter Book—had similarly upsetting family histories. Regardless, the 51 See Bjork, ed., Old English Shorter Poems, 56-57. 52 Dockray-Miller, Motherhood and Mothering, 2. 53 For a summary of the evidence for oblates in early medieval England, see Kuefler, “‘A Wryed Existence’,” especially 824-826. 54 Bede narrates his own history in Book V, Chapter 24; see Miller, ed., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, 481.

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use of explicitly human language ( fæder ond modor: “father and mother,” 2a) alongside the first-person pronoun mec may have led the early medieval audience to identify emotionally with the as-yet unidentified speaker. Any potential separation anxiety felt by the speaker, and by extension, the reader, is assuaged by the appearance in line 4 of a welhold mege (“very loyal woman”), and her interaction with the speaker provides the f irst hint to the latter’s identity. In the lines that follow, the repetition of verbs related to protection—þeccan (“to cover”), healdan (“to protect”), freoþian (“to keep, cherish, preserve”) and be-wrihan (“to wrap up, cover)—recalls the maternal ideal described in The Fortunes of Men. Significantly, the tactile nature of these verbs also evokes images of nesting and incubation, suggesting a possible solution of cuckoo, a bird which infamously incubates in the nest of an unrelated and unsuspecting stranger.55 That this cluster of verbs connotes physical contact may also suggest an attempt to enable the audience to feel the embodied experience of the foster-mother’s loving embrace. The abrupt transition from abandonment to acceptance in the first three lines creates an emotional whiplash, and the wave of comforting verbs in lines 4 and 5 acts as an anodyne for that discomfort. Indeed, the mood of the riddle after line 3 is overwhelmingly positive, complicating Neville’s reading of the poem as a criticism of the disruptive potential of the fostering system. Neville is correct in identifying problems with this system in texts like Beowulf: as Mary Dockray-Miller has shown, Wealtheow’s fierce speeches in protection of her sons represent “a successful challenge to the heroic code” which allows her husband to adopt Beowulf as his heir at the expense of their biological children.56 Crucially, however, Riddle 7 does not consider the cuckoo’s nesting habits or the fosterage system from the perspective of the foster-mother or her neglected children. Rather, the perspective is that of the cuckoo/foundling, and, as Neville admits, “from the cuckoo’s perspective, of course, the sequence of events is entirely positive.”57 Because Riddle 7, like Riddle 6, offers only the cuckoo’s perspective, any readers feeling an emotional connection with the speaker might accept this assessment of the situation as an overwhelmingly fortunate series of events. Indeed, as in Riddle 6, this cuckoo claims that this sequence of events is not merely positive, but in fact divinely ordained. The suggestion in Riddle 7 that the cuckoo acts swa min gesceapu wæron (“just as my nature was made,” literally “as were my fates,” 7b) once again echoes Ælfric’s assertion in the 55 See Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 434. 56 Dockray-Miller, Motherhood and Mothering, 118. 57 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 436.

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Homilies that the diversity of creation can be attributed to God’s careful attention to each individual’s agen gecynd (“own nature”).58 The reference to min gesceapu largely absolves the cuckoo hatchling of responsibility for the foster-mother’s loss of suna on dohtra (“sons and daughters”) by attributing it to the will of their shared Creator. Far from a greedy parasite edging out the competition, the speaker echoes Ælfric here in claiming to act according to his agen gecynd (“own nature”); within the context of Old English ecotheology, this nature can only be good. The speaker’s explicit attribution of his nesting habits to min gesceapu (“my nature”) offers a new perspective on an animal habit recognized since ancient times, and affirms the intrinsic worth of the speaker even as it acknowledges the possibility of collateral damage. In addition, the cuckoo’s defense of this natural behavior may also absolve the foster-mother who nurtured the cuckoo at the expense of her own chicks. Although the speaker admits that the foster-mother hæfde swæsra þy læs […] þy heo swa dyde (“had fewer dears […] because she did that,” 11b, 12b) this is not presented as a case of “fatal neglect,” as Neville suggests.59 Rather, the fact that this anonymous caretaker is identified by compounds emphasizing her loyal, protective nature—welhold mege (“very loyal woman,” l. 4a) and friþemæg (“protectress”)—suggests that she too may be acting swa [hire] gesceapu wæron (“just as [her] nature was made”). In fact, the cuckoo makes it clear that he owes his life to the foster-mother’s neglect of her biological children, and would not have hatched without her intervention: when the cuckoo’s parents abandoned him, ne wæs me feorh þa gen ealdor in innan (“there was no life in me yet, and no spirit within,” l 2b-3a). It was only after the foster-mother began to care for the speaker that he was eacen gæste (“endowed with life,” 8b). The supposed double-birth of birds—first as a laid egg and then again at hatching—was a popular trope in the ancient and early medieval riddling traditions: as Neville as shown, the image appears in the Latin riddles of Symphosius, Eusebius, and Alcuin, as well as in the anonymous Bern riddles.60 However, rather than exploiting the strangeness of the image for human audiences, Riddle 7 instead presents the situation from the cuckoo’s perspective as a profoundly sacrificial act of life-giving generosity. The speaker’s praise of the friþemæg (“protectress”) also anticipates the modern ecological understanding that the success of certain individuals 58 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 274. See my Introduction above. 59 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 439. 60 Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo,” 434.

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within an ecosystem sometimes depends on the death or displacement of others. The suggestion in Maxims I that ne sy þæs magutimbres gemet ofer eorþan, gif hi ne wanige se þas woruld teode (“there would be no limit to the children born on earth if the one who made the earth did not diminish them,” 33-34) certainly demonstrates an understanding that life depends on death. If, as Neville suggests, the riddle serves as an outlet for human anxiety about the process of fostering or abandonment, then it only does so through its affirmation of the cuckoo’s “parasitic” behavior as a natural part of the Earth community. Equally important, however, is the riddle’s affirmation of the intrinsic worth of those lives even if they result in the collateral deaths of others. Life requires death, the speaker of Riddle 7 suggests, and affirmation of the inherent worth of creation requires acknowledgment of and gratitude for that sacrifice, even and perhaps especially when it makes humans uncomfortable. As a thematic pair, Riddle 6 and Riddle 7 offer new perspectives on familiar creatures and habits, and affirm the intrinsic worth and independent will of the other-than-human members of the Earth community. Riddle 6 amplifies the self-congratulatory celebrations of the nightingale, resisting anthropocentric thinking by celebrating the voice of the songbird and deliberately repressing any possible human objections. Similarly, Riddle 7 exploits the explicitly human and emotional language of families to not only justify but also actively celebrate the seemingly “inhumane” nesting practices of the cuckoo. Riddle 7 certainly anthropomorphizes the situation, but, somewhat paradoxically, considering the process from the perspective of the cuckoo removes human judgment from the situation. As they present a birds’-eye view of familiar situations, Riddle 6 and Riddle 7 reflect an Old English ecotheology, which anticipates modern affirmations of the intrinsic worth of all members of the Earth community, including the other-than-human. These bird riddles also utilize many of the same tropes as modern nature series like BBC’s Planet Earth, which, like the Exeter Book, was produced in a period of environmental crisis.61 The two series of Planet Earth, released in 2006 and 2016, document the habits and behaviors of plants and animals in unique ecosystems across the planet, merging stunning videography with compelling narration by Sir David Attenborough. Like the Exeter riddle 61 Although Planet Earth is by no means the first series to explore the habits and behaviors of individuals, its influence on modern environmentalism cannot be overstated: according to the New York Times, when the series was released in 2006, it was at the most expensive nature documentary series ever produced, and the first to be produced in high-definition. See Slenke, “All Creatures Great, Small…and Endangered.”

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collection, Planet Earth reveals a particular interest in the habits of birds. In the 2016 episode “Cities,” Attenborough’s description of a murmuration of starlings over Rome provides a scientific explanation for the birds’ behavior—“there’s safety in numbers”—while simultaneously describing the pattern in remarkably human terms.62 The instinctual flocking of the birds is presented as “one of the nature’s great spectaculars,” a series of “marvelous acrobatics” which the documentary supplements with a sweeping orchestral score.63 The cacophony of the birds is silenced by this music, and the majestic drama of the scene almost excuses Attenborough’s earlier admission that the starlings can cover Rome with an astonishing ten tons of droppings in a single day, in the same way that Riddle 6 emphasizes the songbird’s joy to excuse their intrusion on monastic silence. Later in the same episode, cheerful piano music accompanies the somewhat heartbreaking image of a bird digging through human-made trash to add “glamor” to its bower of twigs in the form of “brightness and color.” Attenborough’s voiceover adds a distinctly human narrative to the bird’s actions: “this great bower bird has spent over a decade building his collection of mostly man-made objects […] that he hopes will impress a visiting female.” This romantic narrative recontextualizes the scene as a familiar and decidedly more palatable mating ritual. The description of the trash as “prized objects” utilized to impress a mate subtly soothes any audience anxiety about the impact of human waste on other-than-human beings by suggesting that trash actually improves this animal’s life. Without these treasures, the narration implies, he has no hope of finding a mate. Like Riddle 7, this 2016 episode of Planet Earth anticipates audience discomfort with some of the scenes it depicts, and elides that discomfort by refocusing the narrative on the subject of the bird. In their empathetic application of human narratives and emotions to non-human beings, Riddle 6 and Riddle 7, like scenes from the modern documentary series Planet Earth, affirm the independent subjectivity and inherent worth of the other-than-human members of creation.

Heroic Horns and Wounded Wood: Riddles of Transformation The bird riddles give voice to the independent subjectivity and desires of animals in and beyond their encounters with humans. However, like their modern counterparts, the people of early medieval England did not only 62 “Cities,” (2016). 63 Ibid.

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encounter non-human beings as living creatures; like us, they removed animals, plants, and minerals from their “natural” state every day in order to transform them into instruments or objects for human use. The Exeter riddle collection describes a number of plant- and animal-objects, and these riddles of transformation are, in my mind, even more fascinating than those describing living beings. These riddles create space for other-than-human beings taken and transformed by humans to describe, celebrate, and/or protest their integration into the rituals guiding human life. Some of these riddles, such as the paired horn riddles Riddle 12 and Riddle 76, imagine that non-human beings, like their human counterparts, are active and willing participants in heroic culture who take pride and find purpose in their service, despite the requisite sacrifice.64 These riddles represent a uniquely Old English take on the modern ecotheological belief that all created beings “are a part of a dynamic cosmic design”—in this case, the organizing system of heroic culture—and that “each piece has a place in the overall of that design.”65 Another thematic group of riddles—Riddle 3 (usually solved as shield), Riddle 51 (usually solved as battering ram), and Riddle 71 (usually solved as spear or arrow)—present a somewhat darker view of non-human involvement in heroic culture.66 The juxtaposition of past and present states in these wood-weapon riddles reveals an uncomfortable awareness of the fact that heroic culture relies on the unwilling labor and continued suffering of other-than-human beings. As they give voice to the celebration and suffering of other-than-human beings conscripted into human service, these riddles of transformation affirm the modern ecotheological principle of voice, which asserts that “Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.”67 They thus provide a unique insight into the troubled environmental conscience reflected in the Exeter Book. The first of the horn riddles, Riddle 12, attests to the ways in which animal bodies were embedded into the rituals guiding early medieval English life, though it is deliberately vague on the past life of this animal object: Ic wæs wæpenwiga; geong hagostealdmon woum wirbogum. hwilum ic to hilde 64 65 66 67

nu mec wlonc þeceð golde ond sylfore Hwilum weras cyssað; hleoþre bonne

Riddle 12 is K-D Riddle 14; Riddle 76 is K-D Riddle 79 and 80. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 46. Riddle 3 is K-D Riddle 5; Riddle 51 is K-D Riddle 53; Riddle 71 is K-D Riddle 73. Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 46.

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wilgehleþan; mec ofer mearce; fereð ofer flodas Hwilum mægða sum bosm beaghroden; heard, heafodleas, Hwilum hongige wlitig on wage freolic fyrdsceorp. on wicge wegað, sincfag swelgan, Hwilum ic gereordum wlonce to wine; stefne minre flyman feondsceaþan.

Old English Ecotheology

hwilum wycg byreþ hwilum merehengest frætwum beorhtne. minne gefylleð hwilum ic bordum sceal: behlyþed licgan. hyrstum frætwed, þær weras drincað, Hwilum folcwigan þonne ic winde sceal of sumes bosme. rincas laðige hwilum wraþþum sceal forstolen hreddan Frige hwæt ic hatte.

I was a weaponed-warrior; now a bold young retainer wraps me in gold and silver, winding coils of wire. Sometimes men kiss me. Sometimes I summon to battle with my song happy comrades; sometimes a steed carries me over the marches; sometimes a sea-horse bears me over waves with my bright ornaments. Sometimes a maiden fills me up, my ring-adorned bosom; sometimes I must lie on the tables: hard and headless, I lie deprived. Sometimes I hang, decorated with ornaments, beautiful on the wall, where men drink, noble war gear. Sometimes warriors riding on horseback bear me, then I must breathe, laden with treasure, the breath from a man’s breast. Sometimes with my cries I summon men, proud warriors their wine. Sometimes with my voice I must save stolen things from the enemies, put the thief to flight. Ask me my name.

The only explicit reference to the speaker’s past life is in the first line, which establishes an important contrast between the speaker’s past and present: Ic wæs […] nu mec (“I was […] now I […]”). Significantly, the speaker does not describe the details of this transformation, as the speaking book of Riddle

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26 does.68 Rather, the gap marked by the caesura of the first line elides the violence of the speaker’s transformation from living animal to inanimate object: the slaughter of the aurochs, the severing of the horn, the boiling and scraping to remove flesh and marrow, and the polishing and gilding of the horn’s surface. Indeed, the double alliteration of the first half-line—Ic wæs wæpenwiga—suggests continuity in these two seasons of the speaker’s life through continued martial activity. In his translation of the riddle, Williamson amends the manuscript reading of wæpenwiga to wæpen wigan, translating the phrase as “the weapon of a warrior.”69 He argues that that “the creature-horn may be literally a wæpen [“weapon”] on the bull’s head or metaphorically a wiga [“warrior”] as it goes to battle,” but that it “cannot be a wæpenwiga or ‘armed warrior’ since it carries no weapon but is the weapon itself.”70 This reading relies on strict binaries—human and non-human, literal and metaphorical, past and present—which relegate the speaker to either a literal wæpen in the animal past—that is, a horn on the aurochs’ head—or a metaphorical wiga in the human present—that is, an instrumental horn going to war. However, as my reading of the cuckoo’s autobiography in Riddle 7 demonstrates, the riddles of the Exeter collection juxtapose past, present, and future actions as a way of simultaneously concealing and revealing the identity of the speaker. The original manuscript reading of wæpenwiga (“armed warrior”) does not require emendation within the context of such temporally flexible riddles. The deliberately ambiguous nature of the Old English riddling tradition allows for a reading which understands the living aurochs (who wields his horn as a weapon) and the object of the horn (which identifies as a warrior riding into battle) as two avatars of the same essential being. In this reading, the first half-line of the riddle is spoken by the aurochs, while the second half line comes from the embellished object of the horn. Although it gives voice to two separate avatars of the aurochs-horn, the double alliteration of first line nevertheless implies that they share an essential identity characterized by martial activity. Indeed, the majority of the riddle is dedicated to listing the crucial martial roles the speaker has played in the time since his transformation. This montage of duties is punctuated by repetition of the word hwilu(m) (“sometimes”), signaling yet more changes in avatar as different possibilities of the horn speak in turn: first, war horns on land, horse, and sea; then a 68 See my discussion of the riddle in the Introduction above. 69 Williamson, Old English Riddles, 171. 70 Ibid.

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drinking horn, a hunting horn, a decorative hanging horn, a call to wine and finally an alarm-like warning against thieves. The use of litotes in the speaker’s repetition of “sometimes” suggests that this transformative object is essential to human activity at all times: in moments of war, peace, celebration, and anger, the speaker claims participation in all kinds of crucial social rituals. Twice the speaker claims active participation: lines 4 and following suggest that it is the horn’s call that begins the battle, and the warriors summoned by that call are his wilgehleþan (“happy comrades,” l. 5). The penultimate line of the riddle similarly suggests that celebrations in the mead-hall, the center of early medieval English social life, are guided by the horn’s actions: as on the battlefield, warriors are summoned to the mead-hall by stefne minre (“my voice,” l. 18). In these lines, the speaker claims not only participation but also active leadership in heroic human activity. Significantly, however, the riddle acknowledges that the speaker isn’t capable of producing sound on his own: þonne ic winde sceal sincfag swelgan of sumes bosme (“then I must swallow, laden with treasure, the breath from a man’s breast,” 14b-15). Megan Cavell has convincingly argued that this line reflects an early medieval belief that speech was born in the chest, and that the horn must therefore swallow human breath in order to gain a voice.71 The aurochs-horn’s dependence on human activity is further reflected in the abundance of passive and transitive verbs in the first half of the poem: the speaker lies (licgan, 10b) and hangs (hongige, 11a) passively while its human companions cyssað (“kisses [me],” 3b), byreþ (“carries [me],” 5b), fereð (“bears [me],” 7a), gefylleð (“fills [me],” 8b). Although the aurochs-horn participates in the important martial and social rituals of life in early medieval England, it is ultimately a passive participant, dependent on human cooperation. Moreover, the horn itself is not the focus of these rituals. Men kiss the horn, but not in adoration, as one might kiss a cross or relic, but rather to drink the precious mead which mægða sum (“some maiden,” l. 8) poured into it. The ritualistic, repeated actions of the mead hall—service, celebration, solemnity—revolve around the horn, but the horn itself does not benefit from these rituals. Indeed, like Riddle 26 (usually solved as book), Riddle 12 suggests some anxiety about the animal sacrifice necessary for the horn’s participation in these rituals. Despite the speaker’s seemingly proud recitation of the details of their participation in social rituals, the assertion in line 9b and following that after the mead and the celebration have finished ic bordum sceal heard heafodleas behlyþed licgan (“I must lie on the board, hard, 71 See Cavell, “Sounding the Horn in Exeter Book Riddle 14,” 324-7.

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headless, emptied”) is a grim reminder that somewhere beyond the confines of the meadhall, a headless and hornless aurochs also lies emptied. This line reminds readers that this celebratory object did not manifest itself spontaneously, but was rather transformed from its original state into one considered more suitable for human use. The rituals of the mead hall, and the humans who organize them, require the horn but, crucially, not the aurochs. Ultimately, with the exception of the first line, all of the actions described in this riddle—riding, drinking, celebrating, stealing—depend on or refer to humans. The speaking horn—or, perhaps, the riddler who sought to amplify their voice—cannot imagine his role outside the realm of these human activities. Though the riddle quite literally centers human activity, the essential continuity between the aurochs and the horn, established in the first line, affirms the conscription of animal bodies into heroic society by imagining a heroic life and afterlife for this transformative object. This may be an attempt to assuage human guilt about the use of animal bodies for decorative purposes. However, it may also be an attempt to honor that animal sacrifice by imagining a world in which the speaker self-identifies as a heroic figure and an integral part of heroic society, as I have argued for Riddle 26. The riddle thus affirms the modern ecotheological principle of purpose by imagining an essential place within the heroic order for the aurochs-object. The second of the horn-riddles, Riddle 76, similarly presents a speaking horn which is deeply imbedded into social rituals, though with two key differences: Ic eom æþelinges Ic eom æþelinges fyrdrinces gefara, cyninges geselda. hwitloccedu eorles dohtor, Hæbbe me on bosme Hwilum ic on wloncum herges on ende; Oft ic woðboran agyfe æfter giedde. ond ic sylfa salo.

æht ond willa.72 eaxlgestealla, frean minum leof, Cwen mec hwilum hond on legeð, þeah hio æþelu sy. þæt on bearwe geweox. wicge ride heard is min tunge. wordleana sum Good is min wise Saga hwæt ic hatte.

72 I follow Williamson, Old English Riddles, 359-360, in taking K-D Riddle 79 to be the first line of K-D Riddle 80.

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I am a prince’s property and desire. I am a prince’s shoulder-companion, a warrior’s follower, beloved by my lord, a king’s comrade. Sometimes a queen fair-haired, lays her hand on me, a prince’s daughter, although she is dignified. I have in my bosom what waxed in a wood. Sometimes I ride on a bold steed on the edge of an army; my tongue is hard. Often I give a speech-bearer a certain reward for words, a gift after the song. My ways are good, and I’m dusky myself. Say what I am called.

The most immediate difference between this riddle and Riddle 14 is that the humans with which this horn interacts are explicitly elite: the speaker identifies himself as a æþelinges eaxlgestealla (“prince’s shoulder-companion,” 2), fyrdrinces gefara (“warrior’s follower,” 3) and cyninges geselda (“king’s comrade,” 4). Similarly, whereas mægða sum (“some maiden,” 8) fills the horn of Riddle 12, the women who handle the horn of Riddle 76 are elevated to the status of cwen hwitloccedu (“fair-haired queen,” l. 3-4) and eorles dohtor (“prince’s daughter,” l. 5).73 Given the hierarchical, stratified nature of early medieval English society, the intimacy with which the speaking horn of Riddle 76 describes his interactions with these elite human actors suggests that the horn has himself been elevated to elite status. Indeed, whereas Riddle 12 begins with an (albeit brief) acknowledgment of the horn’s past animal life, the first two lines of Riddle 76 insist that the horn was, to borrow the Heideggerian phrase, always already a noble object in its animal form: Ic eom æþelinges æht ond willa / Ic eom æþelinges eaxlgestealla (“I am a prince’s property and desire; I am a prince’s shoulder companion,” l. 1-2). I have suggested that the alliteration of wæpenwiga and wlonc in the first line of Riddle 12 hinted at continuity between the past and present lives of its animal speaker. The use of the present-tense eom in Riddle 76 affirms this connection, suggesting that nobility is innate to the speaker in his past, present, and possibly future forms: perhaps because the horn was always intended for noble use, or perhaps because the horn itself—and by extension, the aurochs—may also be described as inherently noble. 73 Inexplicably, Williamson, Old English Riddles, 159 translates cwen as “woman” rather than “queen” despite the fact that the word follows (and indeed alliterates with) the unmistakably royal cyning, “king.”

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This leads to the second distinction between the two horn riddles: the speaker of Riddle 76 asserts and demonstrates more independence than his counterpart in Riddle 12, which primarily describes humans acting on (or near) the horn in heroic rituals. The speaking horn of Riddle 76, on the other hand, claims the ability to act beyond the influence of humans. In line 7, for example, the horn boasts hæbbe me on bosme þæt on bearwe geweox (“I have in my bosom that which waxed in the woods”), almost certainly a reference to the mead which would have filled the horn in celebrations.74 Although this horn says that the fair-haired queen hond on legeð (“lays her hand on me,” 5b), we are not explicitly told that she fills the horn, as in Riddle 12. Rather, if the horn of Riddle 76 is always already noble, then we might similarly argue that it is also always already full, innately able to perform its duty. Whereas the horn of Riddle 12 is an important but ultimately passive participant in human rituals, the horn of Riddle 76 is able to serve its human purpose without the explicit action of humans. Like most early medieval English rituals, the task of distributing mead in the hall is specifically gendered: women serve men. The text of Beowulf attests to the importance and omnipresence of this tradition in Germanic heroic culture: cwen Hroðgares grētte goldhroden ond þa freolic wif ærest Éast-Dena Ymbeode þa duguþe ond geogoþe sincfato sealed þæt hio Beowulfe, mode geþungen [612a-16, 620-24]

Eode Wealhþeow forð cynna gemyndig, guman on healle, ful gesealde éþelwearde […] ides Helminga dæl æghwylcne oþ þæt sæl álamp beaghroden cwen medoful ætbær.

Wealhtheow went forth, Hrothgar’s queen, mindful of customs, greeted, adorned with gold, the men in the hall, and that courteous woman offered the full cup first to the guardian of the East-Danes’ kingdom […] The lady of the Helmings then went around 74 Riddle 27, which is universally solved as mead, describes the honey wine as that which is brungen of bearwum (“brought from the woods,” l. 2).

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to young and old, gave each his portion of the precious cup until the moment came when she, ring-adorned queen, excellent of heart, bore the mead-cup to Beowulf.

The emphasis on custom and courtesy in these lines demonstrates the extent to which these practices are ritualized; Wealhtheow’s actions in this scene reflect prescribed and standardized queenly behavior in the same way that her husband’s subsequent speech encouraging Beowulf and his men reflects typical kingly behavior. Her attention first to Hrothgar, then his retainers, and then to Beowulf demonstrates her understanding of social hierarchies and the importance of honoring guests. The highly ritualistic activity of the mead-hall requires attention to these sorts of details, and this passage demonstrates Wealhtheow’s innate suitability as a queen, and, perhaps, Hrothgar’s failings. In taking responsibility for the distribution of mead—hæbbe me on bosme (“I have in my bosom,” 7a)—the speaking horn of Riddle 76 is not only describing his participation in crucial social rituals, but also actively usurping the role of a human woman in those rituals. Whereas the horn of Riddle 12 is carried, filled, passed, and hung by humans as a part of their rituals, the horn of Riddle 76 takes an active and essential role in heroic rituals. In its depiction of the inherent nobility and independent action of the aurochs-horn, Riddle 76 imagines a world in which non-human beings not only accept but actively enjoy their conscription into human service, eliding any hints of anxiety visible in its counterpart, Riddle 12. Indeed, if Riddle 12 presents a celebration of non-human participation in heroic culture with a slight tint of guilt, Riddle 76 offers a fully realized fantasy of human and other-than-human beings working in heroic harmony. Again, this fantasy is quite literally anthropocentric, prioritizing and valorizing human activity over the previous lives of these animal objects: however, it also reflects a seemingly sincere attempt to integrate other-than-human beings into heroic culture, one of the fundamental systems guiding early medieval English literature. As they give voice to the celebration of non-human beings brought into human service, the horn riddles offer a uniquely early medieval English take on the modern ecotheological belief that “Earth and all its components are a part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place.”75 Although, as my introduction shows, the poetry of the Exeter Book amalgamates insular poetic traditions with classical, continental, and 75 Earth Bible Teams, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 24.

