The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History 1580443591, 9781580443593, 9781580443609

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments ix
Roberta Frank’s publications, 1970 – present x
Introduction / Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott 1
Part 1. Seasons 13
Weathering Time in the 'Wanderer' / Mary Kate Hurley 15
'Beowulf' as Anti-Virgilian World Literature: Archaeology, Ekphrasis, and Epic / Andrew James Johnston 37
A Portrait of the Translator as Grendel’s Mother: The Postcolonial Feminist Polyphony of Meghan Purvis's 'Beowulf' / Denis Ferhatović 59
Part 2. Engines 83
Light Verse in Anglo-Saxon England / Emily V. Thornbury 85
The 'Paris Psalter' and English Literary History / Eric Weiskott 107
Generative Form / Sarah Elliott Novacich 135
Kennings and Things: Towards an Object-Oriented Skaldic Poetics / Christopher Abram 161
Part 3. Discordance 189
Lydgate's Missing 'Ballade' and the Bibliographical Imaginary / Andrew Kraebel 191
Spoiled and Eaten: Figures of Absorption in Medieval English Poetry / Irina Dumitrescu 215
'Gehyre se ðe wille': Sonic Worlds in Old Testament Poetry / Jordan Zweck 237
Notes on Contributors 261
Index 263

Citation preview

The Shapes of Early English Poetry

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE

Medieval Institute Publications is a program of The Medieval Institute, College of Arts and Sciences   Western Michigan University

The Shapes of Early English Poetry Style, Form, History

Edited by Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture LI MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS Western Michigan University Kalamazoo

Copyright © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 9781580443593 eISBN: 9781580443609 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 authors of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

for Roberta Frank

Roberta Frank, New Haven, CT, 2017 Photo credit: Michael Morand

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Roberta Frank’s publications, 1970–present

x

Introduction 1 Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott Part 1. Seasons

13

Weathering Time in the Wanderer Mary Kate Hurley

15

Beowulf as Anti-Virgilian World Literature: Archaeology, Ekphrasis, and Epic Andrew James Johnston

37

A Portrait of the Translator as Grendel’s Mother: The Postcolonial Feminist Polyphony of Meghan Purvis’s Beowulf Denis Ferhatović

59

Part 2. Engines

83

Light Verse in Anglo-Saxon England Emily V. Thornbury

85

The Paris Psalter and English Literary History Eric Weiskott

107

Generative Form Sarah Elliott Novacich

135

viii  Contents

Kennings and Things: Towards an Object-Oriented Skaldic Poetics Christopher Abram

161

Part 3. Discordance

189

Lydgate’s Missing “Ballade” and the Bibliographical Imaginary Andrew Kraebel

191

Spoiled and Eaten: Figures of Absorption in Medieval English Poetry Irina Dumitrescu

215

“Gehyre se ðe wille”: Sonic Worlds in Old Testament Poetry Jordan Zweck

237

Notes on Contributors

261

Index 263

Acknowledgments

T

HIS BOOK HAS BEEN a labor of love. Hal Momma set this project into motion by suggesting that Roberta Frank’s Yale University years (2000–) deserved commemoration. Frank’s time at the University of Toronto (1968–2000) was celebrated in the volume Verbal Encounters: Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Studies for Roberta Frank, edited by Antonina Harbus and Russell Poole (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). The editors warmly thank the contributors for their camaraderie and the Yale English Department and the Elizabethan Club of Yale University for their generosity in supporting the project financially. We would also like to thank Jessica Brantley and Ardis Butterfield, Roberta Frank’s medievalist colleagues at Yale, for organizing a retirement celebration for Roberta just as this book was going to press. Shannon Cunningham at Medieval Institute Publications has been a pleasure to work with. Above all, we thank Roberta Frank, for everything.

Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present

N

B: THIS LIST INCLUDES all of Roberta Frank’s scholarly and general-audience publications, excluding book reviews. This list does not note reprintings of Frank’s publications except where these contain new material. Citations and quotations of Frank’s publications in the introduction and the chapters in this volume refer to this list.

1970 Ed., with Angus Cameron and John Leyerle. Computers and Old English Concordances. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. “Onomastic Play in Kormakr’s Verse: The Name Steingerðr.” Mediaeval Scandinavia 3: 7–30.

1972 “Anatomy of a Skaldic Double-Entendre: Rǫgnvaldr Kali’s Lausavísa 7.” In Studies Offered to Einar Haugen, edited by E. Firchow et al. The Hague: Mouton. 235–43. “Some Uses of Paronomasia in Old English Scriptural Verse.” Speculum 47: 207–26.

1973 Ed., with Angus Cameron. A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. “Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland.” Viator 4: 473–84.

1976 “The Dróttkvætt Stanza.” In Medieval Studies in Honor of Lillian Herlands Hornstein, edited by Jess B. Bessinger Jr. and Robert R. Raymo. New York: New York University Press. 123–40.

Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present  xi

1978 Old Norse Court Poetry: The Dróttkvætt Stanza. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

1979 “Old Norse Memorial Eulogies and the Ending of Beowulf.” ACTA 6: 1–19.

1981 “Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf.” In The Dating of Beowulf, edited by Colin Chase. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 123–39. “Snorri Sturluson and the Mead of Poetry.” In Speculum Norroenum. Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville‑Petre, edited by H. Bekker-Nielsen, Ursula Dronke, Guðrún Helgadóttir, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber. Odense: Odense University Press. 155–70.

1982 “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History.” In The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in Early English Literature in Honor of Morton Bloomfield, edited by Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications. 53–65.

1983 “Bjarni Kolbeinsson.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 2: 255–56. “Bragi Boddason the Old.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 2: 359–60.

1984 “Dróttkvætt.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 4: 294–95. “Eddic Meters.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 4: 384–85. “Egill Skallagrímsson.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 4: 400–1. “Eilífr Goðrúnarson.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 4: 409–10. “Einarr Helgason Skálaglamm.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 4: 410–11.

xii   Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present

“Eyvindr Finnsson Skáldaspillir.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 4: 570. “Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle.” English Historical Review 99: 332–43.

1985 “Flokkr.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 5: 91. “Háttalykill.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 6: 112. “Haukr Valdísarson.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 6: 113–14. “Skaldic Poetry.” In Old Norse‑Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, edited by Carol J. Clover and John Lindow. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 157–96.

1986 “Hand Tools and Power Tools in Eilífr’s Thórsdrápa.” In Proceedings of the Sixth International Saga Conference. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Arnamagnæanske Institut. 1: 347–72. “Kenning.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 7: 230–31. “Kormáks Saga.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 7: 299–300. “Kviðuháttr.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 7: 311–12. “Lausavísa.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 7: 387. “Mere and Sund: Two Sea‑Changes in Beowulf.” In Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature: Essays in Honour of Stanley B. Greenfield, edited by Phyllis Rugg Brown, Georgia Ronan Crampton, and Fred C. Robinson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 153–72.

1987 “A Note on Old English swigdagas ‘silent days.’” In Studies in Honour of René Derolez, edited by A. M. Simon-Vandenbergen. Ghent: Seminarie voor Engelse en Oud-Germaanse Taalkunde. 180–89. “Did Anglo‑Saxon Audiences Have a Skaldic Tooth?” Scandinavian Studies 59: 338–55. “Málsháttakvæði.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 8: 65–67. “Merlínússpá.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 8: 275–76. “Pre-Christian Beliefs and Rites.” In The Christianization of Scandinavia: Report of a Symposium held at Kungälv, Sweden, 4–9 August 1985, edited by Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer, and Ian Wood. Alingsås: Viktoria. 26–27. “Searching for System in Skaldic Verse.” Scandinavian Studies 59: 370–81.

Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present  xiii

1988 “The Blood-Eagle Again.” Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, Notes and Reviews 22: 287–89. “Interdisciplinary: The First Half-Century.” In Words for Robert Burchfield’s SixtyFifth Birthday, edited by E. G. Stanley and T. F. Hoad. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 91–101. “Medieval English Studies at the University of Toronto.” Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter (Tokyo) 19: 3–6. “Skáldatal.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 11: 316. “Skaldic Poetry.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 11: 316–23. “What Kind of Poetry Is Exodus?” In Germania: Comparative Studies in the Old Germanic Languages and Literatures, edited by Daniel G. Calder and Craig Christie. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 191–205.

1989 “Denton Fox, 1930–1988.” Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter (Tokyo) 20: 9–11. “Þjóðólfr ór Hvíni.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 12: 32. “Ulfr Uggason.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner. 12: 245–46.

1990 “Anglo-Scandinavian Poetic Relations.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 3: 74–79. “Ornithology and the Interpretation of Skaldic Verse.” Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, Notes and Reviews 23: 81–83. “Why Skalds Address Women.” In The Seventh International Saga Conference, 4–10 sett. 88. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo. 67–83.

1991 “The Battle of Maldon and Heroic Literature.” In The Battle of Maldon A.D. 991, edited by Donald G. Scragg. Oxford: Blackwell. 196–207. “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 88–106. “The Ideal of Men Dying with Their Lord in The Battle of Maldon: Anachronism or Nouvelle Vague.” In People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer, edited by Ian Wood and Niels Lund. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. 95–106.

xiv   Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present

1992 “Beowulf and Sutton Hoo: The Odd Couple.” In Voyage to the Other World: The Legacy of Sutton Hoo, edited by Calvin B. Kendall and Peter S. Wells. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 47–64. “Late Old English þrymnys ‘trinity’: Scribal Nod or Word Waiting to Be Born?” In Old English and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, edited by Joan H. Hall, Nick Doane, and Dick Ringler. New York: Garland. 97–110. “Old English æræt: ‘too much’ or ‘too soon’?” In Words, Texts and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, edited by Michael Korhammer. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. 293–304.

1993 “The Battle of Maldon: Its Reception 1726–1906.” In Heroic Poetry in the AngloSaxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., edited by Helen Damico and John Leyerle. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications. 29–46. Ed. The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts. New York: AMS. “The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75: 11–36. Reprinted with new postscript in Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, edited by Donald Scragg. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003. 137–60.

1994 “King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds.” In The Reign of Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway, edited by Alexander F. Rumble. Leicester: Leicester University Press. 106–24. “Old English Poetry.” In The Columbia History of British Poetry, edited by Carl Woodring. New York: Columbia University Press. 1–22. “On a Changing Field: Medieval Studies in the New World.” Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4: 1–20. “On the Field.” In The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, edited by John Van Engen. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. 204–16. “Poetic Words in Late Old English Prose.” In From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E. G. Stanley, edited by Malcolm Godden, Douglas Gray, and Terry Hoad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 87–107.

Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present  xv

“When Poets Address Princes.” In Sagnaþing helgað Jónasi Kristjánssyni sjötugum, 10. apríl 1994, edited by Gísli Sigurðsson, Guðrún Kvaran, and Sigurgeir Steingrímsson. Reykjavík: Íslenska. 189–95.

1995 “The Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.” Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter (Tokyo) 33: 12–14. “Quid Hinieldus cum feminis? The Hero and Women at the End of the First Millennium.” In La Funzione dell’Eroe germanico: Storicità, Metafora, Paradigma, edited by Teresa Pàroli. Rome: Calamo. 7–25.

1997 “Old English orc ‘cup, goblet’: A Latin Loanword with Attitude.” In Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately, edited by Jane Roberts and Janet L. Nelson. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. 15–24. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Philologist.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 97: 486–513.

1998 “When Lexicography Met the Exeter Book.” In Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson, edited by Nicholas Howe and Peter S. Baker. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 207–22.

2000 “The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet.” In International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber: Ein runder Knäuel, so rollt’ es uns leicht aus den Händen, edited by Michael Dallapiazza, Olaf Hansen, Preben Meulengracht-Sørensen, and Yvonne S. Bonnetain. Trieste: Parnaso. 199–208.

2001 “Masters on Masters.” Yale Literary Magazine 13: 5–7. “Old English ancor ‘anchor’: Transformation of a Latin Loanword.” In Medieval Reconstructions: Germanic Texts and Latin Models, edited by Antonina Harbus and Karin Olsen, Germania Latina IV. Groningen: University of Groningen. 7–27.

xvi   Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present

2002 “An Aspirin for Beowulf: Against Aches and Pains—ece and wærc.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 15: 58–63. “North-Sea Soundings in Andreas.” In Early Medieval Texts and Interpretations: Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg, edited by Susan Rosser and Elaine Treharne. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 1–11. “Ongendus.” In Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde. Berlin: de Gruyter. 22: 104–5.

2003 “The Discreet Charm of the Old English Weak Adjective.” In Anglo-Saxon Styles, edited by Catherine Karkov and George H. Brown. Albany: State University of New York Press. 239–52. “Sex in the Dictionary of Old English.” In Unlocking the Wordhord: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving, Jr., edited by Mark C. Amodio and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 302–12.

2004 “Old Norse-Icelandic Women Poets (Skaldkonur).” In Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by Katherine Wilson and Nadia Margolis. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 2: 852–55. “Sex, Lies, and Málsháttakvæði: A Norse Poem from Medieval Orkney” [pamphlet]. Centre for the Study of the Viking Age, University of Nottingham.

2005 “O Lady.” Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15: 11–22. “Three ‘Cups’ and a Funeral in Beowulf.” In Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, edited by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1: 407–20. “Wagner’s Ring, North-by-Northwest.” University of Toronto Quarterly 74: 671–76.

2006 “An Appreciation of Joyce Hill.” Leeds Studies in English 37: 1–8. “The Incomparable Wryness of Old English Poetry.” In Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell, edited by John Walmsley. Oxford: Blackwell. 59–73.

Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present  xvii

2007 “A Scandal in Toronto: The Dating of ‘Beowulf ’ a Quarter Century On.” Speculum 82: 843–64. “F-Words in Beowulf.” In Making Sense: Constructing Meaning in Early English, edited by Antonette diPaolo Healey and Kevin Kiernan. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 1–22. “The Lay of the Land in Skaldic Praise Poetry.” In Myth in Early Northwest Europe, edited by Stephen O. Glosecki. Turnhout: Brepols. 175–96. “Terminally Hip and Incredibly Cool: Carol, Vikings, and Anglo-Scandinavian England.” Representations 100: 23–33.

2008 “Afterword.” In Beowulf, translated by Burton Raffel. New York: Signet. 141–51. “The Boar on the Helmet.” In Aedificia Nova: Studies in Honor of Rosemary Cramp, edited by Catherine E. Karkov and Helen Damico. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications. 76–88. “Sharing Words with Beowulf.” In Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture presented to Paul E. Szarmach, edited by Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 3–15.

2010 “Málsháttakvæði: A Translation.” In Poetry, Place, and Gender: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Helen Damico, edited by Catherine Karkov. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications. 234–51. “Marketing Óðinn’s Mead in a Strange Land.” In The Morton Bloomfield Lectures, 1989–2005, edited by Daniel Donoghue, James Simpson, Nicholas Watson. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications. 246–70. “Norse Heroic Legend.” In Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, edited by Robert Bjork. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3: 1213.

2011 “Like a Bridge of Stones.” Yale Review 99: 170–77.

2012 “Siegfried and Arminius: Scenes from a Marriage.” In Germania Remembered 1500–2009: Commemorating and Inventing a Germanic Past, edited by Christina Lee and Nicola McLelland. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 1–26.

xviii   Roberta Frank’s Publications, 1970–present

2013 With Peter Cole and Ralph Hexter. “María Rosa Menocal” [memoir]. Speculum 88: 893–96.

2014 “Conversational Skills for Heroes.” In Narration and Hero: Recounting the Deeds of Heroes in Literature and Art of the Early Medieval Period, edited by Victor Millet and Heike Sahm Berlin: de Gruyter. 19–43.

2015 “The Norse Verse of the Orkney Earldom.” In The International Companion to Scottish Poetry, edited by Carla Sassi. Glasgow: Scottish Literature International. 31–41.

2017 With Peter S. Baker and Daniel Donoghue. “Fred C. Robinson” [memoir]. Speculum 92: 943–45. Ed. “Málsháttakvæði.” In Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, edited by K. E. Gade. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols. 2: 1213–44. “Preface.” In The Song-Weigher: Complete Poems of Egill Skallagrímsson, translated by Ian Crockatt. Todmorden: Arc. 7–11. “The Storied Verse of Sturla Þórðarson.” In Sturla Þórðarson: Skald, Chieftain and Lawman, edited by Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Sverrir Jakobsson. Leiden: Brill. 133–47.

Forthcoming “The Beaker in the Barrow, the Flagon with the Dragon: Accessorizing Beowulf.” In Material Remains: Reading the Past through Archeological Objects in Medieval and Early Modern British Literature, edited by Andrew James Johnston and Jan-Peer Hartmann. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. “Beowulf and the Intimacy of Large Parties.” In Dating Beowulf: Studies in Intimacy, edited by Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver. Manchester: Manchester University Press. “To Commemorate Friendship: The Flavor of Old English Wine.” In Essays in Old English Literature in Honor of J. R. Hall, edited by Lindy Brady. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

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With Antonette diPaolo Healey and Walter Goffart. “Eric Stanley” [memoir]. Speculum. “Morton Bloomfield.” In The Chaucer Encyclopedia, edited by Richard Newhauser. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. “Reading Beowulf with Isidore’s Etymologies.” In By Definition: Studies in Medieval Literature and Lexicology in Honor of Antonette diPaolo Healey, edited by Maren Clegg-Hyer, Haruko Momma, and Samantha Zacher. “A Taste for Knottiness: Skaldic Art at Cnut’s Court.” Anglo-Saxon England.

Introduction Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott

W

E KNOW STYLE WHEN we see it. Style is a way of executing or performing a work, often in a manner specific to an artist or school. Style is a fashion, behavior, or mode of life. Style can be high or low or late or even rude, but it usually implies beauty: better to be style-setting than to have no style or have it cramped.1 Style is suspect too, so often contrasted with substance, representing the seductions of rhetoric over the cool persuasion of reason.2 Style can be thought of as ornamental, like flowers, jewels, rich orient colors, and a lady’s rouge.3 It might be decorous or not, appropriate to the speeches of kings or shepherds or troublingly mismatched. It can also be organic, part of a unified artistic intention.4 When it comes to writing, the notion of style is deliciously expansive. As J. A. Cuddon once put it, studying it means examining “a writer’s choice of words, his figures of speech, the devices (rhetorical or otherwise), the shape of his sentences (whether they be loose or periodic), the shape of his paragraphs—indeed [...] every conceivable aspect of his language and the way in which he uses it.”5 Style can be both form and expression, the shape of the bottle and the aroma of the wine. Before style became style, it was simply a tool: a sharp instrument of metal or bone used to inscribe wax tablets. A style could easily turn into a weapon, as the teacher and saint Cassian of Imola found out when his pupils scratched him to death with theirs. 6 Style is incisive. It shares an Indo-European root, steig-, with the words stick, stitch, etiquette, stigma, tiger, and instigate.7 It is a root good for poking, prodding, and, if need be, raking someone over the coals. After all, the related Old Norse verb steikja, the root of our word steak, meant “to roast.” 8 One end of style stitches together the disparate elements of a composition into a recognizable whole, the other end slices literature into movements, periods, and geographical trends. By its very nature, style is bound up with history and the telling of time. The style is that edge of the gnomon that casts a shadow on a sundial, a manner of counting the years (New and Roman styles for the

2   Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott

Gregorian calendar, Old and English for the unreformed one), and a way of fixing works of art to a historical period. The “history of things,” in George Kubler’s phrase, describes “the shape of time.” Style can be biblical or metaphysical, Tudor or Italian, Ciceronian or Miltonic.9 Style is “indexical,” pointing to “large intellectual and cultural matters.”10 Style makes the general specific, and thus locatable, or so it sometimes seems. For style can also provide a way of imaginatively leaping across temporal periods: recall Edmund Spenser’s neo-Chaucerian diction, James Macpherson’s fraudulent Gaelic epic, and Lewis Carroll’s skipping, wriggling messenger, happily posing in his Anglo-Saxon attitudes. At the intersection of style, form, and history is what might be called literary texture, that is, the myriad strategies that distinguish the literary work as such. Rather than projecting a dichotomy between a “formalist” claim to the specialness of poetic style and a “historicist” claim to poetry’s imbrications in time, this book thinks form and history in tandem. The essays presented in this volume articulate a capacious definition of form and style, including metaphor, meter, rhetoric, sound, temporality, textuality, word choice, and the deployment of material culture, each inscribed in its own historical series. These chapters connect form and style to two larger themes. The first is the passing of time, along with its perception and representation. Style, our contributions suggest, measures time, but it also recovers it, dwells in it, leaps over it, and creates spaces of generative anachronism. The second is the autonomous energy of form, the way style drives the creation of language and poetic text, sometimes even militating against its purported ideologies. Style tells its own story. Roberta Frank has become known for being attentive to style, with style. Her scholarship on Old English and Old Norse literature and culture stands out for its focus on granular details: turning an ordinary word into something foreign or enchanted, rearranging the pieces of an ill-conceived reconstruction, drawing the poetry out of prosaic compositions, demonstrating texture and difference where previous eyes had perceived only smoothness and sameness. In her care for fine distinctions, her vision for the larger interpretations they open up, and especially in her programmatic skepticism toward received narratives about the early Middle Ages, she has inspired generations of scholars. These do not form a “school” in any traditional sense. Instead of a shared methodology or dogma, they adopt a series of attitudes modeled by Frank’s work: experimental, playful, vigilant, reflective, subversive, carefully historicist but receptive to the light modern culture can shed on the past. Frank’s own style has proved harder to imitate. Her essays crackle with puns, epic catalogues, extended metaphors,

Introduction  3

sharp allegories, well-placed F-words, proverbs a-twist, elegant allusions, and the occasional love story. They are a class unto their own. The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History builds on Frank’s work, particularly her foundational studies of Old English poetics. Its essays connect stylistic and formal questions to historical and conceptual ones, often by picking up on a hint from Frank’s scholarship. The contributors read poems whose aesthetic resonance Frank has explored; they offer interpretations implicit in or analogous to those mooted already by Frank; they transpose Frank’s modes of attention to new literary archives. The subtitle was inspired in part by the namesake of Frank’s Yale professorship. Marie Borroff ’s “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”: A Stylistic and Metrical Study (1962) was a major intervention in the study of early English poetry in terms of style, form, and history. Drawing on her wide reading in German philological scholarship, in which stylistic analysis had already attained a high degree of sophistication, Borroff defined “the historical study of style” as “the recovery of certain lost or obscured expressive values in the language of literary texts.” Critics must always keep in mind that “[t]he intuitive impression of style may [...] be actively misleading” in the interpretation of premodern texts.11 In an elegant pincer movement repeated many times over the course of the book, Borroff used non-literary histories—linguistic, cultural, and social—to specify the style of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and then used a historicized poetic style to illuminate fourteenth-century English language, culture, and social history. In the wake of the publication of Borroff ’s book, the triad of style, form, and history attracted more research activity. Frank herself stands at the center of this disciplinary movement. Her second published article, “Some Uses of Paronomasia in Old English Scriptural Verse” (1972), took Anglo-Saxon wordplay seriously as historical evidence. Frank discerned that what seemed to others like poetic decoration was in fact part of the structure of thought and belief of early Christian poetry.12 The edited collection Anglo-Saxon Styles (2003) as a whole offers a precedent for the historicized attention to literary style practiced in the present book. In her contribution to that volume, “The Discreet Charm of the Old English Weak Adjective,” Frank discreetly used stylistic analysis to reject the weak adjective construction as a dating criterion for Old English verse. Nearly all of Frank’s publications historicize Old English and Old Norse literary forms and styles, everywhere resisting the presentist temptation “to see one blade of grass [...] where two grew before.”13 That is, Frank undertakes to recover minute stylistic-historical differences invisible at first glance.

4   Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott

Perhaps her paradigmatic essay on style, form, and history is her study of three words for “cup” in Beowulf: bune, orc, and wæge.14 Where other readers saw a trio of synonyms, Frank discerned competing cultural and linguistic histories epitomizing the poetic project of Beowulf, its rhetorical claims on readers and on its own history. The present volume takes its place among others concerned with relationships between early English poetic style, form, and history. Three recent landmark publications at the intersection of stylistics, formalism, and historicism are Elizabeth Tyler’s Old English Poetics (2006), Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway’s edited volume Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England (2013), and Emily Thornbury’s Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England (2014). Tyler’s book examines “the stability of the stylistic conventions of Old English poetry” as a historical phenomenon, beyond “the distorting effect of the periodization of Anglo-Saxon history.”15 Congruently with Frank’s work on Beowulf in particular, Tyler’s analysis makes it possible to understand Anglo-Saxon stylistic conservatism as an expression of historical circumstance rather than an exit from it—even when, as with Beowulf, the historical circumstances surrounding literary composition are unknown. Grady and Galloway’s Answerable Style proposes a reconsideration of late medieval English literary style, building on the work of Frank’s Yale English colleague Alastair Minnis, among others, under the banner of what Minnis calls “medieval literary theory.” 16 Through detailed stylistic analysis, Thornbury historicizes Anglo-Saxon poetic communities and the cultural status of Anglo-Saxon poets working in Latin and/or Old English. Moving in a different direction, Eileen Joy and Anna Kłosowska’s edited volume, On Style (2013), considers the historical significance of crosspollination between academic and literary writing styles; that volume, like this one, is dedicated to Roberta Frank. As this summary of the state of the field indicates, the nexus of style, form, and history, thanks in no small part to Frank’s career-long efforts, now extends beyond Middle English to Old English. Accordingly, this book addresses English poetry on both sides of the Norman Conquest. The juxtaposition of early and late medieval English literature responds to and extends recent historiographical critiques. Elaine Treharne and others have questioned the basis for dividing early English literary history into “Old” and “Middle” subperiods.17 The Norman Conquest did not, after all, restart history. Authors, forms, ideas, styles, texts, readers, manuscripts, and socioliterary institutions (e.g., Worcester Cathedral) survived the year 1066.18 Treharne’s work demonstrates, moreover, how the Old/Middle

Introduction  5

periodization distorts critical understanding of eleventh- and twelfthcentury English literature, which falls between two stools. Building on recent challenges to traditional periodization, this book considers “early English poetry” as a continuous literary field, amenable to comparative work and perspectives from the longue durée. The study of style, form, and history also reaches forward into the postmedieval centuries. Shakespeare studies is currently enjoying a stylistic turn.19 Indeed, the early modernist Richard Strier has insisted that “one has to know the texture as well as the content of ideas to do intellectual or cultural history with true sensitivity.”20 Scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literature have taken up a revived “historical poetics,” a historicist formalism (or formalist historicism) that seeks to recover and contextualize now-forgotten poetic theories and practices.21 In her recent book, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, Caroline Levine argues for the intimate relationship between literary form and political structures. Considering forms from the perspective of their “affordances,” a design-theory term for the “potential uses or actions latent in materials and designs,” Levine traces complex networks of overlapping forms in both literary works and social worlds.22 “Form,” explains Levine, is “trans­historical, portable, and abstract, on the one hand, and material, situated, and political, on the other.”23 In identifying form, and by extension style, as an undertheorized and unhistoricized area of literary interpretation, literary scholars active in postmedieval fields reaffirm the value of the kind of scholarship that medievalists, following Borroff, Frank, and others, have long practiced. We have divided the contributions to this book into three parts. The first, “Seasons,” considers Old English poetics in relation to time, trauma, and retrospection. Each chapter links literary style to poetic imagination writ large. In “Weathering Time in the Wanderer,” Mary Kate Hurley discovers a recursive poetic temporality in the elegy. The narrator of the poem is trapped between his own repetitive experience of loss, crystallized in the image of stirring the ice-cold sea with his hands, and the universal, linear movement of time. The Wanderer’s lament is “both commemoration and compulsive recitation of pain” (this volume, p. 25), reflecting not only the disappearance of beloved objects and people from the past, but of their signifiers too. As horses, warriors, and bright cups vanish, so does time itself: an apt metaphor for the study of the past. The stylized combination of linearity and circularity that Hurley finds in the Wanderer also characterizes our arrangement of the remaining contributions, which is conceptual rather than chronological.