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North Atlantic influences, two “dynamic cosmic design[s]” dominated early medieval English literature: first, the dogma and practices of the church, and second, the strictly hierarchical structure of heroic culture. I have argued that the wisdom poems of the Exeter Book attempt to map out the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings within the gesceaft, the divine ecosystem of creation. The horn riddles, similarly, can be read as an attempt to find a place for other-than-human beings within the “dynamic cosmic design” of the heroic hierarchies which dominate Old English literature. As a thematic pair, the horn riddles, Riddle 12 and Riddle 76, imagine a world in which inherently martial and noble non-human beings celebrate their participation in heroic culture, thus integrating the non-human into one of the dominant systems governing life in early medieval England. However, not all of the riddles of transformation in the Exeter collection present such a rosy view of human conscription of other-than-human beings. After all, as my introduction shows, for several decades on either side of the millennium, the people of early medieval England were keenly aware of the negative influence of human activity on the Earth in general and on plants and animals in particular. This anxiety is reflected in a series of riddles describing weapons made of wood. Corrine Dale’s study of The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles devotes a chapter to two of the wood-weapon riddles, Riddle 51 and Riddle 71.76 Like me, she concludes that “the ecotheological principle of intrinsic worth resonates” with the Exeter riddle collection, arguing that Riddle 51 and Riddle 71 suggest that “in order for us to see the intrinsic worth of trees we must contemplate the nature of the tree before it was turned into a product with instrumental value” such as a shield or spear.77 Dale’s reading of the riddles is based primarily on comparison to descriptions of trees in The Dream of the Rood and The Phoenix. Reading those poems alongside Augustinian theology, Dale convincingly identifies a belief that, like trees, “humans, too, could be perceived as material waiting to be shaped – by the hands of a loving God.”78 She argues that the narrator of The Dream of the Rood and the sentient rood tree “share an affinity and an anticipation for redemption that unite humanity and the natural world,” and suggests that this affinity 76 Dale follows Krapp and Dobie’s numbering of the riddles, calling them Riddle 53 and Riddle 73. For the sake of clarity, I will continue to follow Williamson’s numbering in my discussion of the riddles. 77 Dale, Natural World, 121. 78 Ibid.

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would have inspired an “affiliation, or sense of solidarity, between humans and nature” for the poem’s early medieval audience.79 On the other hand, because Riddle 51 and Riddle 71 describe transformative objects which are “negative or ambiguous about the nature of craftsmanship and humanity’s use of its materials,” Dale suggests that they present a “playful reversal of traditional doctrine” whereby “the riddle tree’s state prior to human intervention is as important as its f inal appearance.”80 Ultimately, she argues that this emphasis on the intrinsic worth of the tree’s prior state leads the reader to “experience a feeling of empathy for the felled tree and see the non-human subject in more than simply instrumental terms.”81 While I certainly agree that these wood-weapon riddles inspire empathy on the part of the audience, and that, in doing so, they generally resist anthropocentric patterns of thinking, Dale’s reading of the riddles largely dismisses the violence inherent to the wood-weapons’ transformation and elides human participation in that violence. Although she admits that the riddles “clearly depict trees as sentient beings capable of experiencing suffering and wounding,” she nevertheless concludes that “the trees in the Exeter Book riddles […] are not depicted as suffering during a momentous occasion” but that they are understood first and foremost as “trees that have been cut down by the carpenter to be turned into objects of use.”82 Dale’s allegorical reading of Riddle 51 and Riddle 71 makes no attempt to reconcile this apparently instrumental use of the emotional and physical trauma experienced by the wood-weapons with the texts’ insistence that humans are the explicit cause of that suffering. I argue that, as a thematic cluster, the wood-weapon riddles—Riddle 3 (shield) in addition to Riddle 51 and Riddle 71—reflect an uncomfortable awareness of the negative consequences of the interconnectedness of the earth community for other-than-human beings. Whereas the bird riddles celebrated the independent subjectivity of the other-than-human, and the horn riddles imagined transformative objects celebrating their own participation in heroic culture, the wood-weapon riddles admit that interactions with human beings—especially in the context of warfare—are not always in the best interests of the other-than-human. That this collection offers first- and third-person perspectives of wood-weapons suggests the importance of the issue in the early medieval English imagination. 79 Ibid. 80 Dale, Natural World, 114. 81 Dale, Natural World, 121. 82 Ibid.

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Individually and as a unit, these riddles amplify the vocal suffering of other-than-human beings in human service, acknowledge human culpability for that suffering, and even explore the global consequences of human warfare. The wood-riddles suggest that, like modern environmentalists, early medieval English thinkers were keenly aware of the impact of their activity—especially violent conflict—on the other-than-human members of creation. As they give voice to other-than-human resistance to human conscription, these riddles affirm the principle that “Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice […] against injustice.”83 The first of the wood-weapon riddles, Riddle 3, does not explicitly address the speaking object’s past plant life, but it nevertheless attests to the violence enacted on other-than-human beings as a result of human conflicts: Ic eom anhaga, bille gebennad, ecgum werig. frecne feohtan: þæt me geoc cyme ær ic mid ældum Ac mec hnossiað heardecg heoroscearp, bitað in burgum; laþran gemotes. on folcstede þara þe mid wyrtum ac me ecga dolg þurh deaðslege

iserne wund, beadoweorca sæd, Oft ic wig seo, Frofre ne wene, guðgewinnes eal forwurðe. homera lafe, hondweorc smiþa, ic abidan sceal Næfre læcecynn findan meahte, wunde gehælde, eacen weorðað dagum ond nihtum.

I am a lone-dweller, wounded by iron savaged by sword, worn out by war-work, weary of edges. I often see battle, greedy fighting: I expect no salvation, that relief from battle might come before I’m utterly undone before men. But the work of hammers hits me, hard-edged and sword-sharp, the handiwork of smiths, bites me in the burghs. I must abide the most malicious meetings. A doctor 83 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 46.

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in the dwelling place I’ll never find, one who can heal my wounds with herbs, but the scars of swords grow greater on me through death-blows day and night.

The scene here is clearly one of battle; however, Riddle 3 provides a stark contrast to the heroic celebration of war seen in the horn-riddles. Whereas the speaking horn of Riddle 14 claims that his human companions cyssað (“kisses [me],” 3b), byreþ (“carries [me],” 5b), fereð (“bears [me],” 7a), gefylleð (“f ills [me],” 8b), the speaker of this riddle is bille gebennad (“savaged by swords” 2a), hnossiað homera lafe (“hit by the work of hammers,” 7) and hondweorc smiþa bitað (“bit by the handiwork of smiths,” 9b-10a). Although the act of felling is not explicitly described in this text, as it is in Riddle 51 and Riddle 71, the violence of these verbs seems likely to evoke the circumstances which initiated the transformation: the hacking of the tree, the sawing of individual planks, the hammering of nails and the bending of “raw” lumber. The speaker’s ominous assertion that frofre ne wene (“I expect no salvation,” 4a) and the tragic resignation of the phrase ær ic mid ældum eal forwurðe (“before I’m utterly undone before men,” 6) suggests a grim acceptance of their life’s work as an instrument for human use. The speaker’s acceptance of their state is reflective of the importance of the shield as a symbol of war in the early medieval imagination: as Stephen Pollington has argued, the shield was “perhaps the most culturally signif icant piece of defensive equipment” in early medieval England. 84 The speaker’s use of two elaborate kennings for swords—homera lafe (“the work of hammers,” 7) and hondweorc smiþa (“the handiwork of smiths,” 8b), both of which reveal a complex understanding of the swords’ origins—further suggests that the speaker understands his place as one part of a complicated system of martial activity involving human and other-than-human actors. In her reading of the wood-weapon riddles, Dale suggests that the texts inspire human empathy for non-human beings by establishing a shared identity between the two groups as “‘wounded’ and ‘afflicted’ materials that were once ‘un-shaped’.”85 However, as Williamson has shown, Riddle 3 depends on audience understanding of a fundamental difference between the wood-weapon and the humans who use it: “while the shield, like [humans], may sustain wounds in battle, unlike [humans], it may not 84 Pollington, The English Warrior, 141. See also Underwood, Anglo-Saxon Weapons and Warfare. 85 Dale, Natural World, 121.

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be healed by the læcecynn.”86 Indeed, the central paradox of the text is that the attributes of the tree which make it most useful to humans—flexibility, strength, and long-term resistance to damage—are the same attributes which doom the shield to continuous assault as an instrument of war. The shield cannot be healed because its specif ic purpose, indicated by the deliberately euphemistic ic abidan sceal laþran gemotes (“I must abide the most malicious meetings,” 9b-10a), is to accept blows in defense of human bodies. Rather than suggesting affinity between human and other-thanhuman beings, Riddle 3 is in fact a testament to the uncomfortable reality that other-than-human beings are often exploited by humans for the very attributes which distinguish their “unshaped” forms. In this example, the security provided by the shield wall—the peak of early medieval English martial technology—depends on the wood’s long-term resistance to damage, and is therefore quite literally built on the perpetual suffering of other-than-human objects. The use of litotes in the final assertion that the speaker’s wounds will grow (þurh deaðslege dagum ond nihtum, “through death-blows day and night,” 14b) echoes the speaker’s suspicions that this abuse will extend into the foreseeable future by reminding the audience of the centrality of deaðslege to their heroic culture. Compared to the joyous noise of the bird riddles or the celebratory pride of the horn riddles, Riddle 3 is a remarkably dark text, offering an unflinching look at the other-than-human suffering inherent to early medieval warfare and heroic culture. I argue that the emotional pathos of the riddle lies in the simple fact that it forces audiences to bear witness to the wood-weapon’s suffering. The Old English ecotheology which informs the manuscript allows for a reading of the riddle as an attempt to amplify the suffering of a non-human being—in this case, the tree-turned-shield—in an increasingly violent and fallen world. As Riddle 3 juxtaposes descriptions of emotional and physical trauma with the traditionally celebratory image of the shield and language evoking heroic aesthetics, it forces the audience to acknowledge the causal relationship between heroic culture and the violence enacted on other-than-human beings like this wood-weapon. I have suggested that the bird-riddles employ some of the same tropes as modern nature documentary series like the BBC’s Planet Earth (2006, 2016), such as narrativizing and anthropomorphizing the behavior of wild animals. Like Planet Earth and the bird-riddles, Riddle 3 similarly attempts to draws attention to the plight of other-than-human beings by anthropomorphizing the suffering of a single individual. Crucially, however, the speaker of Riddle 3 offers its human 86 Williamson, Old English Riddles, 147.

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audience no comforting insight into non-human behavior or experience, and although the speaker of this riddle clearly attributes their suffering to human activity, they offer no “green” alternative to the use of wood-weapons in warfare. Indeed, as noted above, the speaker of Riddle 3 seems certain that their status will not change. Rather than proposing any solution, the riddle merely requires the audience to bear witness to the suffering of other-than-human beings caused by the heroic culture of violence which created and then condemned this speaker. Rather than directly amplifying the voice of a non-human being, Riddle 51 (usually solved as battering ram) takes a third-person documentarian perspective. This text is even more explicit than Riddle 3 in attributing the suffering of wood-weapons to human activity: Ic seah on bearwe tanum torhtne. wudu weaxende. feddan fægre, On oþrum wearð deope gedolgod, wriþen ofer wunda, foran gefrætwed. þurh his heafdes mægen oþrum rymeð. hord ætgædre; se æftera, genamnan in nearowe

beam hlifian, Þæt treo wæs on wynne, Wæter hine ond eorþe oþþæt he frod dagum. aglachade: dumb in bendum, wonnum hyrstum Nu he fæcnum weg hildegieste Oft hy an yste strudon hræd wæs ond unlæt gif se ærra fær neþan moste.

I saw a tree raised up on a hill, with the brightest of branches. That tree lived in joy, waxed in the woods. Water and earth fed him fairly, until he was wise with age. Another one brought about a miserable state: deeply wounded, silent in shackles, wrapped with wounds, dark ornaments adorning the front. Now with his giant head he opens up a treacherous path, making space for the enemy. Often they steal by storm the treasure together; he was swift and speedy, the second one, if the first one, fearless, might have courage for his comrade in a confined place.

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Readers have long acknowledged the connection between the environmental harmony in the opening lines of this riddle and early medieval depictions of the Tree of Life appearing in the works of Ælfric, Cynewulf, and, most famously, The Dream of the Rood.87 Given the enigmatic nature of these riddles, it is perhaps unsurprising that this thematic echo is one of only a few details in Riddle 51 on which scholars can agree. As is so often the case with the Exeter riddle collection, critical work on Riddle 51 typically involves proposing or rejecting possible solutions; although battering ram is the most common solution, a number of wooden objects have been proposed, including spear, bow and/or arrow, gallows, flail, and wood-turner, as well as an allegorical reading of the tree as a cross.88 However, as Neville notes, Riddle 53, like most of the Exeter riddle collection, resists full interpretation; the riddle “is not really about a particular item of material culture,” but rather “explores the transformation of an originally living creature into another ‘living creature’—the transformation from tree to wooden artefact.”89 I concur with Neville in arguing that Riddle 51 is most concerned with exploring the fundamental difference between the past and present states of this object and human involvement in that transformation. Rather than asking its audience to identify a specif ic object, Riddle 51 instead presents a juxtaposition of past and present that, like Riddle 3, forces readers to acknowledge the physically painful consequences of their actions on other-than-human beings. The first four lines of the poem describe the wood-weapon’s past life as a luminescent tree (tanum torhtne, “the brightest of branches,” 2a) living in joyous and productive harmony with the rest of the inhabitants of its ecosystem. Indeed, the assertion in the third line that wæter hine ond eorþe feddan fægre (“water and earth fed him fairly”) elides the possibility that this quickly growing tree could monopolize resources such as sunlight, water, and nutrients, suggesting instead that the wæter and eorþe willingly offer up everything the tree needs to reach its full potential. If we understand the wood-weapon as a battering ram, then the description of the tree as frod dagum (“wise with age,” 4b) likely refers to the great height and circumference necessary for any tree intended as a tool for destroying buildings. In any case, the touching generosity of this scene—creation working in 87 See Whitman, “Significant Motifs in Riddle 53,” 2-5. 88 These solutions are explored in-depth in Neville, “Precarious Insights,” 130-138. Neville offers then rejects “bow” and “arrow” before finally settling on wood-turner. For an overview of other solutions, see Williamson, Old English Riddles, 297. 89 Neville, “Precarious Insights,” 139.

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harmony to nurture the tree’s growth—is immediately contrasted with the violent actions of on oþrum (“another one,” 5a) who attacks the tree at just the moment that potential is realized. As in Riddle 3, the speaker utilizes painful images of wounds and wounding here to embody the experience of the tree’s transformation for the audience. In a series of three excruciatingly tight half-lines, the speaker explains that the once luminous and joyous tree is now deope gedolgod, dumb in bendum, wriþen ofer wunda (“deeply wounded, silent in shackles, wrapped with wounds,” 6-7a). The reference to the wood-weapon’s silence reminds us that, unlike the speaker of Riddle 3, this wood-weapon cannot speak for itself, and thus cannot protest this unjust treatment. Rather, it is left to the (presumably human) narrator of the riddle to document the details of the wood-weapon’s service, and to the human reader to make sense of what they see. Although early medieval English audiences would not have had personal experience with battering rams or castles, they would have likely been aware of the Roman ram from literary descriptions, and would undoubtedly recognize this as a frightening scene of invasion.90 Indeed, these lines offer a clear contrast to the joyous harmony and generosity of the woodweapon’s previous life: the repetition of vocabulary related to villainy and secrecy in lines 8b and following—fæcnum (“treacherous”), hildegieste (“enemy”), strudon (“steal”)—indicates that the wood-weapon’s service after transformation is far from honorable. Significantly, however, the speaker explicitly states that the wood-weapon is working in tandem with these human invaders: oft hy an yste strudon hord ætgædre (“often they steal by storm the treasure together,” 10b-11a). The penultimate line of the riddle presents the wood-weapon as the first (se ærra) of a team of two comrades (genamnan) and subsumes the invading army into a single soldier (se æftera) following his partner’s primary attack. The harmony which distinguished the tree’s early life is thus replaced by the malicious teamwork of the woodweapon and invading warriors in the latter half of the riddle. However, the text implies that this is not an entirely consensual union: the fact that the wood-weapon uses its strength and size to hildegieste oþrum rymeð (“make space for the enemy,” 9b-10a) indicates that it has a clear instrumental use to its human companions. As an instrument dumb 90 Although, as Williamson, Old English Riddles, 297 notes, “ram does not occur in any original Old English context and there is no archeological evidence for the existence of an [early medieval English] battering ram,” Aldhelm’s Riddle 86 (Aries) plays on the functions of a battering ram, and there is reason to assume to literate early medieval audiences would have been at least tangentially familiar with the Roman battering ram.

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in bendum (“silent in shackles,” 6b), the wood-weapon can never actually lead his comrades, despite the primacy of his position in the order of attack. Moreover, while the successful capture of treasure (hord, 11a) will enrich and empower the human invaders, it cannot heal the wounds the wood-weapon has incurred, as the speaker of Riddle 3 ruefully notes. The only possible benefit for the wood-weapon is the chance of gaining more wonnum hyrstum (“dark ornaments,” 7b); however, if the phrase refers to the metal fixtures added to reinforce the tips of battering rams, then this “reward” only prolongs the wood-weapon’s status as an instrument for its human companions. Ultimately, unlike the speaking horns of Riddle 14 and Riddle 76, this wood-weapon does not seem to benefit emotionally or materially from its association with humans. Rather, it actively and repeatedly suffers as a result of its role in heroic culture. Although, like Riddle 3, Riddle 51 does not explicitly condemn warfare, it nevertheless provides an uncomfortable reminder that heroic culture largely relies on the broken bodies and unwilling labor of other-than-human beings. Like Riddle 3, Riddle 51 bears witness to a wood-weapon’s painful conscription into human service, providing a dramatic contrast to the celebration of heroic culture voiced by the speakers of the horn riddles. Significantly, however, Riddle 51 presents the narrative of transformation from an omniscient documentarian perspective, rather than simply amplifying the embodied suffering of the wood-weapon. Because the process of solving the riddle requires the audience to consider the ramifications of the actions and relationships described, readers of Riddle 51 are confronted with the uncomfortable fact that humans are not only complicit, but in fact directly responsible for the suffering of this wood weapon. I have argued that Riddle 3 reflects the narrativizing tendencies of nature documentaries such as Planet Earth; in its unflinching insistence on human culpability for non-human suffering, Riddle 51 aligns rather more closely with the Netflix series Our Planet, released in 2019 by former Planet Earth producers Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey. Our Planet is much more explicit than its predecessor about the impacts of human-driven climate change on global ecosystems, and Ed Yong’s review of the series applies equally well to Riddle 51: Yong writes that for the viewer, “much of the awe is tinged with guilt, the wonder with concern, the entertainment with discomfort.”91 In Our Planet, the juxtaposition of, for example, tender scenes of an orangutan family with a voiceover explaining the impact of monoculture palm-oil farming on global orangutan populations (about 100 individuals 91 Yong, “Netflix’s Our Planet.”

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killed a week) “forces viewers to acknowledge their own complicity in the destruction” of the natural world.92 Similarly, the juxtaposition in Riddle 51 of the luminescent harmony which opens the narrative and the treachery of the wood-weapon’s final state forces the audience to acknowledge their complicity in the culture of violence which necessitates such weapons. In doing so, the riddle provides a powerfully ecocentric response to the celebrations of heroic violence and material wealth which appear elsewhere in the Old English corpus, including the horn riddles. The last of the wood-weapon riddles, Riddle 71, takes this ecocentric criticism of heroic culture to its fullest extreme, combining the first-person perspective of Riddle 3 with Riddle 51’s insistence on human culpability: Ic on wonge aweox, hruse ond heofonwolcn, gearum frodne, of þære gecynde onwendan mine wisan, gedydon þæt ic sceolde on bonan willan Nu eom mines frean …]dlan dæl, oþþe æfter dome ………]ian wyrcan w[………………… ……ec on þeode ………………………]ipe ond to wrohtstæp[…………… ……………] eorp wo[………………………………] ond swiora smæl, ……………] scir bescineð fægre feormað cræfte on hæfte. þæt ic þristra sum under hrægnlocan hwilum eawunga forðweard brece, 92 Ibid.

wunode þær mec feddon oþþæt me onhwyrfdon þa me grome wurdon, þe ic ær cwic beheold, wegedon mec of earde, wiþ gesceape minum bugan hwilum. folme bysigo[ gif his ellen deag, […]ri[……… mæ[…]þa fremman, utan we[……… eaxle gegyrde, sidan fealwe þonne mec heaþosigel ond mec [………] ond on fyrd wigeð Cuð is wide þeofes cræfte eþelfæsten þæt ær frið hæfde.

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he fus þonan Wiga se þe mine saga hwæt ic hatte.

I flourished in the fields, lived where they fed me, Earth and heaven’s clouds, until I was transformed, wise with years, by those who wish me ill, turned from those habits I’d held while alive. They changed my ways, removed me from my home, made it so that I was forced against my ways to concede to a killer’s will. Now in my master’s hand I am busy [ ………] portion, if his strength avails, until after judgment [……………… ………………………] to advance, to work, [……………………… ………] among the people. Let us […… …………………… and to the marching [………… ……dark shoulders girded […………………………..] and a small neck, fallow sides …………] when the battle-sun shines bright on me and me […… feeds fairly, and wields among the army power in the handle. It’s known widely that I among the bold, with thief’s skill, under the locking rings […] sometimes I openly break through the people’s fortress, that previously held peace. Bold in that journey, he left from there, departed that dwelling-place. The one who understands my ways will say my name.

Significant damage to the last fourteen leaves of the manuscript makes the middle section of this text largely unintelligible, although the use of martial vocabulary like ellen (“strength,” 9b), dome (“judgment,” 10a), fremman (“to advance, to commit a crime,” 11b), and wrohtstæp (“marching,” literally “fight-stepping,” 15a) in the damaged section suggests that Riddle 71 may have once contained an elaborate battle scene like those found in the horn-riddles

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or Riddle 51. Without emending or inventing lines, we cannot know whether the tone of the lost section was celebratory, as in the horn riddles, or critical, as in Riddle 3 and Riddle 51. What is clear, however, is that the poem’s extant opening and closing lines reveal a remarkable transformation on the part of the speaker. As in Riddle 51, the opening lines of this riddle present a picture of environmental bliss: once again, specific elements of the natural world (hruse ond heofonwolcn, “earth and heaven’s clouds,” 2a) offer themselves as nourishment for the tree until it reaches maturity (gearum frodne, “wise with years,” 3a). In an important escalation, however, while Riddle 51 refers to the agent of transformation rather neutrally as on oþrum (“another one,” 5a), the speaker of Riddle 71 is explicit in stating that his transformation was initiated by þa me grome wurdon (“those who wish me ill,” 3b). This initial identification of the human as enemy is solidified a few lines later as the speaker claims to follow bonan willan (“the will of a killer,” 7a). Whereas Riddle 51 merely suggests that the wood-weapon might not benefit from its service in human warfare, the speaker of Riddle 71 actively and vocally objects to his conscription. The repeated references to the change in the wood-weapon’s “natural” habitat and behaviors—þære gecyndu þe ic ær cwic beheold (“those habits I’d held while alive,” 4), and the crucial phrases mine wisan (“my ways,” 5a) and gesceape minum (“my ways,” 6b)—makes it clear that the speaker understands the violence of warfare to be fundamentally antithetical to his nature. Indeed, these references to the speaker’s gecyndu, wisan, and gesceape in the first half of the riddle remind the audience that, by removing these trees from their natural state and transforming them into weapons, humans are undoing the deliberate work of the Creator, who, according to Ælfric, shaped all of creation þæt hi hæfdon agen gecynd, swa swa hit þære godcundlican fadunge gelicode (“that they might have their own nature, so as it seemed good to His divine dispensation”).93 Whereas Dale argues that this riddle suggests an affiliation between humans and other-than-human beings as “material waiting to be shaped,” by a loving God, I submit that this riddle may also be read as an ecotheological reminder that when humans re-shape other-than-human beings, we act against not only their will but also the will of the Creator.94 The speaker’s insistence that his transformation forces him to act against his nature complicates the celebrations of martial skills which 93 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 274. 94 Dale, Natural World, 121.

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comprise the riddle’s extant f inal lines. Like the speakers of the hornriddle, the wood-weapon in the second half of Riddle 71 seems initially to celebrate their participation in heroic culture when they brag that mec heaþosigel scir bescineð (“the battle-sun shines on me,” 19b-20a). Crucially, however, whereas the speakers of the horn-riddles and the other wood-weapons celebrate their work alongside human companions, this speaker explicitly refers to his treacherous ability (þeofes cræfte, 23b) to penetrate chainmail (under hrægnlocan, 24a) and kill men. As Williamson notes, the eþelfæsten (“people’s fortress,” 25b) and wicum (“dwelling-place,” 28a) which the weapon describes breaking must refer to human bodies.95 In these lines, then, the speaking wood weapon adopts the traditional heroic aesthetics and vocabulary used by his human counterparts, suggesting that human bloodlust and desire for war may be transferred to the non-human instruments of that violence. If, as the opening lines of the riddle suggest, violence is antithetical to the tree in its natural state, then the wood-weapon’s transformation into an effective and enthusiastic weapon of war cannot be a cause for celebration. Rather, it offers an opportunity to reflect, once again, on the concrete negative consequences of the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human activity in a post-lapsarian world. Indeed, this riddle echoes Wulfstan’s assertion that clæne wæs þeos eorðe on hyre frumsceafte, ac we hi habbað syððan afylede swyðe 7 mid urum synnum þearle besmitene (“this Earth was clean at its first creation, but we have since befouled it greatly and defiled it through our sins”) and amplifies the voice of other-than-human beings protesting those sins.96 Within the specific context of Old English ecotheology, Riddle 71 may be read as an attempt to identify a specif ic instance of human corruption of creation, even if the riddle itself cannot offer an effective solution. Collectively, the wood-weapon riddles, Riddle 3, Riddle 51 and Riddle 71, present a decidedly pessimistic view of the interconnectedness of the created world, suggesting that human heroic culture depends on the sacrifice, labor, and bodies of other-than-human beings. These riddles amplify the suffering of wood-weapons and force the audience to acknowledge their own complicity in that suffering, thus offering a powerful rebuttal to the celebration of heroic violence found elsewhere in the Old English corpus. In their depiction of non-human beings speaking out against their unwilling conscription and continued mistreatment, these riddles anticipate the 95 Williamson, Old English Riddles, 347. 96 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 124.

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modern ecotheological belief that “Earth is a living entity capable of raising its voice […] against injustice.”97

Conclusions I have suggested that Riddle 3, Riddle 51 and Riddle 71, the wood-weapon riddles, demonstrate the profoundly harmful consequences of human activity on the other-than-human natural world. These riddles of transformation suggest that the conscription of wood into weapons is both painful and antithetical to these beings’ wisa (“ways”), and give voice to non-human resistance to injustice. These wood-weapon riddles therefore affirm the principle that all members of the Earth community have the ability to speak out against injustice. On the other hand, some riddles of transformation, like the horn riddles, Riddle 12 and Riddle 76, affirm the belief that the non-human is also capable of raising its voice in celebration. These riddles attempt to incorporate non-human beings into the “dynamic cosmic design” of heroic culture by imagining animal-objects who f ind joy and purpose in their work alongside human actors.98 The emphasis in these riddles on the martial prowess and inherent nobility of the horns in their past and present states suggests that the essential identity of the animal continues in the object. The essential identity and intrinsic worth of animals are also aff irmed in two f irst-person bird riddles, Riddle 6 and Riddle 7, which both exploit similarities between human and avian behavior to encourage new perspectives on familiar situations. Although the speakers coopt human language, these riddles center non-human voices and experiences, reminding audiences that, like humans, the other-than-human beings of the Earth community were deliberately shaped by a loving Creator. Each of these thematic groupings presents a different perspective on the interaction between human and non-human beings in early medieval England. Together, they suggest that the consequences of human activity on non-human beings were of profound importance to the poets who authored these riddles and the compiler who collected them in the Exeter book. The fact that these environmentally conscious riddles appear in both of the major blocks of the Exeter riddle collection, and that both first-person narrative riddles and third-person documentarian riddles consider this 97 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 46. 98 Ibid.

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theme, demonstrates the particular suitability of the genre of the riddle to discussions of the material consequences of the interconnectedness of the Earth community. However, the Exeter riddle collection is not the only generic group in the manuscript which illustrates these pathways of exchange. Whereas the riddles explore the impact of human activity on other-than-human beings, the Exeter elegies explore the possibility of those beings actively assisting human. It is to the ever-popular elegies that we now turn.

Bibliography Attenborough, F.L., editor. The Laws of the Earliest English Kings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922. Bethurum, Dorothy, editor. Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. 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. Brooke, Stopford. English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest. London: Macmillan, 1914. –––. The History of Early English Literature. London: Macmillan, 1896. Cavell, Megan. “Sounding the Horn in Exeter Book Riddle 14.” The Explicator 72 (2014): 324-327. Dale, Corrine. The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Dockray-Miller, Mary. Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England. The New Middle Ages. New York: St. Martins, 2002. Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, edited by Norman C. Habel, 42-53. Sheff ield: Sheff ield University Press, 2000. Kitson, Peter. “Swans and Geese in Old English Riddles.” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 7 (1994): 79-84. Krapp, George Phillip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. The Exeter Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III. Morningside Heights: Columbia University Press, 1936. Kuefler, Matthew S. “‘A Wryd Existence’: Attitudes toward Children in Anglo-Saxon England.” Journal of Social History 24.4 (1991): 823-834. Meaney, Audrey. “Birds on the Stream of Consciousness: Riddles 7 to 10 of the Exeter Book.” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 18 (2002): 120-52. Miller, Thomas, editor. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Early English Text Society 95. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007.

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Neville, Jennifer. “Fostering the Cuckoo: ‘Exeter Book’ Riddle 9.” The Review of English Studies 58 (2007): 431-446. –––. “The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights into Wooden Artefacts.” In Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, edited by Michael D.J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland, 122-143. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Orton, Peter. “The Exeter Book Riddles: Authorship and Transmission.” Anglo-Saxon England 44 (2015): 131-162. Perniola, Mario. Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Society and Art. Translated by Christopher Woodhall. London: Verso, 1995. Planet Earth II. Produced by Vanessa Berlowitz, Mike Gunton, James Brickell, and Tom Hugh-Jones. 2016; Bristol: BBC Natural History Unit. DVD. Planet Earth. Produced by Alistair Fothergill. 2006; Bristol: BBC Natural History Unit. DVD. Pollington, Stephen. The English Warrior: From Earliest Times till 1066. Little Downham: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2006. Salvador Bello, Mercedes. “The Evening Singer of Riddle 8 (K-D).” Selim 9 (1999): 57-68. Thorpe, Benjamin. Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. London: The Ælfric Society, 1884. Underwood, Richard. Anglo-Saxon Weapons and Warfare. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2001. Whitman, F.H. “Significant Motifs in Riddle 53,” Medium Ævum 41.6 (1977): 1-11. Williamson, Craig. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Yong, Ed. “Netflix’s Our Planet Says What Other Nature Series Have Omitted.” The Atlantic, April 1 2019. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/ archive/2019/04/wildlife-series-finally-addresses-elephant-room/586066/

4. Trauma and Apocalypse in the Eco-elegies Abstract The Wanderer and The Ruin are productively read as eco-elegies: explorations of changing relationships within the Earth community. The Wanderer offers its audience an exemplary portrait of natural depression, a human pattern of exile, emotional trauma, and acceptance which relies on identification with the Earth community as a way of healing. The poem affirms the idea that other-than-human elements of Earth community can actively improve the mental state of their human neighbors and reconcile apocalyptic loss. The Ruin contrasts this apocalyptic imagery with an imagined future where the Earth community responds to, but ultimately outlasts, the destruction of human societies. These eco-elegies encourage audiences to consider the long view of Christian history, pacifying anxieties about human relationships with other-than-human. Keywords: exile, sailing, architecture, dream vision, eschatology, ecopsychology

The riddles of the Exeter Book form a mostly coherent generic group: grammatical, structural, and syntactic similarities across the collection enable scholars to think broadly about “the Exeter riddles” as a unit, as I have just done. Scholars have traditionally written with similar certainty about “the Exeter elegies,” another generic group within the manuscript that is usually taken to include Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, The Rhyming Poem, Resignation, The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Ruin.1 In her definitive edition, Anne Klinck writes that Old English 1 See for example Bjork, Old English Shorter Poems and Treharne, ed., Old and Middle English, who both group the elegies in this way. Klinck, Old English Elegies, includes Exeter Riddle 60 in her edition as a part of The Husband’s Message.

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_ch04

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elegies are united by their use of “a lyrical-reflective mode” and structural features such as “a monologue, personal introduction, gnomic or homiletic conclusion, and the ordered repetition of words and sounds, amounting occasionally to refrain or rhyme.”2 She argues that, above all else, “the concept of ‘elegy’ in an [early medieval English] context provides us with a convenient locus for particular themes: exile, loss of loved ones, scenes of desolation, the transience of worldly joys.”3 Klinck does not explicitly state, perhaps because it seems obvious, that with the possible exception of the penultimate entry, this thematic definition centers human experience: exile from human society, loss of human life, and the reactions of emotional humans to understanding of their own transience. However, centering human concerns in generic definitions risks anthropocentric readings of individual texts: following such a definition of the genre, it is little wonder that Klinck dismisses The Ruin, a poem which is practically a checklist of the themes in her def inition, as “the easiest of the elegies.”4 And yet, like so many other genres in poems of the Exeter Book, the elegies reveal a keen interest in the patterns and power of the natural world. From the atol yþa gewealc (“terrible tossing of the waves, 6a) of The Seafarer, to the bitre burg-tunas, brerum beweaxne (“bitter earth-works covered with briars,” 31) of The Wife’s Lament, to the renig weder (“rainy weather,” 10a) of Wulf and Eadwacer, traumatic environments shape the emotional core of many of the Exeter elegies. The prevalence of these and other striking environmental images is a testament to the emotional power of the Earth community in the early medieval English imagination. Moreover, as the introduction to this book shows, apocalyptic anxiety and environmental change in the years approaching 1000 CE meant that the people of early medieval England were likely keenly aware that they were not the only beings at risk of exile or radical loss. Indeed, as I suggested in the first chapter of this book, the work of Old English theologians such as Wulfstan and Ælfric suggests an Old English ecotheology which framed the inevitable end of this Earth in the apocalypse as the foundation of a new Heaven and Earth. I have suggested that the wisdom poetry of the Exeter Book treats many of these same theological concerns, acknowledging the entanglement of human lives and actions with the interests of the other-than-human. I have also suggested that the Exeter riddle collection attempts to articulate the lived experiences of other-than-human beings, 2 Klinck, Old English Elegies, 11. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.

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and to amplify the celebrations and protests of the animals and plants conscripted into human service. The f irst three chapters of this book, then, have shown that early medieval English thinkers understood that their fates were inseparable from the other-than-human members of the Earth community, and that their poetry anticipates the work of modern ecotheologians such as the Earth Bible Team’s ecojustice principles. Any attempts to define the Old English elegy should therefore similarly consider the perspective of the Earth community, and may benefit from comparison to modern ecotheology. This chapter will offer new readings of The Wanderer and The Ruin, and will argue that, like the wisdom poems, these elegies depict human activity as existing within a larger community of human and other-than-human beings. My goal is not to replace Klinck’s very thorough definition, but rather to re-contextualize it within the context of the Old English ecotheology established thus far.5 Given the early medieval English understanding of the created world as a divine ecosystem, we might revise Klinck slightly to introduce a subsection of Old English eco-elegies: lyrical attempts to describe the evolution of relationships within the gesceaft (“creation”) across time. Texts in the eco-elegiac mode describe the devastating impact of exile from one’s community, the consequences of the loss of one life on other members of that community, and the ultimate fallibility of man-made materials in the face of natural forces: all forms of environmental change. These eco-elegies create space to mourn the ways in which relationships between individual elements of the Earth community have changed (and continue to change) across time. In this chapter, I will suggest that The Wanderer and The Ruin demonstrate both the possibilities of the eco-elegiac mode and the profound influence of other-than-human beings in the early medieval English imagination. The first of these texts is among the most frequently translated, anthologized, and taught of the Exeter Book poems; the second is rarely discussed and, as I suggested above, often outright dismissed. Despite their apparent differences, these two poems offer important perspectives on traumatic loss, environmental change, and the redemptive potential of apocalypse. They also attest to the entanglement of environmental, social, and apocalyptic collapse in the early medieval English imagination. My goal in this chapter is not to offer a unified theory of the role of the created world in Old English elegies, but rather to offer new readings which demonstrate the ways in which certain elegies reflect 5 Given the widespread use of and praise for Klinck’s exhaustively researched edition of the Elegies, I think her definition is likely to remain authoritative.

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the Old English ecotheology established in my first chapter, in particular the principles of mutual custodianship and resistance. I begin this chapter by discussing the relationship between social loss, traumatic emotion, and the natural world in The Wanderer. I argue that the poem offers its audience an exemplary portrait of natural depression: a pattern of exile, emotional trauma, and acceptance which relies on emotional connection to the Earth community as a way of releasing earthly desires and fears. My analysis of this pattern of isolation and exile alongside modern psychiatric diagnostic material suggests that the emotional distress described by the speaker of The Wanderer echoes modern descriptions of depression. In examining the causes, effects, and proposed solutions to this natural depression in The Wanderer, I hope to demonstrate the emotional impact of other-than-human beings on the Old English elegies. My analysis of the pattern of natural depression in The Wanderer will show that the poem affirms the modern ecotheological principle of mutual custodianship, anticipating the Earth Bible Team’s assertion that, in addition to food and shelter, “Earth has provided […] many other riches to sustain the body and the spirit of humanity.”6 I will suggest that The Wanderer is a testament to the therapeutic powers of engagement with the non-human in the early medieval English imagination, anticipating the modern field of ecopsychology. Although my primary concern is demonstrating the use of this pattern of “natural depression” in The Wanderer, I’ll also point to echoes of its use in The Seafarer in order to demonstrate the entanglement of environment, emotion, and elegy in the early medieval English literary imagination. The second part of this chapter removes humans from the picture entirely to consider The Ruin, a poem most famous for its dramatic contrast between imagery of the city in its prime and in crumbling ruins. I argue that, far from a “simple juxtaposition of a ruined city in the present with its time of vibrancy in the past,” The Ruin may in fact be read as an apocalyptic vision. Reading the poem within the apocalyptic mode, I show that The Ruin describes three discrete moments in the history of this unnamed city: presenting it alternately as a stable ecosystem, a community in crisis, and the site of a new creation.7 As it juxtaposes three moments in the history of this community, The Ruin attempts to alleviate apocalyptic anxieties by imagining a future in which the Earth responds to, but ultimately outlasts, the destruction of human societies described in elegies like The Wanderer. In this, it reflects the modern ecotheological principle of resistance, which suggests that, 6 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51. 7 Bjork, Wisdom and Lyric, xxii. See the Introduction above.

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although other-than-human beings can “suffer in sympathy with humans,” the Earth community as a whole is ultimately “a subject with the power to revive and regenerate.”8 The Ruin imagines a future—and rewrites a past—in which members of the Earth community are inextricably bound together in a cycle of action and resistance, destruction and resurrection. Like much of the rest of the Exeter Book, these eco-elegies may have served to pacify audience anxieties about human relationships with the natural world by removing the audience from their social and temporal realities to consider the long view of Christian history. The conclusion to this chapter will suggest that there are important lessons for modern environmentalists to take away from these medieval texts. The Wanderer and The Ruin encourage medieval and modern audiences to make significant sacrifices—personal, communal, global—in order to affect meaningful change while acknowledging the grief such sacrifices inspire. What material or social goods are we willing to sacrifice to stymie environmental collapse? How might environmental activism change if we stop thinking about human loss all together? These medieval texts provide useful models for thinking through these complex environmental questions.

Environmental Trauma & Natural Depression in The Wanderer The Wanderer is among the most famous of the Exeter elegies; indeed, it may be the most famous of the Old English short poems. And yet, despite its popularity in class anthologies, The Wanderer is not a simple poem, for it juxtaposes references to early medieval heroic culture like gold-wine (“gold-friend,” 22b) and meodu-healle (“mead-hall,” 27a) with elements of the Christian-Latin tradition, such as the ubi sunt passage in lines 92 and following. This cultural tension led early critics and editors to suggest that the explicitly Christian framework which bookends the poem was a later monkish interpolation to an earlier, entirely pagan text lamenting the machinations of wyrd.9 Attention to this tension between Christian and heroic values remains the center of much of the criticism regarding The Wanderer: in recent years, scholars have identified echoes of and connections to homiletic texts, insular wisdom poetry, Boethian philosophy, stoic philosophy, Celtic and Norse literary traditions, and even Ovid’s Heroides.10 8 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 52-53. 9 See for example Anderson, The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons, 159-160. 10 For an overview, see Klinck, Old English Elegies, 231-238.

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Anne Klinck’s assessment of The Wanderer as “the application of specifically Christian values to the problem of social alienation” nicely draws together these disparate strands without explicitly naming textual or ideological influences, Christian or pagan.11 Given the Old English ecotheology outlined in my first chapter, it is also possible that the “specifically Christian values” put to use in The Wanderer are a belief in the interconnectedness of the Earth community and in the mutual interdependence of human and other-thanhuman beings. If, as I have suggested, the early medieval English imagination affirmed the principles of interconnectedness and mutual custodianship, then we might refigure “the problem of social alienation” in these elegies as a problem of environmental, rather than social, change.12 In the most basic sense, exile can be defined as a sudden and traumatic removal from one’s home or natural habitat; the “problem of social alienation,” then, is both mourning that loss and finding new ways to engage and interact with a new system and its members. In The Wanderer, this process of traumatic exile, mourning, and reengagement with a new environment is an essential part of the journey leading to the Christian wisdom espoused in the latter half of the poem. Indeed, the emotional and spiritual heart of The Wanderer may be its extended meditation on a specific cycle of emotional self-analysis, a pattern within the poem that I’ve termed “natural depression.” In this pattern, isolation from society leads the speaker to intense emotional turmoil, which aligns closely with what we now call depression. This chaotic emotional state amplifies the pain of the speaker’s physical isolation, so that, rather than suffering alone, they begin to identify linguistically and emotionally with the other-than-human beings which constitute their new community. This identification cannot restore the distance between the speaker and the society from which they have been exiled; however, the connection with the non-human serves as an anodyne to the trauma of separation from the familiar environs of human society. Moreover, the intellectual, spiritual, or moral growth that comes from the speaker’s identification with other-than-human beings as a result of their exile drastically changes the nature (as it were) of that exile. Whereas physical and emotional distance was once the cause of separation, the narrator is now set apart from the rest of humanity because of a fundamental change in their understanding of the created world. This emotional growth, in turn, brings the speaker closer to the Creator, and ultimately leads to a meditation on the stability 11 Klinck, Old English Elegies, 232. 12 Ibid.

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of heaven as opposed to the transience of Earth. This eco-elegiac pattern of natural depression fits neatly into Klinck’s understanding of the elegy, as the speaker moves from “disquiet to a kind of acceptance” of their state.13 However, as I will show, it also acknowledges the power of the natural world in shaping the literary portrayal of exile and emotion. The pattern of natural depression provides a useful way of thinking about the importance of the other-than-human members of the Earth community within Old English eco-elegies. The pattern of natural depression is expressed most clearly—and to greatest effect—in The Wanderer. Indeed, the designation given to “the wanderer” within the poem—eard-stapa (“earth-stepper,” 6)—indicates an innate, physical connection to the earth belied by its Modern English title and most readings of the text.14 The framework of “natural depression” provides a useful way of organizing the poem’s thematic treatment of exile, emotion, and environmental change while nevertheless acknowledging the specifically Christian concerns of the early English monastic context. A quick review of the narrative of The Wanderer will demonstrate how this pattern begins: in the opening lines of the poem, the seemingly omniscient narrator establishes that the eard-stapa is alone (anhaga, 1a) and experiencing emotional distress (modcearig, “anxious in spirit,” 2b), and that the reason for this solitude and emotional distress is his banishment to hreran mid hondum hrim-cealde sæ, wadan wræc-lastas (“to stir with his hands the rime-cold sea, to wander the paths of exile,” 4-5a). The shocking physicality of the image of hreran mid hondum attests to the extent of the eard-stapa’s separation from society: bereft of oars, he must paddle—or perhaps swim—alone in the icy water, engaging directly with the other-than-human elements of his environment without the protective distance of human-made tools. The speaker is thus exiled from society, in emotional distress, and exposed to the elements. The first lines spoken by the eard-stapa address the both the causes and the effects of speaker’s isolation, and suggest that the pattern of “natural depression” has already begun: Oft ic sceolde ana mine ceare cwiþan.

uhtna gehwylce Nis nu cwicra nan

13 Klinck, Old English Elegies, 246. 14 I will use the term eard-stapa throughout this chapter to refer to the “speaker” of the Wanderer as opposed to the narrator whose reflections open and close the poem. The masculine adjective an identifies the eard-stapa as gendered male.

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þe ic him mod-sefan sweotule asecgan. þæt biþ in eorle þæt he his ferð-locan healde his hord-cofan, Ne mæg werig mod ne se hreo hyge (8-16)

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minne durre Ic to soþe wat indryhten þeaw: fæste binde, hycge swa he wille. wyrde wiðstondan, helpe gefremman

Often I must, alone each daybreak, lament my sorrows. There is now no one living to whom my inner spirit I might dare openly express. I know, truly, that among nobles it’s a noble practice: that his soul-enclosure he should bind fast, hold his treasure chamber, think as he will. The weary heart cannot alter fate, nor the turbulent mind provide help.

The f irst two lines of the eard-stapa’s speech make clear the totality and the trauma of his isolation from society: the image is of an endless line of lonely dawns with no possibility of emotional or spiritual support. The juxtaposition of this description of physical isolation with the use of multiple compounds related to emotion and spirituality—modsefan (“spirit,” l. 10a), ferð-locan (“soul-enclosure,” l. 13a) and hord-cofan (“treasure-chamber,” used metaphorically to mean “breast” or “soul” l. 14a)—suggests that one crucial consequence of the eard-stapa’s exile is the inability to process trauma. Isolated on the paths of exile, the eard-stapa must try to process his emotional reaction to the separation from his natural “habitat” alone, in the same way that he must steer through the icy sea without the support of man-made tools. However, the suggestion in the final lines that ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman (“the weary heart cannot alter wyrd, nor the turbulent mind provide help,” 15-16) indicates that the eard-stapa lacks the emotional clarity necessary to proceed towards healing. At this point in the narrative, the speaker is alone, in intense emotional turmoil, unable to think clearly about his situation and thus unable to process his emotions in any meaningful way. These first lines, spoken by the eard-stapa but seemingly witnessed by the narrator of the poem, reveal a profound depression. The Diagnostic and

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Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists nine major symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder, requiring the presence of at least five symptoms for no less than two weeks for a full diagnosis.15 Four of these symptoms are immediately relevant to our discussion of The Wanderer: 1. Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report […] or observation made by others 6. Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day 8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate […] nearly every day 9. Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying)

Although, of course, it would be impossible to fully apply modern psychiatry to a fictional medieval voice, these diagnostic criteria obviously align with the experience of the eard-stapa as expressed in his opening speech. The speaker begins uhtna gehwylce (“each daybreak,” 8b) bewailing his cares, thus meeting the first symptom; his werig mod (“weary spirit,” 15a) and hreo hyge (“turbulent mind,” 16a) indicate both fatigue and diminished mental capacities, satisfying criteria 6 and 8. The persistent references to death, destruction, and loss throughout the poem (but especially in 73-110) suggest an overwhelming preoccupation with death, meeting the final criteria. Of course, the presence of these symptoms, even in a modern patient, does not necessarily indicate depression; however, reading The Wanderer alongside these modern diagnostic materials highlights the severity of the eard-stapa’s emotional crisis. Indeed, the eard-stapa’s opening insistence that wyrd bið ful aræd (“wyrd is fully fixed,” 5b) suggests utter despair: the narrator has no hope for the improvement of his status on earth. Given this “patient testimony,” then, it seems that the speaker of The Wanderer is experiencing profound emotional distress which modern psychiatry might identify as depression. Significantly, lines 19-24 of the poem suggest that the cause of this distress is environmental (or, as the DSM-5 might put it, “in response to significant loss”), rather than a chronic condition.16 Swa ic modsefan oft earmcearig, freomægum feor— siþþan geara iu

minne sceolde— eðle bidæled, feterum sælan, goldwine minne

15 See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 160-164. 16 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 161.

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hrusan heolstre biwrah, wod wintercearig (19-24)

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ond ic hean þonan ofer waþema gebind

So I must take my inner spirit— often wretchedly miserable, deprived of native land, far from kin— and bind it with fetters, since long ago my gold-friend was covered by the darkness of earth, and I, miserable, from there traveled winter-sorrowful over the binding of the waves.