6   Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott

The following two chapters focus on Beowulf, the poem that Roberta Frank has done so much to illuminate. Both essays entertain but subsequently invert traditional approaches to the poem. In “Beowulf as Anti-Virgilian World Literature: Archaeology, Ekphrasis, and Epic,” Andrew James Johnston explores Beowulf’s disjunctions of time and style through analysis of representations of material culture. Beowulf, he shows, uses anachronistic Roman architectural artifacts to imagine its own relationship to Virgil’s Aeneid, and more broadly to the Latin cultural heritage. The aesthetic strategies of Roman epic are fundamental, the very stone-paved roads and mosaic floors on top of which the action of Beowulf takes place. Beowulf deliberately rejects its Latin predecessor, but does so in a way that harnesses its imperial traditions. Johnston’s view of a poem preternaturally pointing backward and forward to unknown stylistic and cultural histories opens space for later adaptations. In “A Portrait of the Translator as Grendel’s Mother: The Post­ colonial Feminist Polyphony of Meghan Pur vis’s Beowulf,” Denis Ferhatović argues that Purvis’s modern translation boldly rewrites the gender politics of Beowulf. Purvis, as Ferhatović shows, brings out elements either marginalized or left silent by the Old English poem: feminine domestic labor, the natural world, and the non-heroic body. Her feminist, postcolonial translation increases the polyphony of Beowulf, putting the story into the voices of multiple speakers instead of one, and showing the extent to which the Old English poem already was a cannibal narrative. No mere reception history, Ferhatović’s stylistic analysis vanquishes the artificial line between medieval and medievalism, already traversed by Frank in such historiographical critiques as “The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet” and “The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet.” The second part, “Engines,” analyzes Old and Middle English poetic style from a functional perspective. The chapters in this part assert what was once a New Critical consensus—poetic form matters—but in a new key. Where the so-called New Critics held that literary form mattered in itself, as the structuration of a “verbal icon,” Emily Thornbury, Eric Weiskott, Sarah Elliott Novacich, and Christopher Abram, in different ways, demonstrate the materiality of poetic practice as transactional and transformational.24 All four chapters take aim at one-dimensional hierarchies of poetic devices, urging that poetic form matters dynamically and experientially, not merely statically and analytically. The first two chapters in this part use stylistic analysis to identify alternative archives of English alliterative poetry beyond Beowulf, the Dream of the Rood, and the Wanderer. In “Light Verse in Anglo-Saxon

Introduction  7

England,” Thornbury carries forward the impulse of the first part to contradict the consensus view of Old English poetics. Comparing AngloLatin (Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum) and Old English (the Rhyming Poem and the Menologium), Thornbury locates in meter and poetic style the levity that Frank has described as the essential ingredient in philological research and Anglo-Scandinavian literature. 25 Light verse offers a glimpse of poetic communities “watching poets dance at the edge of a metrical precipice” (this volume, p. 101). In “The Paris Psalter and English Literary History,” Weiskott uses metrical history to extend Thornbury’s examination of the aesthetic atmosphere of late Anglo-Saxon England into the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Paris Psalter is a monumental tenth- or early eleventh-century English verse translation of the Latin Psalms. Building especially on the codicological and literary scholarship of M. J. Toswell, Weiskott identifies the Psalter as “one of the greatest hits of early English poetry” (this volume, p. 107) and compares it with William Langland’s Piers Plowman. Large questions about the shape of English literary history arise from small details of poetic style, such as the Psalter poet’s unprecedented use of the alliterative simplex scealc “man; warrior” as the regular equivalent for Latin servus “servant.” The third and fourth chapters in part 2 examine words and phrases as special cases of medieval poiesis. In “Generative Form,” Novacich posits the interdependency of meter and vocabulary, discussed by Thornbury with particular reference to light Old English verse, as a general circumstance facing fourteenth-century English poets. This chapter considers the style of Patience and Pearl, two poems uniquely preserved in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x, the so-called Gawain manuscript. For Novacich as for Borroff, meters have textures shaping, and shaped by, the words inhabiting them. Her focus on the historical and semantic perplexities of individual words—ridlande, boʒted, gyn—places her chapter in the tradition of Frank’s word studies.26 Like Hurley, Novacich demonstrates the reflexivity of poetic metaphors, their tendency to indicate the work of poetry itself. In “Kennings and Things: Towards an ObjectOriented Skaldic Poetics,” Abram brings the study of kennings in Old Norse skaldic verse into contact with thing theory and object-oriented ontologies. Too often understood as types of metaphors, kennings prove hospitable to object-oriented analysis; like twenty-first century theorists, the skalds represent the world as a world of objects interacting with objects, and kennings bring this world into being. Kennings are above all a phenomenon of literary style, in practice inseparable from other elements of style. Reading kennings in Sturla Þórðarson’s Hrynhenda and Snorri

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Sturluson’s Edda, Abram’s chapter ventures beyond the coasts of Britain to pay homage to Frank’s engagement with Old Norse poetics.27 If the second part shows what early poetry habitually does, the third and final part, “Discordance,” explores unintended consequences. Engines, normally dynamic and generative, can malfunction. The machine succumbs to age or a manufacturer’s error, “oððe fyres feng | oððe flodes wylm” (“or fire’s grasp or the surging of waters,” Beowulf 1764; quoted from Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles). All three chapters in this part are symptomatic readings, in the sense that they track the historical and stylistic process of poetic making without stipulating the poem’s intentional shape beforehand. In “Lydgate’s Missing ‘Ballade’ and the Bibliographical Imaginary,” Andrew Kraebel introduces a case of textual history gone wrong. Continuing the materialism of the second part, Kraebel skeptically considers the different possible explanations of the received text of Lydgate’s Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary, which is short one stanza in all of its surviving manuscripts. He argues that, by presenting each stanza as a discrete object to be used in prayerful meditation, Lydgate inadvertently made it more likely that scribes would understand the poem as unfixed and leave a stanza out. Kraebel’s analysis remains alive to the potential for slippage between Lydgate’s desires for his poem and our desires for Lydgate. Like Novacich’s, Kraebel’s conclusions about Middle English poetic style have ramifications for textual criticism, and vice versa. The next two chapters return to Old English poetry and examine ideologically overdetermined metaphors. In “Spoiled and Eaten: Figures of Absorption in Medieval English Poetry,” Irina Dumitrescu compares the representation of conquest and assimilation in the Old English Andreas and the Middle English alliterative Siege of Jerusalem. She shows how both poems use spoliation (of both war booty and architectural materials) and cannibalism to figure the relationship of Christianity to Jews and Jewish text. Johnston’s and Ferhatović’s essays independently demonstrated how these two forms of assimilation could be used to think about literary history. Dumitrescu highlights their dark side: while Andreas and the Siege both seem at first glance to support a Christian triumphalist reading, spoils tend to turn against their owners, while cannibalism makes monsters of those who engage in it. Like Weiskott, Dumitrescu pairs stylistically similar poems across the divide of 1066. In “‘Gehyre se ðe wille’: Sonic Worlds in Old Testament Poetry,” Jordan Zweck shows what happens when multiple layers of a poem accomplish different stylistic ends. Whereas the Israelites and the Egyptians are opposed at the plot level of the Old English Exodus, the sounds they make

Introduction  9

render them more similar than different. Moreover, by examining a problematic verb, grymetode “roared,” drawing on contemporary sound studies, Zweck argues that Exodus “does not represent a linear progression from noise to harmony, or from interpenetrating, ambiguous sounds to clearly defined good and bad ones” (this volume, p. 243). Like Novacich’s chapter and much of Frank’s scholarship, Zweck’s chapter uses close study of a single word to reimagine the texture of an entire poem. The final part demonstrates that creative discord is part of the history of poetic style. Kraebel, Dumitrescu, and Zweck each reclaim discrepancy as a hallmark of style as such: a complete poetic text that is incomplete; religious supersession that is also dependence; and soundscapes that unite inimical peoples. These essays resist the move from thesis and anti­ thesis to synthesis, instead setting layers of poetic style in apposition like the Beowulf poet. Style, they suggest, can both sparkle and roar. The cumulative effect of these studies in honor of Roberta Frank is, we hope, to highlight the impossibility of separating style, form, and history in the understanding of early English verse. Each component shapes verse qua verse, and only in concert with the other members of the triad. If one can divorce style, form, and history from each other, it is at an analytical level of abstraction above the experience of reading. It follows that the distinction between the critical practices grouped under “historicism” and “formalism” reflects (if anything) a difference in angle of approach as opposed to a difference in the object under consideration. Whether examining narratives of early English literary history, unfolding the meaning of Old English grymetian, or interrogating medieval representations of cannibalism, the contributors offer these essays as accounts of the shapes of early English poetry. NOTES Oxford English Dictionary online, “style,” II.13.a, III.21.a, III.24.a, and C2. Joy, “Prefatory Note,” and Prudentius, ed. Thomson, 220–29. 3 Art of English Poetry, ed. Whigham and Rebhorn, 222. 4 Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Preminger, Warnke, and Hardison, 814–17. 5 Penguin Dictionary, ed. Cuddon and Preston, 872. 6 OED online, “style,” I.1.a and I.1.b. 7 American Heritage Dictionary, ed. Watkins, “steig-.” 8 Cleasby, Guðbrandur, and Dasent, Icelandic-English Dictionary, “steikja.” 9 OED online, “style,” I.7.a, IV.27a, and III.21.c. 10 Strier, “How Formalism Became a Dirty Word,” 211. 1 2

10   Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott

Both quotations since the previous note are from Borroff, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, 27. 12 Cp. Robinson, “Beowulf ” and the Appositive Style, and Donoghue, Style in Old English Poetry. 13 Frank, “An Aspirin for Beowulf,” 62. 14 Frank, “Three ‘Cups’ and a Funeral.” 15 Tyler, Old English Poetics, 1. 16 See Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, and Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Minnis and Scott. See also Idea of the Vernacular, ed. WoganBrowne et al.; The Vulgar Tongue, ed. Somerset and Watson; and Vernacular Literary Theory, ed. Wogan-Browne et al. 17 Rewriting Old English, ed. Swan and Treharne; Georgianna, “Periodization and Politics”; Treharne, “Categorization, Periodization” and Living Through Conquest; and Faulkner, “Rewriting English Literary History.” 18 On a scribe copying and annotating “Old” English at Worcester Cathedral in the thirteenth century, see Franzen, Tremulous Hand. 19 See Bailey, “‘Monstrous Manner’”; McDonald, Shakespeare’s Late Style; Charney, Shakespeare’s Style; and Hunter, “Measure for Measure.” 20 Strier, “How Formalism Became a Dirty Word,” 212. 21 See Jackson, “Who Reads Poetry?”; Prins, “Historical Poetics” and “‘What Is Historical Poetics?’”; Jarvis, “For a Poetics” and “What Is Historical Poetics?”; Meter Matters, ed. Hall; and Martin, Rise and Fall. For the term in its nineteenthand twentieth-century Russian context, see Persistent Forms, ed. Kliger and Maslov. 22 Levine, Forms, 6. 23 Levine, Forms, 11. 24 Wimsatt, Verbal Icon. See also Levinson, “What Is New Formalism?” 25 Frank, “Unbearable Lightness.” 26 See esp. Frank, “Late Old English þrymnys,” “Poetic Words,” “Three ‘Cups’ and a Funeral,” and “Sharing Words.” 27 See esp. Frank, Old Norse Court Poetry, “Viking Atrocity,” “Anglo-Scandinavian Poetic Relations,” “Unbearable Lightness,” “Sex, Lies and Málsháttakvæði,” and “Marketing Óðinn’s Mead.” 11

WORKS CITED Bailey, Amanda. “‘Monstrous Manner’: Style and the Early Modern Theater.” Criticism 43 (2001): 294–84. Borroff, Marie. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”: A Stylistic and Metrical Study. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962. Charney, Maurice. Shakespeare’s Style. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014. Cleasby, Richard, Vigfússon Guðbrandur, and George Webbe Dasent. An IcelandicEnglish Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon, 1874.

Introduction  11

Cuddon, J. A., and C. E. Preston, eds. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 4th ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000. Donoghue, Daniel. Style in Old English Poetry: The Test of the Auxiliary. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. Faulkner, Mark. “Rewriting English Literary History, 1042–1215.” Literature Compass 9 (2012): 275–99. Franzen, Christine. The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Fulk, R. D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Georgianna, Linda. “Periodization and Politics: The Case of the Missing Twelfth Century in English Literary History.” Modern Language Quarterly 64 (2003): 153–68. Grady, Frank, and Andrew Galloway, eds. Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Hall, Jason David, ed. Meter Matters: Verse Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011. Hunter, Matthew. “Measure for Measure and the Problem of Style.” ELH 83 (2016): 457–88. Jackson, Virginia. “Who Reads Poetry?” PMLA 123 (2008): 181–87. Jarvis, Simon. “For a Poetics of Verse.” PMLA 125 (2010): 931–35. ———. “What Is Historical Poetics?” In Theory Aside, ed. Jason Potts and Daniel Stout (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 97–116. Joy, Eileen A. “Prefatory Note.” In On Style, ed. Joy and Kłosowska. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum, 2013. Joy, Eileen A., and Anna Kłosowska, eds. On Style: An Atelier. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum, 2013. Karkov, Catherine E., and George Hardin Brown, eds. Anglo-Saxon Styles. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003. Kliger, Ilya, and Boris Maslov, eds. Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962. Levine, Caroline. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Levinson, Marjorie. “What Is New Formalism?” PMLA 122 (2007): 558–69. Martin, Meredith. The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetry and English National Culture, 1860–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. McDonald, Russ. Shakespeare’s Late Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Minnis, A. J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

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Minnis, A. J., and A. B. Scott, eds., with the assistance of David Wallace. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100–c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Preminger, Alex, Frank J. Warnke, and O. B. Hardison, Jr., eds. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Prins, Yopie. “Historical Poetics, Dysprosody, and The Science of English Verse.” PMLA 123 (2008): 229–34. ———. “‘What Is Historical Poetics?’” Modern Language Quarterly 77 (2016): 13–40. Robinson, Fred C. “Beowulf ” and the Appositive Style. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. Somerset, Fiona, and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Strier, Richard. “How Formalism Became a Dirty Word, and Why We Can’t Do without It.” In Renaissance Literature and Its Formal Engagements, ed. Mark David Rasmussen. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 207–15. Swan, Mary, and Elaine Treharne, eds. Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Thomson, H. J., ed. Prudentius vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Thornbury, Emily V. Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Treharne, Elaine. “Categorization, Periodization: The Silence of (the) English in the Twelfth Century.” New Medieval Literatures 8 (2006): 247–73. ——— . Living through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Tyler, Elizabeth M. Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar in AngloSaxon England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006. Watkins, Calvert, ed. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Whigham, Frank, and Wayne A. Rebhorn, eds. The Art of English Poetry by George Puttenham. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Wimsatt, W. K., with two preliminary essays written in collaboration with Monroe C. Beardsley. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1954. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Thelma Fenster, and Delbert Russell, eds. Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England: Texts and Translations, c.1120–c.1450. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans, eds. The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Part 1

Seasons

Weathering Time in the Wanderer Mary Kate Hurley

Hu seo þrag gewat, genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære. (95–96)

I

N THIS ESSAY, I reenvision the narrative contours of the Old English Wanderer’s complex meditation on time. Critics have long agreed that the wanderer’s primary lament is a result of his exile from a former habitation. But, aside from the loss of community and belonging, how does the poem imagine that exile? What if we refocus the critical attention on the poem from speakers and societies to the disposition of the subject in time? By focusing on the interaction between time and the weather in the poem, I argue that the speaker’s crisis comes into focus as one that stretches beyond his exiled state. The wanderer’s crisis is not, I argue, simple suffering under fate or the decrees of an almighty God, nor is it a side effect of the difficult transition from heathen wyrd to Christian fæstnung.1 Rather, the conflict that emerges is that of the personal experience of time and its universal, linear movement.2 Put simply, the loss that the Wanderer laments is the irretrievability of the human past: the poem’s speaker finds himself buffeted by his experience of linear temporality. The Wanderer and its speaker must weather the vicissitudes of time itself, and this imperative is made legible in the conflicts—those of past and present, land and sea, and personal and universal—that unfold in the poem. These conflicts are not inevitable; however, their opposition in the Wanderer lays bare the temporalities that afflict the speaker, and lays the groundwork for the move from human time to universal time in the oft-considered final lines of the poem.3 Criticism about the Wanderer often falls into one of two camps: those who seek to identify the speaking voice or voices of the poem and those who are more interested in the quality or content of the complaint that voice speaks. These arguments have ranged from the “theme and structure” focus of criticism at the midpoint of the twentieth century,

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to the examination of the genres from which the poem may have drawn, to the consideration of the Wanderer’s formulaic nature and its implications for the question of self and subjectivity in the poem.4 Such formally varied approaches obscure the fact that each critic and every article have essentially pursued the same end: an explanation for the poem’s disjointed presentation of the experience of exile.5 Most critics who have commented on the Wanderer also argue for the essential unity of the poem6 and, on some level, argue away the reality of the disjointedness which so characterizes the voice of this text.7 My goal in this essay, then, is to reconnect with the disjointedness of the Wanderer—the intuitive sense the poem generates that something, to this speaker, is irreparably lost. To an extent, my line of argument aligns with the approach to temporality outlined by Kathleen Davis, who argues that the Wanderer’s articulation of temporality creates “the occasion for imagination and representation” which “are also the conditions for thinking historically.”8 It is the poem’s representation of temporality that, for Davis, generates its affective force: the hoarding of experience becomes a process through which meditation can take place, and transcendence can ultimately be achieved. Following Davis’s focus on temporality, I argue that the representations of both time and the weather in the Wanderer demonstrate a tension in the poem not between transience and eternity, but between linear and cyclical time.9

Time in the Wanderer The Wanderer—both the poem and its elusive speaker—is obsessed with time. 10 The opening lines of the poem illustrate the depth of this investment: Oft him anhaga  are gebideð, Metudes miltse,  þeahþe he modcearig geond lagulade  longe sceolde hreran mid hondum  hrimcealde sæ. (Often the lone-dweller expects mercy for himself, the Measurer’s mercy, although he, troubled in heart, must throughout the seaways, for a long time, stir with his hands the ice-cold sea.) (1–4)11

These first few lines already delineate several temporal registers. Oft implies the duration of the anhaga’s ordeal, both the length of time

WEATHERING TIME IN THE WANDERER  17

he must wait for or expect (gebidan) mercy as well as the repetition of this waiting, itself implying a duration. The poem reveals this perceived length as an obligation: as it describes the anhaga’s actions within his exile (he “must [...] stir with his hands the ice-cold sea”), the poem notes that he longe sceolde experience this fate. He “must [...] for a long time” be in exile. What the speaker waits for—are, mercy—is deferred by the fate he is obliged to suffer.12 Even the verb hreran suggests a kind of circularity. It appears most often in the Leechbook and usually refers to the kind of stirring that one might do with a pot. 13 Beyond figuring a circle, hreran implies a repetitive act associated with the cyclical temporality in which the speaker is mired. The ice-covered waves literally bind the wanderer’s boat, but also function as a metaphor for his relationship to loss. Even the word oft recurs throughout the poem, indicating its engagement with cyclical rather than linear temporality. In each instance, the recurrence of oft suggests a cycle, the presence of a repeatable and repeating past that continues in some variation into the present. As the main speaker of the poem is introduced, for example, his monologue describes an action he takes repeatedly: “Oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwylce / mine ceare cwiþan” (Often I must alone, each of the hours before dawn, speak my sorrows) (8–9a). As it does in the opening lines, here the poem conjoins a sense of obligation with a sense of repetition—oft precedes sculan. Through this juxtaposition, the poem delineates the precise cause of the misery implicit in exile, and does so in the exile’s own voice. The anhaga is obligated to voice his cares alone—in no small part due to the fact that there is no one left with whom he could share them: “nis nu cwicra nan / þe ic him modsefan minne durre / sweotule asecgan” (there is now no one living to whom I might dare to express all my heart) (9b­–11a).14 Whatever else has happened, the speaker finds himself isolated, and that isolation is presented as an inability to find anyone in whom to confide.15 This inability leads to his repeated voicing of cares, uhtna gehwylce—each morning. What initially appears as “often” becomes each day at the same time, in the early morning. His repetition marks each new day with a return to his cares. He is obliged to experience a cyclical time—a time in which he mourns the people to whom he might have spoken. The speaker contrasts the cyclicality of being in exile—stirring with one’s hands the ice-chilled waves—with his previous life, characterized (as many scholars have observed) by warmth and community rather than cold and loss.16 In his meditation on the loss that pervades his exile, the speaker emphasizes the repetition inherent in his inability to seek solace in human company:

18   Mary Kate Hurley

Swa ic modsefan  minne sceolde, oft earmcearig,  eðle bidæled, freomægum feor  feterum sælan, siþþan geara iu  goldwine min[n]e hrusan heolstre biwrah. (As I must my heart/soul—often, care-worn, deprived of a native land, far from my kinsmen—fasten with fetters, since long ago I covered my gold-friend in the shadows of the earth. [emphasis mine]) (19–23a)

Here, the cyclical time of mourning is placed in direct opposition to the singularity of a time in which this mourning was set into motion. The temporality of these actions is complex: on the one hand, the speaker says he must often (oft) bind his heart with fetters—a metaphor that implies a simultaneous sense of restraint as well as the pain, mental and physical, that accompanies that psychological action.17 The tightness of the chest,18 which the speaker keeps bound so as not to betray his sorrow, stems in time from the specific event that causes his presumed exile: the death of his lord (goldwine minne, literally “my gold-friend”). His actions, repeated often, highlight duration: his lord died in “geara iu,” in a time now accessible only to memory.19 The enduring sense of loss implicit in geara iu contrasts with the repetition implicit in oft. It is here, the poet implies, that the speaker’s exile began, and with it, his pain. Parallel to this enduring pain, the poem evokes scenes of community that are deeply imbued with warmth and solace. In his dream, the speaker seems to relive some of the deeply treasured moments he experienced with his now-departed lord. [Þ]inceð him on mode  þæt he his mondryhten clyppe and cysse,  ond on cneo lecge honda and heafod,  swa he hwilum ær in geardagum  giefstolas breac. (It seems to him in his mind that he clasps and kisses his liegelord, and lays hand and head on his knee, just as he did at times before, in olden days, when he enjoyed the gift-stool.) (41–44)

The scene in question is narrated in the present tense—the wanderer “þinceð him on mode” (thinks in his mind) that he “clyppe and cysse” (clasps and kisses) his lord. The verbs for the wanderer’s actions are all

WEATHERING TIME IN THE WANDERER  19

subjunctive—the scenes that the wanderer imagines are ultimately a fantasy, but they are one based in a real past. Such warm scenes are similar to (implied by swa, meaning “just as”) experiences that he had “hwilum ær / in geardagum.” The first phrase here, “hwilum ær” (at times before), reinforces the way in which the wanderer’s imagined scenes of belonging are based on things that he experienced—at times—in the past. This potential uncertainty emphasizes the latent possibility of loss that was always part of his previous life, whether or not he could recognize its precarity. The wanderer did not always experience such warmth in the hall, and indeed, he has lost that warmth now. “In geardagum,” which is usually translated as “in old days” or “in former days,” bears a more specific relationship to time, and would seem to simply designate the pastness of the past to which the Wanderer refers. Here, however, the phrase resonates with a number of other uses. In the Old English corpus as a whole, the phrase “in geardagum” appears almost solely in relationship to either heroic-epic time or in relationship to Christological time.20 The implication, then, is that the use of these words suggests a kind of time that is qualitatively different from both the present and the quotidian past. By framing these scenes as “in geardagum,” the poem implicitly associates it with two benchmarks of society and its interpretation of time: the time of Christ and the time of heroes. The text thus creates a sense of the speaker’s past in the hall as a kind of “special” time, a kind of time that is different, qualitatively, than his present.

The Universal and the Personal Perhaps the most pervasive rhetorical figures in the Wanderer are the gnomic statements that recur throughout the poem. These statements, as a number of critics have observed, stage an interaction between universal truths and individual circumstances that the speaker must navigate.21 On their surface, they seem to prescribe a series of actions the speaker has to undertake in order to maintain his place and function in society: Ic to soþe wat þæt biþ in eorle  indryhten þeaw, þæt he his ferðlocan  fæste binde, healde his hordcofan,  hycge swa he wille. (I know it as a truth that it is a very noble custom for a man that he bind fast his breast, hold his heart, [though he] think as he wishes.) (11–14)

20   Mary Kate Hurley

This statement of received knowledge occurs directly after the speaker laments that “Nis nu cwicra nan / þe ic him modsefan minne durre / sweotule asecgan.” Critics may well debate whether these lines reflect a custom that makes a virtue of necessity: after all, no one to whom the anhaga could tell his cares is even alive to hear them. What is clear is that the speaker’s response to his disposition in time—his isolation due to the death of his comrades earlier in his life—is to repair to what is known “to soþe,” as truth. This stability comes from a universal well of wisdom, knowledge about the world that is meant to be as timeless as it is situationally useful. And yet the gnomic wisdom to which the speaker so often returns for comfort seems insufficient. The poem generates this insufficiency via an implicit comparison: although the sentiments expressed above suggest an eternal response to a timeless situation, the lines are sandwiched between two instances of oft—in essence, what happens often in the narrator’s life counters and perhaps negates the timeless wisdom that might ameliorate his position. The juxtaposition of these two sentiments— personal lament and timeless knowledge—stages the interaction and contrast of two different kinds of temporality.22 These two divergent temporalities create a contrast between the universal past and the personal past. The speaker experiences the loss of the people and things in his past that make the memories of his former life valuable to him. The result is a hollowing out of meaning—a sense that everything the speaker knows or has known becomes bereft, signifying only the loss he incurs.23 The poem shifts again to the third person and outlines the interaction left to the “wineleas guma,” or friendless man: Ðonne onwæcneð eft  wineleas guma, gesihð him biforan  fealwe wegas, baþian brimfuglas,  brædan feþra, hreosan hrim ond snaw,  hagle gemenged. Þonne beoð þy hefigran  heortan benne, sare æfter swæsne.  Sorg bið geniwad, þonne maga gemynd  mod geondhweorfeð; greteð gliwstafum,  georne geondsceawað secga geseldan—  swimmað eft onweg fleotendra ferð—  no þær fela bringeð cuðra cwidegiedda.  Cearo bið geniwad þam þe sendan sceal  swiþe geneahhe ofer waþema gebind  werigne sefan.