These mournful references to the touchstones of early medieval English heroic culture—eðle (“homeland,” 20b), freo-mægum (“kin,” 21b), and goldwine (“gold-friend,” 22b)—have led many critics to read The Wanderer as a lament for a fading era. However, as I have shown, the dominant emotion in this poem is not nostalgia, but despair. Certainly, these lines mourn the speaker’s distance (emotional and physical) from the comforts (emotional and physical) of society. However, these lines also describe the traumatic changes in the narrator’s environment which led to his exile and depression. The death of his gold-wine signals a significant change in resource availability: following the loss of this crucial member of his community, the eard-stapa also loses access to the financial and social stability offered by the relationship between lord and thegn. The eard-stapa responds to this loss by abandoning his home to find a new community and a new gold-wine; that is, a new provider. Similarly, the speaker’s emphasis on his distance from the eðle (“homeland,” 20) and freo-mægum (“kinsmen,” 21) point to the practical significance of the protection that these close kinship communities provide. The practical focus of these references to heroic culture suggest that, beyond simply mourning the loss of the heroic environment, the poem also also explores the lasting impact of that environment on an individual subject who has been removed from it. For the eard-stapa, the loss of resources, protection, and shelter leads to a seemingly inescapable natural depression. Two details in the last line of this passage point to the pattern of natural depression in The Wanderer. The first is the speaker’s self-identification as winter-cearig (“winter-anxious,” 24). The use of this compound recalls the narrator’s description of the speaker as mod-cearig (“heart-anxious”) in line 2 and earm-cearig (“wretchedly anxious”) in line 20; however, it also represents a significant transition in the eard-stapa’s thinking. Indeed, the use of this compound is the first clue that the eard-stapa may have already begun processing the trauma of his exile and working through his natural

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depression. The term mod-cearig is attested nine times in the Old English corpus; earm-cearig appears here and in The Seafarer. The term winter-cearig, on the other hand, appears only once.17 It’s possible to read the poet’s use of winter in this compound as a suggestion that the speaker’s emotional state is influenced by or a reflection of the harshness of his environment. However, I submit that the compound is more productively read as an attempt to process the intensity of the speaker’s emotional state by refiguring it in situationally appropriate terms. Exiled from the organizing principles of human society, the eard-stapa can no longer claim to be “heart-anxious” or “wretchedly anxious,” but must rely instead on the language of the otherthan-human. Chris Bishop has argued that wyrd was closely tied to the forces of the natural world in the early English imagination, suggesting that the forces of wyrd transform winter from a simple season to “a state of mind, a state of terror.”18 Winter is inescapable and utterly indifferent to human concerns: the eard-stapa’s self-designation as “winter-anxious” may therefore reflect a desire to define (or re-define) the specific trauma of his loss while nevertheless acknowledging the fact that loss is ultimately unavoidable. This simple compound reveals the entanglement of environment and emotion within the poem and in the early English imagination. The use of the curious compound winter-cearig is tied through alliteration to the second important detail in this excerpt, the speaker’s new description of his travel arrangements: wod winter-cearig ofer waþema gebind (“[I] wandered, winter-anxious, over the binding of the waves,” 24). Crucially, the speaker frames his journey here not in human terms—as in line 5’s wræclastas (“the paths of exile”)—but in terms of natural patterns: ofer waþuma gebind “over the binding of the waves”. As with winter-cearig, there has been some debate about what exactly this phrase describes. In their edition of the poem, T.P Dunning and A.J. Bliss suggest that the phrase refers to a covering of ice; the similar compound isgebinde (“binding of ice,” presumably an iceberg) appears in Beowulf line 1133.19 However, given the suggestion that the eard-stapa is stirring the waves with his hands, I think it likely that waþuma gebind refers instead to the vast expanse of water surrounding the speaker, which would have seemed to bind his boat in on all sides. The violence of the verb gebindan makes this a deeply agoraphobic image: an individual completely isolated from society and utterly at the mercy of the waves which bind him 17 See entries for these terms in Healey, Wilkin, and Xiang, eds., Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. 18 Bishop, “Fate, Virtue, and the Metaphysical,” 46. 19 See Dunning and Bliss, eds., The Wanderer, 42.

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in. Here, the speaker’s human agency is subsumed by the activity of the Earth community, so that it is the movement of the waves—and no longer the human-dictated tracks of exile—that guide his journey. If, as Maxims I and the riddles suggest, bodies of water such as waves can act as independent subjects, then it is possible that this other-than-human being is in fact responsible for directing the motion of the eard-stapa’s life. Exiled from the organizing structures of human society, the eard-stapa has entered the realm of the other-than-human, and is no longer in control of his own fate: little wonder, then, that he self-identifies as winter-cearig. The use of these environmentally based images—winter-cearig (“winteranxious”) and waþema gebind (“over the binding of the waves”)—suggests that the speaker is no longer thinking solely in terms of the human world, but has rather come to identify linguistically and emotionally with the non-human elements that surround him, namely winter and waves. In response to his isolation from human society—changes in his environment and his relationships to others in that environment—the eard-stapa has begun to identify more with the unpredictable chaos and coldness of the natural world than the “stability” of the human world. This may seem at first to be a signal of the eard-stapa’s increasing dehumanization, a sign that he has “gone wild” as he moves further and further away from the organizing principles of human society. However, given the apocalyptic context of the Exeter Book, it is possible to read the second half of the poem as a suggestion that traumatic separation from the trappings of human society—material goods, yes, but also emotional and social support—may ultimately be a good thing, redirecting human attention away from the terrestrial to celestial concerns. The suggestion that traumatic change may lead to emotional growth is hardly revolutionary; however, the idea that “the problem of social alienation” can be tackled through engagement with other-than-human “society” reflects a unique Old English ecotheology. The use of the phrase ofer waþuma gebind (“over the binding of the waves,” 24b) provides another useful example here, as it is applied throughout the poem both to the eard-stapa and the non-human members of his new environment. In one of the poem’s most moving passages, as the speaker watches waterfowl swimming away from him, he notes that: Fleotendra ferð cuðra cwidegiedda. þam þe sendan sceal ofer waþema gebind (54-57)

no þær fela bringeð Cearo bið geniwad swiþe geneahhe werigne sefan

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The spirit of the floating ones does not bring many familiar utterances there. Sorrow is renewed for the one who must send, very frequently, over the binding of the waves, his weary heart.

The repetition of the phrase ofer waþuma gebind as the speaker watches the ducks swim away is an indicator of the lasting trauma of the initial separation from the gold-wine described in the beginning of the poem. In her essential study of trauma narratives, Cathy Caruth defines traumatic response as the “often delayed, uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena” related to the traumatic event.20 As a modern example, Caruth offers “the experience of the soldier faced with sudden and massive death around him […] in a numbed state, only to relive it later on in repeated nightmares.”21 Caruth argues that the significance of a traumatic event is “not available to consciousness until [the event] imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor.”22 I argue that the repetition of the phrase ofer waþuma gebind in reference to the birds in this passage and in the passage describing the loss of his gold-wine suggests that the speaker has not fully processed the trauma of the latter loss. As he watches the birds float away, the eard-stapa experiences the loss all over again: cearo bið geniwad (“sorrow is renewed,” l. 55b). Indeed, the traumatic repetition of the phrase may reflect an attempt to understand or alleviate the pain of exile from society by displacing it onto the similar (if slightly less high-stakes) experience of “losing” the company of the ducks. By mapping the trauma of exile onto the patterns of the natural world—the wandering of the waves, the peregrination of the water fowl—the speaker is able to begin to make sense of unthinkable loss without the emotional and spiritual support of a human community. Crucially, it’s only after this second scene of loss that the speaker is able to turn away from his own mental state to consider the fate of the world more broadly. In an echo of Wulfstan, the speaker notes that þes middangeard ealra dogra gehwam dreoseð ond fealleþ (“all this Earth, each and every day, perishes and falls,” 62b-63). This apocalyptic warning is followed by the assertion that that ne mæg weorþan wis wer, ær he age wintra dæl in woruldrice (“a man cannot become wise before he has a share of winters in the worldly 20 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 11. 21 Ibid. 22 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 5.

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kingdom,” 64-65a), suggesting that apocalyptic trauma (or at the very least, wintry weather) is a necessary part of the acquisition of wisdom.23 Ultimately, the platitudes contained in line 65b and following—“the wise man must be patient, must not be too hot-hearted nor too hasty in speech,” etc— and the famous ubi sunt passage in lines 92 and following are not attributed to a wretchedly miserable man condemned to wander the paths of exile, but rather to one snottor on mode, gesaet him sundor aet rune (“wise in mind, sat apart in meditation,” 111). The wisdom of the second half of the poem is only available to the speaker once he has processed the trauma of the first half, and his emotional identification with the other-than-human as a part of the Earth community is key to this transformation. The final five lines of the poem, apparently spoken by the omniscient narrator, suggest that the pattern of natural depression the eard-stapa experiences can provide a useful model for any person seeking to process emotional trauma: Swa cwæð snottor on mode, Til biþ se þe his treowe gehealdeþ, beorn of his breostum acyþan, eorl mid elne gefremman. frofre to fæder on heofonum, (111-114)

gesæt him sundor æt rune. ne sceal næfre his torn to rycene nemþe he ær þa bote cunne, Wel bið þam þe him are seceð, þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð.

Thus spoke the one wise in mind, sat apart in meditation. Good is the one who keeps his faith; never too quickly should the grief of a man’s heart be made known, unless he knows beforehand how to work the remedy with courage. Well is it for the one who seeks mercy, consolation from the Father in the heavens, where for us all stability stands.

The parallel construction of til biþ se þe (“good is the one who,” 112a) and wel bið þam þe him (“well is it for the one who,” 133b) may indicate a prescriptive intention: this is the way a faithful person in crisis ought to act. Indeed, these lines suggest that it is only after one learns to process trauma—that is, þa bote cunne (“how to work the remedy,” 113b)—that one is able to share their feelings and experiences with others. Modern psychotherapy 23 Those of us who have spent winters in Britain can attest to the negative affective power of the season.

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is built on the assumption that talking through diff icult feelings and experiences is essential to overcoming emotional trauma: talk-based practices like cognitive behavioral therapy and psychodynamic therapy are known to reduce depression and anxiety symptoms for modern patients.24 These lines from The Wanderer, however, suggest that it’s impossible (or, perhaps, merely inadvisable) to discuss emotions with others without first processing them individually. Rather relying on the mental or emotional stability of an outsider, such as a kinsman, confidant, king, or therapist, these final lines of The Wanderer urge the reader to seek consolation only from heaven þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð (“where for us all stability stands,” 115b). As the eard-stapa roams the waves, The Wanderer models the process of natural depression: traumatic exile, isolation, identification with the natural world, and finally acceptance of the transience of earthly things in the face of the eternal divine. Echoes of this pattern are visible in other poems; a quick review of those echoes in The Seafarer demonstrates the possible prevalence of this pattern in early English narratives. Like their counterpart in The Wanderer, the narrator of The Seafarer is experiencing emotional distress (earfoð-hwile […] bitre breost-ceare, “times of hardship […] bitter breast-sorrow,” 3a-4a) alongside fatigue (mere-werges, “sea-weary,” 12) and a preoccupation with death (adl oþþe yldo oþþe ecghete fægum fromweardum feorh oðþringeð, “disease or old age or deadly violence will force the soul out of the one fated to die and about to depart,” l. 70-71). In addition, like the eard-stapa, the speaker of The Seafarer attempts to replace human companions with waterfowl: hwilum ylfete song dyde ic me to gomene, ganetes hleoþor, ond huilpan sweg fore hleahtor wera, mæw singende fore medodrince (“at times [I took] the song of the wild-swan as my entertainment, the cry of the gannet and the song of the curlew instead of the laughter of men, the singing gull instead of mead,” l. 19b-22). Moreover, the use of the phrase mere-weregs (“sea-weary,” 12) as a self-descriptor points to linguistic and emotional identification with the other-than-human, as in The Wanderer. Finally, The Seafarer, like The Wanderer, includes traumatic repetition linking human and non-human activity: the description of birds as bitter in breost-hord (“bitter in the breast,” 55) echoes the speaker’s own bitre breost-ceare (“bitter breast-sorrow,” 4a). Ultimately, as in The Wanderer, this pattern of natural depression leads to an embracing of the celestial over the terrestrial. The speaker’s final admonition to his audience—uton we hycgan hwær we ham agen, ond þonne geþencan hu we þider cumen (“let us 24 See Van Driessen et. al, “Cognitive-Behavioral Versus Psychodynamic Therapy,” 653-663.

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think where we have our home and then consider how we may get there,” 117-118)—makes this distinction between earthly (that is, human) and heavenly (that is, divine) concerns clear. In the previous pages, I have suggested that The Wanderer and The Seafarer offer a glimpse into narratives of emotional healing in the early medieval English imagination. In the former poem, an eard-stapa, exiled from the trappings and safety of human society, falls into a state of emotional turmoil which closely aligns with the modern understanding of depression. As a result of this exile and emotional distress, the eard-stapa transfers emotional energy to the other-than-human elements of his new community, and begins to identify emotionally with the Earth community. This emotional identification is echoed in the poem by linguistic ties connecting human and other-than-human patterns of activity. Ultimately, it is his emotional identification with the other-than-human which allows the narrator to let go of ties to human society in favor of the Christian wisdom that constitutes the second half of the poem. This pattern is repeated in The Seafarer, which ends with an explicit call to replace earthly (that is, human) desires with meditation on the glories of heaven. Together, these two poems suggest that, in addition to food and shelter, the Earth community provides humanity with emotional and spiritual support. The poem thus affirms the modern ecotheological principle of mutual custodianship, which suggests that, because humans are “inevitably interconnected with other species and ecosystems,” we share “a kinship that reaches beyond pure biological dependency.”25 Indeed, my reading of these two eco-elegies suggests that early medieval English thinkers understood that other species and ecosystems have the power to radically transform the human experience. The suggestion that spending time in nature can benef it the emotional and spiritual health of city-dwelling humans may seem obvious in the 21 st century; however, my reading of The Wanderer and The Seafarer suggests that early medieval audiences, too, were keenly aware of the power of the Earth community to impact human behavior. Indeed, the poem suggests that deliberate engagement with other members of the Earth community has the potential to address human trauma. Signif icantly, certain Old English poems also imagine the reverse: a world in which other-than-human actively and emotionally respond to the actions of humans. For an example of one such text, we turn now to The Ruin, which offers another perspective on the principle of mutual custodianship 25 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51.

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Apocalypse / Now: The Ruin The Ruin shares a distinctly apocalyptic tone with its manuscript neighbors The Wanderer and The Seafarer. While the latter poem warns, somewhat obliquely, that micel biþ se meotudes egsa forþon hi seo molde oncyrre (“Great will be the terror of the Creator from which the earth will turn aside,” l. 103), The Wanderer describes these scenes of destruction in much more explicit detail: Ongietan sceal gleaw hæle þonne ealre þisse worulde wela swa nu missenlice winde biwaune hrime bihrorene, (73-77)

hu gæstlic bið, weste stondeð, geond þisne middangeard weallas stondaþ, hryðge þa ederas

The wise one must understand how horrible it will be when all the riches of this world will stand waste, as now variously throughout all this Earth walls stand blown by the wind, covered by frost, the buildings exposed to storms.

Scholars have long acknowledged the memorial power of Roman ruins on medieval landscapes; this passage from The Wanderer suggests that the object of the ruin may also have evoked scenes of explicitly apocalyptic loss for early medieval English audiences.26 This confluence of the idea of ruin as imperial memorial and ruin as a sign of apocalypse finds its fullest expression in the text of The Ruin. As I suggested in the beginning of this chapter, Anne Klinck’s dismissal of The Ruin as “the easiest of the elegies” is typical of those readings which focus solely or primarily on humans’ reaction to and anticipation of loss.27 James F. Doubleday, for example, reads The Ruin as a meditation on the transience of human societies and the folly of earthly joys informed by “the philosophy of history” popular at the time of the poem’s writing.28 For Doubleday, this historiographical tradition is exemplified by three texts—Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos, and Gildas’ De excidio et conquestu Britanniae—each of 26 See, for example, Frankis, “The Thematic Significance of Enta Geweorc,” 253–269. 27 Klinck, Old English Elegies, 11. 28 Doubleday, “The Ruin,” 370.

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which attempts to explain the destruction of civilizations. He argues that “the common agreement of these three authorities on a philosophicaltheological explanation for the fall of cities,” that cities fall as punishment for sin, would have had “the force of tradition” in the minds of both the author of The Ruin and their early medieval English audience.29 Doubleday reads the descriptions of earthly wealth in the poem as evidence that “the city is given over to all manner of sin,” and argues that an early medieval English audience, well-versed in the philosophical tradition outlined above, would likely have accepted this as an explanation for the eventual destruction of the city.30 By the end of the poem, he concludes, “the audience has come to know not only how the city fell, but why it fell”: as justifiable punishment from God.31 Crucially, however, The Ruin does not only describe the destruction of the city itself: like The Wanderer and The Seafarer, this text also reveals a keen interest in the interdependence of human and other-than-human members of a community. Indeed, I submit that the use of the crucial words gesceaft (“creation,” l. 13) and ær-sceaft (“ancient creation,” l. 16) to describe the city allows for a reading which takes the eponymous ruin as a stand-in for the whole of the Earth community. For early medieval readers of The Ruin, the destruction of this city may have offered a glimpse into the literal apocalypse that was expected to accompany the ominous year 1000; reading the poem within the context of apocalyptic rhetoric and narratives may thus provide a new perspective on the text. Sarah Beckwith has argued that “ruins offer a way of seeing and of engaging our feelings at the deepest affective level—where we see ourselves in history.”32 She suggests that our experiences with ruins are “synchronous, not diachronic,” and that ruins offer “a different kind of temporality” which “cannot be fixed in the time of their origin” or the viewer’s present.33 In other words, the appeal of ruins is not in the object of the ruin itself, but in the viewer’s ability to use that object as a means of experiencing the past, present, and future simultaneously. John J. Morrell has similarly suggested that apocalyptic rhetoric is “not so much about predicting the end of the world as it is about making us feel as though we are a part of a critical moment in history.”34 In what follows, I will argue that The Ruin—and the complex community 29 30 31 32 33 34

Doubleday, “The Ruin,” 375. Doubleday, “The Ruin,” 378. Doubleday, “The Ruin,” 381. Beckwith, “Preserving, Conserving, Deserving the Past,” 198. Beckwith, “Preserving, Conserving, Deserving the Past,” 205. Morrell, “The Dialectic of Climate Change,” 36.

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it describes—offered early medieval English audiences a space to safely explore the potential of an apocalypse in their immediate future within the familiar context of the Roman ruins that littered their landscape. Reading The Ruin as an eco-elegy within the context of apocalyptic time allows us to move beyond “diachronic” thinking about past and present to consider The Ruin as a synchronous text.35 Although The Ruin is not an explicitly apocalyptic text, it nevertheless employs many of the genre’s conventions. In his analysis of the genre, John J. Collins identifies three structural elements typical of apocalyptic literature: first, a narrative framework which explains the medium of the revelation (visual, auditory, or written); second, the presence of both an otherworldly mediator for the revelation and a human recipient; and third, a contrast between the eschatological salvation of the future and the struggles of the present.36 The work of Robin Globus Veldman has further clarified the structure of apocalyptic narratives, identifying three stages of environmental apocalypse: first, a pre-agricultural period when humans “lived in idyllic harmony with nature”; second, a season of oppression when, “intoxicated with power, [humans] sought to subdue and dominate the Earth”; and finally, the moment when “humanity begins to reap the misfortune it has sewn in the forms of […] environmental ills.”37 This long view of human interactions with the Earth community, presented in three acts, mirrors the long reach of salvation history, which similarly connects past, present, and future activity on Earth. Although Veldman acknowledges that this three-act apocalyptic narrative “is not the only one to be found within environmental discourse,” it remains a useful model for tracing “humanity’s fall from ecological grace,” especially in explicitly Christian contexts like early medieval England.38 Several of these key elements are visible in the text of The Ruin, and their effect is to produce a poem which feels distinctly apocalyptic. First, the combination of multiple temporal settings with clear deictic markers allows us to read The Ruin as a visual revelation of three moments in time. Although The Ruin is most famous for the sharp contrast between the eponymous city in ruins and its bright heroic past, The Ruin also contains a third temporal setting: the unnamed speaker’s present. Although this temporal space is “present” for the speaker and audience, Sarah Beckwith’s analysis of 35 Beckwith, “Conserving, Deserving, Preserving the Past,” 205. 36 Collins, “Introduction,” 9. 37 Veldman, “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse,” 5. 38 Ibid.

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ruins suggests that it is nevertheless “unfixed in the time of its origin,” and may well represent the future.39 However, despite this juxtaposition of temporal settings, there is no doubt that the speaker is describing the same ruined gesceaft (“creation,” 13) throughout the poem. Demonstrative pronouns like þæs (this, l. 9b) are used as deictic markers throughout the poem, regardless of which ruin—past(s) or present—is being discussed; across each of the three moments in the history of this city, the narrator speaks of þaes wag (“this wall,” 9b), þas hofu (“these buildings,” 29b), and þas beorhtan burg (“this bright city,” 37a). These deictic markers underscore the fact that, despite the poem’s movement through time, it remains static in space: despite significant changes in the state and inhabitants of the city across the poem, the location of the ruin—and the speaker describing it—has not changed. The detailed ekphrastic description of þes weal-stan (“this wall-stone,” 1a) which constitutes The Ruin may thus be understood as a kind of visual revelation. Moreover, it is possible to map this revelation onto the three acts of environmental apocalypticism identified by Veldman: as I will show, “the first two [acts] are concerned with history, while the last concerns the future.”40 Taking The Ruin as a combination of specific elements of the eco-elegiac mode within the narrative structure of apocalypticism, my reading of the poem turns away from questions of what has been lost—such as the ubi sunt? motif appearing in The Wanderer—to consider instead the shifting relationship between individual elements within this forþgesceaft (“ancient creation,” l. 13). Crucially, The Ruin is not solely interested in the destruction of this ecosystem; the potential of its resurrection after the eschaton is another important concern within the text. Rather than seeing the apocalypse as the location of loss, The Ruin looks hopefully towards the establishment of a new kingdom of Heaven on Earth. John J. Morrell has suggested that apocalyptic rhetoric is “not so much about predicting the end of the world as it is about making us feel as though we are a part of a critical moment in history.”41 The Ruin uses three specific moments in the life of this system to urge its audience to consider their moment in history as an opportunity for meaningful change in advance of the apocalypse. Like The Wanderer and The Seafarer, this eco-elegiac apocalypse describes the changing relationships between human and non-human beings within an ecosystem across time, and acknowledges the mutual custodianship of 39 Beckwith, “Preserving, Conserving, Deserving the Past,” 205. 40 Veldman, “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse,” 4. 41 Morrell, “The Dialectic of Climate Change,” 36.

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human and other-than-human beings. Crucially, however, The Ruin also imagines an Earth community with the power to outlast human societies, reflecting an “awareness of Earth as a subject with the power to revive and regenerate” independent of humans. 42 Although The Ruin begins in the speaker’s present, the narrative proper is situated firmly in the past. Though this section of the poem is most famous for its depictions of this glorious heroic society, the poet is also clearly interested in the ways in which this anonymous society adapted (and adapted to) the other-than-human elements of their community. The poem’s descriptions of the city’s glorious past align neatly with Veldman’s first stage of environmental apocalyptic narratives, which present an ecosystem in stasis where “humans are depicted as living in idyllic harmony with nature.”43 Consider the juxtaposition of manmade and natural environments in the following lines: ræghar ond readfah ofstonden under stormum; (9b-11)

Oft þæs wag gebad rice æfter oþrum; steap geap gedreas.

Often this wall outlasted, grey with lichen and stained red, one kingdom after another; it remained standing under storms; high and curved, it caved in.

These lines emphasize the practical, protective uses of the now-ruined city as a defense against other human societies (rice æfter oþrum) and, significantly, storms. Elsewhere in the poem, the city is referred to as a scur-beorge (“shelter against storms,” l. 5), further highlighting its ability to resist the destructive powers of the Earth community. Though it seems unlikely that the average inhabitant of early medieval England would describe their experience with storms as “idyllic,” the poet’s emphasis on the city’s protective nature across time does suggest a kind of harmony. That the man-made environment of the city is largely able to resist the destructive forces of nature suggests an ecosystem in stasis, allowing us to situate this past in Veldman’s first act of apocalyptic narratives. Though the poet emphasizes the protective nature of the city for humans, these lines also suggest that the gesceaft has been changed through its 42 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 53. 43 Veldman, “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse,” 4.

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encounters with the non-human natural world. The description of the ruined wall as ræg-har (“grey with lichen,” l. 10a) is particularly telling, as the word is unattested elsewhere in the Old English canon. Nicholas Howe has read this description as “literal signs of historical change,” and argues that the word refers to “the grey of lichen that has grown unchecked over the abandoned structures.”44 However, I want to suggest that, rather than unchecked growth, the lichen in this image might usefully be read as a deliberately placed anodyne against the destructive powers of the natural world. Lichen are remarkable, surprisingly well-studied organisms. Their use in early medieval English medicine is particularly well documented: as M.L. Cameron has shown, “in the Leechbooks there are some half-dozen remedies for wounds […] in which lichen is an ingredient.”45 An early medieval audience familiar with this tradition—and we have no reason to believe the monastic community at Exeter would not be—might have understood the lichen covering this ruined wall-stone as medicinal: an attempt by the Earth community to heal the broken wall with an application of lichen. In Old English medical texts, lichen are identified primarily by the location of their origin, so that certain recipes call for hæsles ragu, lichen from the hazel tree, or Cristes mæles ragu, lichen from a crucifix.46 Cameron notes that the specificity of these origins suggest “magical properties in ingredients taken from them.”47 What properties might this wall-lichen have? It is possible to imagine that this lichen, imbued with the strength of the original wall stone, is presented as a source of extra protection against future storms. In this reading, the application of lichen to this wall is not the natural world reclaiming man-made structures, but, rather, the natural world working symbiotically with its human inhabitants and their man-made environments to ensure their mutual longevity. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of healing the wood-weapon of Riddle 3 laments they will never have access to. Whereas that text laments the conscription of other-thanhuman beings into human service, these lines from The Ruin imagine a harmonious community where “responsible custodians” of all kinds “can function as partners, rather than rulers, to sustain a balanced and diverse Earth community.”48 It is therefore possible to read this as an affirmation 44 Howe, Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England, 87. 45 Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, 124. For more on the use of lichen in early medieval English medicine see also Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic. 46 See Pollington, ed., Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore, and Healing, 135. 47 Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, 124. 48 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 50.

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of the modern ecotheological principle of mutual custodianship, which acknowledges “the role of Earth as a custodian.”49 Whereas lines 9b-11 of The Ruin describe the city’s resistance to the destructive power of storms, lines 38-41a describe the city’s attempts to embrace a powerful flood of water. Stanhofu stodan, widan wylme; beorhtan bosme, hat on hreþre. (31b-41a)

stream hate wearp weal eall befeng þær þa baþu wæron,

Stone buildings stood, and the stream gushed with heat in wide waves; the wall embraced everything to its bright bosom, where the baths were, hot to the core.

The use of the active verb wearp (“gushed,” 38) suggests that, though walls surround the baths, the citizens of this city have not fully contained the powerful surge of the widan wylme (“wide waves,” 39a) of the natural springs. The repetition of the adjective beorhtan (“bright,” 37, 40) to describe both the city and rushing waters of the baths suggests a kinship connection between “natural” and “man-made” environments: just as the city is the bright center of this kingdom, so the baths are the bright center of the city itself. These lines are most often used as evidence that the “historical” location of The Ruin must be Bath, as the Roman ruins in that city were visible in early medieval England. More important, however, is the poet’s obvious fascination with the raw power and heat of the baths and their relative importance to the city. Regardless of where the city was located, these lines indicate that, for early medieval English thinkers, attempting to integrate elements of the natural world into man-made environments was seen as materially enhancing the latter. The Ruin’s depiction of the harmony and balance of this city’s glorious past, then, might well be read as a description of an ecosystem in stasis: the city is able to successfully resist the destructive powers of the natural world as represented by storms, but embraces and integrates other forces, such as the hot springs which are redirected into the city center. The description of the city as ræghar ond readfah (“grey with lichen and stained red,” 10) 49 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51.

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suggests that other-than-human members of that community are active in the city’s resistance to destruction. Indeed, these descriptions of the city’s harmonious past anticipates the modern ecotheological belief that other-than-human beings can act as “responsible custodians” of the Earth community alongside their human counterparts.50 The poem may thus be read as another affirmation of the principle of mutual custodianship, which suggests that human and other-than-human beings can work together “as partners, rather than rulers, to sustain a balanced and diverse Earth community.”51 The narrator’s interest in the delicate balance between human and other-than-human beings in this section also allows us to read this as the first of the three acts of apocalyptic narratives identified by Veldman. From an ecosystem in stasis to an ecosystem in crisis, the second act of apocalyptic narratives addresses the causes and violent effects of human distance from the natural world. In many environmental apocalypses, such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, this separation is directly attributed to human fallibility and greed. Within the text of The Ruin, apocalyptic destruction in the form of environmental collapse is attributed to wyrd; lines 21-31a describe the transition in explicit detail: Beorht wæron burg-ræced, heah horngestreon, meodoheall monig oþþæt þæt onwende Crungon walo wide, swylt eall fornom wurdon hyra wig-steal brosnade burg-steall. hergas to hrusan. ond þæs teafor-geapa hrostbeages hrof. (21-31a)

burnsele monige, heresweg micel, monn-dreama full; wyrd seo swiþe. cwoman wol-dagas secg-rofra wera; westen staþolas Betend crungon, Forþon þas hofu dreorgiað, tigelum sceadeð

Bright were the city buildings, the many bathing halls, high gables and great noises of war, many mead-halls filled with the joys of the people; until fate the mighty changed all that. Perished men fell dead widely, days of pestilence came, 50 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 50. 51 Ibid.

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death consumed all the brave men; their defenses became waste places, the city decayed. The rebuilders fell, the armies to the earth. Therefore, these buildings grow desolate, and the red curved roof sheds its tiles.

The standard heroic imagery of the first four lines of this excerpt is immediately contrasted with scenes of destruction following the crucial phrase oþþæt þæt onwende wyrd seo swiþe (“until wyrd the mighty changed all that,” 24). Chris Bishop has shown that “temporal comparisons separated by the word oþþæt” frequently appear in Old English poetry to highlight “the power of wyrd and its entropic nature.”52 His analysis of the poetry of the West Saxons suggests that “the oþþæt clause is used to introduce the agent of change, and the transformation is always towards decay.”53 In the lines quoted above, the “oþþæt clause” signals a shift from the city’s former glories to its current state of decay, and highlights the power of wyrd against human societies. Bishop argues that wyrd was closely tied to winter in the early medieval English imagination, suggesting that the forces of wyrd transform winter into “a state of mind, a state of terror.”54 However, the scenes of chaos and loss described in The Ruin are not explicitly connected to winter: indeed, the violence in the lines above recalls environmental collapse, rather than regular seasonal changes. Though the term wol-dagas (“days of pestilence, 25) seems to appear only in The Ruin, references to wól (“pestilence, plague”) appear throughout the Old English corpus in discussions of environmental collapse. In the Ecclesiastical History, for example, Bede refers to þa tid þæs miclan woles & monncwilde, þe Breotone ealond & Hibernia mid micle wæle fornom & forhergade (“the time of the great plague and loss of lives, which wasted and ravaged the islands of Britain and Ireland with great mortality”).55 Just as, in The Ruin, plague consumes ( fornom, 26) the human inhabitants of the city, in Bede’s text plague wastes ( fornom) the whole island, suggesting a severe endemic. If, as I have suggested, the ruined city is intended as stand in for the ærgesceaft (“ancient creation”) as a whole, then we might read the repetition of Bede’s phrasing by The Ruin-poet as an 52 Bishop, “Fate, Virtue, and the Metaphysical Winter,” 46. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Miller, ed. and trans., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, 191. Subsequent citations will be in-text, by book, chapter, and line number.

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attempt to convey similarly catastrophic loss of life. In other words, though the narrator of The Ruin only explicitly mentions the loss of human life, it is possible to read lines 25-29 of the poem as a description of widespread apocalyptic collapse. Indeed, Bede’s description of the great plague of 664 explicitly ties the loss of life through plague to environmental collapse. He writes that Þa wæs geworden ymb syx hund wintra 7 foewer 7 syxtig æfter Drihtnes menniscnesse eclipsis solis, þæt is sunnan asprungennis, þæt heo sciman ne hæfde: ond wæs eatolice on to seoone […] æfter þon swycle wæs þy ylcan geare semninga wool & aðol forhergiende & forneomende ærst þa suðælas Breotone, 7 swylce eac Norðanhymbra mægðe wæs þreagende, 7 mid grimme wæle longe feor 7 wide grimsigende (Book 3, Ch. 27) Then, there was, 664 years after our Lord’s incarnation, an eclipsis solis, that is, a failing of the sun, so that it had no light, and it was dreadful to see […] after this there was, in the same year, a sudden plague and a sickness, which wasted and destroyed first the southern parts of Britain, and in the same way the people of Northumbria were afflicted, and raged with grim death far and wide for a long time.

J.R. Maddicott has shown that Bede’s concern with plague reached “near apocalyptic” heights, and there is a long medieval tradition of reading plague as a sign of the apocalypse.56 Moreover, as I have argued above, the eschatological writings of Wulfstan and Ælfric urged the faithful to look for tacna on sunnan (“signs in the sun”) as symptoms of apocalyptic collapse.57 It is possible, then, that Bede’s descriptions of these deadly nation-wide plagues were intended to recall (or inspire prayerful meditation on) scenes of global apocalyptic environmental collapse. An early medieval English audience, well-aware of the consequences of the seventh-century plagues, and reading in Bede’s long shadow, may have similarly understand references to wol-dagas (“days of pestilence,” 25) in The Ruin as distinctly apocalyptic destruction. Regardless of the exact cause or extent of the loss of life alluded to in these lines, the narrator is clear that the non-human members of this 56 Maddicott, “Plague in Seventh-Century England,” 1, 23. For plague as a sign of the apocalypse, see Eco, “Waiting for the Millennium,” 126-128. 57 Thorpe, ed., Sermones Catholici, 610.

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system actively respond to the loss of their human counterparts. In lines 28b-29, the narrator says that betend crungon, hergas to hrusan; forþon þas hofu dreorgiað (“the rebuilders, the armies, fell to the earth; therefore these buildings grow desolate.”) The use of the crucial conjunction forþon (“therefore, because,” l. 29b) suggests that the gradual decay of the city is in direct response to the loss of its human inhabitants. The reference to those humans as betend (“rebuilders,” l. 28b, from the verb betan, “to repair, make better”) also suggests that the buildings rely on their human inhabitants for upkeep and maintenance just as the humans rely on the protective power of the city. In these lines, then, the symbiotic harmony described in the first part of the poem begins to disintegrate. The loss of the human element leads to the gradual decay of the ecosystem as a whole. I have suggested that it is possible to read the eponymous city as a stand-in for the Earth itself; we may similarly read these lines as an attempt to imagine an Earth community which actively responds to the loss of human life. Whereas The Wanderer and The Seafarer describe the fate of humans removed from their community, The Ruin describes the reaction of a community to the loss of its humans. Indeed, the poem’s uncanny depictions of familiar landscapes marked by conspicuous absence of humans almost anticipates the 2007 publication of Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. Variously classified as either non-fiction or speculative fiction, Weisman’s book imagines the impact of the sudden disappearance of humans on the Earth community, focusing especially on the gradual decay of man-made landscapes and the “reclamation” of the natural world. Like Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, released just a year earlier, The World Without Us relies heavily on dramatic images of apocalyptic collapse—an empty Times Square, a crumbling Empire State Building—to emphasize the severity of the environmental crisis. However, whereas The World Without Us imagines the natural world “taking back” the Earth after human extinction, this early medieval English apocalypse seems to imagine a natural world that cannot continue without the support of human activity.58 Though it is possible to read this image as anthropocentric—arrogant humans imagining a natural world which cannot exist without their care—a more generous interpretation might see this as a refraction of the principle of mutual custodianship, imagining a world where the other-than-human members of a community actively respond to the loss of their human counterparts. I have suggested that the wisdom poems Maxims I and The Order of the World attempt to map out the complex interconnections that constitute the Earth 58 Weisman, The World Without Us.

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community. The riddles explore the concrete consequences—positive, negative, and neutral—of this interconnectedness, and amplify the voices of the other-than-human. In the same way, The Ruin imagines a world where all members of the Earth community—represented by the metonymic gesceaft—act in harmony as mutual custodians. The final act of The Ruin’s apocalyptic narrative attempts to alleviate the horror of the apocalypse by looking hopefully towards the establishment of a new kingdom of Heaven on Earth. As Robin Globus Veldman notes, this final act takes can take one of two forms. In the tragic mode of environmental apocalypticism, the narrative ends by suggesting that “there is nothing humans can do to avert catastrophe, and the most realistic course of action is to start preparing now for a post-apocalyptic world.”59 In the comic mode, the narrative ends “by warning that humans can prevent catastrophe, but only if they act soon, and decisively.”60 The third act of The Ruin’s apocalyptic narrative—the speaker’s present, in which the ruin continues to be materially transformed—merges these two possibilities, presenting a hopeful vision of the post-apocalyptic world which is nevertheless dependent on human action in the present. Because the poem has sustained significant manuscript damage, we cannot be certain about how it ended; however, descriptions of the speaker’s present throughout the poem indicate that the final lines may be intended to recall a post-apocalyptic landscape awaiting the establishment of the new Earth. The description of the city in lines 6 and following is especially telling: waldend wyrhtan— heardgripe hrusan, werþeoda gewitan. (6b-9a)

Eorðgrap hafað forweorone, geleorene— oþ hund cnea

The earth’s grasp holds the master builders—perished, gone— the hard grip of the earth, until a hundred generations of men have departed.

The term eorðgrap, unattested elsewhere in the Old English corpus, gives active agency to the earth, and as such must be considered distinct from more 59 Veldman, “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse,” 5. 60 Ibid.

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common compounds such as eorðgræf (“a hole dug in the earth”) or eorðscræf (“an earth-cavern, grave”), both of which are also used in descriptions of burials.61 The reference to waldend wyrhtan (“the master builders,” 7a), like the later reference to the betend (“rebuilders,” 28), reminds us that this city is a human construction, and that, despite the strength of the structures we build to keep the forces of nature away, all bodies will eventually return to and be consumed by the earth. And yet, the emphasis here is on the strength of the earth’s grip, not the inevitability of death; indeed, the poet’s specificity in mentioning the city’s architects (as opposed to a vaguer reference to the general citizenry) seems to suggest that the hold of the earth is strong enough to overwhelm even those trained in the art of keeping it out. Nor are human remains the only thing held by the heard-gripe hrusan: Wonað giet se […] fel on foldan grimme gegrunden, (12-14)

wæpnum geheapen, forð-gesceaft bærst grund eall forswealg.

The […] still molders; hewn by weapons, it fell to the earth, its future-state burst, fiercely ground down, the ground swallowed it all.

The phrase wæpnum geheapen acts here as yet another reminder that this is a human-made and therefore fallible structure; the alliterative fel on foldan (“fell to the earth,” 13a) looks to the future to remind the audience that just as the heard-grip of the earth holds the master builders, it will, ultimately, reclaim the building itself. Similarly, the phrase grund eall forswealg (“the ground swallowed it all,” 14b) expands the image of a passive landscape as a resting place for the architects to an image of the landscape actively consuming architect and architecture. The noun grund is used primarily in the Old English corpus in the sense of terrain, the physical reality of the ground, as opposed to eorð or lond, which have more symbolic connotations. Forswealg, similarly, typically connotes physical—and not merely symbolic—consumption: in Beowulf, for example, we are told that Grendel […] leofes mannes lic forswealg (“Grendel devoured the beloved man’s body.” 2080). The use of the term here again reinforces the idea that the landscape surrounding the ruin will eventually consume and perhaps even repurpose 61 For more on the language used in describing early medieval English burial practices, see Thompson, Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England, especially chapter 5.

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the constituent parts which add up to the object of the ruin: rocks, mud, and mortar all return to the Earth. These lines, then, present a vision of an apocalyptic wasteland marked by human absence and the reintegration of the remnants of human society into the Earth. In this, it is eerily reminiscent of Weisman’s The World Without Us and other pieces of speculative fiction which imagine humanbuilt landscapes after humanity. And yet, significantly, this apocalyptic wasteland is temporally bound: the speaker states that it will last only oþ hund cnea werþeoda gewitan (“until a hundred generations of men have passed,” 8b-9a). The suggestion that, after this period of time, the Earth will release the men and materials it holds close may be intended as a reference to Christ’s return. Because, according to Mark 13:33, no one knows the day or the hour of Christ’s coming, these lines can be read as hyperbolic representation of the unknown period between the end of the world and the second coming. In this reading, the poem positions the narrator—and their early medieval English audience—in a unique moment in time: in the midst of the apocalypse, awaiting the establishment of a new heaven and Earth. Within this context, references to the longevity of the landscape throughout the poem—eorðgrap (“earth’s grasp,” 6), heard-grip hrusan (“hard grip of the earth,” 8a), fel on foldan (“fell to the earth,” 13a), and grund eall forswealg (“the ground swallowed all,” 14b)—suggest that the Earth itself will outlast the destruction of human societies. This is in keeping with both biblical doctrine and the early medieval English apocalyptic tradition: as Ælfric reminds his audience, ne awendað heofon and eorðe to nahte, ac hi beoð awende of ðam hiwe ðe hi nu on wuniað to beteran hiwe (“Heaven and Earth will not turn to naught, but they will be changed from the form in which they now exist to a better form.”)62 In these lines, then, we see a third vision of human engagement with the Earth community, one in which the Earth outlasts the destruction of human societies and patiently awaits the foundation of a new kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Though manuscript damage makes it impossible to know for sure how The Ruin originally ended, the poem’s extant final lines provide tantalizing clues. Line 48b is complete—þæt is cynelic þing (“that is a noble thing”)—while only two words remain in line 49: huse (“house”) and burg (“city”). I want to suggest, briefly, that these cryptic remainders may have originally described the New Jerusalem, the center of the newly established kingdom of heaven on Earth. Revelations 22:1-2 describes this heavenly city as having the “pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from 62 Thorpe, ed. and trans., Sermones Catholici, 618.

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the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of its street.” The end of The Ruin, similarly, describes hate streamas (“hot streams,” l. 43b) running through the streets of an anonymous city. Though it is possible that this running water is intended as yet another description of the city’s baths, it is also possible that these lines might have described the establishment of the new kingdom of Heaven on Earth, and the refreshing waters of life which revitalize and reawaken the post-apocalyptic landscape. In such a reading, this third narrative act would alleviate apocalyptic anxieties by imagining a future in which the Earth outlasts the destruction of human societies and patiently awaits the establishment of a new kingdom. The very fact of the city’s continued existence is a testament to its remarkable power of resistance. If the eponymous city is taken as a stand-in for the Earth community, then this final act of The Ruin affirms the modern ecotheological principle of resistance, which suggests that the members of that community “have a remarkable capacity to survive, regenerate, and adapt to changing physical circumstances in spite of human exploitation and short-sighted greed.”63 For an early medieval English audience anticipating the apocalypse, this text may have offered some relief, imagining a future in which other-than-human beings mourn but ultimately survive the destruction of human societies. Far from a simple elegy mourning the loss of human societies, The Ruin is, rather, a complex meditation on the mutual custodianship of the Earth community, and the power of the other-than-human to resist destruction at human hands.

Conclusions In this chapter, I have suggested that The Wanderer and The Ruin can best be described as eco-elegies, lyrical explorations of the impact of ecosystem changes on the various members of that system. I have also argued that the emotional power of these eco-elegies lies in their depictions of an unforgiving natural world. As the eard-stapa roams the waves, The Wanderer models the process of natural depression: traumatic exile from one’s natural habitat leads to the loss of social and practical benefits of that community, which leads in turn to emotional identification with the natural world and, finally, acceptance of the transience of earthly things in the face of the eternal divine. This pattern of emotional trauma and environmental healing is also repeated in The Seafarer. In both cases, the harsh environmental realities 63 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 53.

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of the scene act as a conduit to healing, rather than the primary source of stress. The poems thus affirm the modern ecotheological belief that Earth has provided “riches to sustain […] the spirit of humanity.”64 Moreover, it is possible the poem may have acted to alleviate apocalyptic anxiety by reminding its monastic audience that, no matter how our dramatically or traumatically our environs change, there is stability in heaven. The Ruin, too, can be read as an apocalyptic narrative. Considering elements of the apocalyptic mode within the poem, rather than taking it a simple elegy, makes space for continued consideration of points of continuity and systems of exchange between human societies and the natural world in Old English poetry. By imagining a future in which the Earth actively responds to but ultimately outlasts the destruction of human societies, The Ruin alleviates apocalyptic anxieties and encourages more thoughtful integration of humanmade and natural environments. In The Ruin, as in Maxims I, The Order of the World, and the Exeter riddle collection, human and other-than-human spheres of activity are collapsed, so that inanimate environmental actors, such as the curved roof which is said to shed its tiles and the lichen which heals the city’s walls, are given active roles in the city’s history. This chapter has suggested that the eco-elegies of the Exeter Book affirm the modern ecotheological principles of mutual custodianship and resistance; in previous chapters, I argued that the Exeter Riddle collection similarly affirms the principles of intrinsic worth, purpose, and voice, and that the wisdom poems affirm and trace the interconnectedness of creation. Together, then, this body of poetry offers reflections of each of the major principles of modern ecotheology as articulated by the Earth Bible Team. Read alongside the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan, the poetry of the Exeter Book provides a glimpse into a unique Old English ecotheology, which I have argued was informed by cotemporaneous environmental change and apocalyptic anxieties. For the final chapter of this book, we turn now to a concrete example of this ecotheology, in the form of a verse hagiography: Guðlac A.

Bibliography Anderson, George K. The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Legacy Press, 2015. Beckwith, Sarah. “Preserving, Conserving, Deserving the Past: A Meditation on Ruin as Relic in Post-War Britain in Five Fragments.” In A Place to Believe In: 64 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51.

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Locating Medieval Landscapes, edited by Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, 191-210. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Bishop, Chris. “Fate, Virtue, and the Metaphysical Winter in the Poetry of Wessex.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 4 (2008): 1-15. Bjork, Robert E., editor. Old English Shorter Poems Volume II: Wisdom and Lyric. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 32. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Cameron, M.L. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Collins, John J. “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre.” Semeia 14 (1979): 1-19. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013. diPaolo Healey, Antonette, John Price Wilkin, and Xin Xiang, editors. Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2009. Doubleday, James F. “The Ruin: Structure and Theme.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71 (1972): 369-381. Dunning, T.P. and A.J. Bliss, editors. The Wanderer. London, Meuthen: 1969. Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel, 38-53. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Eco, Umberto. “Waiting for the Millennium.” In The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950-1050, ed. Richard Landes, Andrew Gow, and David C. Van Meter, 121-136. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Frankis, P.J. “The Thematic Significance of Enta Geweorc and Related Imagery in The Wanderer.” Anglo-Saxon England 2 (1973): 253–269. Howe, Nicholas. Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Klinck, Anne L. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. Maddicott, J.R. “Plague in Seventh-Century England.” Past & Present 156 (1997): 7-54. Miller, Thomas, editor and translator. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Early English Text Society 95, vol. 1. London: Early English Text Society, 1890. Morrell, John J. “The Dialectic of Climate Change: Apocalypse, Utopia and the Environmental Imagination.” PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 2012. Pollington, Stephen, editor. Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore, and Healing. Little Downham: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2000.

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Storms, Godfrid. Anglo-Saxon Magic. Berlin: Springer Science + Business Media, 1948. Thompson, Victoria. Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002. Thorpe, Benjamin, editor and translator. Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. London: The Ælfric Society, 1884. Treharne, Elaine, editor. Old and Middle English c. 890-1450: An Anthology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Van Driessen, Ellen et. al. “Cognitive-Behavioral Cognitive-Behavioral Versus Psychodynamic Therapy for Major Depression.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 85.7 (July 2017): 653-663 Veldman, Robin Globus. “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse: How Imagining the End Facilitates Moral Reasoning Among Environmental Activists.” Ethics and the Environment 17 (2012): 1-23. Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.

5.

Mutual Custodianship in the Landscapes of Guðlac A Abstract Guðlac A details the eponymous saint’s relationships with the holy landscape surrounding his hermitage and its other-than-human inhabitants. The poem suggests that the work of Guðlac’s sainthood is sustained devotion to the Earth community. As an exemplum of Old English ecotheological living, Guðlac’s legend offers a challenge to the concept of environmental “stewardship” of the Earth community in favor of a model of mutual custodianship calls for sustained and deliberate devotion to the created world for its own sake and as a manifestation of the Creator’s love and glory. It also suggests that sustained engagement with the natural world even in the face of environmental crisis or collapse will be rewarded, in this life or the next. Keywords: divinity, sacred land, isolation, mysticism

In the previous chapters, I have suggested that the looming specter of apocalyptic collapse at the end of the tenth century brought human connections to the other-than-human elements of the Earth community into sharp relief for the people of early medieval England. My first chapter argued that the Old English ecotheology which emerged from this cultural-environmental moment—expressed most clearly in the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan—anticipates modern ecotheological principles, such as belief in the interconnectedness of the Earth community in the intrinsic worth, active voice, and resistance of the other-than-human members of the gesceaft, and in the mutual custodianship of human and other-than-human beings on Earth. Subsequent chapters suggested that this Old English ecotheology is also reflected in representations of the Earth community in the Old English poetry of the Exeter Book. These poems are representative of a corpus and an ecotheology which sought points of continuity, rather than conflict, with other-than-human members of the Earth

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_ch05

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community, and I have suggested that their authors actively sought to engage that community in their work. As they looked back in time to the harmony of Eden and forward to the inevitable apocalypse for help in navigating their relation to the other-than-human, early medieval English writers and thinkers also sought aspirational examples of holy living in their present moment. The depth of the Old English hagiographical tradition—over 230 prose lives in the Old English Martyrology, a didactic collection of Lives by Ælfric, Cynewulf’s verse hagiographies Elene and Judith, the anonymous Andreas, and the two-part poem Guðlac A and Guðlac B—attests to the prominence of saints’ lives as moral exempla and practical models of holy living.1 However, despite this obvious fondness for hagiography, of all the saints memorialized in Old English poetry, only two—Kenelm and Guðlac of Crowland—are native to early medieval England. Though St. Kenelm’s life is extensively recorded in Middle English, the only record of his life in Old English is the two-line Distich on Kenelm.2 Guðlac, on the other hand, is the subject of an extensive Old English hagiography, including a prose Vita, two lengthy narrative poems known as Guðlac A and Guðlac B, and a set of illustrations from the 13th century called the Guðlac Roll.3 Following Bishop Leofric’s original description of the manuscript, I have argued that the Exeter Book is a uniquely englisc boc informed by a specifically Old English ecotheology; we might likewise consider Guðlac A to be the quintessential englisc hagiography, for Guðlac’s life was deeply entangled in the landscape early medieval England. Born into the royal house of Mercia in the 7th century, Guðlac fought in King Æthelred’s army before joining the monastery at Repton at the age of 24.4 A year later, Guðlac left the community in Repton to live as a hermit in the East Anglian fenland; he remained in the fens for the rest of his life, venerated for his wisdom and visited by pilgrims such as the Mercian prince Æthelbald, whom he sheltered in exile and correctly prophesied would become king. Guðlac’s life was thus firmly tied to early medieval English royal, religious and political life. 1 For an introduction to the Old English verse hagiographical tradition, see Bjork, The Old English Verse Saints Lives, 3-27. For the prose tradition, see Whatley, “An Introduction to the Study of Old English Prose Hagiography,” 3-34. 2 See Clayton, ed., Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints, 354-355. 3 See Roberts, “An Inventory of Early Guðlac Materials,” 193-233 for a discussion of these materials and their Anglo-Latin counterparts. Guðlac A and Guðlac B are both held in the Exeter Book, although capitals in the manuscript indicate that they were clearly intended as separate texts. The former poem describes the saint’s life and initial temptations; the latter is presented primarily as a dialogue, and depicts the saint’s death. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus primarily on Guðlac A. 4 See Roberts, “Hagiography and Literature,” 69-86.

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It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that this specifically englisc hagiography begins with a discussion of the environmental and social consequences of the coming apocalypse, which I have argued was an important concern for the people of early medieval England. The introduction to the saint’s narrative in Guðlac A paints a decidedly bleak picture: colaþ Cristes lufu. geond middangeard swa þæt geara iu wordum sægdon eal anemdon, Ealdað eorþan blæd ond of wlite wendað Bið seo siþre tid mætre in mægne. (37b-46a)

Woruld is onhrered; Sindan costinga monge arisene, Godes spelbodan ond þurh witedom swa hit nu gongeð. æþela gehwylcre wæstma gecyndu. sæda gehwylces

The world is disturbed; Christ’s love grows cold. Many tribulations have risen up across all this Earth, just as years ago, God’s messengers announced through prophecy, declared all that is happening now. The earth’s abundance grows old in every noble quality, And the beauty of every kind of fruit decreases. In these later days, everything that grows grows weaker in strength.