WEATHERING TIME IN THE WANDERER  21

(Then the friendless man awakens again, and sees before him the fallow waves [with] seabirds bathing, spreading their feathers, frost and snow falling, mingling with hail. Then the wounds of the heart are heavier, longing for the beloved [man]. Sorrow is renewed when the recollection of kinsmen pervades the heart: he greets them joyfully, eagerly surveys the beloved companions of men. They often swim away, the spirits of the seafarers, [it, the dream] does not bring many familiar utterances. Sorrow is renewed for he who must send very frequently [his] tired heart over the expanse of the waves.) (45–57)

In this oft-quoted section of the poem, we find the first contrast of the universal and the particular, although the poem frames it in terms of the personal loss that the speaker has experienced. 24 The psychological dimensions of the vision here are clear: the poem has just outlined the speaker’s dream, in which the speaker is back in the warmth of the hall interacting with his lord in the way he presumably always did. Both duration and repetition are suggested by the collocation of “hwilum ær / in geardagum” (at times, in olden days) (43–44) as discussed above. In the present, by contrast, he is adrift on the sea, with only seabirds to give him solace or company. The birds behave as birds do: they are impervious to and undisturbed by the friendless man’s interloping, and the weather, too, mirrors their utter disregard: “hreosan hrim ond snaw, hagle gemenged” (frost and snow falling, mingling with hail). This moment of sleet, snow, and hail evokes the opening lines of the poem, which emphasize the wintry time in which the wanderer must travel by boat along the exile-path, “hreran mid hondum hrimcealde sæ” (stir with his hands the ice-cold sea) (4a). The reappearance of snow at this later moment of renewed sorrow (sorg bið geniwad) suggests the same relationship to cyclical time invoked by the repetitive action of hreran examined above. The speaker realizes the irretrievability of the past, and the weather, to a degree, reflects the contrast between his current situation and the larger cycles of time to which he belongs. The warmth of his literal hall-dream is replaced by icy, avian indifference. The speaker also meditates on the larger repercussions of this bereftness for the world more generally:

22   Mary Kate Hurley

Ongietan sceal gleaw hæle  hu gæstlic bið, þonne eall þisse worulde wela  weste stondeð, swa nu missenlice  geond þisne middangeard, winde biwaune,  weallas stondaþ hrime bihrorene,  hryðge þa ederas. (The wise man must perceive how terrible it [will] be when all this world’s wealth stands deserted, as now in various places throughout this earth walls stand, blown against by wind, covered by frost, the precincts are exposed to storms.) (73–77)

Here, we see a contrast between the warmth of the personal and the coldness of the desolation that awaits it. The past in which the speaker “gifstolas breac” (enjoyed the gift-stool) (44) with his lord and fellow retainers stands in stark contrast to the future in which “weallas standaþ, hrime behrorene.” This future becomes almost dystopic: ghastly in the modern sense.25 The essential elements of this image are the westen26 (“wasteland”) and the walls.27 In this case, the walls are part of what becomes waste in the imagination of an unnamed and hitherto unreferenced gleaw, a wise man. It is not clear whether the wisdom of the wise man is what leads him to this meditation or whether this knowledge—the knowledge that all things in the world will one day be abandoned and empty—is what makes him wise.28 What is clear is the figure of the walls and their icy fate. They are buffeted by wind and covered in that ubiquitous hrime that the speaker lamented having to churn with his hands and that he encountered falling from the skies before his visions. Moreover, these walls are abandoned: where the Ruin opens its meditation with “wrætlic is þes wealstean, wyrde gebræcon” (wondrous is this wall-stone, broken by the course of events) (1), the walls of the Wanderer seem to have a different valence.29 In fact, the poem makes a point of contrasting the past and the present of the edifice that it describes. These walls still stand, encased in hrime. What is broken, idle, are the strongholds they represent: “hryðge þa ederas.” Without their former inhabitants, these enclosures are open to the very elements they once served to protect against. Ice enters, and walls stand buffeted by wind as a stark reminder of all that has been lost, mute testimonials to the fallen civilizations that built them. These images—of abandoned walls that serve as markers of memory for broken buildings and cities that once thrived—are part of the long

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history of why poems like the Ruin and the Wanderer are called “elegies.” Yet the very thematic similarities of the two poems belie their deeper, generic, difference. 30 As Kathleen Davis suggests, what unifies these poems is their emphasis on a “poetics of experience”: these poems “are not backward-looking, world-rejecting, or nostalgic in any sense. Indeed, many of these poems undertake a study of just such an attitude, and, with a finely calibrated sense of multiple temporalities, place it in quotation marks.”31 Davis’s reading of the ways in which temporalities work in the genre of poems called elegies is compelling; however, in the Wanderer, it is precisely the problem of temporality that is at stake. Linear time itself inflicts the kind of damage that necessitates an alteration in worldview— the “offering for meditation” that Davis suggests lays bare the disposition of the human in time and although the result may not be what previous critics have termed elegy, it is without question elegiac. The inevitability of the abandoned strongholds is the result of a series of violent enmities, and again a contrast between past and present emerges that figures these walls as part of a time out of joint: 32 Woriað þa winsalo,  waldend licgað dreame bidrorene;  duguþ eal gecrong wlonc bi wealle.  Sume wig fornom, ferede in forðwege,  sumne fugel oþbær ofer heanne holm,  sumne se hara wulf deaðe gedælde,  sumne dreorighleor in eorðscræfe  eorl gehydde. (The winehalls moulder, the rulers lie deprived of joys. The troop all fell, proud by the wall. Some a battle destroyed, carried on the way forth. Some were carried off by a bird over the high sea. Some the gray wolf got [as a share] at death. One was concealed by a man in a grave.) (78–84)

This segment of the poem focuses on the implication of the human in both time and nature. The human situation of the people who are listed in these lines is clear: they have died proudly by the wall (“wlonc bi wealle”), presumably in the same war that left their rulers dead (“dreame bidrorene,” deprived of joys) and destroyed the winehalls. Yet their fate is not simply to perish. Rather, these lines demonstrate that in the aftermath of battle, humans lose their agency. Battle can destroy (literally

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“seize”) them, birds carry them away as prey, and a wolf eats them (presumably) after their death. Humans are made into objects of action— even the one who is buried must rely on another person to put him in his grave. In the aftermath of battle, the poem begins with the spiritual valence that accrues to death: life becomes a journey (forðwege) for which death is simply the last step. The second two members of the troop are returned to a state of nature: they are carried off by a bird and a wolf respectively. The use of the bird and the wolf is particularly significant because of their status in Old English poetry as the beasts of battle, carrion-eaters who consume the bodies of the fallen warriors. 33 These lines, far from being a mere catalogue of ways that human beings can die and then have their bodies destroyed by the natural world, demonstrate the imbrication of the human in that world and in the broader temporality it represents. The loss of these warriors is an integral part of the vision of ruined halls and stark, abandoned walls—each loss of which the poem speaks situates the human in a longer time span, a time span that emphasizes the loss endemic to the warrior culture the wanderer has been forced to leave behind. These losses of agency are the inverse of the experience of the hall: the wages of such comradeship are death in battle. The Wanderer thus engages with the scenes of heroism that permeate other Old English poems; yet it does so in part by outlining what befalls the erstwhile hero who survives longer than his community. The pervasive loss of human life is contextualized, to an extent, as an act of the “scyppend,” who lays waste (yþan) to the halls of the nowdeceased warriors, “oþþæt burgwara breahtma lease / eald enta geweorc idlu stodon” (until deprived of the noise of the city-dwellers, the old works of giants stood empty) (86–87a). It is at this point that the walls become a place of reflection, and a wise person stands by them “frod in ferðe, feor oft gemon / wælsleahta worn, ond þas word acwið” (old in spirit, and remembers often from a distance the battle-slaughters of men, and says these words) (90–91). Time here becomes literal: the old man stands by a wall and can read it, can understand what happened in this spot feor, from a distance. The distance in question can only be temporal distance: the poem delineates carefully that it is “þisne wealsteal,” this wall, that the wise one contemplates. Sharing space with the wall leads the old man to reflect on what has gone before—and most notably, on the loss of the signifiers that structured life in the warrior society that once perished wlonc bi wealle (“proud by the wall”).

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This speech, which draws on the ubi sunt tradition to lament the loss of earthly things, dramatizes the interaction between the past—replete with life and the signifiers of men—and the present and future that see the past’s warmth fade away. The distinction between the past and its future is made vivid through lament: Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom  mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? Hwær cwom symbla gesetu?  Hwær sindon seledreamas? Eala beorht bune!  Eala byrnwiga! Eala þeodnes þrym!  Hu seo þrag gewat, genap under nihthelm,  swa heo no wære. (Where is the horse? Where the horseman? Where are the treasure givers? Where are the seats of the feast? Where are the hall-dreams? Alas for the bright cup! Alas for the warrior! Alas for the bravery of the people! How that time vanished, darkened under night’s helm, as if it never were.) (92–96)

Swa heo ne wære. As if it never were. In this perfectly tuned half line, the speaker sums up the magnitude of his loss, and it is revealed as not simply a transitory one.34 Rather, the loss of each signifier—the horse, the horseman, the treasure-giver, the seats of the feast, the hall-dreams themselves— empties the past of its meaning: these times (þrag) themselves vanish (genipan), “swa heo no wære.”35 Here we catch a hint of the Augustinian distentio animi, the long memory of the past that conditions the long expectation of the future: the sense, first articulated by Augustine and later theorized by Paul Ricoeur, that part of human suffering is wrapped up in the experience of time as linear.36 Although the loss of this past is not necessarily personal, the meditation it occasions emphasizes again the darkness that follows in the wake of such loss. Suspended as he is between the vanished past and an uncertain future, the speaker catalogues the losses of the past as both commemoration and compulsive recitation of pain. Appropriately, then, this reflection on the bereftness of time is part of a meditation on spaces that once belonged to men: when he observes that “eald enta geweorc idlu stodon” (the old works of giants stood empty), the wise man who speaks of the loss of human things apprehends his place in time. The present—the now—seems to extend unbroken into

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the future, and the imagery reflects a kind of loss that can only exist in isolation from continuity with the community of the past. After all, this wondrously high wall was not always so isolated in its stormy self: Stondeð nu on laste  leofre duguþe weal wundrum heah,  wyrmlicum fah. Eorlas fornoman  asca þryþe, wæpen wælgifru,  wyrd seo mære, ond þas stanhleoþu  stormas cnyssað, hrið hreosende  hrusan bindeð, wintres woma;  þonne won cymeð nipeð nihtscua  norþan onsendeð hreo hæglfare  hæleþum on andan. ([It] stands now in the tracks of the dear troop, a wall wonderfully high, variegated with serpent shapes. The might of spears destroyed the men, weapons greedy for slaughter—the famous course of events—and storms dash against the stone wall. The snowstorm, falling, binds the earth, harbinger of winter, then the dark comes. The shade of night grows black and drives forth from the north a fierce hailstorm to the vexation of men.) (97–105)

The image here makes clear the stakes of this particular loss: the “power of spears” (asca þryþe) destroyed or carried off (fornoman) these men. The presence of the warriors is thus already in the past, already lost to the history that sees them erased from the earth. This pastness would be unremarkable save for its contrast with the storms that are firmly in the present: “stanhleoþu stormas cnyssað” and “hrið hreosende hrusan bindeð” (emphasis mine). The buffeted slopes remain where the duguð has passed away, and they are bound by snow and storms. Human life moves in only one direction—even if human memory would will that direction to change— but the cycles of the earth persist in and around such human dramas. Thus the past and the present are invoked in this moment of mourning—and the imagination of the present of these places, bereft of humans, is conditioned by the weather, by the cold and snow that remains when these places are void of human beings. In a certain sense, time here is broken: although the troop is gone, destroyed by the power of spears, “nipeð nihtscua norþan onsendeð / hreo hæglfare hæleþum on andan” (the shade of

WEATHERING TIME IN THE WANDERER  27

night grows black and drives forth from the north a fierce hailstorm to the vexation of men). We are presented with a problem, one that we can resolve several ways. On the one hand, we can say that the warriors—the hæleðas—are lost without their eorlas, and the weather simply reflects their plight. On the other hand, we continue to see the influence of time and tense here: “þonne won cymeð, / nipeð nihtscua, norðan onsendeð” until the darkness comes, the shadow of night grows, and from the north drives forth [a hailstorm]. Weather and darkness both afflict the hæleðas, when they do come, and the present tense of these afflictions seems to resurrect, if only in shadow, the dead men they oppress. But at what time? In the present, we know this wall may well be beaten by winds, because we know that other walls have been. Yet it seems that even in the mind’s eye, as the wise one stands by the wall, the pervasive loss that characterizes human life—emblematized by the storms and noise of winter that presently bind the empty landscape—will continue into the future: “Her bið feoh læne, her bið freond læne, / her bið mon læne, her bið mæg læne, / eal þis eorþan gesteal idel weorþeð!” (Here is money fleeting, here are friends fleeting, here is man fleeting, here are kinsmen fleeting, all this earthen foundation becomes empty!) (108–10). The catalogue of signifiers culminates in a vision of the entire world becoming as empty as the halls that remain only in solitary walls. For even the wise one—perhaps especially for the wise one—the future is as bleak as the present.

Conclusion If the Wanderer ended in this bleak space, standing by the wall and reflecting on the loss that permeates every aspect of the lives of the warriors it laments, perhaps fewer critics would debate its voices and aims. A sad poem ends in sorrow, and darkness falls over all things. The challenge of reading voice in the Wanderer lies in its final lines: Swa cwæð snottor on mode;  gesæt him sundor æt rune. Til biþ se þe his treowe gehealdeþ,  ne sceal næfre his torn to rycene, beorn of his breostum acyþan,  nemþe he ær þa bote cunne, eorl mid elne gefremman.  Wel bið þam þe him are seceð, frofre to Fæder on heofonum,  þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð.

28   Mary Kate Hurley

(So said the wise man in his mind, as he sat alone in secret meditation. Good it is for he who holds his faith, nor shall he ever reveal his grief too quickly, the man say from his breast, unless he before might know the remedy, to bring about with courage. Well is it for him who seeks mercy, comfort from the father in heaven, where all stability stands for us.) (111–15)

Here we see the fundamental dichotomy that animates so much of the criticism treating the poem. How does a speaker move from a cold affirmation of the transience of all things to this equally stark declaration of the importance of faith in a transcendent religious solution to inevitable loss? The discrepancy has led a number of scholars to suggest that the poem has been altered in some way, perhaps by a monk who has added a segment of text in order to make clear the eternal stakes of falling into a state of despair. These lines suggest that there is more to human life than what is apparent: the snottor will be able to discern patterns of the past, and, in so doing, he will also be able to reinterpret time. In these final lines, the speaker rejects human temporalities. He chooses—literally and metaphorically— to reshape his understanding of time, and in that refusal of human linearity and repetition he finds comfort—fæstnung, stability. In some ways, this resembles (although imperfectly) Bede’s version of the eighth age or day of the world. Of this entrance into eternity and out of worldly vicissitudes, he writes, “this eighth day will so follow upon the preceding seven, that it will not have other days following it of which it will be the first, but it alone will abide, one and unending, in the eternal light.”37 This day, Bede notes, already exists, not unlike the fæstnung that the Wanderer envisions. However, although it “has always abided, abides, and will abide, eternal in itself [...] for us it will begin when we deserve to enter into it in order to see it.”38 The eighth day or age, then, exists already, but our ability to recognize it relies on our capacity—granted only at the end of human, linear time in an eschatological sense—to apprehend its temporality. If we understand the Wanderer as a question of weathering time— both literally and metaphorically—we begin to see that the exile this poem treats so profoundly is not an exile from a specific homeland or group of warriors. Rather, it is an exile all humans are subject to: the linearity of time that exiles us from our past. The Wanderer is about the affliction of the human in and by time. The snottor of the poem’s final lines has recognized that the problem of human life is not the suffering that is actually endured but the extension of that suffering : the long

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expectation of a future that will mimic, in its cold and unheimlich way, the emptiness of those spaces that the past saw inhabited and the present sees desolate and bereft. Hope becomes opaque, in this worldview: there is no clear, linear development that will allow a different ending for humanity. Linear time, that is, is also revealed as bereft: no forward motion will change that the anhaga must stir with his hands the ice-cold sea both often and alone. And yet there is hope beyond the cycles of the human world: a different kind of temporality, a different relationship to time, might offer a respite from the losses that condition human existence. And though that hope remains remote, uncertain—locked in the heart-coffers of a man who sits sundor æt rune—it is no less real for that remoteness. In this final refusal of linear time, the Wanderer offers the most stark hope of all: that there is a way to survive the vicissitudes of earthly experience and exile. There is a way to weather time itself.39

NOTES For a variety of approaches to the Wanderer over the past century, see the following articles, inter alia: Huppé, “The Wanderer”; Pope, “Dramatic Voices”; Woolf, “The Wanderer, The Seafarer”; Niles, “Pagan Survivals”; Bennett, “Exile and Semiosis of Gender”; and Champion, “From Plaint to Praise.” 2 My approach here owes much to the work of Kathleen Davis, not least of all her essay “Old English Lyrics: A Poetics of Experience.” In this groundbreaking new approach to poems that have been traditionally referred to (anachronistically—and, Davis demonstrates, problematically) as elegies, Davis argues that our critical approaches to the poems designated as elegiac has obscured our vision of them: “Cutting across this critical discourse, then, is a persistent attention to the poetry’s concern with temporality, to the qualities of its personal, or ‘lyric’ voice, and to the tensions between this personal voice and enigmatic, gnomic, and didactic elements. Also well-recognized is the poetry’s self-conscious references to poetic composition and to the conditions of its own writing. Taken together, these attributes provide a useful starting point for approaching these and related poems, which are not backward-looking, world-rejecting, or nostalgic in any sense. Indeed, many of these poems undertake a study of just such an attitude, and, with a finely calibrated sense of multiple temporalities, place it in quotation marks” (334). She argues that in poems like the Rhyming Poem and the Wanderer, such “lyrics offer their representations of worldly experience as essential matter for the meditation necessary to the composition of a steadfast mind, capable of discerning and resisting evil, and thus of achieving salvation. The hoarding and representation of such experience offers a means of countering transience, acquiring wisdom, and coming to terms with the coursing of time and events” (335). 1

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Another method by which to arrive at some of the same conclusions as this essay is demonstrated by Green, “Man, Time, and Apocalypse.” Green argues that by understanding the Christian apocalypse as functioning similarly to what Frank Kermode called “the sense of an ending,” we can better understand and assess the transience that these poems seem to simultaneously mourn and celebrate. The key difference between my reading of the Wanderer and Green’s is that while by situating the Wanderer in its context with other Old English texts that consider the apocalypse, he stresses the universality of its imagery—such as the ruined walls— to consider them as markers of apocalypse. I argue that, although these ruined walls can indeed spur meditation on the end of all humans, they are also deeply personal and recognizable to the speaker of the poem. 4 For considerations of theme and structure, cp. Huppé, “The Wanderer”; Pope, “Dramatic Voices”; and Greenfield, “Min, Sylf and ‘Dramatic Voices.’” For genre studies, cp. Cross, “On the Genre of the Wanderer”; Woolf, “The Wanderer, The Seafarer”; and Champion “From Plaint to Praise.” For a discussion of the formulaic nature and disjointedness of the Wanderer and its relation to self and subjectivity, cp. Pasternack, Textuality of Old English Poetry. 5 There are various ways in which critics resolve this problem. The most common way, followed by the critics of the theme and structure variety (including Pope, Greenfield, Huppé, and Cross), is to seek to divide the poem into separate voices, to account for the radical differences between the viewpoints presented in the poem. Robert Bjork’s article “Sundor æt Rune” posits exile as a natural part of life. Perhaps closest to the theme of this text, Champion, “From Plaint to Praise,” suggests that the wanderer attains healing through language (her examination relies on Lacanian psychoanalysis for the main thrust of its argument). However, most critics simply accept the “evolutionary” structure offered by Bjork, where the poem itself marks a coherent movement forward, from the world of exile and its requisite malaise to a vision of life that sees the source of all hope in a Christian God who is not subject to human transience. Pasternack, Textuality of Old English Poetry, has a very different view from those outlined above. Cp. note 7 below. 6 The relationship between the two is not unconflicted and homogeneous as critics such as C. Tidmarsh Major argue, nor is it a perfect hegemony of Christian belief over its non-Christian religious predecessor, as Clare Lees points out. See Major, “A Christian Wyrd,” and Lees, Tradition and Belief. 7 The self in which most scholars are interested in the Wanderer is the self of the speaker, or the subjectivity that is implied and/or created by the poem. The sole exception to the tendency of scholars to flatten the disjoined presentation of this self is Pasternack, Textuality of Old English Poetry. Yet even Pasternack does not recognize the possibility of both a self and the disjointed voice of the Wanderer. Her analysis sees the disjunctions in the text as formulating series of quotations and formulae, a schema in which (for her) the presence of a self becomes impossible. Her argument does not consider the possibility that the poem’s disjointedness might be part of a narrative strategy which constructs a self in a very specific location of questioning. 3

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Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” 353. It is worth noting that this conflict between linear and cyclical time can also be read as a process of affective engagement with the poem and its subject: because the Wanderer describes situations that are meant to be familiar to its audience, it participates in a process of absorption in the text. Cp. Reynolds, “Beowulf’s Poetics of Absorption.” 10 My understanding of time in the Wanderer owes much to Liuzza, “Tower of Babel.” See page 13: “Unlike their analogues in the tradition of Biblical exegesis, however, the ruins in The Wanderer are monuments not to the legibility but to the inscrutability of history, not to God’s providential intervention but to the decline and decay of the earthly kingdom and the impermanence of human fame [...] they reveal the past not as a stable place from which the present takes its legitimate origin but as a place of loss, decay, silence, rupture, and brokenness, ultimately a warning to the present that our story will be told by the fragments we leave behind.” 11 Old English text of the Wanderer is from Wanderer, ed. Leslie. All translations are my own. 12 An obligation made clear through the use of the inflected form of the verb sculan. 13 Dictionary of Old English, s.v. “hreran.” 14 There are six instances of oft in the Wanderer. The first two are mentioned here. The other instances describe: the importance that men “bind fast/securely a sad thing in their heart” (dreorigne oft / in hyra breostcofan | bindað fæste) (17b–18); the necessity of binding the modsefa with fetters “often, care-worn” (oft earmcearig) (20a); the time when “sorrow and sleep together at the same time often beind fast the wretched solitary one” (sorg ond slæp | somod ætgædre / earmne anhogan | oft gebindað) (39–40); and when the wise one remembers deaths by the wall “often, from afar” (feor oft) (90b). 15 Cp. Irvine, “Speaking One’s Mind,” in terms of how this is simultaneously a fiction of orality and a sense that the speaker in question is suffering from a particular kind of pain. 16 The juxtaposition of warmth and coldness also evokes Bede’s sparrow, who flies from the cold darkness outside the hall into its warmth and brightness, but remains there only for the briefest of intervals, and “he sona of wintra on þone winter eft cymeþ” (he soon out of winter into winter again comes). Old English Version, ed. Miller, 2.13. 17 For a more robust consideration of the work of binding the self in the Wanderer, see (inter alia) Godden, “Anglo-Saxons on the Mind”; Matto, “Containing Minds”; and Davis, “Old English Lyrics.” 18 Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Pyschologies, offers a robust reading of what she terms the “hydraulic model” of the mind in Anglo-Saxon literature. 19 These lines echo the opening lines of The Dream of the Rood’s speech, in which the rood avers that “þæt wæs geara iu (ic þæt gyta geman), / þæt ic wæs aheawen | holtes on end” (28–29, “That was long ago (I yet remember it), that I 8 9

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was hewn from the edge of the forest”). This poem features a similar interplay of times, on which see Holdsworth, “Frames.” Text is from Dream of the Rood, ed. Swanton; translation is my own. 20 Dictionary of Old English, s.v. “geardagas”2: “days of old, former times; (in / on) geardagum ‘in days of old, in days of yore, in former times; long ago.’” The specific texts in which the formulation appears are as follows: Wanderer, Beowulf, Christ and Satan, Andreas, Elene, Christ II B, Fortunes of Men, Wulfstan’s Homilies 10c, 11, and 12, the Laws of Grið, and the gloss on the psalms. 21 See, for example, Greenfield, Hero and Exile. Greenfield figures the Wanderer as a fundamental dichotomy between universal truths of Christianity and the vicissitudes of life that structure lament: “The introduction [to the Wanderer] states a Christian truth: God is superior to Wyrd; he can, and often does, show mercy to those who suffer long in the inexorable grip of Fate. The body of the poem illustrates Fate’s relentless way: in the form of a wanderer’s monologue it tells of the inevitable destruction of man and nature which Wyrd occasions; and it describes the limits to which man’s unaided intelligence and courage can bring him in withstanding Fate—an awareness of the universality of change and decay. The conclusion develops the only logical response from a Christian point of view: in the form of gnomic verse it exhorts man to become aware of and to act according to the best of human capabilities; but since this is insufficient for real security, man must also actively seek the mercy of God to facilitate the intervention of that mercy on his behalf ” (147). 22 This method of creating a “voice” within the poem bears some relation to what Joel Fineman termed a “subjectivity effect,” which he found particularly important in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Of the sonnets, he notes that “the language that the poet of Shakespeare’s sonnets speaks manages to place the poet’s image of identification, his idea of identification, in an imaginary past, making both image and ideal into something retrospective. Accordingly, because the poet identifies himself with this retrospective identity, both a space and a time will open up within the poet for subjective introspection. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the subject of Shakespeare’s sonnets experiences himself as his difference from himself. His identity is an identity of ruptured identification, a broken identity that carves out in the poet’s self a syncopated hollowness that accounts for the deep personal interiority of the sonnets’ poetic persona” (Fineman, Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye, 25). Although I do not wish to make too close a comparison between Shakespeare’s sonnets and the Wanderer, it strikes me that the two do bear significant similarities in their portrayal of a poetic subjectivity that constitutes itself through multiple temporalities. 23 This bears some relationship to the way in which Overing, Language, Sign, and Gender, reads the eponymous hero of Beowulf. 24 Irvine, “Speaking One’s Mind,” argues that “for the speaker in The Wanderer the attempt to engage with memories in this way only leads to frustration. Unable

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to recall familiar utterances, the mind is seen to be disconnected from comprehensible speech. It is with this image of failed communication and the ephemerality of spoken words that the poet, at the very centre of the poem, chooses to express the sorrow that isolation can bring” (121). 25 Dictionary of Old English, s.v. “gæstlic.” 26 For a careful consideration of the westen as a figure in Old English poetry, see Dailey, “Questions of Dwelling.” 27 See Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” for a thorough consideration of the wall as an impulse to historiography. 28 This use of a futurity that is contrasted with the past of the speaker also partakes, albeit in a lyric mode, of what Gerard Genette referred to as “anachronies”—discontinuties he terms prolepsis and analepsis, which stage the difference between “the temporal order of succession of the events in the story and the pseudo-temporal order of their arrangement in the narrative” (Narrative Discourse, 35). 29 Old English text of the Ruin is from Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. Krapp and Dobbie. Translation is my own. 30 Davis, among others, reminds us that the problematic provenance of the term elegy—emerging as it does out of a “nineteenth-century nationalism”—and the fact that it “is technically and historically inappropriate for the Old English poems in question” should lead us to a more critical stance on whether the poems traditionally designated as elegies (The Wanderer, the Seafarer, the Ruin, the Rhyming Poem, the Wife’s Lament, Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, the Husband’s Message and Resignation) should even be called such (Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” 332). Although I take a less firm line on the generic distinction than Davis—I think the term elegy can be useful, although mostly in the adjectival form of “elegiac”—I concur with her conclusion that it is an imprecise term for what the poems accomplish. 31 Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” 334. 32 Here I invoke Derrida, Spectres of Marx, who remarks upon the temporality of the revenant. 33 The poem Beowulf observes that they spoke to one another “of how they succeeded at the feast.” 34 Davis argues that “Such contemplation upon the remnant of an ancient foundation opens the topic of history. It is not that ruins signify a lost history; to the contrary, ruins generate historiography” (Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” 354). Drawing on Michel de Certeau, she suggests that “The past is made relevant to the present through its postulation as past to a present that is constituted as such through historical interpretation. Thus the ruined foundation prompts The Wanderer’s ubi sunt catalogue, a gathering of people, relations and things offered as comparable to those experienced in the speaker’s personal life. This catalogue likewise comprises a thought-hoard available for meditation, but on a historical

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scale” (Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” 354). See also Leneghan, “Preparing the Mind for Prayer.” 35 Davis observes that the Wanderer “gestures towards a complete hold on past time by imagining its extinction” in these lines, and notes that “the speaker places this disappearance of time in the context of the transitoriness of all things, and ultimately the end of the world: ‘eal þis eorþan gesteal idel weorþeð’ [110; the foundation of this entire earth will become empty]. Only then [...] does the poem move to its closing, homiletic exhortation. Exemplarity becomes generalizable only when it is abstracted, or in Certeau’s terms, made ‘dead,’ and thus available for interpretation” (Davis, “Old English Lyrics,” 354). 36 See Bittner, “Augustine’s Philosophy of History.” See also Ricoeur, Time and Narrative. 37 Wallis, Bede, 248. 38 Wallis, Bede, 249. 39 This essay, fittingly, owes a great deal to a community of scholars (although lingering infelicities are mine alone). First and foremost, the editorial guidance of Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott have greatly improved this piece, and I am grateful for the chance to have written it. Patricia Dailey, Denis Ferhatović, Gina Marie Hurley, Nicholas Osborne, Gillian Overing, and Jordan Zweck have all helped me to formulate my thoughts on this complex poem over a period of many years. Finally, I wish to thank Roberta Frank: in my own interstitial moment—after graduate school but before I found permanent employment—her collegiality and kindness granted me a place I could belong. For that, she has my deep gratitude.

WORKS CITED Bennett, Helen. “Exile and Semiosis of Gender in Old English Elegies.” In Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections, ed. Britton C. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. 43–58. Bittner, Rudiger. “Augustine’s Philosophy of History.” In The Augustinian Tradition, ed. Gareth B. Matthew. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 345–60. Bjork, Robert. “Sundor æt Rune: The Voluntary Exile of the Wanderer.” In Old English Literature: Critical Essays, ed. Roy Liuzza. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. 315–27. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al., eds. Dictionary of Old English: A to I. Online. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018. https://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/index.html. Champion, Margret Gunnarsdóttir. “From Plaint to Praise: Language as Cure in ‘The Wanderer.’” In Old English Poems, ed. Roy Liuzza. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. 328–52.

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Cross, J. E. “On the Genre of the Wanderer.” Neophilologus 45 (1961): 63–75. Dailey, Patricia. “Questions of Dwelling in Anglo-Saxon Poetry and Medieval Mysticism: Inhabiting Landscape, Body, and Mind.” New Medieval Literatures 8 (2006): 175–214. Davis, Kathleen. “Old English Lyrics: A Poetics of Experience.” In Cambridge History of Early Medieval English, ed. Clare A. Lees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 332–56. Derrida, Jacques, and Peggy Kamuf, trans. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge, 1994. Fineman, Joel. Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Genette, Gerard, and Jane E. Lewin, trans. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Green, Martin. “Man, Time, and Apocalypse in The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Beowulf.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 74 (1975): 502–18. Godden, M. R. “Anglo-Saxons on the Mind.” In Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 271–98. Greenfield, Stanley B. Hero and Exile. London: Hambledon, 1989. ———. “Min, Sylf and ‘Dramatic Voices’ in The Wanderer and The Seafarer.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 68 (1969): 212–20. Holdsworth, Carolyn. “Frames: Time Level and Variation in the Dream of the Rood.” Neophilologus 66 (1982): 622–28. Huppé, Bernard. “The Wanderer: Theme and Structure.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 42 (1943): 516–38. Irvine, Susan. “Speaking One’s Mind in The Wanderer.” In Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell, ed. J. Walmesley. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 117–33. Krapp, George Phlip, and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III: The Exeter Book. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. Lees, Clare A. Tradition and Belief: Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Leneghan, Francis. “Preparing the Mind for Prayer: The Wanderer, Hesychasm, and Theosis.” Neophilologus 100 (2016): 121–42. Leslie, Roy F., ed. The Wanderer. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997. Liuzza, Roy M. “The Tower of Babel: The Wanderer and the Ruins of History.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 36 (2003): 1–35. Lockett, Leslie. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Major, C. Tidmarsh. “A Christian Wyrd: Syncretism in Beowulf.” English Language Notes 32 (1995): 1–10.

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Matto, Michael. “Containing Minds: Mind, Metaphor, and Cognition in Old English Literature.” PhD diss., New York University, 1998. Miller, Thomas. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. London: EETS OS 95, 96, 110, 111, 1890–1898. Niles, John. “Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 126–41. Overing, Gillian. Language, Sign, and Gender in “Beowulf.” Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. Pasternack, Carol Braun. The Textuality of Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pope, John C. “Dramatic Voices in The Wanderer and The Seafarer.” In Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry, ed. Jess B. Bessinger and Stanley J. Kahrl. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968. 533–70. Reynolds, Evelyn. “Beowulf ’s Poetics of Absorption: Narrative Syntax and the Illusion of Stability in the Fight with Grendel’s Mother.” Essays in Medieval Studies 31 (2015): 43–64. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, Volume I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Swanton, Michael, ed. The Dream of the Rood. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996. Wallis, Faith, ed. and trans. Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Woolf, Rosemary. “The Wanderer, The Seafarer and the Genre of Planctus.” In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Freese. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975. 192–207.

Beowulf as Anti-Virgilian World Literature Archaeology, Ekphrasis, and Epic Andrew James Johnston

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IVEN BRITAIN’S DOMINANT WORLD-POLITICAL role in the nineteenth century—the century that saw the rise of the modern philologies—it was practically inevitable that Beowulf, a poem invested with a specifically national importance by Victorian Britons, would become world literature—albeit world literature of a specifically imperialist and Eurocentric kind. Following its rediscovery, the poem soon assumed a status of supreme canonicity as England’s national medieval epic. Within Britain’s larger claim to cultural grandeur, it was made to perform a role similar to that of the Nibelungenlied in Germany’s national consciousness, or that of the Chanson de Roland for French cultural identity. If we regard as world literature, in the words of David Damrosch, “all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language,” 1 then the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf certainly constitutes a work of world literature. Beowulf’s world-importance was reinforced, moreover, by its place in the US-American canon. From its earliest beginnings, the United States’ cultural and political self-consciousness had been shaped, among other things, in the image of England’s specifically Germanic heritage. None other than Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the Union, had suggested that the mythic Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain— Hengest and Horsa—be depicted on the Great Seal of the United States.2 Odd as this ultimately unrealized suggestion may seem to us, it testifies to the crucial significance that the notion of an Anglo-Saxon, that is, a Germanic England possessed within the teleological narratives shaping both modern British and modern American political identities. Ever since the historian Herbert Butterfield invented the term in the 1930s, we have come to identify the British version of this historiographic tradition as “Whig history.” Whig history establishes a trajectory of England’s free and democratic institutions that reaches back far beyond the Norman Conquest. According to this view of history,

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England’s freedom-loving Anglo-Saxon heritage triumphantly prevailed over the successive threats of Norman feudalism, Roman law, the Roman Catholic Church, French absolutism, and the enlightenment radicalism that inspired the French Revolution and led, inevitably, to Napoleon’s military dictatorship and imperial control of the European continent. Consequently, as the Anglo-Saxon epic masterpiece and hence as the literary embodiment of England’s ancient Germanic spirit of liberty par excellence, Beowulf was ideally suited to serving the ideological requirements of the greatest global powers of the last two centuries. In other words, its place in the legitimizing grands récits of Britain’s and America’s imperial histories alone would suffice for the poem to merit the epithet of “World Literature.” But in its particular capacity for rendering problematic the basic assumptions on which any notion of world literature must rest, I would argue, Beowulf can actually be seen as world literature in more than one sense of the term. During the last decade or so, the world literature debate has become extremely vibrant and diverse. In the light of recent developments within this discussion, Damrosch’s pragmatic definition quoted above has been superseded by a whole set of newly formulated critiques. These critiques question, among other things, the very notion of the “world” underlying the world literature debate. Critics such as Emily Apter, Gayatri Charkravorty Spivak, Amir Mufti, and others have challenged the ways in which the implicit understanding of “world” in world literature reinforces Western, neoliberal notions of globalization; they have drawn attention to how this sense of a “world” still depends on colonialist concepts positing a metropolis pitted against the margins, and, especially, how the idea of a “world” as implied in world literature is linked to unspoken Western concepts of temporality and periodization.3 Without wishing to go into the details of the world literature debate, my observations below will show how Beowulf itself negotiates problems of a very similar nature, and how, as it engages in its process of poetic worldmaking, it self-consciously grapples with fundamental issues of periodization and cultural hierarchy. These problems become especially obvious as soon as we locate the text in its specifically early medieval context. First of all, we might ask whether there was such a thing as world literature in Beowulf’s time and, if so, whether the Anglo-Saxons had a stake in it. And even if the Anglo-Saxons did participate in the world literature of their era, does Beowulf really fit into such a context? If we posit that Anglo-Saxon culture

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participated in an early medieval world literature, would it not be more plausible to see that claim realized in, say, the Anglo-Saxon translation of Orosius’s History Against the Pagans or in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History? Would it not be far more sensible to argue in favor of the pan-European Latin republic of letters as represented by monastic culture? If we consider the spatiotemporal range of Bede’s work, we cannot but wonder about the deeply provincial and even marginal sense conveyed by Beowulf’s fictional world—with its Northern and more specifically Scandinavian political geography, a geography obviously cut off from anything that an educated English monk in the tenth century might have considered as evidence of a truly global literary culture. Indeed, since the poem’s very date remains in doubt—some scholars would place its composition in the eighth century, others in the tenth, with any time in between being just as possible—is there any way for us to embed it in some kind of stable context? 4 And without a precise historical context, how should we be able to construe the discursive concept of “globality” on which the poem might draw? To make matters worse, even the question of Beowulf’s genre is anything but settled. Though, admittedly, critics nowadays seem to be comfortable with calling the text an “epic,” if only for lack of a better term, Beowulf does, in a variety of ways, appear to defy the notion of an epic. Of the many possible arguments that militate against conceiving of the poem as an epic, I mention only two. First, given that Beowulf is unique in Anglo-Saxon literature, the very concept of the epic must appear anachronistic: how can we assign a generic identity to the poem, if that “supposed” genre is realized in only a single specimen?5 Second, at closer inspection the standard reasons for calling the text an “epic” all seem to be remarkably superficial. Beowulf is long, or rather: longish, since a mere three thousand lines do not really amount to very much as epics go. And Beowulf is heroic. But do these characteristics suffice to call the poem an “epic”? And of course, once we deprive the text of its claims to being an epic, we also considerably reduce its global aspects. After all, if there is a genre in the history of premodern literature which we might call “global” in its aspirations, then it is that of the epic.6 J. R. R. Tolkien, whose article “The Monsters and the Critics” still constitutes a seminal contribution to the poem’s critical analysis, did not see it as an epic at all.7 Responding to Frederick Klaeber’s criticism of the poem’s “lack of steady advance,” 8 Tolkien preferred to see it as an elegy. And, indeed, instead of giving us a clear historical trajectory, the poem offers us only two brief glimpses of Beowulf ’s heroic life: first the killing of

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Grendel and Grendel’s mother, marking the inception of the protagonist’s heroic and political career; then the old King Beowulf ’s killing of the dragon. The two events are divided by fifty years, fifty years that do not, however, matter in narrative terms, since they are neither depicted nor discussed at any length. The poem has no middle. Hence the text achieves what Tolkien saw as a beautiful elegiac balance between a grand beginning and a tragic end. According to Tolkien, it is this philosophical juxtaposition of early glory and final death that makes us contemplate, from the superior historical vantage point of a Christian perspective, the sublime paradox of pagan heroism—a heroism utterly futile, but all the more beautiful for that. Seen against the background of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, it makes perfect sense that the poem, through its structural division, focuses on the dialogue between the moral and the aesthetic. As a Christian elegy meditating on the beauty, futility, and historical distance of an ultimately senseless pagan heroism, one might see Beowulf as world literature, inasmuch as the poem grounds its particular aesthetic and ethical point of view in the universal and world-historical claims of Christianity.9 Ironically, Tolkien’s generic redefinition of the poem never really caught on with critics. In mainstream Beowulf criticism, the poem remains an epic, if its specific genre is mentioned at all.10 To a certain extent, this is a result of Tolkien’s very success. Precisely because he provided such a cogent analysis of both the poem’s structure and its historical outlook, it was henceforth possible to see the text as a Christian epic of its own kind.11 Other critical issues thus began to fade into the background. One such problem is the poem’s relation to the Aeneid. And this is a shame, since in the poem’s recently much-neglected links to the Aeneid we can detect a consciousness of world literature that considerably complicates both the Christian trajectory of the Tolkienian view and the poem’s Germanic flavor so popular with nineteenth-century critics. Klaeber, especially, attempted to show the extent to which Beowulf derived its artistic inspiration and aesthetic techniques from Virgil’s model.12 He sought to ennoble the poem by inserting it into one of the West’s central traditions of world literature. But, just as Tolkien ultimately failed to persuade the critical community that Beowulf was a kind of inflated super-elegy, Klaeber’s and his successors’ case for Virgil has largely remained unpersuasive. Partly, this has been because the parallels between the two works detected by Klaeber and others were both too many and too general to be conclusive. As Theodore M. Andersson pithily commented on the then prevailing method: “Even in the case of the closest analogy,

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some combination of wind and foam might be expected to occur in any description of the sea.”13 Moreover, in the post-Tolkienian critical climate, the interest in the poem’s genre began to decline. The frequent comparisons of Beowulf with the works of Homer and Virgil, so popular with older critics, went out of fashion, not least because they smacked of generic essentialism.14 Once in a while within the subsequent history of Beowulf criticism, the Virgilian hypothesis did send a few bubbles to the surface of discussion, but, as bubbles will inevitably do when they reach the surface, these merely burst.15 In this critical context, Richard North’s insightful 2006 monograph The Origins of “Beowulf ”: From Vergil to Wiglaf must be seen as an important exception and may even prove a turning point, though the scope of his analysis is limited, to a certain degree, by his desire to tie his findings to a very particular topical setting. However, if we wish to make a case for Beowulf as world literature in its own time, we may be ignoring those Virgilian bubbles at our peril. In the following, I shall attempt to make a double case for a specifically global context for Beowulf, a context shaped, in a negative way—or, more precisely, in an inverted way—by the example of the Aeneid. I will argue that, before a self-consciously Virgilian backdrop, Beowulf makes a powerful bid for its status as world literature, and that it does so by conceptualizing an archaeological geography that reflects on alternative traditions of world literature as seen from an early medieval Anglo-Saxon perspective. And, among other things, this archaeologically constructed alternative notion of world literature proves to be particularly persuasive precisely because the poem’s characters are depicted as being utterly incapable of comprehending its meaning. Before I proceed, a caveat is in order. While I do find that some of the recent arguments in favor of the Beowulf poet’s having been familiar with the Aeneid are very persuasive, it is not my aim here to prove beyond any doubt that the Beowulf poet actually did know Virgil’s epic, nor would I think such an attempt to be very useful, let alone necessary, for the purpose of my argument. Proof beyond any doubt, in the traditional sense of source study (often seen in contrast to analogues), would require evidence of either direct references or else of a consistent set of clear verbal echoes. Modern notions of intertextuality have, however, moved beyond this rather limited sense of proof, so that intertextual relations can be established through other forms of resonance than mere verbal echoes or direct references. To quote Roland Barthes’s seminal statement on this issue:

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“The text is a tissue of citations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.”16 Besides, within the Latinate climate of Anglo-Saxon monastic culture at its most sophisticated, it would actually have been more likely for the Beowulf poet to have been familiar with the Aeneid than not. Readers who remain skeptical of my approach are invited to see Beowulf’s relationship to the Aeneid as something that would have been engendered in the minds of tenth-century educated monastic readers or listeners, that is, the readers or listeners of the time period during which the single extant manuscript was produced. My argument would thus rest less on the poet’s supposed intentions than on a specific audience’s ability and willingness to establish intertextual connections by identifying and being inspired by themes, structures, and aesthetic devices the two texts have in common. One reason why the Virgilian hypothesis never managed to establish a firm foothold in Beowulf criticism is because the poem appears to be so insistently Germanic. As we have seen, it was the poem’s specifically Germanic flavor that made it such a perfect candidate for a nineteenthcentury appropriation into very particular British and/or American concepts of world literature. Referring to the Geats, the Danes, the Swedes, the Frisians, the Franks, the Wylfings, and the Waegmundings, the poem often reads like an encyclopedia of early sixth-century Germanic nations and tribes living within what one might call the naturally expansionist range of what is now Denmark and southern Sweden. This impression is reinforced by the complete cultural and ethnic isolation of the Germanic nations depicted. Only in tragic Queen Wealhtheow’s name do we possibly detect a hint of ethnic Otherness, since Wealh- can mean both “slave” and “Celt.”17 Apart from that, the epic deals only with members of nations speaking Germanic languages interacting with members of other nations speaking Germanic languages in a climate of absolute cultural homogeneity: the nations listed all share the general outlook of what is constructed as a Germanic aristocratic warrior culture. But, as Roberta Frank has shown, there are subtle differences between the various nations. The Danes are altogether the most splendid and refined, while the Geats and, especially, the Swedes seem to inhabit a rather more primitive cultural stage.18 We are thus presented with an image not only of Germanic cultural totality, but also of Germanic cultural variety. The poem advertises its interest in geopolitical world-making with a powerful invocation of the great Danish kings’ imperial ambitions. Meriting the title of þeodcyning—that is, “national king”—the Danish rulers are set apart from their more marginal colleagues. In this respect, the

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poem creates a dynamic and multifaceted sense of political space marked by an overarching cultural and ethnic unity in diversity as well as by constantly shifting hegemonic power relations. Even the fact that the Danes are referred to as North-Danes, South-Danes, East-Danes, and West-Danes at various points in the narrative—much as this has to do with the lexical and phonological requirements of Germanic alliterative verse—seems to suggest that there is something literally all-encompassing about Danish culture.19 It is all the more puzzling then that beyond this self-enclosed world of North Sea Scandinavian peoples and their internal dynamics there is nothing. However complex and finely calibrated the epic’s fictional geography and sense of internal chronology are, they exist only within the narrow confines of an emphatically Germanic world. In this world, both Britain and Byzantium are unheard of. Beowulf’s Germanic landscape may be rich and complex, but it is a world entire unto itself, locked, as it were, in its very own and very deep sense of nostalgia.20 And yet the picture I have been painting so far is not altogether complete. On a diachronic and vertical level, we find the apparent synchronic and horizontal self-enclosedness of Beowulfian space repeatedly undermined: there is a fascinating range of anachronistic archaeological remains strewn across the epic’s landscape. Again and again, the characters are shown to be moving in spaces shaped by the material leftovers of civilizations long perished. These ubiquitous archaeological remnants are, I will argue, anything but innocent. They considerably complicate the ostensible historical, geographical, and cultural seamlessness of the epic’s fictional world. It is, I suggest, through the temporal associations triggered by its archaeological remains that the poem challenges the deceptive purity of its fictional Germanic universe. With one important exception—the sword hilt Beowulf brings back from the depths of the mere—the poem’s archaeological objects and fragments are predominantly identifiable as imperial Roman remains. To recall only the most important examples: when Beowulf and his companions approach Heorot, the Danish King Hrothgar’s hall, they walk on a stone-paved road—a thing unknown to migration-period and early medieval Scandinavians and thus, clearly, a leftover from the Roman occupation of Britain: “stræt wæs stanfah” (the road was paved with stones).21 In the splendid hall itself, Beowulf fights on a fagne flor,22 a tessellated, possibly even a mosaic floor—an architectural feature anachronistic in the context of migration-period Scandinavian history. Scholars have suggested that this floor was inspired by the Roman ruins in the city of

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Bath, ruins well known to the Anglo-Saxons. Seth Lerer has even hypothesized that the fagne flor’s mosaic may contain a visual representation of Orpheus.23 Fanciful as Lerer’s idea may sound, the notion is helpful for its linking of Beowulf’s archaeological images to classical literature, both in terms of theme and in terms of modes of representation: The (admittedly dangerously speculative) presence of an image of Orpheus in an AngloSaxon poem would constitute an example of ekphrasis, a typical set piece of classical epic poetry. And, closer to the poem’s end, the dragon’s lair is supported by so-called stanbogan,24 “stone arches,” an architectural feature foreign to both migration-period Scandinavian and early Anglo-Saxon building styles.25 Admittedly, the dragon’s lair could also be interpreted as a megalithic funerary monument from the Stone Age. But as Howard Williams persuasively argues, the dragon’s lair combines features inspired by a variety of different historical and architectural traditions, some of which evoke megalithic associations, while others clearly point to Roman architecture or early medieval ecclesiastical buildings, suggesting a palimpsestic use of the space.26 Again, none of these architectural features would have been completely unknown to the Anglo-Saxons, but they would have been known to them primarily, and in some cases exclusively, as Roman remains. As features of the Anglo-Saxon landscape, a fagne flor or stanbogan pointed to Britain’s pre-Germanic, imperial past. And that was a past that came to a swift end after the Roman legions withdrew from the island in AD 407. The Anglo-Saxons were acutely aware and in awe of this archaeological legacy—both Roman and pre-Roman—and put it to all manner of cultural and political uses. Sarah Semple has stressed “the sheer scale, in temporal and selective terms, at which the ancient past was recognized and harnessed to the purposes of tradition-making by communities and elite families and individuals in Anglo-Saxon England.”27 Hence the Old English term for ambitious stone constructions, which by definition were ruins of Roman origin, was enta geweorc: the “work of giants”—and this was not merely a term, but actually a poetic formula. Obviously, this is a metaphorical term. The “giants” in question were Romans and the Anglo-Saxons were well aware of the fact. Nevertheless, they called the products of Roman engineering the “work of giants.”28 Given the Beowulf poet’s extremely subtle sense of history as well as the degree to which he carefully avoids anachronism or else makes strategic use of it, one thing ought to be certain: the poem’s Roman remains so conspicuously scattered over migration-period Scandinavia constitute

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a conscious anachronism. Beowulf’s Denmark is littered with Roman remains precisely because, historically speaking, these remains should and could never have been there. Obviously, neither Denmark nor the land of the Geats, that is the southern half of Central Sweden, ever came near to being conquered by the Romans. And this is something the Anglo-Saxons would have been conscious of, too. In other words, we witness the Beowulf poet deliberately projecting a Romano-British archaeology onto a politicogeographical scenery apparently reveling in its Germanic purity. This presents us with an odd paradox: why should the Beowulf poet take such infinite care in designing his entirely self-enclosed historical panorama of early sixth-century Scandinavia, only to deliberately contaminate the ostensible cultural “purity” of his canvas through the application of glaringly anachronistic Roman daubs and smudges? The easy way out would, of course, be to assume that here the Beowulf poet displays a “typically medieval” lack of historical consciousness, the inability to grasp the essential nature of historical difference. But that would be too simple an explanation. Nicholas Howe points out that “there is no inherent reason to assume that those who lived during the period were somehow less alert to the complications of their own history than we are some twelve hundred years later.”29 And Fred C. Robinson has poignantly characterized the poem’s dominant mood as “conflicted nostalgia.”30 Indeed, as Frank and others have shown, the Beowulf poet is obsessed with making historical sense.31 Gale R. Owen-Crocker remarks: “Beowulf is, as Tolkien observed, antiquarian, but for us its historicity is more complex ‘than an echo of an echo.’”32 Even the poem’s anachronisms prove to have been inserted with a highly developed sense of consistency. They are almost all of an archaeological nature, they are all recognizable to the audience, but they are never once commented on by the poem’s characters. It is as though the epic’s Danes, Geats, etc., were living in a gigantic archaeological theme park without ever realizing it, or at least without particularly caring. In this they differ markedly from their Anglo-Saxon audience, who cared very much about the specifically archaeological nature of their landscape. The poet thus strategically inflicts the Roman remains onto his superficially “pure” Germanic landscape in the same way that he alludes to Christian themes. He alerts his readers to the fact that the poem’s cast is moving in a world beyond their grasp. Hence, one could argue, the supposed Germanic purity of Beowulf’s fictional world is itself unmasked as a historiographical construct. Such an interpretation would fit well with Eileen A. Joy and Mary K. Ramsey’s general assessment of the poem’s

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sense of history: “Beowulf does not make sense of the past so much as it calls the supposed coherence of the past [...] into question.”33 And, as we have become increasingly aware, the poem’s Germanic world is a historical construct.34 Frank has shown that the Anglo-Saxon approach to things Germanic was complex and ever-changing. Anglo-Saxon culture was not the simple and straightforward manifestation of a pan-Germanic cultural unity that it was seen to be in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. True, the Anglo-Saxons did possess a Germanic heritage of myth and legend. But the large-scale interest in the pseudo-historical kind of legend based on migration-period history which we witness in Beowulf and other Old English poems is a relatively late development in AngloSaxon cultural history. The fascination with migration-period heroes seems to have been part of an erudite game played by the literary connoisseurs of the ninth and tenth centuries. As Frank explains, the rise of an interest in migration-period heroes and history and an evolving sense of pan-Germanic unity originally seems to have been generated at the court of Charlemagne and spread to England from there: “An Englishman in the age of Bede was unlikely to have heard of Ermanaric, let alone to have regarded him as kin. Goths were not seen as chic or German during the long period stretching from the death of Theodoric to the coronation of Charlemagne.”35 Curiously, even when the Anglo-Saxons did develop their newly found fascination with migration-period Germanic legend, by no means did they display a general interest in things Germanic. Apparently, they chose only what they liked, and they do not seem to have liked a lot. Thus, the Franks rarely capture the Anglo-Saxon literary imagination, just as the Vandals and the Langobards are virtually absent from Old English texts. It was the Scandinavians and the Ostrogoths who really mattered to the Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, not only was the scope of the Anglo-Saxon fascination with legendary Germanic history fairly limited, that fascination was also largely confined to events and characters from the fifth and early sixth centuries.36 This rather narrow migration-period fashion seems to have developed alongside the Danish conquest and large-scale settlement of vast parts of England during the second half of the ninth century. It was in this period that the West Saxon royal house began to create Danish genealogies for itself.37 At this point it seems in order to acknowledge the fact that the question of dating Beowulf is by no means settled. On the contrary, the issue is so contentious that arguments based on a dating of the poem alone might