Here, as in Wulfstan’s Homilies, conspicuous environmental change is explicitly tied to human activity (specifically, a lack of active faith) and a general anxiety about the coming apocalypse: the cooling of Christian love stymies earthly growth as all living things move inexorably towards death and the end of time. Indeed, the last line echoes Wulfstan’s refrain throughout the Homilies that the world proceeds swa leng swa wyrse (“always the longer, always the worse”) in the days approaching the apocalypse.5 5 The phrase appears in three of Wulfstan’s homilies: De Anticristo, Secundum Lucam, and Secundum Marcum. See Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 117, 123, 137.

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This interest in the environmental effects of religious crisis is fitting for an eremitic native saint like Guðlac, whose hagiography is intimately connected to the landscape on which his hermitage is built. Indeed, unlike the anonymous landscapes of The Wanderer and The Ruin, the landscape of Guðlac A can be positively identified. As Jane Roberts has shown, Guðlac’s legacy lives on in modern churches and place-names throughout the fens of eastern England: in a touching bit of symmetry, the landscapes which shaped his life are shaped by his afterlife.6 However, although most scholars of the poem understand the fenland to be, as Laurence K. Shook has it, more than “mere geographical appendage,” most readings do not consider the landscape to be a meaningful participant in the drama of the poem or in Guðlac’s life.7 Shook’s argument—that the landscape on which Guðlac lives and works “[stands] for all that is significant in the spiritual life of the good Christian”—is typical of criticism which reads the landscape of the fen as a passive space onto which Guðlac’s religious goals can be projected.8 Paul F. Reichardt has similarly suggested that the landscape on which Guðlac’s hermitage is built is as much “a symbol of interior spiritual achievement as a geographical location in the fens of Crowland,” and that the saint’s removal of demons from the fenland represents the “degree of ascetic perfection” which Guðlac has achieved.9 These allegorical readings of the landscape reduce the fenland to either a means of measuring or a symbol for Guðlac’s spiritual growth, rather than fully considering its significance as an active agent in the narrative of Guðlac’s life. More recently, Alfred K. Siewers has suggested that “the fens and demons in the Guðlac tales can be seen as landscape narratives both of conquest and possession, and of the formation of cultural identity.”10 Reading Guðlac A within the context of “the political and cultural situation of eight-century Mercia,” Siewers argues that the poem seeks to construct a desperately needed “ethnic identity,” and that the landscape of the fen within the poem acts as the “contemporary literary equivalent of the construction of Offa’s Dyke.”11 In Siewers’ reading of the poem, the demons who occupy this landscape prior to Guðlac’s arrival stand in for “the spirits of the native population that demographically was still present in the early medieval English kingdoms” in Guðlac’s day, and the saint’s central role is “taking 6 Roberts, “Early Guðlac Materials,” 204-206. 7 Shook, “The Burial Mound in Guðlac A,” 10. 8 Ibid. 9 Reichardt, “Guðlac A and the Landscape of Spiritual Perfection,” 335. 10 Siewers, “Landscapes of Conversion,” 2. 11 Siewers, “Landscapes of Conversion,” 2-3.

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possession of the land” back from those native forces.12 As is the case with most allegorical readings of the fen, Siewers’ focus on human activity and desire in the Guðlac legend overshadows consideration of the active role of the landscape in shaping the saint’s life and legend, reducing it somewhat clinically to “an ecosystem that is not compatible with the emerging polity’s imposition of order.”13 This chapter will suggest that the landscape in which Guðlac lives and works is not simply a symbol of religious growth or a representation of Mercian colonial desires, but rather an integral and active participant in Guðlac’s spiritual journey and the narrative of Guðlac A. As a manifestation of God’s incomprehensible glory, as an earthly mirror of the heavenly home to which all Christians aspire, and as the literal foundation of Guðlac’s sainthood, the landscape of the fen is essential to his life and legend, and an essential part of any reading of Guðlac A. My analysis of the poem will show that its primary concern is Guðlac’s relationships with this holy landscape and the other-than-human members of his community, and that his legend offers a concrete model of environmental sustainability in early medieval England. Rather than a problem to be solved, the landscape in Guðlac A is presented as an inherently holy space deserving of the saint’s devotion, even as demons challenge him for power and resources. The work of Guðlac’s sainthood—and, the poem suggests, the work of any Christian in a time of environmental collapse—is sustained devotion to this earthly home without expectation of anything more or less than eternal life in heaven. Indeed, the poem suggests that the benefits of environmental sustainability extend beyond harmony on Earth to eternal salvation. The saint’s hagiography as it appears in Guðlac A provides an example of holy (and wholly sustainable) living in early medieval England. My analysis of Guðlac A is built primarily on comparison to the eighthcentury Vita Sancti Guðlaci, an Anglo-Latin prose hagiography written within living memory by an East Anglian monk named Felix. Although, as Roberts notes, “the relationship of these two texts may never be decided to the agreement of all who give this problem their attention,” most scholars agree that the popularity of Felix’s Vita in the early medieval English period makes it a likely source for the Guðlac A poet, who must have had some familiarity with the Latin text.14 Because saints’ lives are intended to provide moral exempla for their audiences, comparison of these two texts illuminates the 12 Siewers, “Landscapes of Conversion,” 24-25. 13 Siewers, “Landscapes of Conversion,” 13. 14 Roberts, “Early Guðlac Materials,” 201.

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moral priorities of their authors. The first section of this chapter compares descriptions of the saint’s life and landscapes in Guðlac A and Felix’s Vita Sancti Guðlaci. My reading of Guðlac’s introduction to religious life in these two texts shows that that his representation in the former text is that of a man truly alone in the wilderness. I argue that, by disconnecting the eponymous saint from the Mercian and monastic communities to which his legend is so firmly tied in Felix’s Vita, Guðlac A relegates earthly concerns to mere background noise, presenting Guðlac instead as a man motivated entirely by love for God and the Earth community. I suggest that stripping Guðlac of these royal and monastic connections makes him a more widely accessible bysen on Brytene (“example in Britain,” l. 175) than in Felix’s telling. I also show that the depiction of the fens in Guðlac A differs in several important ways from its depiction in Felix’s Vita. Whereas Felix presents the fenland as an impermeable and entirely evil space, inaccessible to human use, Guðlac A presents this landscape as an inherently holy space by connecting Guðlac’s dangerous hermitage to the refuge and joy of heaven. I show that the occupying presence of demons does not negate the inherently holy nature of the fens, and argue that, while the poem’s theology is hardly animistic, it acknowledges the active and loving presence of God in the Earth community even—and perhaps especially—in the midst of environmental collapse and conflict. The second section of this chapter builds on my discussion of Guðlac’s relationship to the Earth community to argue that his hagiography offers a model of environmentally sustainable living in an early medieval English context. I suggest that his hagiography imparts two important lessons to its early medieval English audiences. The first is a challenge to the concept of stewardship as “management” of the Earth community for the purposes harvesting “raw” material resources. Rather, Guðlac’s model of mutual custodianship calls for sustained and deliberate devotion to the created world for its own sake and as a manifestation of the Creator’s love and glory. Secondly, Guðlac’s lesson suggests that sustained engagement with the natural world even in the face of environmental crisis or collapse will be rewarded, in this life or the next. Reading Guðlac A as an intentional model of early medieval environmentalism informed by Old English ecotheology can expand our understanding of one of the most important religious cults of early medieval England. Moreover, it can complicate modern ideas about environmental responsibility. Guðlac’s insistence on the inherently holy nature of his hermitage—even as he faces down its demonic inhabitants— challenges us to rethink the dangerous modern environmental rhetoric of “the fight against climate change” or “the war on environmental collapse.”

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Jane Roberts has suggested that Guðlac A is, at its core, an illustration of “one way in which a faithful man may gain everlasting joy.”15 In this chapter I argue that, as an exemplum of Old English ecotheological living, Guðlac’s legend positions sustained devotion to God’s creation as both a viable path to salvation and the only possible hope for significant environmental restoration. Guðlac’s dedication to the londes wynn (“the joys of the land,” l. 139, 467, and 819) and the poem’s insistence on the connection between earthly and heavenly homes suggest a widely felt desire for models of sustainable living in the face of environmental crisis in the apocalyptic tenth and eleventh centuries. The poem encourages early medieval audiences to love and protect their eorðlic eþel (“heavenly home,” 261) as a means of worshipping God and as a way to reach the eþel ece (“eternal home,” 67). As an idealized example of engagement with the natural world, Guðlac’s legend provides unique insight into early medieval English attitudes about sustainable models of living within God’s creation. Indeed, Guðlac A suggests that ecological harmony—in this life or the next—may have been as important to early medieval English thinkers as it is to modern environmentalists.

Home, Alone: Guðlac in the Wilderness From its inception, the hagiography of St. Guðlac has been supported by royal and monastic efforts. Shortly after the saint’s death in 714, King Æthelbald, who spent time in the fenland hermitage as a youth, ordered the construction of Crowland Abbey, which was dedicated to Guðlac and which quickly became the center of his cult.16 The creative output inspired by that following is extraordinary. Felix likely began work on his Vita within fifteen years of Guðlac’s death, and the evidence suggests that it was a wildly popular text.17 There are thirteen extant manuscripts dating from the 8th to 14th centuries containing part or all of the Vita; in most cases, the Vita is held in these manuscripts alongside other saints’ lives as part of a legendary, passional, or in a larger collection of religious works.18 In addition to these copies of the Latin Vita, there remains one Old English translation of Felix’s text, an accompanying Old English homily focusing on 15 Roberts, “Early Guðlac Material,” 201. 16 See Roberts, “Hagiography and Literature,” especially 69-73. 17 Colgrave, ed. and trans., Felix’s Life of St. Guðlac, 15-19. 18 Roberts, “Early Guðlac Materials,” 194-200 provides an exhaustive list of the extant medieval manuscripts containing the Vita, including their contents and contexts.

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Guðlac’s early experiences in Crowland, and entries for Guðlac in three of the five extant manuscripts of the Old English Martyrology.19 This extensive hagiographical record confirms that “Guðlac held a highly prominent place in religious observation in England before the Conquest.”20 In fact, his popularity extended far beyond the early medieval period: texts concerning Guðlac appear in three manuscripts of the Middle English South English Legendary, and in a number of insular and continental manuscripts well into the fifteenth century.21 Guðlac was, quite simply, inescapable. Because it is so expansive, Guðlac’s hagiographical tradition is necessarily f illed with divergent, sometimes conflicting, details: as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has noted, “numerous and conflicting Guðlacs appear in a diversity of lives.”22 However, whereas Felix’s Vita describes the saint as an active member of multiple communities—thus contributing to the “numerous and conflicting” identities inherent to his narrative—the text of Guðlac A elides the saint’s connections to these communities. Indeed, Guðlac A presents the saint as a man truly alone in the wilderness, motivated not by social or cultural pressure, but by pure love for God and the gesceaft, and a desire to live a life worthy of entrance into heaven. Divorced from this elite background in Guðlac A, the eponymous saint presents a practical model of holy living, a bysen on Brytene (“example in Britain,” 175a) for the average inhabitant of early medieval England living without the support of royal, monastic, or martial communities. In Felix’s Vita, Guðlac is presented as an active member of multiple communities which inform and transform his life. The first of these communities, and clearly the most important to Felix in the early sections of the Vita, is the prominent Mercian family into which the saint is born. The first chapter of the Vita describes Guðlac’s father as “a certain man of distinguished Mercian stock named Penwalh, whose dwelling […] was in the district of the Middle Angles.”23 This brief biography figures Guðlac as part of an established lineage (as Colgrave notes, Penwalh “is in fact descended from the Mercian royal house”) while simultaneously displacing him: as a Mercian living in 19 For a comprehensive explanation of the relationship between Felix’s Vita and these Old English texts, see Roberts, “Early Guðlac Materials,” especially 202-204. 20 Damon, Soldier Saints and Holy Warriors, 286. 21 Roberts, “Early Guðlac Materials,” provides a complete list of the extant hagiography, including the manuscripts listed above and evidence of the saints’ longevity in popular lore and place-names. 22 Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, 120. 23 Colgrave, Felix’s Life, 73. All subsequent references to the Vita will be in-text, by chapter number.

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exile amongst the Middle Angles, Guðlac straddles the lines between these communities, belonging wholly to neither.24 Felix elaborates on Guðlac’s noble lineage in the next chapter of the Vita, noting that that “the descent of this man was traced in set order through the most noble names of famous kings, back to Icel in whom it began in days of old” (II). Here, Felix endows Guðlac with a legendary heritage: Icel, “presumably the first of the Mercian race to live in England” was an important figure in his own right, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle traces his lineage back to the god Woden.25 Of the royal Mercian line but living in a sort of diplomatic exile, descended from a legend of the migratory age, but firmly entrenched in contemporary power struggles, the Guðlac of Felix’s Vita is a fragmented figure, juggling multiple identities and allegiances. Guðlac’s reliance on and participation in multiple communities is made even more explicit in those sections of the Vita describing his sinful youth and first introduction into the monastic community at Repton. In the Vita, Guðlac’s days as an outlaw begin with a desire to live up to his family’s martial tradition: in Chapter XVI, Felix writes that Guðlac first took up arms while inflamed with a “noble desire for command” inspired by “the valiant deeds of heroes of old”: heroes, perhaps, like Icel’s father Eomer, who is described in Beowulf as hæleðum to helpe (“a help to heroes,” 1709). If Felix had any qualms about the relative morality of the young man’s actions compared to his ancestors, they remain unrecorded. Significantly, Guðlac’s career as an outlaw ends following similar meditation on his family’s legacy. Felix writes that Guðlac gave up his life as an outlaw when he “contemplated the wretched deaths and the shameful ends of the ancient kings of his race in the course of the past ages” (XVII). In other words, it is Guðlac’s desire to atone for his sins and those of his family that sends him to the monastery at Repton. Here again, Felix’s narrative figures Guðlac as a man deeply connected to his family and their legacy. By attributing Guðlac’s decision-making to meditation on that legacy, moreover, Felix reinforces the importance of Guðlac’s earthly communities in guiding his actions. Felix’s description of the saint’s time at Repton similarly stresses the importance of community in shaping Guðlac’s life. He begins by noting that, because he refused to drink, Guðlac was “intensely hated by all the 24 Colgrave, Felix’s Life, 176. He further notes that Penwalh “may have been ealdorman over some section of the Middle Angles”; if this is the case, it surely would have only made Guðlac’s position within these two communities even more tenuous. 25 Ibid. References to Icel appear in the entry for the year 755 in the series of chronicles historically known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; see Earle and Plummer, eds., Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel, 50.

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brethren who lived with him there” (XXI).26 Of course, this moment of discord cannot last: once Guðlac’s new family “proved the sincerity of his life and the modesty and serenity of his mind, the hearts of them all were turned to an affectionate love of him” (XXI). This rapid-fire juxtaposition of harsh rejection and total acceptance highlights the intensity of communal feeling and importance of acceptance at Repton. The importance of Guðlac’s connection to this community is further emphasized in Chapter XXVI of the Vita, when Guðlac leaves his recently established hermitage and returns to the community at Repton for emotional and spiritual support. Felix writes that “he began to consider that he ought to go and have converse with his companions to whom he had been united by no common brotherly love in the bosom of a Catholic community.” As in the chapters describing Guðlac’s noble and heroic lineage, these descriptions of Guðlac’s time at Repton serve to highlight the saint’s participation in and reliance on larger communities, and act as a contrast to the isolation of his future eremitic life. Felix’s Vita ties Guðlac’s legend firmly to the reality of life in early medieval England by presenting the eponymous saint as an active member of Mercian royal, martial, and religious life, and suggesting that his actions are largely guided by his participation in those communities. In contrast, the Guðlac A-poet makes no such attempts to localize their subject; indeed, the poem seems entirely uninterested in the saint’s background or historical significance. The poem’s introduction to the saint gives no genealogical information, nor does it suggest that social or family pressures influenced Guðlac’s spiritual awakening: Magun we nu nemnan þurh haligne hu Guðlac his mod gerehte, eorðlic æþelu, ham in heofonum. siþþan hine inlyhte gæstum gearwað, engelcunde,

þæt us neah gewearð had gecyþed, in Godes willan man eall forseah, upp gemunde Him wæs hyht to þam, se þe lifes weg ond him giefe sealde þæt he ana ongan

26 Colgrave, Felix’s Life, 179 argues that “it is probably the fact that Bede describes Cuthbert as abstaining from all intoxicants […] which leads Felix to attribute the same abstemiousness to Guðlac,” suggesting that the historical Guðlac—or, at least, his historical contemporaries—would likely not have abstained. In any case, the historical accuracy of Felix’s Vita is less important than the deliberate insertion of conflict between Guðlac and his monastic community.

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beorgseþel bugan (93-102a) We can now tell what was made known to us in a high and holy way, how Guðlac, according to God’s will, directed his soul, gave up all wickedness and earthly nobility, sent up his mind to the home in heaven. That was his hope after He who prepares the way of life for souls enlightened him, and had given him grace of angels, so that he began to inhabit alone a dwelling on the hill

Compared to the wealth of biographical detail in Felix’s Vita, this introduction is decidedly vague. The reference to earthly nobility hints at a royal heritage, but the text does not explicitly connect Guðlac to the Mercian royal line, nor does it address his apparently legendary ancestors. The vague mention of wickedness here and a later admission that Guðlac in þa ærestan ældu gelufade frecnessa fela (“loved many dangerous things in his youth,” 109-110b) likely allude to his time as an outlaw. However, the passage explicitly attributes his decision to give up his martial life to Godes willan (“God’s will,” 95), rather than extended meditation on his sins or those of his ancestral line, as in Felix’s telling. Guðlac’s decision to man eall forseah, eorðlic æþelu (“give up all wickedness and earthly nobility,” l. 97) is presented in this introduction not as a response to social pressure or meditation on his sinful lineage, but rather the result of personal divine inspiration. Moreover, this introduction to Guðlac’s legend makes no reference to the saint’s time in the monastic community at Repton. Whereas Felix dedicates several chapters to Guðlac’s life at Repton, the narrative of Guðlac A ignores that part of his life entirely, suggesting instead that it was God’s will that caused the saint to ana ongan beorgseþel bugan (“[begin] to inhabit alone a dwelling on the hill,” l. 101-102a). Indeed, the poem actively positions Guðlac against the very social and monastic communities which Felix spends so much energy highlighting: before Guðlac is even named in the poem, he is described as belonging to a tradition of eremitic saints who wuniað secað ond gesittað hamas on heolstrum.

on westennum, sylfra willum Hy ðæs heofoncundan

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boldes bidað (81-84b) dwell in the wilderness, seek out and settle of their own desire homes in hidden places; the heavenly home they await

The poet later notes that Guðlac is revered as þam þe feara sum mearc-lond gesæt (“one of only a few who occupied the borderland,” l. 173b-174a). Clayton suggests that the phrase þam þe feara sum is “probably litotes for alone,” emphasizing Guðlac’s isolation in the wilderness of the fen on the border of the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia.27 However, if we take the term mearc-lond in its broader definition as any “wasteland lying outside the cultivated,” then Guðlac is once again removed from his historicized local setting to join the larger transhistorical tradition of eremitic saints. The poem thus removes Guthlac from the early medieval English context specific to his biography in order to situate him within a global tradition of holy people marked by rejection of society in favor of intimacy with God and, crucially, the Earth community. For, significantly, Guðlac’s sainthood is figured as a journey not simply towards isolation, but rather towards an intentional and personal relationship with the landscape of the fen. The narrator suggests that in Guðlaces lufade hine ond lærde þæt him leofedan bold on beorhge. (136b-140b)

þam frofre gæst geoce gewunade, lenge hu geornor, londes wynne,

the comforting spirit remained in Guðlac’s service, loved him and taught him ever more diligently, so that the he would love the joys of the land, his home on the hill.

The emphasis here on the londes wynne and Guðlac’s bold on beorhge demonstrates just how important Guðlac’s relationship to the surrounding 27 Clayton, Old English Poems, 372.

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landscape is to the work of his salvation.28 In coaching Guðlac through his early days in the wilderness, the Holy Ghost does not encourage him to focus on the glories of heaven, or the suffering of Christ, as in the hagiographies of other saints, but rather on the londes wynne, the specifically located joys of his home in the fens. These lines make it clear that Guðlac’s relationship to the fenland is key to his hagiography within the narrative of the poem. It is important to make a distinction here between the eorðlic æþelu (“earthly nobility,” l. 97) and synna lustas (“sinful desires,” l. 113) which Guðlac gives up when he moves to the fens and the londes wynn which the Holy Spirit teaches him to love. We are told that Guðlac came to the wilderness nales […] þurh gitsunga, lænes lifwelan, ac þæt lond gode fægre gefreoþode (“not out of greed, because he cared for temporary earthly wealth, but so that he might defend that land well for God,” l. 150-152b). In another section, the narrator says of Guðlac that wæs him botles neod, forlet longeþas lænra dreama (“his desire was for that home, and he renounced any longings for fleeting joys,” l. 329b-330). The significance of Guðlac’s relationship to the fenland is further reinforced when the poet claims that Guðlac becomes an example to many siþþan biorg gestah (“after he climbed the hill there,” 175b). Again, Guðlac’s reliance on the londes wynn—his love of the wild landscape—is central to his legend. Rebecca Douglass’ analysis of wild spaces in medieval literature suggests that humans living and working in the wilderness are typically presented as “not a part of a governing system,” and that they do not follow social norms or uphold expected courtly behavior.29 By figuring Guðlac as a man truly alone in the wilderness—rather than as a member of the governing systems of early medieval English life—Guðlac A frees the saint from the social norms governing elite men of his day. The eradication of these social expectations opens up his hagiography to the “average” Christian in early medieval England, and makes him a more accessible, if slightly wilder, example of holy living than the elite model given in Felix’s telling. Divorced from the complex social and political networks into which he is born, the eponymous hero of Guðlac A provides a model of saintly living achievable for any Christian who reads or hears his hagiography, making him a true bysene on Britene (“lesson for Britain”). Indeed, given the practical function of the Exeter Cathedral collection as a working library, it is not outside the 28 Of the many terms used to describe Guðlac’s dwelling, the most common by far is beorg-seþel. The first half of this compound can be translated as “hill” or “barrow,” and there has been some debate as to the meaning of the term; following Roberts and Clayton, I translate as “hill.” 29 Douglass, “Ecocriticism and Middle English Literature,” 148.

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realm of possibility to imagine that Guðlac A was included in the Exeter Book intentionally as a model of holy living for the monastic community. Mary Clayton has argued that “in striving to overcome all distractions, [hermits] aimed to empty themselves of selfhood, to open themselves to God, and reject all society.”30 Similarly, by separating the saint from the complex social and political networks into which he was born, the Guðlac A-poet creates space for the eponymous saint to open to the true work of his sainthood: faithful devotion to his fenland hermitage, which the poem figures as an earthly manifestation of God’s glory. Whereas the Vita highlights the tension between Guðlac’s human communities, the text of Guðlac A focuses instead on the saint’s relationship with the inherently holy landscape on which his hermitage is built. This suggests that the Guðlac A-poet, adapting the saint’s legend from Felix’s Vita and other texts, may have felt specifically called to explore the relationship between Guðlac and his fenland home, and that they may have sought to use the saint as a model for human interactions with the Earth community. Significantly, the depiction of the landscapes in Felix’s Vita and Guðlac A also differ dramatically. The fen held a special—and especially complex—place in the early medieval English imagination. Justin T. Noetzel has written that early medieval thinkers saw the fens as “a profane space of exile and monstrosity, but also a sacred space of Christian holiness.”31 The depiction of the fen in Felix’s Vita Sancti Guðlaci falls rather more in line with the first part of this description. In Chapter XXIV, Felix describes the landscape as “a most dismal fen of immense size […] now consisting of marshes, now of bogs, sometimes of black waters overhung by fog, sometimes studded with wooded islands and traversed by the windings of tortuous streams.” In its vast expanses, the landscape of the fen is presented as an obstacle to overcome, a massively difficult space against which Guðlac must contend: the image of “black waters overhung by fog” and “tortuous streams” highlights the impenetrability of the landscape to human activity. The repetition of “now” and “sometimes” in this description of the fen suggests that the landscape in Felix’s Vita is unfixed and unstable, an ever-changing obstacle dangerous in its uncertainty and largely impermeable. The next chapter of Felix’s Vita adds another dangerous dimension to this already threatening space: the presence—indeed the infestation—of demons. Felix notes that many men “had attempted to dwell” on the island where Guðlac eventually builds his hermitage, but that all had “rejected it on account of the 30 Clayton, “Hermits and the Contemplative Life,” 148. 31 Noetzel, “Monster, Demon, Warrior,” 107.