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well be dismissed out of hand by supporters of a different date. Hence, I wish to stress that, while I have obvious sympathies for a tenth-century dating of Beowulf and while such a dating would fit very well with some aspects of my argument, its general thrust does not really depend on the poem’s date. A complex archaeological consciousness and an interest in the Aeneid could just as well have been developed in the eighth century as in the tenth. Against the backdrop of the Anglo-Saxons’ increasingly sophisticated interest in the migration-period past, Beowulf reads like an encyclopedic attempt to tie together all these different strands, presenting, as it were, the whole geographical range of Scandinavian legend available to an educated Englishman of the late ninth or tenth century. And yet, by strategically adding his anachronistic archaeological details, the Beowulf poet draws attention to the fictional constructedness of this supposedly encyclopedic Germanic panorama. And here, I believe, the poem’s critical interest in the supremely artificial nature of its Germanic universe reveals itself as a conscious response to the classical epic tradition as embodied by the Aeneid. In its appropriation of two of the most dominant themes of the Iliad and the Odyssey— heroic struggle and maritime quest—Virgil’s epic itself is engaged in a project of imagining geographical space as imperial. As Aeneas traverses the Mediterranean, he draws the contours of future imperial expansion: encyclopedic geography is harnessed to a political agenda. In Beowulf, too, geography is primarily conceptualized in terms of military expeditions and conquests. Yet whereas the Aeneid shapes a whole world in the image of a future imperium sine fine—an empire without end—Beowulf seems to portray the exact opposite. Again and again we see expansionist policies and diplomacy fail, civil war looming on the horizon, and alliances ending in blood feuds. Beowulf ’s own kingdom is doomed to extinction when the hero dies of the wounds he receives while killing the dragon. Hence, the poem appears to be deeply pessimistic about the ability of a Germanic warrior culture to maintain political stability. Beowulf’s preoccupation with the futility of its heroic politics becomes especially visible in its single non-Roman archaeological scene, wherein the poem betrays a highly analytical approach to one of the most important conventions of the Western epic tradition. This convention is that of ekphrasis,38 here to be understood not in the original sense as developed in classical rhetoric, 39 but in its more recent sense as the detailed description of an imaginary work of visual art—or, in

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James A. W. Heffernan’s definition, “a verbal representation of a visual representation”—a convention Virgil inherits from Homer.40 As we recall, in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, ekphrasis provides a celebration of human civilization and poetic capability as it is used to depict two cities on the shield of Achilles: the city at peace and the city at war. The Aeneid then appropriates the idea of linking ekphrasis to the principal hero’s shield, with a daring political twist: Aeneas’s shield depicts glorious events in a specific historical future, that is, Octavian’s victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium.41 It is in the political significance of ekphrasis as established by the Aeneid, I argue, that the Beowulf poet intervenes through a strategic deployment of his archaeological objects.42 And, paradoxically, the object he chooses as the basis for his most direct engagement with classical tradition is the single archaeological fragment in the poem that cannot immediately be linked to ancient Rome. The object in question is the sword Beowulf pulls from the hoard in the underwater cave, said to be the work of giants: “ealdsweord eotenisc” (“the ancient sword made by giants,” 1558a) and “giganta geweorc” (“the work of giants,” 1562b). In a desperate struggle, the hero uses the sword to kill Grendel’s mother and then to decapitate the dead or dying Grendel lying in the corner of the cave. Beowulf takes the sword back to King Hrothgar and hands it over to him as a token of his victory. But meanwhile the sword’s blade has melted and what remains is a mere fragment, the sword’s hilt. This hilt proves to be a strange thing covered in foreign lettering, and the poem takes great pains to emphasize that it is indeed writing that is engraved on the hilt: “þurh runstafas rihte gemearcod, / geseted ond gesæd.”43 The inscription describes the biblical Flood destroying the giants.44 At least, this is what the narrator tells us, since neither Beowulf nor Hrothgar seem to be capable of reading the script, the runstafas, engraved on the hilt. The sword made by giants confronts us with a whole set of issues. If it is literally meant to be a giant sword—that is, a sword made by giants— how can it possibly depict God’s destruction of the giants by means of the Deluge? According to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, the giants were the descendants of Cain and taught humans the art of metalwork.45 There seems to be, therefore, a deliberate proleptic confusion of temporal levels. As a costly object depicting an event of the distant future at the time when that object was made, a future which is simultaneously a past both unknown and unimaginable to the protagonists of the story, the sword elegantly takes its place in the ekphrastic tradition as encapsulated by the Shield of Aeneas.

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But instead of depicting a military triumph within a teleological scheme of history, it represents a divine triumph of the distant, Old Testament past. Moreover, in purely ekphrastic terms, the sword vignette seems bent on conspicuously outdoing the Aeneid. After all, the writing that is visualized through the poetic description’s rhetorical enargeia is a common feature of the ekphrastic tradition. Chaucer will play the same trick in Book 1 of the House of Fame, where he lets the letters on the tablets of brass turn into visual impressions of the action—of the Aeneid.46 Finally, the identification of the sword as the “work of giants” in Old English is itself highly ambiguous. After all, we have seen how the metaphorical expression enta geweorc frequently denotes Roman ruins, or archaeological remains of Roman provenance. At first glance, this meaning does not seem to apply here. Since the sword depicts a narrative about biblical giants, in this specific context we seem to be expected to take the phrase “the work of giants” literally. This sword must really be the product of enta and not merely of Roman engineering.47 But who says so? If there is one thing we know about Anglo-Saxon poetry, then it is its tendency to delight in the riddling and the enigmatic, in the ambiguous or even the ambivalent, and above all in the metaphorical. What if the formula enta geweorc were here operating on two different textual levels at the same time, one literal, one metaphorical, thereby both exploiting and drawing attention to its specifically poetic nature? On the literal level we would then be dealing with a monstrous weapon crafted in some distant past by biblical giants long drowned in Noah’s Flood. But on a self-reflexively literary level and on a metaphorical level, “enta geweorc” would, once again, be invoking its usual context of Roman cultural superiority. Operating on two different levels of meaning simultaneously, the metaphor would be encapsulating an effect that Robinson has identified as the very essence of the appositive style in Anglo-Saxon poetry, namely, “to remind the poem’s audience of the multiple levels of meaning present in the words that make up the traditional Old English diction as it was adapted by the poet of Beowulf.”48 In this reading , the metaphor refers not so much to the object depicted itself, but to the poetic mode of its description, that is, to the specific poetic and imperialist tradition of ekphrasis that is central to this scene. In that case, the poetic formula enta geweorc would in fact be referring to Romanness in both literary and structural terms. The phrase would then be turning the verbal evocation of visual imagery into a poetic phenomenon comparable to the archaeology of Roman engineering. Hence

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the sword constitutes an instance of what one might call verbal instead of material enta geweorc: it metaphorically and performatively represents a poetic craftsmanship of a typically Roman/Latin type because it belongs to the tradition of ekphrasis as exemplified in the classical epic, as most typically embodied by the Shield of Aeneas. The sword thus constitutes a version of enta geweorc due to the ekphrastic nature it shares with the Aeneid. Presented through a typically Anglo-Saxon poetic formula, the sword follows in the footsteps of ancient rhetoric and dramatizes the visualization of a scene supposedly present only in script: the Flood’s gigantocide. Moreover, this instance of ekphrasis presents us with a structural inversion of the most famous Virgilian ekphrasis. Instead of depicting a beautifully crafted weapon given to the hero on the eve of his supreme triumph, foretelling a glorious future, we are shown a mere archaeological fragment that is ruined through use in battle. A fragment, moreover, that tells not of a future imperium sine fine for which the epic’s protagonist is laying the foundations, but rather of a biblical past from which the epic’s characters are ineluctably cut off, just as that past is entirely beyond their comprehension. In thus making the phrase enta geweorc oscillate between a literal and a metaphorical, indeed a poetically self-reflexive and performative meaning, the poem styles itself as an inverted Aeneid, not an epic that leads to triumph and empire, but one that ends in decline and destruction, an epic that refuses to follow a clear narrative trajectory with a beginning, such as the fall of Troy, a middle, such as Aeneas’s adventures first at sea and then in Latium, and an end, such as his victory over Turnus. As we have seen, what we get in Beowulf instead is an epic that lacks clear narrative progress, indeed an epic that does not have a middle at all, as it blithely skips over fifty years of Geatish history. The poem designs its diligently delineated map of migration-period Scandinavia not as an act of imperial world-making, as we encounter it in the Aeneid’s Mediterranean, but as the backdrop to a relentless story of imperial failure. And that imperial failure is set in a carefully constructed panorama of apparent Germanic purity, the artificiality of which is insistently exposed through the presence of anachronistic archaeology of a primarily, but not exclusively, Roman nature. But even as Beowulf seems to cast a skeptical eye on the later AngloSaxons’ taste for the heroic legends of migration-period Scandinavia, and even as the poem also appears to be dismissing the Aeneid’s literary heritage by turning the Latin epic on its head, Beowulf simultaneously acknowledges its own structural and poetic dependence on ancient

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literature and culture, a dependence rendered even more acute by its very fragility. Especially after the experience of the Danish invasions, the Anglo-Saxons had reason to believe themselves to be “always in danger of being cut off from the historical and spiritual heritage of the Latin culture they had adopted.”49 Nearly all the cultural traditions the Anglo-Saxon drew on taught them the fragile nature of cultural transmission, a message powerfully reinforced by recent historical experience. The anachronistic presence of Roman architecture in migrationperiod Scandinavia testifies to the degree to which the Anglo-Saxons depended on the Latin cultural heritage Christianity had brought them. Thus even a poem set in an entirely artificial Scandinavia, a poem that seems to envisage itself as an anti-Aeneid, ultimately remains bound to the aesthetic strategies developed by classical Latin literature, that is to aesthetic strategies belonging to the very culture that the poem is ostensibly rejecting. Beowulf’s archaeology must, therefore, be read as a potent extended metaphor for the degree to which the writing of an early medieval anti-imperial text remains indebted to those very imperial traditions it sets out to reject. These imperial traditions remain inescapable because they are embedded in the aesthetic structures on which the poem rests, just as these traditions are metaphorically present in the Roman objects rising out of the ground. Even the architecture of Heorot symbolically contributes to this scheme: when Beowulf wrestles with Grendel on a slippery mosaic floor of Roman origin, we witness the Beowulf poet analyzing the politics of Germanic legend on the literal basis of the classical tradition, however hidden that tradition may appear under a veneer of Germanic purity. In conclusion, Beowulf conceives of itself as world literature, because in its imaginary Scandinavia, painted as it is in colors of exquisite Germanic purity, all kinds of Roman objects keep popping up out of the ground. The Empire, to refashion a postcolonial cliché, “writes back.”50 And as Rome’s cultural heritage insists on its presence, the poem simultaneously deconstructs the notion of Germanic purity—a notion apparently so captivating for educated Anglo-Saxons of the tenth century, and so attractive also to Anglo-Saxon readers of the nineteenth. Anachronistically speaking, it looks as though the Beowulf poet were already anticipating and resisting the appropriation of his poem into the respective imperial canons of nineteenthcentury Britain and America. As the poem raises the problem of its own place in literary history, as it flaunts its Germanic marginality even as it problematizes the imported concept of literature it is literally grounded in, Beowulf, it seems, is wary of its own status as potential imperial “world

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literature” and of the ideological costs that status may entail. To put it differently, Beowulf proves to be “world literature” in both the most traditional and the most modern senses of the term. NOTES This concept of world literature is the one formulated by Damrosch, who sees world literature as “all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language (Virgil was long read in Latin in Europe)” (Damrosch, What Is World Literature?, 4). 2 Frantzen, Desire for Origins, 16. 3 To cite only some of the best-known participants in this debate: Spivak, “Planetarity”; Apter, Against World Literature, 70–98; Mufti, Forget English!, 1–49; and Cheah, What Is A World?, 1–45. 4 For the debate on the dating of Beowulf see Frank, “A Scandal in Toronto,” who favors a late date, and more recently Frantzen, “Afterword,” who supports an early date in his concluding essay to a volume whose contributors, too, overwhelmingly make a case for an early date. 5 For a cogent demonstration of Beowulf’s uniqueness in Anglo-Saxon literature see Harris, “Beowulf in Literary History,” 16. 6 Ultimately, even that might prove a dangerous generalization. Denecke, Classical World Literatures, 56–59, draws attention to the problems that the absence of epics in classical Chinese and Japanese literature generates when it comes to comparisons between Greek and Roman hierarchies of genre, on the one hand, and Chinese and Japanese ones, on the other. 7 Tolkien, “The Monsters and the Critics.” 8 Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, lvii. 9 For a particularly sensitive analysis of Tolkien’s proto-New Critical and yet paradoxically historicist approach and the way it was further developed by Fred C. Robinson see Howe, “Historicist Approaches,” 85–89. 10 Admittedly, many scholars avoid the issue altogether by consistently referring to Beowulf simply as “the poem.” See for instance Orchard, Critical Companion. But post-Tolkienian research has also seen quite a number of critics call the poem an “epic”; to cite only two examples: Greenfield, A Readable “Beowulf,” and Kiernan, “Beowulf ” and the “Beowulf ”-Manuscript, 278. 11 This is not the only paradoxical effect Tolkien’s essay generated. As Frantzen has remarked, “without realizing it [Tolkien] handed Beowulf over to New Criticism” (Frantzen, Desire for Origins, 176). 12 Klaeber, “Aeneis und Beowulf.” To be fair, Klaeber seems to have seen his article more as a starting point for further research and admits himself: “Aber ich bin mir wohl bewusst, dass ich in der (hier mit allem Vorbehalt mitgeteilten) 1

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Jagd nach Analogien bis an die äußerste Grenze gegangen bin—vielleicht sogar darüber hinaus” (358). My translation: “But I am well aware that in my hunt for analogies (which I present here with considerable reservations) I may have gone to the very limit—and possibly beyond—of what is possible.” 13 Andersson, Early Epic Scenery, 150–51. 14 Recently, Tom Shippey has compared Beowulf to the works of Homer. Drawing on Erich Auerbach, Shippey accuses Homer of a lack of depth, of constructing an epic world in terms of a pure and uncomplicated present, and exclaims: “How different is the Old English poem, how very much in possession of a historical and political perspective that he [sic] deploys without the slightest hesitation or contradiction!” (“‘The Fall of King Hæðcyn,’” 254). 15 One of the latest and most comprehensive attempts from that earlier period to link Beowulf to the Aeneid was made by Haber, Comparative Study. Unfortunately, many of the parallels Haber establishes are of such a general nature as to possess no evidential value even if seen within the most positivist of frameworks. Take only this example: “The Beowulf-poet assumes that the Danes and the Geats had no difficulty in understanding each other’s language [...] Similarly Virgil describes the conversation of the Trojans and the Latins as he had described the spoken formalities of the Trojans and the Libyans in Book IV” (Haber, Comparative Study, 116). 16 Barthes, “Death of the Author,” 170. 17 For a detailed analysis of the question of Wealhtheow’s possible status as a foreign slave see Hill, “‘Wealhtheow’ as a Foreign Slave.” 18 Frank, “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History,” 55. 19 Shippey, “‘The Fall of King Hæðcyn,’” 262, insists that the points of the compass mentioned in “East-Danes” etc. bear next to no semantic meaning. But that depends on what kind of meaning one is looking for. Within their immediate context in the poem, it does, indeed, seem to be neither here nor there whether the Danes are named as being “East-” or “West-Danes,” but in more general terms there is a sense that Danes possess a geopolitical presence which is far from parochial, just as a term like “Spear-Danes” will consistently invoke the war-like nature of the people so described. Similarly, when in Homer we encounter the “swiftfooted Achilles” reclining on his bed, there is no immediate connection between the epithet and the hero’s depicted activity at that given moment in fictional time, but the phrase does alert us to the fact that the bed is not, perhaps, the protagonist’s most characteristic habitat. 20 As Liuzza has remarked: “Beowulf is a profoundly retrospective poem: when we look back towards it, we find it too looking back to a vanished age, for all we know seeking the same things we are hoping it will provide” (Liuzza, “Beowulf: Monuments, Memory, History,” 92). 21 Beowulf, line 320a. All quotations from Beowulf are taken from Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles.

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Beowulf, line 725. Lerer, “‘On fagne flor.’” 24 Beowulf, line 2545. 25 For a detailed analysis of the Roman aspects of the dragon’s lair see Thornbury, “Eald enta geweorc.” 26 Williams, “Beowulf and Archaeology.” 27 Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 224. 28 Garner, Structuring Spaces, 54. 29 Howe, “Anglo-Saxon England,” 40. 30 Mitchell and Robinson, “Introduction,” 38. 31 For an analysis of how the poem carefully constructs and expresses its sense of historical alterity see Frank, “Beowulf Poet’s Sense,” especially 58–61 for the ways in which the poem appears to be intent on presenting a complex historical panorama that is multifaceted and, above all, multilayered. 32 Owen-Crocker, Four Funerals, 123. Owen-Crocker continues: “A late Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Viking poet is invoking, in flashes, a culture which existed three centuries earlier, in order to tell a fictional story which incorporates real historical material over a century older.” 33 Joy and Ramsey, “Introduction,” xxxiv. 34 The question of whether there actually was a sense of a common Germanic heritage in the post-migration-period kingdoms of early medieval Western, Northern, and Central Europe remains a matter of debate. Ghosh, Writing the Barbarian Past, 263, has recently cautioned us not to assume that an interest in migration-period history necessarily equaled a sense of Germanic belonging. When Charlemagne displayed a fascination with Theodoric the Great he may have been concerned more with an example of a great ruler than with an example of a great Germanic ruler. 35 Frank, “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature,” 87. 36 Frank, “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature,” 88. 37 Frank, “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature,” 89. 38 To my knowledge, the first scholar to refer to the giant sword in the context of ekphrasis is Wandhoff, Ekphrasis, 18. 39 In classical rhetoric, ekphrasis referred to a specific type of verbal representation emphasizing vividness. As Webb explains: “So, not only was ekphrasis not understood as a term for ‘description of a work of art,’ it was not even understood in the same terms as our ‘description’” (Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, 70). 40 Heffernan, Museum of Words, 3. 41 There are a number of ekphrastic moments in the Aeneid, such as Aeneas, on his arrival in Carthage, being confronted with murals depicting the destruction of Troy, or, close to the poem’s end in the climactic duel, the images on the belt that Turnus is wearing. But in the way it echoes the Shield of Achilles, the 22 23

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Shield of Aeneas must be seen as Virgil’s most self-conscious and stylized ekphrastic response to Homer. 42 Klaeber, “Aeneis und Beowulf,” 342, compares the sword hilt to the Shield of Aeneas but does not discuss it in terms of ekphrasis. 43 Beowulf, lines 1695–96a. Near, “Anticipating Alienation,” 323, has suggested that the engravings on the hilt are marked by a two-part structure, the first half of which consists in visual imagery depicting the flood and the second half of which provides written information on the sword’s provenance. Lerer, Literacy and Power, 171, has shown, however, that the syntactic arguments Near marshals in favor of his interpretation—the specific use of swa in the passage—is at best ambiguous. 44 There have been various theories about the exact nature of the script depicted. Fell, “Paganism in Beowulf,” argues that the writing on the sword hilt must be in Latin; Robinson, “Language of Paganism,” on the other hand, seeks to make a case for a runic inscription. In his graphic novel version of Beowulf, Hinds (Beowulf, no pagination), depicts cuneiform lettering on the hilt. In this general context see also Schrader, “Language on the Giant’s Sword Hilt.” 45 Enoch 8:1 tells the story of how the fallen angels taught the humans metalwork and also writing. They cohabited with women descended from Cain and thus spawned the race of Giants, a race that was ultimately destroyed by the Deluge. See Köberl, “Magic Sword,” 124, and Schrader, “Language of the Giant’s Sword Hilt,” 141–47. 46 House of Fame, lines 143 ff., cited from Riverside Chaucer. 47 For a comprehensive analysis of the many ways that the enta geweorc metaphor was deployed in Anglo-Saxon verse see Garner, Structuring Spaces, 112–68. 48 Robinson, “Beowulf ” and the Appositive Style, 61. 49 Liuzza, “Tower of Babel,” 14. 50 The Empire Writes Back famously features as the title of one of the most influential textbooks on postcolonial literature: Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back.

WORKS CITED Andersson, Theodore M. Early Epic Scenery: Homer, Virgil, and the Medieval Legacy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. Apter, Emily. Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London: Verso, 2013. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. David Lodge, 167–72. London: Longman, 1988.

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Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Cheah, Pheng. What Is A World? On Postcolonial Literature As World Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Damrosch, David. What Is World Literature? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Denecke, Wiebke. Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Fell, Christine E. “Paganism in Beowulf: a Semantic Fairy-Tale.” In Pagans and Christians: The Interplay Between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe: Proceedings of the Second Germania Latina Conference, University of Groningen, May 1992, ed. Tette Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen, and Alasdair A. MacDonald, 9–34. Groningen: Egbert Forsten Publishing, 1995. Frantzen, Allen J. “Afterword: Beowulf and Everything Else.” In The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf, 235–47. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. ———. Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Fulk, R. D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Garner, Lori Ann. Structuring Spaces: Oral Poetics and Architecture in Early Medieval England. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. Ghosh, Shami. Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Greenfield, Stanley B. A Readable “Beowulf ”: The Old English Epic Newly Translated. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982. Haber, Tom Burns. A Comparative Study of the “Beowulf ” and the “Aeneid”. New York: Phaeton, 1968. Harris, Joseph. “Beowulf in Literary History.” Pacific Coast Philology 17 (1982): 16–23. Heffernan, James A. W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Hill, Thomas D. “‘Wealhtheow’ as a Foreign Slave: Some Continental Analogues.” Philological Quarterly 69 (1990): 106–12. Hinds, Gareth. Beowulf. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 1999. Howe, Nicholas. “Anglo-Saxon England and the Postcolonial Void.” In Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir, and Deanne Williams, 25–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ———. “Historicist Approaches.” In Reading Old English Texts, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, 79–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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Joy, Eileen A. and Mary K. Ramsey. “Introduction: Liquid Beowulf.” In The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook, ed. Eileen A. Joy and Mary K. Ramsey, xxix–lxvii. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006. Kiernan, Kevin S. “Beowulf ” and the “Beowulf ”-Manuscript. Rev. ed. with a foreword by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Klaeber, Friedrich. “Aeneis und Beowulf.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 126 (1911): 40–48 and 339–59. ———, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 3rd ed. Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1950. Köberl, Johann. “The Magic Sword in Beowulf.” Neophilologus 71 (1987): 120–28. Lerer, Seth. Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. ———. “‘On fagne flor’: The Postcolonial Beowulf.” In Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams, 77–102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Liuzza, Roy M. “Beowulf: Monuments, Memory, History.” In Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne, 91–108. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ———. “The Tower of Babel: The Wanderer and the Ruins of History.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 36 (2003): 1–35. Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson. “Introduction.” In Beowulf: An Edition, ed. Mitchell and Robinson, 1–38. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Mufti, Aamir R. Forget English!: Orientalisms and World Literatures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Near, Michael R. “Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy.” PMLA 108 (1993): 320–32. North, Richard. The Origins of “Beowulf ”: From Vergil to Wiglaf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to “Beowulf ”. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. Owen-Crocker, Gale R. The Four Funerals in “Beowulf ” and the Structure of the Poem. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. Robinson, Fred C. “Beowulf ” and the Appositive Style. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. ———. “The Language of Paganism in Beowulf: A Response to an Ill-Omened Essay.” Multilingua 18 (1999): 173–83. Schrader, Richard J. “The Language on the Giant’s Sword Hilt in Beowulf.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 94 (1993): 141–47. Semple, Sarah. Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England: Religion, Ritual, and Rulership in the Landscape. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Shippey, Tom. “‘The Fall of King Hæðcyn’: Or, Mimesis 4a, the Chapter Auerbach Never Wrote.” In On the Aesthetics of “Beowulf ” and Other Old English Poems, ed. John M. Hill, 247–65. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Planetarity.” In World Literature: A Reader, ed. Theo D’haen, César Domínguez and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 207–17. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Reprinted from Spivak, Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Thornbury, Emily V. “Eald enta geweorc and the Relics of Empire: Revisiting the Dragon’s Lair in Beowulf.” Quaestio 1 (2000): 82–92. Tolkien, J. R. R. “The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien, 5–48. London: HarperCollins, 1997. Wandhoff, Haiko. Ekphrasis: Kunstbeschreibungen und virtuelle Räume in der Literatur des Mittelalters. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003. Webb, Ruth. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Williams, Howard. “Beowulf and Archaeology: Megaliths Imagined and Encountered in Early Medieval Europe.” In The Lives of Prehistoric Monuments in Iron Age, Roman, and Medieval Europe, ed. Marta Diaz-Guardamíno, Leonardo García Sanjuán, and David Wheatley, 77–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

A Portrait of the Translator as Grendel’s Mother The Postcolonial Feminist Polyphony of Meghan Purvis’s Beowulf Denis Ferhatović

Murathan Mungan’ın bir öyküsünü İsveççeye çevirmişlerdi. Murathan çevirinin nasıl olduğunu sordu bana. “Teknik olarak hiçbir eksik yok, yazdığın her şeyi çevirmişler ama yazmadığın hiçbir şeyi çevirmemişler,” demiştim. Eğer Murathan Mungan’da anlatılmayanı sezdiremiyorsanız o çeviri elbette iyi olmayacaktır. (Ali Arda) (They translated a short story by Murathan Mungan into Swedish. Murathan asked me how the translation had turned out. “Technically, it was flawless,” I said, “They seem to have translated everything you wrote, but they did not translate anything you did not write.” If you cannot sense what is not narrated in Murathan Mungan, that translation is certainly not going to be very good.)1

Introduction: Of Prefaces, Polyphony ... and Cannibals

M

EGHAN PURVIS’S RECENTLY PUBLISHED version of Beowulf (2013), which I will call Purviswulf in analogy with Heaneywulf and Liuzzawulf,2 stands apart as a rare Old English translation done by a woman.3 Purviswulf achieves a fine balance, upholding and challenging the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon poem by including what it excludes, altering it in a number of startling but, after a closer look, fitting ways. In this essay, I argue that Purvis has produced a postcolonial feminist translation4 appropriate for a text that, for instance, puts women marked by inter-tribal warfare at its partially concealed center; in other words, Beowulf invites and welcomes this particular approach. Rather than being characterized merely by her own gender and cultural background, though they are salient, this postcolonial feminist translator delights in disruptive, productive formal

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experimentation that exposes the “contact zone” between languages, and makes a point of bringing out, even supplying, certain themes passed over by the original work. She both breaks up the dominant narrative and fills the gaps that it had left behind. She cuts hegemonic presences down to scale, while revealing the invisible or obscured. In our particular case, Purvis supplies understated thematic elements of domestic labor, the non-heroic body and its functions, and ordinary life and natural phenomena. Alongside the metaphor of breaking and entering, “like the nameless, hapless thief ” in the last part of Beowulf “who plunders the dragon’s cave,”5 I present another, more famous, postcolonial metaphor of the translator: the cannibal,6 and modify it to be a selective female cannibal, like Grendel’s mother.7 Through cannibalizing, that is honoring-through-devouring the source text, the postcolonial feminist translator uncovers the polyphony behind the seemingly unified discourse of an already “cannibal narrative.”8 Purvis’s work readily embodies the formalist principles of feminist translation as formulated by the Québécois school of the 1970s and 1980s. One of its champions, Barbara Godard, characterizes interventions of feminist translators as ruptures that produce plurality and polyphony to challenge the original. According to her, “[d]ialogic, the one-within-theother in the Bakhtinian sense of the polyphonic text, feminist discourse works to subvert the monologism of the dominant discourse.”9 Purvis breaks Beowulf into many short sections, to which I will refer by name throughout this chapter. She also multiplies the narrators, some of whom are unidentified while others are known from the original poem, their names clearly marked in intertitles of individual sections (“Wealhtheow,” “Hrothgar’s Requiem,” “Beowulf ’s Version”). The translator explains in her preface that she introduces a plurality of speakers in order to make “space for the many voices within Beowulf that are often drowned by a single narrator describing a single hero” (ii). One of the added voices is Purvis’s own. Her paratexual assertions correspond to Godard’s statement that the feminist translator eschews the modesty and transparency traditionally praised in translations, and that she “immodestly flaunts her signature in italics, in footnotes—even in a preface.”10 Purvis begins her brief but suggestive preface by recalling what it was like to hear Old English in a woman’s voice. Her History of the English Language professor Jennifer Bryan’s recitation of the opening lines of Beowulf appears to have planted the seeds of Purvis’s future endeavor (i). She writes that, even though she knows that female scholars such as Marijane Osborn and Heather O’Donoghue have worked with

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Old English and Old Norse for a while now, “the idea that Beowulf was a story I could tell was a new horizon beckoning” (i). Purvis goes on to observe that a number of translators of Beowulf were people “who do not have their papers in order,” either because of their ethnic identity (Edwin Morgan, Seamus Heaney) or simply because they were not always good at school (Kevin Crossley-Holland), concluding: My translation comes from writing as a woman—usually destined to pour mead and wait for the family feud to erupt—and as an American. We have, all of us, snuck up to this poem while the gatekeepers were otherwise occupied. None of us came to this by birthright. And in doing this we follow our source material entirely. Scyld Scefing was a foundling who rose to become a legendary king. Beowulf was never meant to rule: he fell into it by outliving everyone else in line for the throne. The world of the poem is populated by people meant for other things, and who wanted something different. (i–ii)

Purvis’s invocation of female teachers and scholars and “suspect” male translators of Beowulf, alongside her own self-positioning as a “woman” and “American,” almost directly frames her endeavor in postcolonial feminist terms. Her metaphors are telling. Sneaking up to the poem and breaking in through its gate suggests the Grendelkin to the gatekeepers’ guards. The monsters, too, “do not have their papers in order,” that is, their lineage is not as clearly established as that of Beowulf or the Danish royal house, and certainly not as patriarchal. Grendel’s mother is a woman par excellence who does not serve alcohol at feasts and takes an active role in family feuds, avenging the death of her only son. She is a woman living on the margins, possibly a ruler in her own right in the mere. Although formerly ignored by scholars and downplayed by Beowulf himself in his reports to Hrothgar and Hygelac, the fight with Grendel’s mother takes place at the midpoint of Beowulf.11 The outsider perspective turns out to be central, rather than external, to the poem, as indicated by Purvis in the second part of the excerpt above. On their own, two prominent approaches that privilege such a perspective, the postcolonial and feminist, are not unprecedented in previous poetic translation from Old English, but their combination seems to be new. It is, therefore, important to briefly discuss Heaney’s Beowulf and Holland’s Lament of the Wanderer to show where Purviswulf fits, before turning to particular aspects of the translation.

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Postcolonial Beowulf and Feminist Wanderer The scandal over Heaneywulf (1999) and its aftermath—rife with accusations of provocative politicization, willful anachronism, and linguistic inability12—show what a vehement reaction a postcolonial13 translation can provoke, even if (or especially because) it came from an established male, Nobel Prize-winning poet. Heaney, too, “flaunts [his] signature” in his preface, where he discusses his decision to call Heorot a bawn, an English colonial mansion erected in Ireland in the early modern period (xxx). With a single word, the translator associates the Danes and their Geatish helpers with the colonizing English, and the Grendelkin with the colonized Irish. The insertion, however partial, of a later (post)colonial context into an Anglo-Saxon text has struck some Anglo-Saxonists as reckless; in the words of one scholar (and rival translator), placing a bawn in Beowulf resembles putting intifada in a modern rendition of the Hebrew Bible.14 But Heaney still writes in English, and pointedly, in the same preface, recalls his exhilaration upon realizing that the Old English verb þolian, “to suffer,” gives rise to the regionalism to thole that his farmer relatives used (xxv–xxvi). Postcolonial translation, like postcolonial writing more broadly, acknowledges complex, mixed legacies of the colonizing force, including their culture. Heaney’s challenging of Beowulf does not preclude his paying homage to it. These two at first glance opposing actions are intertwined. Indeed, Heaney has given the Old English poem a new life by making it speak to our own time and struggles, and he did so by focusing on certain aspects of colonization already present in the original: for instance, the division of space and exclusion of a humanoid Other from the life of the royal hall. Though her work likewise embodies the same duality of challenge and homage, Purvis employs neither politically charged terms nor key words from her dialect or idiolect. She seems not to introduce overwhelming alterations into her text even when she would wish to. When mentioning Grendel’s mother in her preface, the translator admits, “I have not given her a name, but I have given her and others more of a presence and, occasionally, a voice in the poem” (ii). Jane Holland’s “womanhandling” of the Wanderer provides a different example of feminist translation of an Old English text.15 While Purvis continues to write from the margin, Holland makes her hero into a heroine. Her wanderer’s gender is evident in the female pronouns that abound from the very beginning of The Lament of the Wanderer: “Far out, a solitary drifter falters; falls / to her knees [...]

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She’s always waiting for her stars to change / [...] / as she travels this earth” (33). Instead of a lost homosocial bond between the lord and his thane, Holland presents us with a vanished, unabashedly erotic heterosexual romance. The protagonist of the Old English Wanderer recalls a scene from his past: “þinceð him on mode þæt he his mondryhten / clyppe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecge / honda ond heafod, swa he hwilum ær / in geardagum giefstolas breac” (it seems to him in his mind that he embraces and kisses / his lord, and on his knee might lay / hands and head, as before he sometimes / enjoyed the gift-stool in days of old) (41–44).16 Holland’s narrator, on the other hand, reports that the wanderer sees before her eyes “the two of you still together, / skin-close, kissing, or down on your knees, / laying your head in his lap again, / greedy for pleasure” (34). Oral sex provided by a woman takes the place of cuddly, all-male expressions of fealty; pleasure substitutes for treasure. Deceived by the apparitions in the waves, the lonely voyager woman calls out “Darling!” (34). Compared to Holland’s feminization and subsequent heterosexualization of the Wanderer on the one hand, and Heaney’s sporadic deployment of charged historical allusions and Hiberno-English in his Beowulf, on the other, Purvis’s modifications and additions appear at home in Anglo-Saxon England, if not always in Beowulf itself. They are not, for their closeness to the world of the original, any less challenging to the text.

Destabilizing the Text: Postcolonial Feminist Translation and the Textuality of Beowulf One such challenge is to Beowulf’s integrity and consistent narrative voice. As I have mentioned above, Barbara Godard argues that polyphony in feminist translation works to undermine the hegemonic monological discourse. Purvis transforms the Anglo-Saxon poem, and at the same time she transforms the poetic English of today. A feminist translator strives to endow their text with “polyglossia or the co-presence of several ‘foreign’ languages.”17 Closely related creatively disruptive strategies include “the fragmentation of language, the disregard for grammatical or syntactical structures and the dismantling of individual words [...] to examine their concealed meanings.”18 All these elements appear in Purviswulf. For instance, the last subsection of “Grendel,” the section that introduces the monster, features code-switching between the original Old English and Modern English:

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      3 Border-wanderer, heath-walker. The line is crossed. Se the moras hold— se grimma gæst, mearc-stapa. (23)

A translator decodes and encodes once again.19 She reassembles lines 102–3 from Beowulf: “wæs se grimma gæst Grendel haten, / mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold” (that grim spirit was called Grendel! / [a great borderstepper, he who ruled the moors]).20 Anglo-Saxon is separated from its later descendant by means of italics, but certain words, pronounced loudly, prove understandable (“grim,” “guest/ghost”). Mearc-stapa may not present too many difficulties because it follows the two compounds that, split like it with a hyphen, translate it doubly (“border-wanderer, heathwalker”). If that is not enough, the title on the next page announces, “THE MOOR-STEPPER COMES.” “Se the moras hold,” a macaronic clause, works as a miniature riddle for the modern reader, who has to decode both the vocabulary and the syntax.21 The crossing of lines and Grendel’s liminality are mirrored in a passage that crosses the line between Old and Modern English, original and translation. Just as Grendel, the descendant of Cain, provides a reflecting surface for Beowulf and other indubitably human characters, so does the language of Anglo-Saxons reverberate in its modern offspring. Theories and practices of feminist and postcolonial translation often relish “in-betweenness,” seeking “a reassessment of the creative potentialities of liminal space.” 22 What Purvis creates here has deeper resonances. An element of ungrammaticality flows into the text. “Hold,” not in italics, should either be “held” if past tense or “holds” if present tense to accord with the singular subject se, “he.” Touched by its predecessor, or reminded of it, Modern English loses its bearings. We should, of course, keep in mind that the power dynamic that plays out in the passage above does not parallel, strictly speaking, the one between languages of the colonizer and the colonized, in which the latter incorporates the former or resists being incorporated by it. The Anglo-Saxon stratum survives in present-day English in a fairly altered form due to the vagaries of historical linguistics. The Vikings might have colonized Old English, and the Normans after them: if anything, Modern English is a result of these linguistic colonizations (and its later colonizations of other languages). Nevertheless, faced with its past, in a charged moment of cannibal bordercrossings orchestrated by Purvis, Modern English can no longer pretend

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to have a transcendent, pure, standard, imperial form against which all other Anglophone expressions, including the American, are measured.23 Purvis’s avant-garde approach fits the source text because they both resist absolute transparency. The experience of reading Beowulf even in the original does not allow for full comprehension, and translating the poem in purely understandable terms, whatever that might mean, would betray it.24 Alfred David defends Seamus Heaney’s use of hirpling, a lesser-known dialectal word, to describe Grendel’s painful convulsions (lines 975–77) against accusations of opacity. The scholar explains that complete transparency of every word is unnecessary for our understanding of the poem; some words can invoke their meaning simply by their sound.25 David goes on to point out that the manuscript of Beowulf features many words that are opaque, such as ealu-scerwen, the crux meaning either “ale-sharing” (sharing out of ale, a feast from hell) or “ale-shearing” (depriving of ale, a feast to end all feasts, i.e., Grendel’s attacks threatening the warriors’ way of life) (line 769).26 Purvis preserves a similar type of opacity while she underlines several moments of textual difficulty in her description of the pilfering of the dragon’s hoard: This is an unknown door. We should not be here. In dark of night, a dragon rules is ruling, will rule a hoard in a barrow-hall, we cannot be here, the pen in my hand shakes, I cannot write. The pen is a treasure that burns—was I reaching? There is no light here, I cannot see. I took in my hand     what is in my hand, He will this, he will come when he wakes and sees our trickery, every household will know in its beams and bones we have angered it. Who do we blame? A kinsman a slave fleeing the page spits my story back at me, homeless, finding a door we have no name for: mwatīde, it means nothing.     Fear goes there. That is all. (87)

The translator includes several gaps, inspired by manuscript damage in the passages from which she takes inspiration for the extract above. In addition to the lacunae between “will” and “this” (line 7 above) and after “my hand” (line 6), the long indentations in lines 7 and 13 evoke blank spaces. Purvis keeps the crux mwatīde as it stands in the manuscript, though with an editorial macron on the i marking a long vowel. Even the act of refusing

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to decode a crux is an encoding, a careful authorial decision. The editors of Klaeber’s Beowulf list about a dozen proposed emendations in a footnote, themselves preferring to read the problematic place in 2226b as “(in þ)ā tīde” (in that time). Purvis here follows the original version by Klaeber, who left the word unchanged, having considered it “a hopelessly corrupt reading.”27 “[I]t means nothing” (87). Nevertheless, it means something because it absorbs meaning from its surroundings. We cannot trust any of the numerous narrators of Purviswulf any more than we can trust the main narrator in Beowulf or its characters telling their stories. The modern translator in this passage dramatizes our uncertainty when faced with an ancient narrative. Writing about it—or rewriting it—is like breaking and entering a forbidden hoard. “We” switches to “I.” Then questions come thick and fast. Who is that “I” who took something in his or her hand, and what did he or she take? And then, a few lines later, “I” becomes “we,” and “we” blame “a kinsman a slave.” Italicization once again introduces even more voices (or a different aspect of the speaker’s voice). “[T]he page spits my story back at me” indicates the resistance that the manuscript puts up against our efforts to uncover its secrets. A modern translator is expected to illuminate the obscure parts, or at least not to create more obscurity, but Purvis here strategically introduces obscurity in order to complicate the confidence of the dominant voice of her original and its later reconstructions. At the same time, she introduces a possibility for reading the passage: it is about fear that circulates in the Geatish society well before the dragon begins his rampage across the countryside. The postcolonial feminist translational strategies of productive obscurity, including fragmentation and grammatical and syntactic destabilization, at the same time contribute to the richness of the new work and communicate the textual reality of the lone surviving Beowulf manuscript. In addition to playing with languages and textual form, Purvis focuses on three interrelated elements to extend the polyphony of her source. They are domestic labor, quotidian practices, and ordinary biological phenomena. The two last phenomena often involve eating, which fits with our idea of the translator as Grendel’s mother. The original usually avoids these elements because of their non-heroic nature, that is their association with women, sometimes women caught between ethnic identities. By adding such ordinary objects and creatures as a stewpot, a crooked thumb, a field mouse, and “a seabird / catching that first smell of salt” (16) to Beowulf, the feminist translator fills the conspicuous gaps

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in a narrative explicitly concerned with masculine valor, conquest, and outpourings of elegy.

Domestic Labor In Beowulf, the only significant physical exertion expended by the characters involves warfare, preparing for warfare, or bragging about warfare. Non-aristocratic characters do not figure importantly in the plot, with the exception of the nameless slave who pilfers the dragon’s hoard in the last part of the text, setting in motion the events that will lead to the hero’s death. Labor of any kind is, for the most part, invisible.28 Heorot appears as if by magic, analogous to God’s creating the world ex nihilo. The readers hear nothing about the cooks who prepare the many feasts that Hrothgar, his court, and his guests enjoy. Wealhtheow’s famous serving the hero with drink appears more ritualistic than vocational. The elaborate armor of our heroes receives attention, but not the artisans who must have crafted it, except for the legendary Weland (line 455)29; swords have names, not sword-makers. The only structure for which one might get a sense of the work it required is Beowulf ’s barrow, which takes ten days to construct according to the poet (line 3159).30 Purvis’s foregrounding of scenes of domestic labor in her translation suggests that work is a necessary activity in every historical period, and, moreover, that legendary heroes depend on their subjects for more mundane, everyday tasks. The anonymous narrator of the first section of Purviswulf, “Scyld Scefing,” reports how the Danes had discovered the mythic founder of their royal lineage: 31 “I was gathering kelp when we found him, my back unbent by age, / holding his squalling face in the hollow of my neck as we carried / him to the hall, that first grey morning” (16). The nameless woman in “Scyld Scefing” remembers her youth, the time when her back was still straight, infusing non-heroic physicality into the account of the mythical warrior-king. Whereas her unglamorous activity before discovering Scyld—kelp-gathering— could indicate the lowly state of the Danes before the arrival of their savior, her tender care of the “squalling” baby Scyld shows him, too, in an extremely vulnerable human position. The physical, maternal closeness, that astonishing “hollow of [her] neck,” finds no equivalent in Beowulf. The original rushes to establish a link connecting fathers and sons in the Danish dynasty, with only one woman, who is unnamed in the current state of the manuscript: “Ðæm feower bearn forðgerimed

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/ in worold wocun, weoroda ræswan, / Heorogar ond Hroðgar ond Halga til; / hyrde ic þæt [...] wæs On]elan cwen, / Heaðo-Scilfingas healsgebedda” (Four sons and daughters he fathered all told, / and brought them up to be great rulers: / Heorogar and Hrothgar and Halga the Good, / and an excellent daughter, who was Onla’s queen, / beloved wife of the Swedish war-king ) (59–63). Just as she ushers Scyld into his life among the Danes at the very beginning of the poem, the speaker of this section states that she is present after his death to help send him off into the afterlife. In contrast to the glorious funerary goods enumerated in Beowulf, such as “hildewæpnum ond heaðowædum, / billum ond byrnum” (battle weapons and garments of war, / [...] blades [...] and byrnies) (39–40), Purviswulf speaks of only the unspecified “gifts / we shroud him with,” “a wooden boat,” and “gold he couldn’t at his strongest height have carried” (17). The narrator, an old, low-ranking, bent woman, may not know the words to name aristocratic appurtenances, or she may not care to. She does pay attention to details that she finds meaningful (“kelp,” “the hollow of my neck”), and she does not forget to remark that after “[h]e died in his sleep, of old age,” not a very warrior-like death, she “carved the nails” (17). For a second, her small act of cutting Scyld’s corpse’s nails in a pared-down scene of his funeral at sea becomes strange, even heroic. There is a linguistic ambiguity in the phrase to deepen that sense: the “carving” implies more than mere cutting, as it is a considered, artistic deed (like wood carving ), and the nails could also refer to the rivets holding together the boat in which Scyld was put to rest. “Carving the nails” confuses the division between artifact construction and the grooming of a corpse; between a lofty, even religious endeavor and a mundane, usually unmentioned, yet crucial deed. Purvis does more than represent everyday labor: she endows it with quiet dignity. If feminist translators more generally showcase traditionally invisible female labor by refusing to be invisible within the text they translate, 32 then Purvis does so doubly by being visible and adding instances of actual women at work to Beowulf.

Everyday Life: Food Aside from Grendel, Beowulf does not discuss anybody else’s eating habits. 33 Purvis permits more hints of gastronomy in her version. Her Beowulf describes to Hygelac how Grendel would swallow his victims like

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a man swallows a pilchard (81). “Pilchard” is a broader term for sardine, one of the smaller fish.34 A strategic storyteller, the Geat carefully crafts a narrative for his uncle and lord in which the implied difference in size between Grendel and men makes Beowulf ’s triumph all the more impressive. Seafood in Anglo-Saxon England was “traded from the coast deep into the Midlands,” and the taste for it seems to have been a mark of Scandinavian influence.35 Purvis aptly has the Scandinavian hero use a pilchard in his analogy. A different alimentary simile occurs earlier. When the protagonist grapples with the monster and their din fills Heorot, the Old English poet says that the Danes experienced ealu-scerwen, the crux I already mentioned, which could mean “ale-sharing” or “ale-shearing.” “Denum eallum wearð / ceasterbuendum, cenra gehwylcum, / eorlum ealuscerwen [...] Reced hlynsode” (The hall thundered, sounding to the thanes / who lived in that place hideously like / the pleasure of men who were merry on ale) (767–69; Osborn opts for “ale-sharing”). Purvis transforms this phrase when translating the subsequent passage about Heorot’s sturdiness: “The hall clattered with waking ; / Heorot held clamor like a boiling stew-pot closed fast” (38). The sustained alliteration on h- and cl- (“hall,” “Heorot”; “clattered,” “clamor,” “closed”) and other sound effects (the end of “fast” echoing the beginning of “stew”) along with the interlace of finite verb forms (“clattered,” “held,” “closed”) and gerunds (“waking,” “boiling”) mimic bursts and flows of energy in keeping with the scene in which a mighty building barely contains the grappling of two superhuman adversaries. What is at stake here is somebody’s meal, and, at the end of the one-on-one battle with Beowulf, either Grendel will have a chance to eat the warriors or the warriors will have breakfast. The narrator of this section of Purviswulf perhaps reaches out for an image familiar to her or him; preparation of meals, rather than drinking parties, would have captured that particular imagination. Readers today, too, can more easily imagine a pot threating to boil over than whichever signification of ealu-scerwen is at play in the original Beowulf. Comparing Hrothgar’s hall to a stewpot has a more menacing resonance in a narrative introducing Grendel, a cannibal antagonist within a “cannibal narrative.” The simile offers a momentary vision of Heorot turned into a source of not just food, but cooked food, likening Grendel’s ravaging of humans to more “civilized” fare. Though this sonorous, sensuous scene, Purvis shows an awareness of her own role of a translator-as-a-sophisticated-cannibal: she “cooks up” a scene inspired by her “anthropophagic” source for our delectation.

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Non-Heroic Anatomy Beowulf, a poem featuring multiple cremations, spilled blood, and dismembered body parts, does not shy away from the anatomical even in its smallest building blocks, the kennings such as ban-hus (“bone-house,” meaning body, lines 2508 and 3147). However, non-heroic, individualized, distracting anatomical detail tends to be missing. We can only distinguish Beowulf from other people because he has the strength of thirty normal men. No visible mark of distinction such as eye or hair color, or gait or twitch, sets him or other warriors apart. Purvis not only inserts such specific elements into her text, but she also draws the reader’s attention to them. A certain pleasure in corporeal observation fits well with the spirit of cannibalism; the translator adds parts for our carnivorous rumination. In the scene where Æschere sleeps before being snatched away by Grendel’s mother, we read: Identical under a blanket to the rest, but not quite the same—he squinted when he laughed, he had a crooked thumb, but in a story set tight with blood and bone, we forget these, we pare these things away. (57)

Æschere appears identical to the other sleeping soldiers only from a distance. Up close, his squint while laughing would distinguish him, an attribute Purvis draws out typographically. He also has a disfigured thumb, making readers wonder about his past: was he born with one, or did something happen to him later in life? If the latter, perhaps the injury was not heroic enough to warrant a comment. Although the narrator claims that we forget such common variation in human physique in a story of war that focuses on graphic bodily harm, the non-heroic aspects of the heroic body abound in Purvis’s text. Warriors buckle at the knees (63) when they glimpse water monsters in the mere. Grendel is reported as nibbling on “knee cartilage” (37), a phrase that brings to mind both scientific and gastronomic discourses. Fifty years later, Wiglaf washes the dying Beowulf ’s “wounds, dirt and sweat caked to his helmet, / his blood-stained hands” (99). “Bloodstained” could subtly indict our protagonist. Sweat is never mentioned in the Old English poem, but the word swat, which does appear three times as a simplex, means “blood,” so Purvis might have created a pointed

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English/englisc pun here. Such wordplay does not go against the spirit of the original, and is found regularly in Anglo-Saxon verse.36 As Purvis elsewhere incorporates instances of labor and endows them with dignity, here, too, she adds an ordinary bodily fluid to heroic verse, placing on the same level sweat and swat. At the same time, sweat swallows swat in a poem that has a greater appetite, for a greater range of liquids, than its source.

Small Birds and Baby Mammals In Purviswulf, animals and humans can inhabit the same link on the food chain. One of the most memorable instances of a dramatically outsider perspective happens in the section titled “The Collar,” which consists of a flashback into the future of the torque that Wealhtheow gives Beowulf after he vanquishes Grendel. It begins: Eagles hunt high. Their feathers glint gold against the sun, mica among the loam-specks of crows a sky-current below. They hunt by sight—a rabbit tensing to the ground, grass tenting over a field mouse’s flight—or light against a gold collar, a signal-fire gone wild to an empty sky. Coast closer. The collar sits on Hygelac still, prideful where he clasped it that dark morning, waves pushing him towards Frisia. He fell under his shield, and his people’s flag covers them both. (54)

First, the speaker expands the “beasts of battle” trope, removing the traditional wolf and raven that gather in expectation of a feast while supplying a brace of other woodland creatures. Second, they zoom out to encompass the Frisian tableau around the fallen Geatish leader Hygelac. Purvis’s precise naturalistic observation would be out of place in the original Beowulf: a rabbit’s body contracting in fear, grass rising in a particular way around the path of a fleeing field mouse. Nature surrounds and incorporates the world of the human characters of Beowulf; they do not master it, however much they may wish to. On the “field of corpses,” Hygelac is on the same level as a field mouse. An eagle would eat them both. What sets

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the man apart is the glimmer of his jewelry that, nevertheless, does not communicate anything to the world at large, “a signal-fire gone wild to an empty sky.” What sets Hygelac apart is that he figures in a work of art that we read: the Old English poem. After zooming up to the eagles and crows and zooming down to their prey, the section rests on the human level in between. The last line of the second stanza restores some dignity to Hygelac: “He fell under his shield, and his people’s flag covers them both.” “His people’s flag” underlines the fact that he perishes abroad. Questioning the heroic in Purviswulf still keeps the concept in circulation, and the heroic, as evident in the original Beowulf, already incorporates a critique of itself—the translator just brings it out more. With other references to small beasts, Purvis establishes intertextual links with smaller, more lyrical Anglo-Saxon poems which, like the more elegiac passages in Beowulf, highlight the other side of the aristocratic warrior lifestyle. The bent, kelp-gathering narrator of “Scyld Scefing” speaks of the Danish dynasty founder’s rapid development, “Eager to have what was his, deeds / came quickly—he knew his way with a sword in his hand, a seabird / catching that first smell of salt” (16). The seabird image somewhat deflates the young Scyld’s accomplishments. Seabirds famously emerge in the Wanderer’s travels as a contrast to his visions of yearnedfor plentitude in the hall, their screeching a cruel parody of the sounds of feasting with other retainers of his lord: “Ðonne onwæcneð eft, wineleas guma, / gesihð him biforan fealwe wegas, / baþian brimfuglas, brædan feþra” (Then he awakes again, the friendless man, / sees before him fallow waves, / bathing seabirds, with spread feathers) (45–47).37 An invocation of a sea voyage framed existentially (although with an orthodox consolation at the end) fits beautifully in the context of a legendary king who comes from nowhere and goes to an unknown place after his sea-burial. This double image of marine instability stands in sharp contrast to the subsequent establishment of a Danish royal line down to Hrothgar, culminating in the construction of Heorot on land adjacent to Grendel’s mere. Another intertextual infusion in Purviswulf comes from Wulf and Eadwacer. A Danish princess married off to a Frisian king, Hildeburh is caught in the middle in a war between her father’s and her husband’s tribes in one of the embedded narratives of Beowulf. Describing the mass cremation scene in Finnsburg, in which the corpses of Hildeburh’s brother and son burn side by side, the narrator of the corresponding section in Purviswulf explains that “[h]er whelp went on the fire as well, / she insisted on it” (48). The word “whelp” to mean “child” recalls the lines

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“Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earmne hwelp / bireð wulf to wuda” (Do you hear me, Eadwacer? The wolf bears our wretched whelp / to the woods) (16–17).38 Wulf and Eadwacer is one of the two Frauenlieder, or lyrics in women’s voices, surviving in Old English, and it is appropriate that Purvis alludes to that tradition in a passage that depicts the suffering of a woman. Moreover, it is a poem that underlines the geographic separation between the speaker and her beloved, with Wulf on one island, she on another; he exiled and she enslaved. Purvis’s postcolonial feminist translation fortifies passages in the original that already foreground the predicament of gender, geography, and complicated tribal allegiances.