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unknown portents of the desert and its terrors of various shapes” (XXV). He goes on to say that “no settler had been able to dwell alone in this place […] on account of the phantoms of demons which haunted it” (XXV). For Felix, these details are problematic for two reasons: first, because the presence of demons in the fenland represents a dark incursion onto the landscape, and second, because it prevents human use of this massive space. As Noetzel notes, the dual nature of the fenland in this description “as a hidden and haunted locale” makes it “an eremitic foundation par excellence.”32 Within the context of Felix’s Vita, then, the landscape of the fen is presented as a prohibitively massive obstacle against which no human has been able to contend. Despite Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s suggestion that “no dark meres swarm with strange water-beasts or bubble with blood” in Guðlac A, I argue that the depiction of the fen in the poem in fact aligns quite closely with that of Beowulf.33 As perhaps the most famous fenland in the Old English corpus, the frecne fen-gelad (“dangerous fen-path,” l. 1359) inhabited by Grendel and his mother in Beowulf provides a useful parallel for my contrast of the fenland in Guðlac A and Felix’s Vita. Justin T. Noetzel has argued that the fens in Beowulf are figured as an “unholy and uncanny reflection of solid land,” a dark mirror of the heroic communities at Heorot.34 The dygel lond (“secret land,” l. 1357) of the fens acts as an uncanny foil to human communities. As a sele-gyst (“guest in the hall,” l. 1545) in the fenland nið-sele (“hall of hatred,” l. 1513), Beowulf repays the violence enacted in and on Heorot by killing Grendel’s mother and desecrating her body in their fenland home. In its churning chaos, moreover, the fenland is also a reflection of the hero’s psychological state; the brim-wylm (“the surging sea,” l. 1494) mirrors the initial anxiety that comes with Beowulf’s entrance into the realm of the monstrous.35 Immediately after Beowulf kills Grendel’s mother, the fenland is transformed into a more calm, less threatening, space: the speaker notes with some amazement that after the death of the warrior, wæron yðgebland eal gefælsod, eacne eardas, þa se ellorgast oflet lif-dagas ond þas lænan gesceaft (“the mingled waves were completely cleansed, the environment improved, now that the departing spirit let go of its life-days, and this fleeting existence,” l. 1620-22).36 The expulsion of the Grendelkin transforms this 32 Noetzel, “Monster, Demon, Warrior,” 119. 33 Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, 138. 34 Noetzel, “Monster, Demon, Warrior,” 110. 35 See Ball, “Monstrous Landscapes.” 36 My translation here closely follows that of Fulk, ed. and trans., The Beowulf Manuscript, 193, which cannot be matched for clarity.

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dangerous landscape into a space of celebration where Beowulf is able to enjoy his victory and sælace gefeah (“rejoice in the sea-loot,” l. 1624). Although the significance of the fenland in the Old English corpus—and especially in Beowulf—has been much discussed, I want to pause here and expand on what I see as the most important aspects of this characterization, which I believe to be typical of depictions of the fen in the early medieval English imagination, and which contrast Felix’s fens important ways.37 The first is the uncanny nature of the fen: familiar but incongruous, the horrors of Grendel’s nið-sele (“hall of hate,” 1513) are a reflection of the violence inherent to Heorot and indeed all human communities.38 The second important feature of this characterization of the fen is that it is not inherently or entirely evil; indeed, although the fenland’s permeability allows Grendel and his mother to access the human communities at Heorot, it also allows for their expulsion from the mere, and ultimately its “restoration” in the narrator’s eyes. Furthermore, the revitalization of the mere following the expulsion of evil mirrors Beowulf’s growing confidence in his mission and the soð Metod (“true creator,” l. 1610) who guides his steps. Beowulf’s faith in himself and God’s providence leads to his defeat of the Grendelkin, which, in turn, leads to the expulsion of anxiety and evil from the mere; its permeability allows for both the discharge of “evil” forces and Beowulf’s return, unharmed, to human society in Heorot. Guðlac A describes the landscape of the fen in remarkably similar terms. Just as the description of the mere in Beowulf echoes that of the hall at Heorot, the text of Guðlac A connects the saint’s home in the fenland with the eternal home in heaven, figuring Guðlac’s hermitage as an earthly mirror of the heavenly home. Indeed, the Guðlac A-poet uses parallel phrasing to describe heaven and Guðlac’s hermitage throughout the poem. In line 10 the narrator refers to heaven as the halgan ham (“holy home”); Guðlac’s hermitage is similarly described in line 149 as a haligne ham (“holy home.”) Similarly, the hermitage is described as þam leofestan earde on eorðan (“the dearest dwelling on earth,” l. 428) and heaven is called the leofestan ecan eared (“the dearest eternal home,” l. 655). Although the language of the poem makes it clear that Guðlac’s hermitage is temporary, the narrator describes the two spaces in remarkably similar terms, suggesting that the earthly home may be a mirror of the eternal home. Just as the Grendlekin’s 37 Noetzel, “Monster, Demon, Warrior,” 108-117, provides a thorough and enlightening review of depictions of the fenland in the Old English corpus. 38 For more on the similarities between Heorot and Grendel’s mere, see Doubleday, “Grendel’s Two Halls,” 8-10 and Irving Jr., Rereading Beowulf, 150–151.

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mere in Beowulf acts as a dark mirror of Heorot, the landscape of the fen in Guðlac A is presented as a reflection of the holy home in heaven early medieval English Christians hoped to attain. The connections between Guðlac’s earthly and heavenly homes also points to the second important feature of the fenland in the early medieval English imagination: its permeability and capability for change. When Guðlac arrives, the fenland in is decidedly dangerous, populated by a legion of demons; however, it is not entirely evil. These demons see Guðlac as the central threat to their existence and, significantly, as an intruder into their home. The poet writes that the demons þær ær fela setla gesæton (“had previously occupied many dwelling-places there [in the wilderness]” l. 143b-44a) and that the landscape was in fact their only refuge: Wæron teon-smiðas cwædon þæt him Guðlac earfeþa mæst siþþan he for wlence beorgas bræce earme ondsacan, æfter tintergum ðonne hy of waþum restan ryneþragum, wæs him seo gelyfed (205-214)

tornes fulle eac Gode sylfum ana gefremede, on westenne þær hy bidinge, æror mostun tidum brucan, werge cwoman rowe gefegon; þurh lytel fæc.

The evil-doers were full of rage, and said that Guðlac, apart from God’s own self, had brought about their greatest suffering alone, after he, out of arrogance, took those hills in the wilderness by storm, where they, wretched enemies, were previously able, after their torments, to use a house, after they came weary from their wanderings, to rest for a time, and they rejoiced in the quiet; it was permitted to them for a short period.

Guðlac’s entry into the beorg is a quite clearly a loss for the demons who originally occupied the landscape; indeed, the phrase eac God sylfum (“God’s own self”) suggests that the loss is parallel to the loss of heaven. The demons’ anger at Guðlac’s presence is the result of what Lindy Brady has identified

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as “competing conditions of ownership” over the landscape of the fen.39 She writes that it is “significant that the poem introduces these claims in the first place,” and that in doing so, the poet imagines a “landscape whose ownership is contested rather than one whose control by the saint is straightforward.”40 However, despite the demons’ clear belief in their right to brucan (“make use of,” 210) the landscape of the fens, the language of the poem suggests that Guðlac’s eventual habitation in this landscape is a foregone conclusion. The initial description of the hermitage in Guðlac A says that Stod seo dygle stow idel ond æmen, bad bisce (215-217)

Dryhtne in gemyndum eþel-riehte feor, betran hyrdes.

That secret place stood in the Lord’s thoughts; idle and desolate, far from the rightful homeland, it awaited the claim of a better guardian.

These lines suggest that, despite its distance from civilization and its current infestation with demons, the landscape on which Guðlac’s hermitage is built was an inherently sacred space before he came to it, and may therefore be made holy again. I have identified several important differences between representations in Felix’s Vita and in Guðlac A of the eponymous saint and the landscape in which he lives and works. Whereas Felix’s Vita emphasizes Guðlac’s entanglement in martial, social, and religious activity, Guðlac A focuses instead on the relationship between the saint and his fenland home, ultimately suggesting that Guðlac is a man alone in the wilderness, a landscape from which he draws all his strength and comfort. This shift in focus away from the saint’s historical roots makes Guðlac a more universal model for the audience to follow. Moreover, the landscape of the fen, presented as an impassable and entirely evil space in Felix’s telling, is depicted in Guðlac A as a permeable, inherently sacred space awaiting a betran hyrdes (“better guardian,” 217b) than the demons to restore it to health. Brady has argued that the phrase betran hyrdes emphasizes “the suitability of the land’s eventual guardian” 39 Brady, “The Contested Landscape of Guðlac A,” 65. Brady’s thoughtful and thorough examination of the landscape of the beorg in Guðlac A has been invaluable to this chapter. 40 Brady, “The Contested Landscape of Guðlac A,” 66.

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and implies that “the beorg was in fact appointed to Guðlac.”41 However, I want to suggest that, by identifying Guðlac as this betran hyrdes, the poem positions the saint as a prime example of early medieval English sustainability. In the remainder of this chapter, I will argue explore the implications of that work for early medieval English audiences and their modern counterparts.

Lessons in Early Medieval English Environmentalism In her essential critique of stewardship, Clare Palmer argues that the term frames “the environment” as an entity external to humanity, rather than presenting humanity as one element of the Earth community, and that this framing accommodates a whole host of anthropocentric ideas: “that the natural world is a human resource, that humans are really in control of nature, that nature is dependent on humanity for its management.”42 Palmer shows that modern usage of the term often frames God as “a rich man who has handed his riches over to humanity to use to greatest advantage” or “an absentee landlord, who has put humanity in charge of his possessions.”43 Within these frameworks, the other-than-human is denied any agency, and instead reduced to “possessions” for humanity to manage and consume. Palmer concludes that “stewardship is an anthropocentric ethic which considers it to be better not only for humans, but for the rest of the world, for nature to be managed and made fruitful by human standards.”44 Despite the term’s linguistic origins, the concept of stewardship is also problematic within the context of Old English ecotheology. In early medieval England, a stig-weard (“steward,” literally “hall-guard”) was responsible for the management and protection of land and resources in their lord’s absence; the concept of environmental stewardship similarly figures God as “an absentee landlord who has put humanity in charge of his possessions.”45 Crucially, as Clare Palmer notes, the authority of the steward relies on the complete absence of the landlord: “perceptions of stewardship have great difficulty in accommodating the idea of God’s action or presence in the world.”46 However, as the introduction to this book shows, early medieval 41 Brady, “The Contested Landscape of Guðlac A,” 67. 42 Palmer, “Stewardship,” 77-78. 43 Palmer, “Stewardship,” 73-74. 44 Palmer, “Stewardship,” 82. 45 Palmer, “Stewardship,” 74. 46 Ibid.

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English Christians not only understood God to be present in the world, but actively identified environmental crises as divine retribution or communication. Moreover, Ælfric and Wulfstan both suggest that the mysteries of the gesceaft are ultimately unknowable to all but the Scyppend. The idea that humans could ever truly be in control of the other-than-human is thus antithetical to the humility at the core of Old English ecotheology, which assumes God’s active presence in the world. Moreover, as I have shown, medieval English theologians understood environmental collapse or change to be the result of human sin; Wulfstan, for example, claimed that clæne wæs þeos eorðe on hyre frumsceafte, ac we hi habbað syððan afylede swyðe 7 mid urum synnum þearle besmitene (“this Earth was clean at its first creation, but we have since greatly fouled and defiled it through our sins.”)47 If the early medieval English imagination figured environmental collapse as the consequence of human failings, then it seems logical that it might equally see humans as responsible for environmental rehabilitation. Crucially, however, this responsibility does not equal outright control; as the previous chapters have shown, early medieval English thinkers were intimately aware of the power of the Earth community in shaping human activity. As an alternative to the anthropocentric concept of stewardship, the Earth Bible Team offers the model of “mutual custodianship.” Whereas stewards guard and manage resources so that they can be used most effectively, custodians are caretakers, responsible for tending and supporting the subjects of their care. The concept of mutual custodianship acknowledges that, by providing “food, shelter, beauty, and many other riches to sustain the body and the spirit of humanity,” the Earth and members of the Earth community have always served as “the custodians of human beings.”48 In such a worldview, nature is not “dependent on humanity,” as Palmer has it, but humanity is rather responsible for nature. Guðlac’s legend presents an exemplary model of mutual custodianship for early medieval and modern audiences. His example presents two concrete lessons: first, that there is more to be gained from the natural world than raw material resources, and second, that sustained devotion to the natural world as an extension of God’s glory will lead to environmental restoration in this life or the next. Guðlac’s reliance on the londes wynne in completing the work of his sainthood suggests that it is possible to draw more from the natural world than raw material resources; indeed, the only resource explicitly acknowledged in the poem is the strength he draws from his landscape, 47 Bethurum, ed., Homilies of Wulfstan, 124. 48 Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 51.

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discussed above. Within the narrative of the poem, significantly, Guðlac’s reliance on the landscape in which he lives and works is known not only to the British faithful, but also to the demons who torment the saint. In one early attempt to drive Guðlac away from his hermitage, the demons threaten þæt he on þam beorge byrnan sceolde (“that he should have to burn on that hill,” 192). By centering Guðlac’s punishment on the fen, the demons acknowledge that his strength comes from the londes wynn. This becomes even more clear when the poet claims that the demons fly through the night to see hwæþre him þæs wonges wyn sweðrade (“whether the joys of that place had come to an end,” l. 352); finding Guðlac steadfast in faith and still deeply connected to the landscape, they flee again in anger. Later, the demons explicitly state their desire to separate Guðlac from the land he loves: in a comic echo of modern film villains revealing their plans, the demons carefully explain that we þec in lyft gelæddun, (“we brought you up into the air,” l. 467) in the course of their temptations not to frighten Guðlac, but so that they could oftugon þe londes wynna (“[deny] you the pleasures of the land,” 467). The demons’ attempts to use Guðlac’s devotion to the londes wynn against him reveals their deep misunderstanding of his intentions for the landscape; in the first of a series of taunts the demons hurl at Guðlac, they claim Ðu þæt gehatest gegan wille, Bi hwon scealt þu lifgan, Ne þec mon hider beoð þe hungor ond þurst gif þu gewitest ana from eþele (271-277a)

þæt ðu ham on us ðe eart godes yrming. þeah þu lond age? mose fedeð; hearde gewinnan, swa wilde deor

You, who claim to take this home from us, you are God’s wretch. By what shall you live, even if you possess this land? No one will come to feed you here; hunger and thirst will be fierce opponents, if you, like the wild animals, go alone from your home

In these lines, the demons follow the colonialist impulses identified by Siewers and others; as in Beowulf, the landscape is depicted here as an extension

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of human communities, a territory to be conquered (age, 273) as Guðlac’s ancestors conquered Mercia. Highlighting the inhospitable nature of the landscape, the demons hope to discourage Guðlac from settling permanently in this space: if the landscape is not useful, they seem to imply, then he will not choose to settle there. This reveals a crucial misunderstanding of Guðlac’s intentions, for, as lines 80-84a of the poem show, the saint intentionally sought out this wild wasteland as the site of his hermitage. Contrary to the demons’ attempts to dissuade Guðlac, it is, in fact, the very inhospitable nature of the landscape and its distance from human activity that makes the fen an ideal space for the work of Guðlac’s stewardship. The demons’ next attempt to push Guðlac off the landscape is equally misguided. Changing their tactics, the demons promise that We þe beoð holde oþþe þec ungear maran mægne […] […] fotum afyllan; meara þreatum (280-286)

gif ðu us hyran wilt, eft gesecað We þas wic magun folc in ðriceð ond monfarum.

We will be loyal to you if you listen to us, or else we will seek you, unprepared, out again with a greater force […] […] this dwelling we can level with our feet; an army will come pushing in with troops of horses and of men.

Here again, the demons rely on Guðlac’s past (as articulated in Felix’s Vita and elsewhere) in their attempts to drive him off the land, this time by appealing to his violent history. By promising to follow him—as did the band of outcasts in his youth—and then by threatening him with maran mægne (“a greater force,”), the demons seem to assume that Guðlac’s intentions in the fenland are martial. The demons’ central temptations, then, reflect the heroic and martial communities of Guðlac’s past, and their assumptions about his intentions for the beorg are tied to these communities’ exploitation of other-than-human “resources” and landscapes. Crucially, however, Guðlac’s confidence in his position as the betran hyrdes comes not from his desire to “use” or “cultivate” the landscape, but from his assurance that the land is inherently holy. The saint’s understanding

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of the landscape far outweighs the demons’ expectations of land use. Guðlac’s strongest condemnation of the demons’ presence on the landscape is immediately followed by a confident assertion that he will ultimately defeat the occupying forces because they fundamentally misunderstand the space: Wid is þes westen, eardas onhæle sindon wærlogan þeah ge þa ealle ond eow eac gewyrce ge her ateoð sigeleasne sið (296-302a)

wræcsetla fela, earmra gæsta; þe þa wic bugað. ut abanne, widor sæce, in þa tornwræce

Vast is this wasteland, its many homes of exile, the secret homes of wretched spirits; they are traitors, those who inhabit these dwellings. Though you summon all of them out, and even extend the conflict more widely, you make a journey here in your grievous revenge which is hopeless.

These lines suggest a crucial difference in attitudes towards the landscape: while the demons see the fen as an extension of human communities, a space to be used, Guðlac understands that the landscape is an extension of divine power, and thus already inherently holy. In Guðlac’s eyes, as we shall see, this is a space to be enjoyed. Augustine’s distinction between use and enjoyment (uti/frui) is articulated most clearly in his De doctrina Christiana, a text which likely circulated in early medieval England. 49 In book one of De doctrina Augustine writes: To enjoy ( frui) something is to hold fast to it in love for its own sake. To use (uti) something is to apply whatever it may be to the purpose of obtaining what you love—if indeed it is something that ought to be loved. (The improper use of something should be termed abuse.)50 49 Marsden, The Old English Heptateuch, liii suggests that De doctrina was a source for Ælfric’s Libellus de veteri testamento et novo, a treatise on the Old and New Testament. 50 Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 9.

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The demons’ presence in the landscape of the fen seems to constitute use, rather than enjoyment; lines 209b-214 suggest that they have used the fenland as a place of refuge and respite for some time. Although they clearly feel the loss its use acutely, the poem gives no hints as to the demon’s potential to enjoy the landscape, while clearly stressing Guðlac’s emotional connection. What the demons do not—or perhaps cannot—understand is that Guðlac’s purpose in coming to the fenland is to escape these communities; indeed, the work of his sainthood, as I have suggested, relies on his relationship with this holy landscape, separate from human communities. The significance of this emotional connection is made clear in the opening lines of Guðlac A, which explicitly tie the holy landscape of the fen to the holy home Guðlac hopes to attain in heaven. In a deeply contested 29-line introduction, the poet describes the joys of a soul recently ascended into heaven.51 This discussion of life of after death, which may at first seem more relevant to the end of a saints’ life, are crucial because they introduce the key concept of the halgan ham (“heavenly home,” l. 10), the heaven to which all Christians aspire. Throughout this introductory section, the poet refers to heaven as a permanent place of rest and refuge: in addition to the halgan ham, heaven is described as sawla ræst (“the resting-place for souls,” l. 12b), “wuldres ræste” (“the repose of heaven,” l. 25), and a place with getimbru þe no tydriað (“buildings that will never decay,” l. 18).52 The emphasis here on heaven as a place of rest, refuge, and permanent protection is crucial, because it introduces the spiritual stakes for the remainder of the poem: Guðlac is presented as an example of holy living with the spiritual goal not of sainthood, or of martyrdom, but of behavior worthy of entrance into the halgan ham. References to the heavenly home appear throughout the poem: heaven is described as the eðel ece (“eternal home,” l. 67), deoran ham (“dear home,” l. 69), heofon-cundan boldes (“the heavenly abode,” l. 83), ham in heofonum (“home in heaven,” l. 98), and fægran botles (“beautiful abode,” l. 382). In one particularly descriptive section towards the end of the poem, Guðlac says his heart has been turned towards 51 For example, Krapp and Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, xxx, noted with some concern that this section is “only very remotely connected with the narrative of the life of Guðlac” which follows for the next 818 lines. Clayton, Old English Poems, 370 notes that while these lines are thematically similar to the end of Christ in Judgment, they are “a prologue to, and a very important part of, Guðlac A.” 52 The description of heaven in Guthlac A as a place where getimbru þe no tydriað (“buildings that will never decay,” l. 18) also recalls the images of destruction in The Ruin. As in that text, the stability of heaven is here contrasted with the inhospitable ruin of the present.

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leomum inlyhted ecan earde, fæger ond gefealic (654b-657)

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to þam betran ham, to þam leofestan þær is eþellond in fæder wuldre

the better home, illumined by His rays, toward the most beloved eternal dwelling, where the fair and delightful homeland is in the glory of the Father.

In the introduction and in the lines above, the emphasis on heaven as the halgan ham serves to connect Guðlac’s ultimate goal—eternal life in heaven—to the work of his salvation on earth: the eremitic lifestyle to which he is dedicated. Although a clear distinction is made throughout the poem between the hamas on heolstrum and heofoncundan boldes, the repetition of these terms suggests that hermits like Guðlac build hamas on heolstrum specifically in order to reach the heofoncundan boldes: the two homes are inextricably connected. Ultimately, Guðlac’s fierce defense of the hermitage—his determination to care for the land as a way of worshipping God—concludes with a routing of the demons, and a transformation of the landscape into an earthly paradise. The poet writes that, upon Guðlac’s return monge mægwlitas, treofugla tuddor eadges eftcyme. þonne hy him hungrige grædum gifre, Swa þæt milde mod dreamum gedælde, genom him to wildeorum wynne, Smolt wæs se sigewong fæger fugla reord, geacas gear budon. eadig ond onmod Stod se grena wong hæfde se heorde, feondas afyrde. (733b-748b)

Hine bletsadon meaglum reordum, tacnum cyðdon Oft he him æte heold, ymb hond flugon geoce gefegon. wið moncynnes dryhtne þeowde, siþþan he þas woruld forhogde. ond sele niwe, folde geblowen; Guþlac moste eardes brucan. in godes wære; se þe of heofonum cwom,

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He was blessed by many species with earnest voices, breeds of tree birds announced by these signs the blessed man’s return. He often held out food for them when they, hungry flew about his hand, greedily eager, glad for his help. So that gentle spirit from mankind’s joys detached himself, served the Lord, took pleasure in wild animals, after he had rejected the world. That field of victory and his new home were tranquil, the birds’ voices delightful, the earth all in bloom; cuckoos welcomed the new year. Guðlac was able, blessed and resolute, to enjoy his home. That green place stood under God’s protection; He banished, the one who had come from heaven, the host of the fiends.

I quote the text at length here because it represents part one of the two-part “finale” of Guðlac’s hagiography, one-half of the ultimate reward for his saintly labors. Before he can ascend to his heavenly home, Guðlac is able to eardes brucan (“enjoy his home,” 744) fully. The repetition of the infinitive verb brucan here is significant: unlike the demons, who are only able to use the beorg temporary space of rest, Guðlac is able to enjoy the newly cleared landscape for some time before he dies. Here, the phrase moste […] brucan (“might […] enjoy”) carries a sense of reward: having spent so much energy resisting temptation and routing the demons, Guðlac is finally able to fully enjoy the holy landscape. That enjoyment centers on Guðlac’s appreciation of the natural vitality of the ecosystem, revealed for the first time in these lines. Free of the demonic forces by which it was dominated for so long, the landscape is transformed into a vibrant and energetic earthly paradise. This verdant new paradise is not merely a reflection of the saint’s own spiritual purity and vitality; it is the very reason for that purity. The poem presents an idealized example of the vision of God’s creation living in harmony as described in Maxims I and The Order of the World and glimpsed throughout Exeter elegies. As in the wisdom poetry, these lines describe a divine ecosystem with Guðlac, a native saint, lives in harmony with the rest of the Earth community. As in the elegies, the text of Guðlac A imagines a cooperative recovery process, in which the natural world is an active participant in the dramas of human social and spiritual life. Moreover, that the poet uses such detail and enthusiasm in this lengthy

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scene suggests that the revival of the landscape’s abundance is as important a part of Guðlac’s hagiography as his ascension into heaven. Indeed, the poet uses the verb gestigan (“to mount, ascend”) multiple times to describe both Guðlac’s journey across this landscape (biorg gestah, l. 175; þis lond gestag, l. 307; he eft gestag beorg, l. 428b-429a) and his journey to his heavenly home at the end of the poem: swa soðfæstra sawla motun in ecne geard up gestigan (“so the soul of the righteous one may ascend up to the eternal home,” l. 790-791). This repeated use draws a clear connection between the preservation of Guðlac’s earthly home—his bold on beorg—and his attainment of salvation; it’s only after he secures and cares for his earthly environment that he is allowed (motan) to ascend into heaven. The poem thus suggests that faithful devotion to the Earth community is a viable means of achieving salvation.

Conclusions I have argued that, throughout the text of Guðlac A, the saint’s relationship with his environment is presented as symbiotic: while the construction of a hermitage and the purging of the demons represents a certain degree of influence over the landscape, there is an explicit acknowledgment that Guðlac draws strength from the fenland, and that the landscape is an active participant in its own transformation. This vision of mutual support in the effort to maintain the landscape anticipates the modern ecotheological principle of mutual custodianship, which calls for a partnership between human and non-human actors in environmental activism. Moreover, Guðlac clearly understands the landscape as a manifestation of God’s glory, a space to be enjoyed, rather than used. In this, Guðlac acts as an exception to Lynn White, Jr.’s suggestion that, in medieval theology, “the saint is not in natural objects; he may have special shrines, but his citizenship is in heaven.”53 Guðlac, inextricable from the landscape in which he lives and works, represents a worldview in which God’s glory is visible in the innate goodness of the natural world. As an exemplum of saintly living, Guðlac’s lesson suggests that sustained engagement with and worship of God’s Creation is a viable path to salvation; his legend encourages the faithful to care for their earthly homes as a way of ensuring entry into the heavenly home. That Guðlac, a native saint, encourages mutual custodianship with the Earth community as a means of salvation speaks to the importance of environmental concerns in the early medieval English imagination. 53 White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis,” 1205.