Conclusion: Grappling with Beowulf In discussions of Beowulf translations, Anglo-Saxonists often speak of the need to maintain the distance between the modern reader and the medieval text and preserve the historical specificity of the poem. In other words, they favor foreignization over domestication, to use Lawrence Venuti’s influential terms. 39 So far, so good. Using the past as a mere mirror for the present amounts to erasing the Otherness of the past, thus hindering its ability to exert a salutary influence on the present. The problem arises when that defamiliarization becomes what I call a familiar defamiliarization (which Purviswulf avoids rather well). Familiar defamiliarizations of Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon literature in general include any of the following : an emphasis on orality, communality, heroism and other Old Germanic values, grounding of the poem’s reality in archaeolog y, and straightforwardness of meaning. 40 This volume celebrates the work of Roberta Frank, an invaluable scholar, an erudite reader of literature, and my graduate-school mentor. Her voice is female and “non-metropolitan” (as in not from the colonial center of London), American, and from one of the “outer” boroughs, the Bronx. Frank is by her own admission more of a Dr. Watson than a Sherlock Holmes.41 For much of her career, she has been on a polemical mission against a number of all-too-familiar defamiliarizations, making us question, for instance, the unwarranted faith in Sutton Hoo parallels, Anglo-Saxon oral poet theories, imagined Germaniae having more to do with nineteenth-century fantasies than anything medieval, and early-dating practices based on heavily reconstructed metrics and presumed one-to-one correspondences between the world of the poem and its audience. 42 Meghan Purvis and Roberta

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Frank, each in her own fashion, poet and scholar alike, demonstrate what can happen when a brilliant woman grapples with the text. New insights and perspectives become possible, illuminating what Beowulf hints at, but does not or cannot—for reasons of style or decorum or shortsightedness—say. This call for multifaceted feminist involvement with Old English poetry would now seem old-fashioned, even passé, if it were not for some disturbing recent Anglo-Saxonist outbursts: a collection of essays tainted with dismissals of feminist and postcolonial criticism and ad feminam remarks about Frank herself, and the anti-feminist online meltdown of an influential male scholar.43 It matters to have responses to Beowulf in many different women’s voices, wherever they might reside on the continuum between poetry and philology. Such contributions permit us to declare, along with Purvis’s Hrothgar at his parting from Beowulf—knowing that, this time, it would be true: “There will be treasures shared, and words / called over the seabirds’ bathing-pool, curved hulls / bending to each other like embracing arms” (74).44 NOTES Ali Arda is a Turkish translator working with Swedish and Norwegian. Murathan Mungan is a contemporary writer of poetry and prose. Arda’s statement comes from an interview with Cansu Canseven, “Saklıyı bulmak” (“To find the hidden,” my translation). 2 Heaneywulf, albeit originally a slur by Anglo-Saxonists, is no longer derogatory (Chickering, “Beowulf and ‘Heaneywulf,’” 305). I take Liuzzawulf from Sauer’s title “Heaneywulf, Liuzzawulf ” (331), also non-derogatory. I use the portmanteau titles for their liveliness and convenience. 3 Schulman lists more than sixty translations from 1837 to 2010 (Appendix 2 to “Monstrous Introductions,” 84–86). Out of them, five are by women (Mary E. Waterhouse, Constance B. Hieatt, Marijane Osborn, Ruth Lehmann, and Bertha Rogers). 4 Melissa Wallace compares the two schools of translation, feminist and postcolonial, concluding that they have much in common: they “signify a search for and a vindication of the Other” and rely on the trope of the translator as “[a] creator of a contact zone, and more radically as [a] cultural cannibal” (“Writing the Wrongs,” 71). Moreover, feminist translation thrives in marginal spaces. It is not a coincidence that an influential school of feminist translation, to which Godard and von Flotow belong, emerged in the late 1970s in Quebec, or that the co-editors of a recent volume on feminist translation (Castro and Ergün, 1

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Feminist Translation Studies) come from Galicia and Turkey respectively. For more on the postcolonial tenor of the Québécois school, please consult Simona Bertacco, “The Canadian Feminists’ Translation Project: Between Feminism and Postcolonialism.” 5 The quotation is from R. M. Liuzza, “Beowulf: Monuments, Memory, History,” 101. Liuzza there makes an analogy between the unfortunate pilferer of the hoard and the poet of Beowulf. 6 Bassnett and Trivedi, “Introduction: Of Colonies, Cannibals and Vernaculars,” 1–2. The Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade famously employed this metaphor in his manifesto on writing (4); the translator Haraldo de Campos similarly compared translation to a blood transfusion because of its ability to give life to a different culture (5). The inspiration for the cannibal-as-translator trope seems to be historical: the Tupinambà tribe of sixteenth-century Brazil honored a Portuguese Jesuit priest by eating him (1). It seems apt, even taking into consideration the attitudes prevalent in medieval Britain, that postcolonial translators would imagine themselves as eaters of human flesh. According to Geraldine Heng, by the thirteenth century in Britain, “cannibalism has explicitly become the preferred trope, in romance, for figuring conquest and colonization” (Empire of Magic, 68). The Empire always bites back. 7 The poem hints that she eats only one character, Æschere (his head survives, so she presumably consumes the rest of his body), as opposed to her son, whose hunger for human flesh knows no bounds. 8 In Heather Blurton’s estimation, Beowulf’s own “cannibal narrative” begins with Grendel’s attacks, marking “the culmination of the overarching cannibal narrative of the Beowulf-manuscript,” which contains other texts, like The Wonders of the East and The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle with prominent antropophagic characters (Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature, 37). A range of attitudes on cannibalism existed in the Middle Ages. For scholarly discussion mostly focusing on the late medieval period, see Price, Consuming Passions (which, nevertheless, touches upon Old English texts like The Wonders of the East and Andreas [13–17]) and Tattersall, “Anthropophagi and Eaters of Raw Flesh.” The type of cannibalism practiced by Grendelkin is exocannibalism (eating strangers), to borrow a term from Tattersall (241). If we follow the translation-as-cannibalism metaphor further, we may ask ourselves whether Purvis’s practice bridges endo- and exocannibalism, since Old English is both a “stranger” to Modern English and its still living, submerged, however fragmented, part. That vernacular Anglo-Saxon poetry itself could imagine textual production as cannibalism is clear from Andreas, a poem that incorporates, hungrily and dramatically, bits of Beowulf and features pagan Mermedonians who crave human flesh. For more on Andreas and its cannibalizing poetic practice, see Irina Dumitrescu’s essay in this volume.

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Godard, “Theorizing Feminist Discourse,” 88–89 (quotation on 88). Godard, “Theorizing Feminist Discourse,” 94. 11 Chance, “The Structural Unity of Beowulf”; Oswald, “‘Wigge under Wætere.’” 12 See, for example, Chickering “Beowulf and ‘Heaneywulf ’” and Gruber, “‘So.’ So What?” in Schulman and Szarmach, “Beowulf ” at Kalamazoo. 13 Ireland’s postcolonial status has been widely accepted among literature scholars. For instance, Jahan Ramazani, The Hybrid Muse (21–48); Maria Tymoczko, “Translations of Themselves” (147–63); and Ashok Bery, Cultural Translation and Postcolonial Poetry (101–31) use postcolonial frameworks to read W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Seamus Heaney, respectively. 14 Chickering, “Beowulf and ‘Heaneywulf,’” 318. 15 Susan Bassnett applies Barbara Godard’s term “womanhandling” to Holland’s Lament of the Wanderer. She deems the rendition not entirely successful (“Variations on Translation,” 64). The text of The Lament of the Wanderer used in this chapter is found in Holland’s collection Camper Van Blues. 16 I quote the text of The Wanderer and Modern English translation from Treharne, Old and Middle English. 17 Godard, “Theorizing Feminist Discourse,” 89. 18 Von Flotow, “Feminist Translation,” 73. 19 Godard, “Theorizing Feminist Discourse,” 91. 20 I quote the original of Beowulf from Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles. The modern English translation that follows quotations in Old English comes from Osborn, Beowulf. I chose Marijane Osborn’s version for two reasons: one, to show what a more philologically close (though still poetic) translation than Purvis’s would look like; and two, to showcase another translation by a woman. (Osborn for some reason does not translate the second part of this quotation. I supply the translation in the brackets.) 21 Drawing on Johan Huizinga, Craig Williamson notes in the introduction to his translation of the Exeter riddles that poetry is “never far from its riddlic roots” (A Feast of Creatures, 44). The riddle pervades the Anglo-Saxon imagination, also playing a crucial role in analyses of their visual art such as intricate metalwork (Karkov, Art of Anglo-Saxon England, 38). 22 Bassnett and Trivedi, “Introduction,” 5. These discussions of in-betweenness go back to Homi Bhabha’s theorizations of hybridity. Bhabha proposes that “it is the ‘inter’—the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the inbetween space—that carries the burden of the meaning of culture” (Location of Culture, 38). 23 I am not claiming that non-standard, non-metropolitan, and regional Englishes have still not received a proper recognition. One needs only look at recent histories of the English language like David Crystal’s Stories of English (which tells two parallel stories, one standard and one not) and anthologies 9

10

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of literature in many Anglophone varieties like Dohra Ahmad’s Rotten English (which includes African American Vernacular English, Scots, West African and Caribbean Creoles, etc.) to see how untenable that argument would be. My point here concerns translations from Old into Modern English which have not been known for (socio)linguistic experimentation partly in fear of academic criticism. After all, the scholarly reaction against Heaneywulf, some of which I sketch above, often focuses on the number, sometimes exaggerated, of Irish and Hiberno-English words. Alfred David, on the contrary, sees Heaney’s occasional employment of these terms as an indication of “the multicultural and transnational nature of any translation and of the English language and Beowulf itself,” and points out that one cannot (as had been attempted in the past) imagine a Modern English translation of an Anglo-Saxon text that avoids Romance borrowings (“The Nationalities of Beowulf,” 7). Daniel Remein in “Auden, Translation, Betrayal” goes a few steps further when he argues for “the possibility of translating the medieval as a betrayal of globally hegemonic modern English” (811). Whatever the acceptance level for multiple non-standard Englishes, one variant may still hold “globally hegemonic” sway. Remein’s remark that, through its avant-garde relationship to Wulf and Eadwacer, Auden’s poem “The Secret Agent” “reminds us that modern English is constantly already handing us over to Old English” (822) resonates well with my discussion of this particular passage in Purviswulf. 24 Liuzza, whose Beowulf may at first glance appear relatively modest and transparent, believes that every translation of the work is artful (“Beowulf in Translation,” 24), and intends his own to “leave some of the poem’s rough spots there for students to trip over” (“Beowulf in Translation,” 25). The key issue for him would be “the balance between clarity and obscurity” (“Beowulf in Translation,” 25). 25 David, “The Nationalities of Beowulf,” 4–5. 26 Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 161. I discuss Purvis’s handling of the crux in the section on food. 27 Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, 76. 28 “The heroic economy [in Beowulf] that I am describing, if it bears any resemblance at all to the economy of Anglo-Saxon England, is a radically abbreviated version of it” (Baker, Honour, Exchange and Violence, 37). 29 Baker makes this point on page 39 of Honour, Exchange and Violence. 30 Gale Owen-Crocker attributes this exception to the author’s desire to distinguish “the remote past” of the winged hoard-guardian from “a more tangible past” in which Geats build tombs (Four Funerals, 85). The closer we are to an event, the argument goes, the more specific labor emerges in the text (although Weland would seem to be an exception to this rule, belonging to a mythical past, the poet gives the readers no sense of time or effort required for his craft).

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Or he, since the speaker’s identity, including the gender, is not clear, but the person’s acts suggest labor traditionally associated with women (gathering, tending to infants and the dead). 32 Flotow, Translation and Gender, 43–44. 33 See Magennis, Anglo-Saxon Appetites, esp. 28–34 (“Absence of References to Food”). 34 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a sardine is a young pilchard. 35 Lee, “Earth’s Treasures,” 150. 36 Frank, “Some Uses of Paronomasia,” and Robinson, “Artful Ambiguities.” 37 Treharne, Old and Middle English. 38 The text and translation of Wulf and Eadwacer also come from Treharne, Old and Middle English. 39 They first appear in Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility. Magennis gives a useful summary of traductological debates regarding foreignization and domestication as they bear on his focus, Modern English poetic translations of Beowulf (Translating “Beowulf,” 7–13). His own preferences appear to fall on the foreignization end of the spectrum, which is evident from, for instance, his critique of Raffel’s extremely domesticating translation (132). 40 Stephen Glosecki, for example, hits all the commonplaces in “Skalded Epic (Make It Old)”: “the Saxon poet—the scop, insular counterpart of the Norse skald” (52); “the fossil of a primary epic that evolved in a preliterary oral tradition” (52); “[t]hus sound linkage in the Saxon line found its counterpart in [...] artifacts [...] from Sutton Hoo” (54); “(with thanks to Tacitus) we know ... ” (55). Or, in a single sentence: “And so by skalded I mean an epic composed in resounding alliterative verse meant to be chanted, ideally by a group of people passing the harp round opposite a horn of mead beside a crackling fire” (53). Magennis observes admiringly: “Published portions of [Glosecki’s] translation attest to its muscular imitative and emphatically foreignizing style” (Translating “Beowulf,” 216). 41 I am referring, of course, to Frank, “A Scandal in Toronto,” 854 ff. 42 See her essays “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History,” “Beowulf and Sutton Hoo,” “Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet,” and “A Scandal in Toronto,” among others. 43 The collection in question is Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf. The problematic tenor of some of the contributions has not escaped the reviewers. “I am also surprised,” writes Chris Abram, “at how close several of these essays come to making ad hominem attacks on other scholars, especially Roberta Frank, who is made the scapegoat for the sins of the Toronto contributors again and again” ([Review of Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf ], 137). Eric Weiskott mentions a footnote by Michael Drout “offering to diagnose what has ‘confused’ Clare Lees about twentieth-century literary scholarship (p. 174 n. 56)” and concludes that “[o]ne cannot help but read this footnote against the backdrop of a volume 31

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that includes only one essay by a woman” ([Review of Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf ], 789). On the anti-feminist online meltdown by Allen J. Frantzen (who had also written the afterword for Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf ) and reactions, see Fernandes, “Prominent Medieval Scholar’s Blog.” 44 I would like to thank the editors Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott, the anonymous reader, and Ariella R. Rotramel for their help in revising this essay.

WORKS CITED Abram, Christopher. [Review of Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf ]. Saga-Book 39 (2015): 133–37. Ahmad, Dohra. Rotten English: A Literary Anthology. New York: Norton, 2007. Baker, Peter S. Honour, Exchange and Violence in “Beowulf.” Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. Bassnett, Susan. “Variations on Translation.” In A Companion to Translation Studies, ed. Sandra Bermann and Catherine Porter, 54–66. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Bassnett, Susan and Harish Trivedi. “Introduction: Of Colonies, Cannibals and Vernaculars.” In Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 1999. Bertacco, Simona. “The Canadian Feminists’ Translation Project: Between Feminism and Postcolonialism.” Linguistica Antverpiensia: Themes in Translation Studies 2 (2003): 233–45. Bery, Ashok. Cultural Translation and Postcolonial Poetry. New York: Palgrave, 2007. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Blurton, Heather. Cannibalism in High Medieval Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2007. Canseven, Cansu. “Saklıyı bulmak çeviri için çok önemli” (“To find the hidden is very important for translation”). K24: Kitap, Kültür, Kritik (March 16, 2016). http://t24.com.tr/k24/yazi/ali-arda,631. Castro, Olga and Emek Ergün, eds. Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2017. Chance, Jane. “The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel’s Mother.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 22 (1980): 287–303. Reprinted in Beowulf: A Verse Translation, trans. Seamus Heaney, ed. Daniel Donoghue, 152–67. New York: Norton, 2002. Chickering, Howell. “Beowulf and ‘Heaneywulf.’” Reprinted in Schulman and Szarmach, “Beowulf” at Kalamazoo, 305–21. Crystal, David. The Stories of English. New York: Overlook, 2004. David, Alfred. “The Nationalities of Beowulf: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.” In Ramsey, “Beowulf ” in Our Time, 3–21.

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Fernandes, Rio. “Prominent Medieval Scholar’s Blog on ‘Feminist Fog’ Sparks an Uproar.” The Chronicle of Higher Education January 22, 2016. http://www. chronicle.com/article/Prominent-Medieval-Scholar-s/235014. Flotow, Luise von. “Feminist Translation: Contexts, Practices and Theories.” Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 4 (1991): 69–84. ———. Translation and Gender: Translating in the “Era of Feminism.” Manchester: St. Jerome, 1997. Fulk, R. D., Robert E. Bjork, and Jack D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf. 4th ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Glosecki, Stephen. “Skalded Epic (Make It Old).” In Ramsey, “Beowulf ” in Our Time, 41–66. Godard, Barbara. “Theorizing Feminist Discourse/ Translation.” In Translation, History and Culture, ed. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 87–96. London: Pinter Publishers, 1990. Gruber, Loren C. “‘So.’ So What? It’s a Culture War. That’s Hwaet!” Reprinted in Schulman and Szarmach, “Beowulf ” at Kalamazoo, 335–46. Heng, Geraldine. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Holland, Jane. Camper Van Blues. Cambridge: Salt, 2008. Karkov, Catherine E. The Art of Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Lee, Christina. “Earth’s Treasures: Food and Drink.” In The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, 142–56. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011. Liuzza, R. M. “Beowulf in Translation: Problems and Possibilities.” In Ramsey, “Beowulf ” in Our Time, 23–40. ———. “Beowulf: Monuments, Memory, History.” In Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne, 91–108. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Magennis, Hugh. Anglo-Saxon Appetites: Food and Drink and Their Consumption in Old English and Related Literature. Dublin: Four Courts, 1999. ———. Translating “Beowulf ”: Modern Versions in English Verse. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Neidorf, Leonard, ed. The Dating of “Beowulf ”: A Reassessment. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Osborn, Marijane, trans. “Beowulf ”: A Verse Translation with Treasures of the Ancient North. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Oswald, Dana M. “‘Wigge under Wætere’: Beowulf ’s Revision of the Fight with Grendel’s Mother.” Exemplaria 21 (2009): 63–82. Owen-Crocker, Gale R. The Four Funerals in “Beowulf ” and the Structure of the Poem. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Price, Merrall Llewelyn. Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2003.

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Purvis, Meghan, trans. Beowulf. London: Penned in the Margins, 2013. Ramazani, Jahan. The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Ramsey, Mary K., ed. “Beowulf ” in Our Time: Teaching “Beowulf ” in Translation. Old English Newsletter Subsidia 31. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2002. Remein, Daniel C. “Auden, Translation, Betrayal: Radical Poetics and Translation from Old English.” Literature Compass 8/11 (2011): 811–29. Robinson, Fred C. “Artful Ambiguities in the Old English ‘Book-Moth’ Riddle.” In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation: For John C. McGalliard, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese, 355–62. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1975. Sauer, Hans. “Heaneywulf, Liuzzawulf: Two Recent Translations of Beowulf.” In Of Remembraunce the Keye: Medieval Literature and its Impact through the Ages: Festschrift for Karl Heinz Göller on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, ed. Uwe Böker et al., 331–48. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. Schulman, Jana K. “Monstrous Introductions: Ellengæst and Aglæcwif.” In Schulman and Szarmach, “Beowulf ” at Kalamazoo, 69–92. Schulman, Jana K., and Paul E. Szarmach, eds. “Beowulf ” at Kalamazoo: Essays on Translation and Performance. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2012. Tattersall, Jill. “Anthropophagi and Eaters of Raw Flesh in French Literature of the Crusade Period: Myth, Tradition and Reality.” Medium Ævum 57 (1988): 240–53. Treharne, Elaine, ed. and trans. Old and Middle English: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Tymoczko, Maria. “Translations of Themselves: The Contours of Postcolonial Fiction.” In Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era, ed. Sherry Simon and Paul St-Pierre, 147–63. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2000. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge, 1995. Wallace, Melissa. “Writing the Wrongs of Literature: The Figure of the Feminist and Post-Colonialist Translator.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 35 (2002): 65–74. Weiskott, Eric. [Review of Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf ]. Review of English Studies 67 (2016): 788–90. Williamson, Craig, ed. and trans. A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Part 2

Engines

Light Verse in Anglo-Saxon England Emily V. Thornbury

T

HOUGH IT ONCE HAD a happy home in newspapers, magazines, and social gatherings, light verse has never been entirely comfortable in academic settings. Perhaps consequently, it tends to lack definition: though its label sets it in implicit contrast with Heavy Verse, it is rarely clear in what units of measurement light verse has been weighed and found wanting.1 Rather, each reader seems to employ his or her own scales, to such an extent that anyone who has spent much time perusing anthologies of light verse must conclude that it is very much in a class with pornography, in Mr. Justice Potter Stewart’s definition: we can only know it when we see it.2 And, also like pornography, that act of recognition provides a glimpse into the often baffling oddity of our fellow humans. Kingsley Amis, for instance, opened the introduction to his New Oxford Book of English Light Verse with the question of how W. H. Auden could possibly have considered Kipling’s “Hanging Danny Deaver” (“one of the most harrowing poems in the language”) to be “light”; though not stating so outright, Amis implied that such aberrations in judgment necessitated a New Oxford Book as a counterweight to Auden’s earlier Oxford Book of Light Verse.3 Few professional connoisseurs of light verse seem to have considered Old English poetry buoyant enough to qualify. Gavin Ewart, editor of the Penguin Book of Light Verse, included three Exeter Book riddles: the “Onion,” “Key,” and “Butter-churn,” so it would seem that double entendre rendered these specimens especially light.4 No other compilation of English light verse, so far as I have been able to tell, includes any Old English. This is of a piece with the general reputation for ponderousness overhanging early medieval poetry. Old English, we are often told, “moves at a slow and stately pace”; it was “formal and dignified,”5 and singularly short of the frivolity usually associated with light verse. Usually, but not always. As Amis and others pointed out, Auden’s peculiar definition of the form allowed it to encompass not only downbeat genres like murder ballads, but vast swathes of medieval verse of all

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kinds. For Auden, the lightness of light verse did not emerge from its tone, but from its social commitments: When the things in which the poet is interested, the things which he sees about him, are much the same as those of his audience, and that audience is a fairly general one, he will not be conscious of himself as an unusual person, and his language will be straightforward and close to ordinary speech. When, on the other hand, his interests and perceptions are not readily acceptable to society, or his audience is a highly specialized one, perhaps of fellow poets, he will be acutely aware of himself as the poet, and his method of expression may depart very widely from the normal social language. In the first case his poetry will be “light” in the sense which it is used in this anthology. Three kinds of poetry have been included: (1) Poetry written for performance, to be spoken or sung before an audience [e.g., Folk songs, the poems of Tom Moore]. (2) Poetry intended to be read, but having for its subject-matter the everyday social life of its period or the experiences of the poet as an ordinary human being [e.g., the poems of Chaucer, Pope, Byron]. (3) Such nonsense poetry as, through its properties and technique, has a general appeal [Nursery rhymes, the poems of Edward Lear].6

Light verse, then, is verse that appeals to as many people as possible by reaching out to them on what Auden portrays as deep, fundamental levels: through sound (either the immediate sound of performance, or the encoded sound of rhythm and rhyme), or through common human experience. Emerging from Auden’s socialist principles, this definition of light verse valorizes the form, but in a way that sweeps whole eras into its orbit—if most medieval poetry was intended for some form of performance, for instance, then huge swathes of the surviving corpus would constitute light verse. This probably was indeed Auden’s purpose; but if all medieval verse is to be considered light, the category ceases to be a useful one to medievalists. However, the subdivisions of Auden’s definition open the possibility of identifying subspecies of light verse, forms whose differences allow them to occupy unique niches within a larger poetic ecosystem. In particular, his invocation of “properties and technique” in heading (3) implies a mode of light verse whose appeal is inseparable from its form. Many commentators have noted how often light verse uses strictness of form to create its

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effects;7 Auden here invites us to see the audience as an important player in this game. And by examining the way that form can cultivate a particular kind of expectation in a poem’s audience—and then exploit that expectation for its own purposes—we can discern the outlines of a mode of light verse that demonstrably was practiced in Anglo-Saxon England. This mode, which I call “formal light verse,” is based on an inversion of the usual notion of poetic license. Normally, such license allows poets to temporarily reconfigure their meters to admit words that would not ordinarily fit; through devices like inversions of ictus, substitutions of syllable quantity, or imperfect rhyme, poets signal that the words they choose take precedence over strictly metrical form. But in formal light verse, the meter is imagined as a far mightier force, to whose dictates words are obliged to conform themselves. Ogden Nash delighted in this mode, as a few lines from his “Procrastination is All of the Time” demonstrate: Torpor and sloth, torpor and sloth, These are the cooks that unseason the broth. Slothor and torp, slothor and torp The directest of beeline ambitions can warp. He who is slothic, he who is torporal Will not be promoted to sergeant or corporal.8

Some might classify this as nonsense poetry, but it isn’t at all nonsensical: it simply requires the bound morphemes to obey the strictures of the meter, rather than the lexicon, and allows words to be melted down and recast in any form necessary. Similarly, the stanzas of another great classic of light verse, Byron’s Don Juan, often require language give way to the demands of its rhyme. For example, in Canto I, we find: When people say, “I’ve told you fifty times,”     They mean to scold, and very often do; When poets say, “I’ve written fifty rhymes,”     They make you dread that they’ll recite them too; In gangs of fifty thieves commit their crimes;    At fifty love for love is rare, ’tis true, But then, no doubt, it equally as true is A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.9

The French name of the coin is necessary, but (as so often in the poem) works only with an emphatically British pronunciation. While Byron usually does not invent words wholesale, Don Juan habitually draws words

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from other languages into its orbit and leaves them, as here, in a curious suspension: Louis, rhyming with true is, is neither French nor English, but held by the meter somewhere midway between. Formal light verse, then, has a great deal in common with classical satire, macaronic verse, and other forms that demand a mixture of language and register; we might say that these genres also become formal light verse when their meter seems to compel the use of a foreign, colloquial, distorted, or otherwise inappropriate word. This illusion of necessity can only be created when the meter is predictable—when the audience knows precisely what must come next. This need not mean that the poem’s rules have been explicitly defined. Limericks are a good example of unspoken strictness: most people can appreciate and, often, compose them without knowing much about scansion, even though limericks’ jokes almost always depend on the total predictability of their stress and rhyme. This is true to the extent that an entire subgenre of limerick plays with that predictability by hinging on its disruption: for example, A decrepit old gas man named Peter Whilst hunting around for the meter Touched a leak with his light, He arose out of sight, And, as anyone can see by reading this, he also destroyed the meter.10

The broken meter of this limerick is the logical consequence of the ironclad meter of “normal” limericks and much other light verse. That is to say, once the meter has been imagined as an external structure capable of remaking language, it can be further imagined as a kind of physical structure, vulnerable to disasters like gas explosions.11 Formal light verse, then, is verse in which the meter has been reified: the audience is invited to enjoy the spectacle of words wriggling in its grasp—and, occasionally, of the meter’s own violent overthrow. Medieval poets’ love of formal constraint led a number of them to embrace this mode of light verse. In the late Anglo-Saxon Latin–English Proverbs, for instance, we see its characteristic lexical distortions: Ardor frigesscit, nitor squalescit, amor abolescit, lux obtenebrescit. (Heat cools, brightness grows soiled, love decays, light is darkened.)