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It should also challenge us to rethink much of the rhetoric involved in modern environmental movements. How might our conversations about “saving the environment” change if we start with the acknowledgment that “the environment” is an active system from which we cannot separate ourselves? What would the modern environmental movement look like if we eradicated the language of “saving resources” to consider the inherent worth of a healthy planet beyond human needs? How might personal habits change if we stopped thinking of our efforts to stop environmental collapse as a “war” or “battle,” but rather a lifelong process of engagement? Guðlac’s lesson suggests that sustained engagement with the other-than-human can result in environmental harmony within the Earth community in this life or the next: how might attitudes towards climate crises change if we take a long view of human history to move beyond a single generation? The answers to these questions require careful reconsideration of the boundaries between human and non-human, stewardship and domination, and the medieval and modern worlds.

Bibliography Augustine. On Christian Teaching, translated by R. P. H. Green. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Ball, Charlotte. “Monstrous Landscapes: The Interdependence of Meaning Between Monster and Landscape in Beowulf,” Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies 5 (2009). Accessed February 25, 2021. https://hortulus-journal. com/journal/volume-5-number-1-2009/ball/. Bethurum, Dorothy, editor. Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Bjork, Robert E. The Old English Verse Saints Lives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Brady, Lindy. “Colonial Desire or Political Disengagement? The Contested Landscape of Guðlac A.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 115 (2016): 61-78. Clayton, Mary editor. Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 27. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. –––. “Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, 147-176. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Medieval Identity Machines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Colgrave, Bertram, editor and translator. Felix’s Life of St. Guðlac. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.

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Damon, John Edward. Soldier Saints and Holy Warriors: Warfare and Sanctity in the Literature of Early England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2003. Doubleday, James F. “Grendel’s Two Halls,” Notes and Queries 58 (2011), 8-10. Douglass, Rebecca M. “Ecocriticism and Middle English Literature.” Studies in Medievalism 10 (1998): 136-163. Earle, John and Charles Plummer, editors. Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892. Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel, 42-53. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2000. Fulk, R.D., editor and translator. The Beowulf Manuscript. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Habel, Norman C., editor. Readings from the Perspective of Earth. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2000. Irving Jr., Edward B. Rereading Beowulf. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Krapp, George Phillip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. The Exeter Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III. Morningside Heights: Columbia University Press, 1936. Marsden, Richard. The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de veteri testamento et novo. Early English Textual Society 330. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Noetzel, Justin T. “Monster, Demon, Warrior: St. Guðlac and the Cultural Landscape of the Anglo-Saxon Fens.” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 45 (2014): 105-131. Palmer, Clare. “Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics,” in The Earth Beneath: A Critical Guide to Green Theology, edited by Ian Ball, 67-86. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1992. Reichardt, Paul F. “Guðlac A and the Landscape of Spiritual Perfection,” Neophilologus 58 (1974): 331-338. Roberts, Jane. “An Inventory of Early Guðlac Materials.” Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970): 193-233 –––. “Hagiography and Literature: The Case of Guðlac of Crowland,” in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, edited by Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr, 69-86. Studies in the Early History of Europe. London: Continuum, 2001. Shook, Laurence K. “The Burial Mound in Guðlac A,” Modern Philology 58 (1960): 1-10. Siewers, Alfred K. “Landscapes of Conversion: Guðlac’s Mound and Grendel’s Mere as Expressions of Anglo-Saxon Nation-Building,” Viator 34 (2003): 1-39. Whatley, E.G. “An Introduction to the Study of Old English Prose Hagiography: Sources and Resources.” In Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, edited by Paul Szarmach, 3-34. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. White, Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207.



Coda: Old English Ecotheology Abstract The descriptor “medieval” is often used disparagingly to suggest a lack of scientific awareness or curiosity. However, the poetry of the Exeter Book reflects a specific Old English ecotheology, which anticipates by nearly a millennium the modern environmental movement. Indeed, there are lessons to be learned from these Old English ecotheologians. The poetry of the Exeter Book suggests modern earth consciousness and activism can be facilitated by acknowledging the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human beings on Earth; rejecting binaries which see humanity as distinct from (and superior to) nature in favor of a worldview which sees humanity as a part of nature; and finally, recognizing that, environmental crises are an opportunity to grow our relationships with the Earth community. Keywords: environmentalism, activism

The introduction to this book began with a list of environmental crises; over the past four years, environmental crises of this type have acted as macabre milestones marking the progress of this project. In addition to these dramatic crises, climate change presents a concrete daily challenge or millions of people across the world. It is perhaps the biggest challenge facing society at the present moment. However, questions about human engagement with the natural world—how we shape and are shaped by the Earth community—are hardly modern. In the preceding chapters, I have argued that the Old English poetry of the Exeter Book suggests that the people of early medieval England actively engaged a number of ecotheological questions familiar to contemporary environmental debate: in what ways is human activity bound to or driven by other-than-human forces? In what ways does human activity impact the other-than-human, for good or ill? What does it mean to be a faithful “steward”? What will become of the Earth when we are gone? In my exploration of these questions, I have suggested that the

Barajas, C.C., Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463723824_coda

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Exeter Book, a microcosm of the Old English corpus as a whole, reveals a worldview which acknowledges infinite connections between human and other-than-human members of the Earth community. My analysis of the work of Ælfric and Wulfstan, similarly, demonstrates the existence of an Old English ecotheology which anticipates by nearly a millennium the work of modern ecotheologians such as the Earth Bible Team, whose “Guiding Ecojustice Principles” are reflected throughout the poetry of the Exeter Book. Ultimately, I have argued that the poetry of the Exeter Book—and the Old English ecotheology which informs it—offer a glimpse into early medieval attempts to understand and address environmental change. It has been disheartening, then, to see the recent trend of branding climate change denial as “medieval”: in 2017, the Huffington Post warned that “Trump Threatens to Take Us Back to the Climate Dark Ages,” while the Los Angeles Times dismissed the former president and his E.P.A. director Scott Pruitt as “medieval priests” unwilling to be “contradicted by any scientific findings that refute their belief that climate change is a hoax.”1 Such attempts to reframe modern crises as medieval problems are hardly new, as the middle ages have long been a dumping ground for modern anxieties. In the United States especially, the term “medieval” has been extensively used as a pejorative in conversations about race, torture, income inequality, and political nepotism, and medievalists have worked hard to shift public misunderstandings of the age. And indeed, in recent years, this brand of medievalism has taken on a specifically environmental inflection. A letter in The Guardian regarding a vote to overturn Britain’s foxhunting ban strongly criticized those “who want to return Britain to the dark ages of animal cruelty,” ignoring (or, perhaps, unaware of) the fact that while foxes were considered “beasts of the chase” in the middle ages, the sport’s popularity increased dramatically in the 18th century, as city-dwellers sought to escape the effects of the Industrial Revolution with hunting trips to the countryside.2 The recent publication of Studies in Medievalism XXVI Ecomedievalism speaks to this recent confluence of environmental anxiety and popular medievalism.3 And yet, modern references to “the dark ages” or “medieval” ignorance often imply a narrative of progress which is not supported by historical fact. That contemporary environmental debate includes many of the same 1 Stevenson, “Trump Threatens to Take Us Back to the Climate Dark Ages”; Horsey, “Scott Pruitt undermines the EPA with anti-scientific ignorance”. 2 See Birley, Sport and the Making of Britain, 130-132. 3 Fugelso, ed., Ecomedievalism.

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questions engaged by medieval thinkers suggests that, despite the wealth of scientific data and technology afforded to modern society, we have not fully solved the problems identified by our predecessors. Though literary analysis alone cannot, of course, reconcile the influence of human activity on global climate change, examining the ways in which the literature of the past engaged these issues may help us move towards finding new solutions. If, as I have suggested, the Old English literary corpus reveals a desire to articulate man’s impact on and responsibility for the non-human, then returning to that body of literature may explain how we got here, and expand contemporary thinking on global responses to environmental change. Moreover, moving away from a binary which sees the medieval as the antithesis of the modern—as opposed to acknowledging an evolving continuum of activity and thought across time—makes space for the rejection of similarly limiting binaries, such as human/non-human, natural/ unnatural, which many medieval texts attempt to disrupt. What lessons, then, can be drawn from this brief exploration of attempts to engage the natural world within the Old English corpus? We might begin by considering the ways in which these texts frame human activity and society. I have argued that the corpus of Old English literature, and the poems of the Exeter Book in particular, reveal a worldview which complicates Lynn White, Jr.’s arguments about narratives of human dominance in the medieval world. White’s arguments are built on the assumption that “especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has ever seen.”4 This generalization overlooks the presence of an active creation across the corpus of Old English religious verse, such as the sacred landscape which drives the narrative and drama of Guðlac A. Other seemingly secular texts, such as the elegies (in particular The Ruin and The Wanderer), the Exeter riddle collection, and wisdom poems like Maxims I and The Order of the World, likewise reveal an acute awareness of the power of the other-than-human in governing and shaping human activity, and the interconnectedness of natural and human-made environments as a part of the Earth community. Early medieval English Christianity acknowledged and celebrated the belief that humanity was made in God’s image; it is, therefore, an inherently anthropocentric theology. However, representations of engagement between human societies and the natural world within the Exeter Book reveal a worldview which troubles this strict hierarchy, often figuring humanity as one part of the gesceaft (“creation”), rather than as master of nature outright. These texts therefore provide 4

White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” 1205.

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a model for modern thinkers attempting to destabilize anthropocentric thinking: acknowledging the intricate connections between human and non-human spheres of activity is the first step in resolving and reducing our destructive impact on the natural world. Equally important is moving away from reliance on binary which sees humanity as distinct from the rest of creation in favor of a worldview which considers humanity to be part of the natural world. How might activism and legislation change if we stop thinking about “the environment” as a monolithic problem to solve and consider it instead as an independent ecosystem which is shaped by, but not ultimately subject to, human activity? Such ecocentric thinking may be foreign to a modern society which tends to privilege the human and the rational over the natural and the irrational; the Old English poem Guðlac A presents a medieval example of mutual custodianship which decenters human desires in favor of an acknowledgment of the inherent worth of nature. In Chapter V above, I have argued that the text of Guðlac A presents an exemplary model of early medieval English environmentalism, and that the poem encourages sustained devotion to the natural world as an accessible means of salvation. Because it presents Guðlac as man truly alone in the wilderness, with the ultimate goal not of martyrdom but of a sustainable life on earth as a means of reaching a home in heaven, Guðlac A in many ways anticipates the modern social ecological movement, which seeks to “promote exemplary lifestyles and communities that pref igure a more general social transformation.”5 Indeed, reading Guðlac’s hagiography as kind of guide for living within an ecosystem in crisis provides the modern reader with a number of important lessons, from acknowledging the worth of other-than-human beyond our use of “resources” to exploring the earthly and heavenly rewards of faithful engagement with the non-human. Though the eponymous saint’s environmental concerns differ dramatically from contemporary crises, Guðlac A nevertheless presents a unique model of mutual custodianship which may usefully inform modern environmental movements. If we read Guðlac A as an exemplar of holy living with the non-human, then we might likewise read the elegies as meditations on the ways those relationships change and the consequences of those changes. I have argued for an understanding of The Wanderer and The Ruin as eco-elegies, highly emotional lyrics which describe, among other things, the impact of exile from natural habitats and the fallibility of human-made materials in the face of natural forces. Like Guðlac A, The Wanderer presents a model for personal 5 Garrard, Ecocriticism, 30.

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and spiritual growth through engagement with the other-than-human. However, whereas Guðlac drew strength and joy from his holy landscape, The Wanderer evokes a decidedly less positive emotion: despair. I have argued that the narrative of the anonymous eard-stapa (“earth-stepper”) reveals a pattern of natural depression which is visible in other poems, such as The Seafarer. In this pattern, a narrator is exiled from human society and experiences intense emotional turmoil which amplifies that isolation so that they begin to identify with the chaos of the non-human natural world. This emotional identification acts as an anodyne for the pain of exile, and ultimately enables the narrator to release their human identity and grow in faith. These eco-elegies suggest that traumatic engagement with the non-human natural world can enable a faithful Christian to release transient earthly desires and to meditate fully on the stability of heaven. The relationship between earthly fallibility and heavenly stability is also explored in The Ruin. As it describes three discrete moments across the lifetime of an unnamed city, The Ruin attempts to alleviate apocalyptic anxieties by imagining a world in which the Earth actively responds to—but ultimately survives—the collapse of human societies. The resilience of the Earth and the quiet resistance of the ruin itself act as a reminder of God’s providence in a sometimes-punishing world. Clare Lees and Gillian Overing have suggested that the object of the ruin is “a place of paradox in its making and unmaking” and that meditation on ruins “occasions […] the making of powerful new meanings for both past and present.”6 As a meditation on the past, present, and future of a coherent—if sometimes contentious—ecosystem, The Ruin encourages reflection on the ways in which human societies act and are acted upon the natural world in the long term. As we search for answers to contemporary environmental questions and seek new ways of living sustainably, these eco-elegies may provide a useful model of this long view of human interactions with the non-human. Thinking about the history of conflict between human and natural environments—rather than focusing solely on current crises, however apocalyptic they may feel—may open up new ways of thinking about our shared future. Acknowledging the historical relationship(s) between the human and non-human is an important step in shifting attitudes and activism alike. My analysis of three groups of riddles within the Exeter collection—the bird riddles, horn riddles, and wood-weapon riddles—shows that the collection as a whole reflects a widespread interest in the independent subjectivity, inherent worth, and active voice of non-human beings, anticipating the work 6 Lees and Overing, “Places of the Mind in the Northumbiran Landscape,” 6.

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of modern environmentalists and ecotheologians. Indeed, the attribution in Riddle 6 and Riddle 7 of complex emotional states and personalities to the nightingale and cuckoo anticipates by over a millennium the research of modern corvid specialists, which suggests that avian intelligence may also include a sense of identity.7 These riddles affirm the essential identity and intrinsic worth of non-human beings, Riddle 6 and Riddle 7, exploiting similarities between human and avian behavior to encourage new perspectives on familiar situations. Although the speakers coopt human language, these riddles center non-human voices and experiences, reminding audiences that, like humans, non-human beings were deliberately shaped by a loving Creator. The riddles of transformation give voice to the celebration and suffering of non-human beings conscripted into human service; these riddles provide a unique insight into the troubled environmental conscience reflected in the Exeter Book. The horn riddles, Riddle 12 and Riddle 76, imagine a world in which animal-objects celebrate their participation in heroic culture, alleviating anxiety about the material animal sacrifice that culture requires. These riddles reflect a sincere desire to integrate non-human beings into the governing system of heroic culture, anticipating the modern ecotheoretical belief that “the Earth and all its components are part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place.”8 On the other hand, the wood-weapon riddles, Riddles 3, 51, and 71, reveal an uncomfortable awareness of the fact that interactions with human beings—especially in the context of warfare—are not always in the best interests of the non-human. That this collection offers first- and third-person perspectives of wood-weapons suggests the importance of the issue in the early medieval English imagination. Individually and as a unit, these riddles amplify the suffering of non-human beings in human service, acknowledge human culpability for that suffering. The worldview espoused by Guðlac A, the eco-elegies, and the Exeter riddle collection is, I have suggested above, one which discourages anthropocentric thinking and acknowledges the interconnectedness of human and other-than-human spheres of activity. This idea finds its fullest expression in the wisdom poems The Order of the World and Maxims I. I have argued that The Order of the World encourages it audience to engage the non-human members of creation through poetry as a way of understanding the future state of creation. I show that the poem presents the challenge of understanding the searo-runa gespon (“web of mysteries”) as a divine 7 8

Andersen, “What the Crow Knows.” Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” 24.

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imperative, and that the poem-within-a-poem offers a prime example of this kind of engagement. Similarly, by connecting human and natural spheres of activity and acknowledging the sometimes devastating impact of the natural world in shaping human action, Maxims I figures humanity as one part of the divine ecology of creation. As a response to and product of growing apocalyptic concerns, the poem alleviates anxiety about man’s place in the universe in its gentle assurance that humanity is neither as powerless nor as powerful as we feared. By collapsing the distance between human and natural spheres of activity, the poem attempts to reconstruct the divine ecology of Eden and, in the process, work out some of the trauma caused by human expulsion from that ecology. The poem thus imagines new ways of engaging the natural world, and highlights moments of continuity rather than conflict. Martin Heidegger has suggested that “a stone is worldless. Plant and animal likewise have no world […] they belong to the covert throng of a surrounding into which they are linked.”9 The Order of the World and Maxims I describes a similar “covert throng” of creation, in which the “overtness” of non-human beings is defined through explicit comparison to humans and an acknowledgment of intimate relationship between human and non-human spheres of activity. Reframing contemporary environmental discourse in this way—acknowledging the “covert throng” of activity on Earth, as opposed to “the environment” as a monolithic concept—may help to destabilize anthropocentric thinking in favor of an earth-centered approach. Because this monograph takes as its focus poems from a single manuscript, its scope is necessarily limited; however, I believe that the study of Old English literature in general may benefit from similarly “green” reading. In my use of texts from three discrete yet distinctly englisc literary forms, I have hoped to demonstrate the widespread influence of environmental concerns in the early medieval English imagination, and the ways in which those concerns are reflected across different genres. An earth-centered exploration of attempts to engage the natural world in other genres—such as the metrical charms, chronicles, or even the homilies—would be equally fruitful. Throughout my work on the poems of the Exeter Book, I have, moreover, sought to decenter human concerns as much as possible, searching instead for moments of engagement and exchange between the human and non-human members of Creation; I believe that such reading practices might also be productively applied to other Exeter Book texts, even (and perhaps especially) those with widely accepted interpretations. For example, 9

Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 138.

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by decentering human emotion and considering the ways in which the eponymous Wanderer actively engages these non-human elements, rather than positioning them in strict opposition to the human society he has lost, we create space for a new reading of perhaps the most famous and frequently read poem in the Old English corpus. Attempts to engage the natural world within these earliest examples of the English tradition provide a historical baseline from which we can measure the evolution of literary environmentalism and ecological thought. If we can be honest in articulating the ways in which medieval views of nature are similar to or even exceed our own, then we can begin to break down some commonly accepted assumptions about human attitudes towards the natural world throughout history, such as Lynn White, Jr.’s arguments about medieval “mastery of nature.” In doing so, we may decenter human concerns and make space for a more nuanced understanding of our own relationship to the non-human. Moreover, instructors of early medieval English history and culture can steer future generations of scholars away from anthropocentric reading practices by developing an ecocritical pedagogy. Such a pedagogy would instill student familiarity with the environmental realities which informed textual production in the early middle ages, and actively engage non-literary texts which speak to social, scientific, and theological concerns about the Earth, such as the exegetical and scientific work of Ælfric, or Wulfstan’s homilies. Refusing to separate the study of literature and history from the study of science and technology encourages students to produce interdisciplinary work, and to see the value of literary analysis to other fields of study. The development of a medieval ecocritical pedagogy which encourages collaboration across traditional academic disciplines at all levels can only benefit universities and our students. As we struggle to address the challenges of global climate change, a more nuanced and historically contextualized understanding of the role of literature in shaping human engagement with the natural world may help open up new ways of thinking about the future of our shared Earth.

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Earth Bible Team. “Guiding Ecojustice Principles.” In Readings from the Perspective of Earth, edited by Norman C. Habel, 34-58. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Fugelso, Karl, editor. Ecomedievalism. Studies in Medievalism XXVI. Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2012. Heidegger, Martin. “Nietzsche’s Overturning of Platonism: the Origin of the Work of Art.” In Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Postmodernists: A Critical Reader, ed. Christopher Kul-Want, 118-148. Morningside Heights: Columbia University Pres, 2010. Horsey, David. “Scott Pruitt undermines the EPA with anti-scientific ignorance.” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2017. Accessed February 25, 2021. http://www.latimes. com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-pruitt-undermines-20170406-story.html Lees, Clare A. and Gillian R. Overing, “Anglo-Saxon Horizons: Places of the Mind in the Northumbiran Landscape.” In A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, edited by Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, 1-26. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Stevenson, Aiko. “Trump Threatens to Take Us Back to the Climate Dark Ages.” Huffington Post. March 20, 2017. Accessed February 25, 2021. http://www. huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-threatens-to-take-us-back-to-the-climatedark_us_58cbb34de4b0537abd956f9b White, Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207.

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Index Ælfric of Eynsham 15, 17-19, 21-23, 48-49, 51-53, 55-63, 67-68, 73 Hexameron 23, 51-53, 56, 59, 61-63 Sermones Catholici 18-19, 22-23, 48-49, 51, 55-56, 58-61, 67-68, 73-74, 112, 174 Apocalypticism in early medieval English theology 15-20, 68 in Old English poetry 157-158, 161-165, 168-176 Aurochs 123-126 Beowulf 96, 117, 127-128, 193-195 Birds 31, 51-52, 109-120, 157, 159, 204 Cuckoo 113-119 Nightingale 109-113 Children 91-92, 114-119 Creation see Gesceaft (Index of essential Old English terms) Earth Bible Team 45-47, 49-68; see also Ecojustice principles Ecocriticism 38, 44-45, 87-88, 216 Ecojustice principles 46-47; see also Interconnectedness; Intrinsic worth; Mutual custodianship; Purpose; Resistance; Voice Ecotheology 43-69 medieval 20, 47-69, 85-88, 97-98, 110-113, 119, 124-125, 128-129, 140-142, 159-160, 165-168, 175-176, 197-206, 211-215 modern 43-47, 53, 54, 57-58, 60, 63-67, 96; see also Earth Bible Team Ecosystems 59-61, 93-98, 118-119, 135, 147, 160, 163-175, 203-205; see also Interconnectedness Elegies 28, 35-36, 145-151, 161-165, 175-176, 212-213 Emotion in animals or animal-objects 111-113, 117-120 in plants or plant-objects 91, 131-136 in humans 18, 111-112, 115-116, 150, 160, 175-176, 190-191, 204 Environmental change in the modern world 11-13, 43-44, 209-211 in early medieval England 13-16, 147, 168-172, 198 Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501) 20, 26-30, 33, 106-107, 209-210 Exeter Cathedral 26-27 medieval community 29-30, 112-113, 191-192 Exeter riddle collection 29, 35, 44, 101-106, 106-108

Felix see Vita Sancti Guðlaci Fenland 14, 182-184, 190-196, 199-202 Genesis 23, 53-54, 64, 96 creation story 51-54, 61-63 the Flood 57-58, 60 Guðlac A 27, 30, 37, 180-185, 188-192, 194-197, 199-206, 212 Gnomic verse 79-82, 88-93, 97 Hagiography 180, 185-186, 191, 204-205 Heroic culture 120-129, 131-134, 136-138, 140-142 Horse 89-90, 122-123 Interconnectedness (ecotheological principle) 54-57, 74-77, 86-88, 90-94, 97-98, 130, 141 Intrinsic worth (ecotheological principle) 5153, 110-113, 117-120, 129-130 Landscape 14, 161, 171-175, 182, 191-196, 198-206 Maxims see Gnomic verse Maxims I 34-35, 76-78, 88-98, 102-103, 119, 214-215 Mutual custodianship (ecotheological principle) 63-66, 160, 164-168, 171-172, 198-202, 205-206 Natural world 47-49; see also Gesceaft (Index of essential Old English terms) Ocean see Sea Order of the World 34-35, 76-77, 81-88, 97-98, 214-215 Purpose (ecotheological principle) 59-63, 105, 123-125, 127-129 Resistance (ecotheological principle) 66-68, 130-133, 136-138, 140-142, 172-175 Riddles see Exeter Riddle Collection in Old English 79-80, 89, 103-104 Riddle 3 105, 121, 130-134, 136-137, 142, 214 Riddle 6 104, 109-113, 119-120, 142, 214 Riddle 7 102, 104, 113-120, 123, 142, 214 Riddle 12 105, 121-125, 142, 214 Riddle 26 30-33 Riddle 51 105, 121, 129-131, 134-138, 140-142, 214 Riddle 71 105, 111, 121, 129-131, 138-142 Riddle 76 104-105, 110-111, 121, 125-129, 142, 214 ruins 161-163, 171 Ruin 36, 148-149, 161-176, 213

230  Sea 14, 53, 59, 94-97, 151-152, 155-157, 159 Seafarer 159-160 Stars 18, 58-59, 61-62 Stewardship see Mutual Custodianship Sun 18-19, 61-62, 67, 170 Sustainability 60, 183-185, 212-213 Trauma 130-133, 150-160 Trees 54, 61-63, 74, 91-95, 129-130, 131-143, 214 Vita Sancti Guðlaci 183-188, 192-193, 196 Voice (ecotheological principle) 57-59, 109-113, 123-125, 131-134, 140-142

Old English Ecotheology

Wanderer 36, 147-161, 175, 212-213 Weapons 35, 105, 111, 121-123, 129-142, 214 Wisdom poetry 34-35, 75-81, 88-89, 93-94, 97-98, 102-103; see also Order of the World and Maxims I Winter 29, 62, 154-158, 169 Women 91-92, 94-96, 127-128 Wood see Trees Wulfstan, Archbishop of York 15-17, 19-20, 23-26, 33-34 Homilies 16-17, 55-56, 60-61, 65-67, 141, 181, 198



Index of Essential Old English Terms

Agen gecynd (“own nature”) 51-52, 111-112, 118, 140 Gesceaft (“creation”) 48-49, 52-53, 55-57, 59-60, 74-76, 81-87, 112, 162-165, 169-175 Londes wynn (“joys of the land”) 185, 190-192, 198-199

Middangeard (“all this Earth”) 18, 55-56, 92, 157, 161, 181 Scyppend (“Creator”) 48-49, 60, 67, 89 Wisa (“ways” or “manners”) 109-112, 138-140; see also Agen gecynd Wyrd (“fate/God/destiny”) 152-153, 155, 168-169