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Hāt ācōlað, hwīt āsolað, lēof ālāðaþ, lēoht āðystrað. (Heat cools, white grows soiled, a beloved grows hated, light is darkened.)12

In the Old English, Latin inchoatives consistently appear as Class 2 weak verbs with an ā-prefix: although this seems to have been a common grammatical translation, its regularity here is unusual, and was probably inspired by the rhythmic similarity of the Old English and Latin verb endings (-éscit/-að). Particularly remarkable is the verb āsolian, which only appears in this text; we gather from context that it means “grows dirty,” though the usual Old English word for this is fulian or āfulian.13 Fulað, however, does not rhyme with cōlað; and so the author has seemingly created a new verb. Though the base of this new word was quite probably the noun sol—which usually refers to an animal’s wallow14—it seems most likely that it was pronounced with a long root vowel (āsōlað), possibly by analogy with slōh, “slough.” Not only does the invented word āsōlað perfect the rhyme with ācōlað, it is the only form permitted by the meter: we might say, then, that the Old English verb āsōlian is a creation of the Latin–English Proverbs’ metrical form.15 Even at this small scale, then, reading Anglo-Saxons’ poems as formal light verse can help us perceive how they thought about the elements of language—and when and why they might be tempted to experiment with remaking their own dialects. Undoubtedly, the most spectacular such experiment in Old English is the Rhyming Poem. With opportunities for eyeskip, haplography, and dittography in every single verse, this poem is truly a scribe’s worst nightmare—and though there are indeed a number of mistakes in the Exeter Book’s text, it is rather remarkable that there are not more. All but a handful of the poem’s eighty-seven lines double-alliterate as well as rhyme, and these extraordinary formal requirements often stretch the Old English lexicon into surprising new shapes. Every compound in this passage, for instance, is a hapax legomenon: Searohwīt sōlaþ,   sumurhāt cōlað, foldwela fealleð,   fēondscipe wealleð, eorðmægen ealdaþ,   ellen cōlað. (Bleached white grows soiled, summer’s heat cools, earth’s wealth fails, enmity boils up; the might of earth ages, courage cools.) (67–69)16

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In Old English verse, of course, original compounds are not especially unusual; metrical requirements and (most likely) aesthetic preferences encouraged poets to take creative liberties with their lexicon. But the concentration of new compounds in these lines is notable, and through it the poet has created some remarkable metrical effects. The compounds in line 68 are the rhythmic inverse of those in 67: in the first line, a resolved lift (two light syllables) is followed by a heavy half-lift, while in 68, a heavy primary lift is followed by two light syllables—in effect, a resolved halflift.17 In each of these three lines, the second lift and dip are occupied by finite verbs. The pairing in 67, hwīt sōlað/hāt cōlað, will be familiar from the Latin–English Proverbs—which suggests that this rhyming association may indeed have been (or become) proverbial, although sōlað (whose long vowel is demanded by the meter) is, like āsōlað, a hapax legomenon. But the much more common cōlað reappears in line 69, where it spoils the rhyme: many early editors, following Ludwig Ettmüller’s 1850 edition, emended to cealdað for that reason.18 The verb cealdian is attested only once elsewhere, so that each instance may have been generated from basic morphological rules rather than derived from common use;19 certainly the normal Old English word for “cools” is cōlian, so it indeed seems likely that a scribe substituted it for cealdað, the lectio difficilior. This brief passage, then, shows a tremendous amount of lexical creativity: four unique compounds, and two Class 2 weak verbs that were certainly rare, and may have been invented for the sake of rhyme. It exemplifies the quintessence of formal light verse: a stringent form that prompts poet and audience to view words as malleable. This cavalier attitude toward the lexicon seems to have provoked the poem’s scribe, and the first lines of the Rhyming Poem display a kind of internecine battle. This is a lineated version of the manuscript reading, with quantity indicated and a rough translation: Mē līfes onlāh   se þis lēoht onwrāh ond þæt torhte getēoh   tillīce onwrāh; glæd wæs ic glīwum,   glenged hīwum, blissa blēoum,   blostma hīwum. (He who revealed this light and fitly disclosed the bright [???] granted me life; I was brilliant with joys, adorned with colors, with the aspect of happiness, with the colors of flowers.) (1–4)20

As they stand in the Exeter Book, lines 2 and 4 do not rhyme, while the same word is repeated at the ends of lines 1 and 2, and again in 3 and 4.

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While it is possible that this is authorial, it would be peculiar: not least because the poet has gone to such lengths in the rest of the poem to achieve true rhyme across the caesura. Most editors have therefore emended lines 1–4 for rhyme—overwhelmingly, lines 2 and 4. 21 Each line offers two theoretical possibilities for those who seek to retain some part of the manuscript reading: the editor could choose the a- or b-verse as the base rhyme. In line 4, however, substituting blīwum for blēoum creates an otherwise unattested form of blēo. 22 However, hēow, with a re-created diphthong, is fairly widely attested. Macrae-Gibson thus favors the emended reading “blostma hēowum” for 4b; this reading is curiously unpopular among other editors, however. The reason is perhaps that hīwum and hēowum are effectively the same word, in which the restoration of w has had differing effects on the root vowel.23 Of the two, hēow is rarer and tends to be late (though it does appear in the Vespasian Psalter and the Old English Bede); but some texts, including the Royal Psalter, contain both spellings.24 Though both hīwum and hēowum were, at least at points, simultaneously available to certain Old English speakers, then, the question remains as to why these synonymous variants would be necessary, built structurally into a text in such short sequence. A scribe, it seems, decided that they were not necessary—that requiring two spellings of the same word practically side by side was absurd—and many modern editors have agreed. I believe, however, that Macrae-Gibson’s emendation was correct, and that the poet of the Rhyming Poem demanded two spellings of the same word precisely because it was absurd. These initial lines serve as a signal flare, indicating that words were not going to behave as they normally do: that the poem, in short, was formal light verse. Line 2, then, was no doubt part of the same game. Though the reading “ond þæt torhte getēah, tillīce onwrēah” (and brightly drew it forth, fitly disclosed it) requires two emendations, it does least violence to Old English syntax to propose that we again have, in effect, two forms of the same word: with onwrēon as a Class I strong verb in line 1, and partially brought into Class II in line 2. Both forms are well attested. While the emendation to 2a proposed here might still be an imperfect solution, this emended version of lines 1–4 would both restore the meter and explain why the Exeter Book version does not rhyme: Mē līfes onlāh   se þis lēoht onwrāh ond þæt torhte getēah,   tillīce onwrēah; glæd wæs ic glīwum,   glenged hīwum, blissa blēoum,   blostma hēowum.

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(He who revealed this light, brightly drew it forth and fitly disclosed it granted me life; I was brilliant with joys, adorned with colors, with the aspect of happiness, with the colors of flowers.)

The scribe who altered these readings need not have suffered eyeskip, but may have deliberately changed them, not understanding—or rejecting the idea!—that side-by-side variants might represent not sloppiness, but a challenge.25 As this example demonstrates, the dialect of the Rhyming Poem might be best described as “implausible.” Later lines make this even clearer: Wērig winneð,   wīdsīð onginneð; sār ne sinniþ,   sorgum cinnið (The worn man struggles, begins his long journey; pain does not cease, [it] multiplies in sorrow) (51–52)

From the normal West Saxon -eð inflection of the third-person singular verb, the poem suddenly switches to -ið, generally an archaic and/ or Northumbrian form of the inflection. 26 This delighted some early editors, who saw it as a fossilized trace of the poem’s primitive form and accordingly localized the Rhyming Poem to early eighth-century Northumbria—sometimes emending the entire text to suit. 27 But such “restorations” generally involved large-scale changes, since most of the sounds encoded in the Exeter Book text’s rhymes are not those of an early Northumbrian dialect. Moreover, hypothesizing such an origin does not solve the problem of cinnið, for the verb itself is otherwise unattested and in many ways problematic. 28 However, cennan is a fairly common verb, and one that is paired with sār in a number of the Old English glosses to Psalm 7:15, which seems to be an intertext for this passage: the Royal Psalter, for instance, glosses concepit dolorem et peperit iniquitatem as “he onfeng sar 7 he cende unryhtwisnesse” (he conceived pain, and brought forth iniquity).29 But cenneð does not rhyme with sinneð. I would suggest that the poet solved this problem by recourse to dialectal mixing: having discovered (perhaps through a glossary) that -ið could appear for -eð, he generalized the rule that “i may be substituted for e” and included the -ið present-tense inflections as a key to the puzzle he has set up. While (alas) I cannot prove that this is the only possible origin story of cinnið, the rhyme patterns in the Exeter Book text do demand a dialect that almost certainly

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never existed in nature, but instead emerged from the poet’s ingenuity and (in some sense) the meter itself. That meter is, for the most part, not merely correct, but reflective of an acute sensitivity to detail—as seen, for instance, in the reciprocal balance of lines 67–68 quoted above. Most of the metrical faults in the Rhyming Poem coincide with gaps, or problems with rhyme or sense, and thus can plausibly be attributed to scribal error in nearly all instances. But there is one very notable exception: þonne lichoma ligeð   lima wyrm friteð, ac him wenne gewigeð   ond þa wist geþygeð oþ þæt bēoð þā bān   ān ond æt nyhstan nān   nefne se nēda tān. (when the body lies dead, the worm eats the limbs, but he portions out his pleasure and enjoys the feast until there are bones alone, and at last none except the inevitable lot.) (75–78)

The most striking feature of this passage is, of course, line 77. Most editors indicate loss of text; but Macrae-Gibson does not, and writes: The metrical gap is commonly filled by emendation. But this representation of the final reduced state of man, beyond even the devouring worms, by a half-line reduced almost to nothing, if indeed a scribal error, must be one of the happiest in the history of poetry.30

I believe that his decision not to emend is correct—and that the text itself makes this clear through an extraordinary use of meter. Here are the lines once more, with scansion indicated:  x x / \   /    /  \   x / þonne lichoma ligeð  lima wyrm friteð, x x  / x x /  x  x /  x / ac him wenne gewigeð  ond þa wist geþygeð x  x  (x)x  x  /   / oþ þæt bēoð þā bān    ān x  x  /  x  /   x x x  /x  / ond æt nyhstan nān  nefne se nēda tān. (75–78)

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The metrical model I rely on here is essentially that first developed by Eduard Sievers, with particular emphasis on the requirement for four metrical positions (with a highly restricted set of exceptions).31 In Sievers’s theory, metrical stress must be borne either by a heavy syllable (i.e., one containing a long vowel or closed by a consonant), or by two light syllables which “resolve” into the metrical equivalent of a single heavy syllable. Based on this model—which provides an efficient template for the vast majority of the Rhyming Poem’s verses—line 77 is not the only problematic one in this passage. Of the 85 normal lines in the poem—setting aside 77, in other words, as well as line 35, which is missing its b-verse—only two do not have metrically identical rhyming codas.32 As it stands, 77b is quite correct—metrical stress is permitted to fall on an unresolved light syllable if it directly follows another stressed position. But juxtaposed with ligeð, gewigeð, and geþygeð, all of which resolve, friteð acquires a kind of ghost scansion by virtue of the expectations created through the poem’s normal metrical practice. On the one hand, friteð cannot resolve, because if it did so, the line would have only three metrical positions and would be impermissably short. But on the other, hearers would by this point in the poem expect it to behave like its rhyming mate, contracting into a single position. The sudden conflict between the normal standard of Old English verse and the idiosyncratic strictness of the Rhyming Poem causes the word to oscillate disturbingly between one metrical position and two, as if it were in the act of disappearing. Formally, then, line 75 strikes an uncanny note that presages the weird emptiness of line 77. The problem with this line is not simply the monosyllabic b-verse. Because, up to this point, the Rhyming Poem has consistently double-alliterated, a hearer would have been puzzled on hearing bān: nothing preceded it that could bear alliterating stress except bēoð, which in ordinary circumstances is (like other forms of bēon and wesan) never stressed. The line would thus already sound too light even before reaching 77b, which is stripped down to nothing but the rhyming syllable. While it is, of course, possible that all the problems with the passages are scribal, the meter points so insistently to its own gaps that the most efficient explanation is, I think, the true one: the worms have eaten the verse. This puts it in the same class of joke as the limerick about the gas meter. While the reified metrical structure of formal light verse gives it the power, as we have seen, to break and remake language, that same thingly quality makes it vulnerable to outside catastrophes like gas explosions and grave-worms. The elaborate form of the Rhyming Poem has earned it more than its fair share of blame among medievalists. 33 But while it is, indeed,

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quite different from the most popular Old English lyrics, criticizing the Rhyming Poem for not being like the Wanderer is rather like criticizing a tennis player for not scoring enough field goals. Understood in its proper mode, the Rhyming Poem appears as an extraordinarily inventive and playful work that displays a remarkably acute awareness of the Old English language and its range of possibilities. It does, however, demand a very particular mode of reading : form can never be allowed to sink into the background when we read light verse like the Rhyming Poem, because devices like the manipulation of dialect and meter (and, indeed, rhyme and double alliteration) are not extraneous ornaments, but integral to the way the poem creates meaning. As particularly dramatized in lines 75–78, where worms as agents of decay have power over what was previously an all-encompassing structure, the poem’s full significance is realized not simply through lexis, but also through the ongoing dialogue between the words and the reified meter. Form does not obscure the Rhyming Poem’s meaning : form produces its meaning. While the Rhyming Poem is the most sustained and spectacular surviving instance of formal light verse in Old English, it is not alone. Other instances of this mode show us the range of ways that poets could use reified meter to add further dimensions of significance to their work. One of the best examples of the way in which form takes on a concrete significance is the Menologium, a late Old English poem about the calendar. It has been the subject of an excellent recent edition and study by Kazutomo Karasawa, who convincingly shows that the Menologium is engaged in a complex synthesis of multiple methods of reckoning time, interweaving the Roman and solar calendars with an apparently native calendrical system in which time is calculated relatively, by counting days forward and back.34 Fittingly for a poem whose subject demands precision, the meter of the Menologium is, in general, very carefully correct.35 However, much as the Rhyming Poem demanded different pronunciations of the same words, the Menologium frequently requires different metrical values for the same words. For example, in this passage, the verb cymeð must be dissyllabic: And þæs embe fīf niht  þætte fulwihttiid        x / / x ēces drihtnes  tō ūs cymeð ... (And it is five nights after that that the festival of the baptism of the eternal Lord comes to us ...) (11–12)

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Because it is permissible for the second lift of a C-type verse to fall on a light syllable, 12b is metrical (if cymeð resolved, the verse would be too light, and unmetrical).36 However, a little later in the poem, the same verb must function as a single metrical position:        x x  /  x  / Aprelis mōnað,  on þām oftust cymð sēo mæˉre tiid  mannum tō frōfre ... (... the month of April, in which most often comes the great festival as a comfort to men ...) (56–57)

Here, cymð must be either pronounced as a monosyllable or resolved: if it were allowed to occupy two metrical positions, as cymeð did in 12b, 56b would have five positions and thus be rendered unmetrical. As the third-person present singular forms of a core vocabulary word (cuman, “to come”), both cymð and cymeð are widely attested in the surviving corpus (and must have been extremely common in daily spoken use). The unsyncopated, disyllabic form is more common in poetry and in distinctively Anglian texts like the Lindisfarne and Rushworth glosses, while the syncopated form seems to have been the normal pronunciation in late West Saxon, and is certainly the form favored by Ælfric. It is not unusual for both spellings to be attested within the same text, although examples from the poetry show us that those spellings do not always closely track metrical value (or, presumably, pronunciation).37 What is particularly striking about cymð/cymeð in the Menologium, however, is that the meter demands two different pronunciations of the same word, and those pronunciations are reinforced by the spellings in the lone surviving manuscript: London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B.i (which also contains the C-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). Nor is this the only instance of multiple metrical values for the same word: mōnað, too, may appear as either a monosyllable or dissyllable. Here, for instance, it must function as a dissyllable, just as the manuscript spelling indicates: ... in foldan hēr.  Swylce emb fēower wucan  x x   /  \  x þætte Solmōnað  sīgað tō tūne būtan twām nihtum,  swā hit getealdon gēo, Februarius fær,  frōde gesīþas ...

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( ... here into the land. Likewise after four weeks [minus two nights] Solmonað comes to town, as wise noblemen long ago reckoned it, Februarius’ course ...) (15–18)

But in this passage, mōnð must be a monosyllable, as again indicated by both spelling and meter: Ond þæs ymbe þrēo niht  geond þēoda feala  x x   / x  / þætte Hāligmōnð,  heleþum geþinged, fēreð to folce,  swā hit foreglēawe, ealde ūþwitan,  æˉror fundan, Septembres fær ... (And then it’s three nights after that, throughout many nations, that Holymonth, appointed to men, comes to the people, as the wise ancient philosophers of old formerly arranged it, September’s course ...) (163–67a)

Though widely separated, these two passages are extremely similar. Especially, the two verses that provide the month’s name in English have a near-identical structure, which renders the difference between their metrically enforced pronunciations of mōnað/mōnð all the more emphatic. The Tiberius B.i text of the Menologium is not perfect: some words or entire verses are missing, and there are several straightforward errors.38 In other words, the Tiberius scribe is unlikely to have composed the Menologium himself. At the same time, the clear tendency for spelling to reflect the metrical value of words indicates that a scribe—perhaps of an antecedent copy—cared a great deal about making the correct form legible to audiences. Anyone reading the Menologium, silently or aloud, would see precisely which pronunciation the meter demanded that these common, yet variable, words like cymð or mōnað should take at any given moment. This close attention to the unstressed syllables of English words is all the more interesting when set alongside the poem’s tendency toward what one might call graphically surprising alliterative combinations. For example: Phillippus and Iacob   feorh āgēfon (Philip and James gave up their lives) (81)

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Iunius on geard,  on þām gim āstīhð ( June in the dwelling, in which the jewel ascends) (109) Zebedes afera   and þæs symle scrīþ ( Zebedee’s sons.   And then after that always comes ...) (136)

All three of these verses alliterate perfectly, but to perceive this, one must know the correct pronunciation of the Greek or Latin names they contain. Lines like these help to demonstrate the fundamentally aural character of the Menologium, and perhaps indeed of formal light verse generally— reinforcing Auden’s connection between light verse and performance. To recognize these verses as correct, one must hear them (aloud or subvocally). But to fully appreciate their wit, one must also see them. Given its subject matter—the reconciliation of multiple calendars—there is little question that the Menologium is a literate production. The poet has thus exploited the inherent duality of a written work of light verse. Though all three of the lines above could have been reconfigured to present easier alliterative patterns, the recurrent graphic “failure” of alliteration overlaid upon an aurally perfect substructure teases reading audiences with an added layer of difficulty. Although nearly all the verses in the Menologium are indeed metrically correct, we do nonetheless find three flawed verses with a set of shared characteristics: Agustus  yrmenþēodum (August to the great nations) (139) Nouembris  niða bearnum (November to the children of men) (196) Decembris  drihta bearnum (December to the children of nobles) (220)

The structure of these lines is nearly identical. In each, a three-syllable Latin month name is allowed to fill the a-verse, in a way that is normally unmetrical;

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each, too, is paired with a dative plural epithet for groups of people. This odd pattern suggests several possible explanations. One is scribal error, a possibility supported by the care with which the poet has elsewhere incorporated Latin names into the Old English metrical structure: Aprelis mōnað,   on þām oftust cymð (the month of April, in which most often comes) (56) Iulius mōnað,   on þām Iacobus (the month of July, in which James) (132) Septembres fær,   and þyˉ seofoþan dæg (September’s course, and on the seventh day) (167)

The metrical treatment of the month names demonstrates a great deal of cunning. Septembres is the only one whose precise metrical value is visible from its form. Since it consists of two closed syllables followed by an unstressed inflectional syllable, it has been treated as the sequence /\x and incorporated into an E-type verse. But both Aprelis and Iulius are potentially ambiguous: if one were unsure of the Latin vowel length, either could potentially resolve (since, in Latin prosody, the liquid r does not necessarily close a syllable). Thus either word could scan /x or /xx. By using the disyllabic form of mōnað, however, the poet has left both options open: the combination of this form of the word with alliteration on the initial syllables of the names indicates that the verses are A-type, which could encompass either scansion of the Latin names. It is possible, therefore, that a word has been left out of verses 139a, 196a, and 220a. In fact, mōnað would suit the meter in all cases, and it is possible to imagine a scenario in which the word was abbreviated but a scribe failed to recognize it. Conversely, however, it may be that these month names have been allowed to be regularly anomalous: that their status as foreign has granted them a license to fill the verse. Unless a second copy of the Menologium is discovered, this particular textual problem is likely irresolvable. Either possibility could work within the poem’s mode of formal light verse, although each would differently shade our view of the work as a whole. As we have seen, the reified meter of the Menologium has one very striking effect on the words within it: only the transcendent framework

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of the meter—and not more commonly operating factors like register or dialect—determines how long or short words will be. The metaphor here is an obvious, but still a clever and elegant one: the meter controls the patterning of human actions in time—just as the calendar itself does. In Latin, the language of these two disciplines overlapped in some significant ways: the Greek term synalepha, for instance, was used to designate both metrical elision and the “lunar leap” (saltus lunae). Among AngloSaxon commentators, Byrhtferth of Ramsay was most explicit about this connection: in his Enchiridion, a recollection of the saltus lunae spurs him to include a discussion of metrical principles in his computistical handbook.39 The Menologium poet, however, enacts the metaphor without naming it. Whether or not they are authorial, the effect of the three short verses is to inject an audible reminder of the sometimes arbitrary and unpredictable nature of that framework, which is reinforced by the alliterative connection to the wise people who established the calendar in days of old, and who are particularly linked to the Roman calendar, rather than to the divinely appointed solar cycle. In the Menologium, then, we see how the reified meter of light verse can be used in a way that is not funny, exactly, but could be considered comic in the larger sense of reconciling audiences to the order of things. There are several consequences for this reading of the poem, which go beyond an appreciation of the Menologium’s artistry and entail implications both for linguistic scholarship and for our understanding of AngloSaxon literary culture. On an immediate and practical level, the examples of the Menologium and Rhyming Poem show us that we as modern scholars must be extremely careful about the conclusions that we draw from dialectal markers in verse. In both texts, we see poets using multiple forms of the same words, apparently for conscious artistic purposes. Each seems to have been aware of differences in usage, and happy to exploit those differences in the service of their formal light verse. Sometimes, then, peculiar usages and odd patterns in the distribution of word-forms may indicate an artistic mode (like light verse) rather than the dialect of a poet or scribe. An awareness that some Old English poets set about their task armed with a malleable concept of language will help keep us from falling into the traps they have set, and will perhaps also give us new insights into the scope of the Anglo-Saxons’ linguistic self-consciousness. Further, the very possibility of formal light verse as a feasible literary mode tells us something crucial about the context of Old English poetry. For meter to be reified in the way I have argued it was, it must be understood well enough to be predicted. As the example of modern limericks shows,

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though, this need not mean that the metrical form has been explicitly theorized: only that it must be comprehensible to the degree that an audience can judge its correctness—and, more importantly, incorrectness. The fun of this mode of light verse comes from watching poets dance at the edge of a metrical precipice: the audience must be able to appreciate precisely how they might fall in—but don’t. In my view, then, the creation of formal light verse inevitably and entirely depends on the expectation of a commonly shared, and fairly strict, sense of the metrical and unmetrical among speakers of Old English.40 The essential nature of Old English meter is, of course, still controversial; but because this mode of light verse relies so heavily on the ability to judge form—often at a very fine level of detail—it would seem particularly well suited to help us understand that form. It may even show us that Old English meter was simpler than it often seems to non-native ears, as well as reminding us that, even in late, highly literate verse, the ear—attuned to the aural qualities of such verse—remained essential to the reception of poetry. Yet the Old English formal light verse examined here was only one strand within a very versatile mode. Identifying other kinds of light verse may depend, ultimately, on how we define lightness: but one might plausibly include apparently unique paratexts, like the exuberantly trilingual poem called Aldhelm or the figured poem called Thureth, as well as many other texts that play with language and form in different ways. We might look to Anglo-Latin, too, to see the full range of the Anglo-Saxons’ interests in this mode. The seventh and eighth centuries saw a fad for rhythmic octosyllables, whose short lines and rhymed couplets made them strikingly memorable. Such poems were used in personal exchanges, as this passage from Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum shows: Lector, casses catholice Atque obses anthletice, Tuis pulsatis precibus Obnixe flagittantibus Ymnista carmen cecini Atque rem sponsam reddidi Sicut pridem pepigeram. (Reader—O catholic helm and warlike hostage— bowing to the repeated blows of your requests, I, a hymnist, sang this song and delivered up my pledge just as I once promised.) (1–7)41

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These first lines most likely encode the Old English name of the recipient, Helmgils (helm=casses + gisl=obses).42 Often used in, or as, letters, octosyllabic poems helped to forge and strengthen personal ties, and (as in the Carmen rhythmicum) could be used to narrate entertaining personal anecdotes. Insistent rhyme, frequent alliteration, and strong rhythm all contributed to Anglo-Latin octosyllables’ aural appeal: their form could be appreciated even by those with a shaky grasp of spoken Latin. It is more than a little noteworthy, I think, that one of the first things the AngloSaxons did with Latin was to use it to create light verse. “Old English literature is full of images of lightness, of a figure raising himself above the world with an agile leap, of a soul carried aloft by wings to a vision of happiness, of a silhouette suspended in air.” 43 Such images find their counterparts in the form of Anglo-Saxon verse as well; and just as a spirit of play is at work in even the most serious of their biblical poems, we find the wit of light verse clothing even the heavy themes of time and death in the Menologium and Rhyming Poem.44 With continuing close attention, we can still perceive the lightness with which the AngloSaxons’ literary world was sometimes unexpectedly filled.45 NOTES “... poetry, or Heavy Verse,” in the formulation of Bishop, “Case for Light Verse,” 32; John Hollander, too, distinguishes between “poets” and “writers of verse”: American Wits, ed. Hollander, xv. For a study of the elements constituting lightness as a “structure of feeling” in prose fiction, see Scott, Lightness in World Literature. 2 Virtually all the work of theorizing light verse has been done by anthologists: indeed “light verse” as a recognized category seems to be a product of the nineteenth-century anthology industry. For a history of thought on the subject, see the Princeton Encyclopedia entry by A. J. M. Smith (himself an anthologist). As a mode, however, light verse is far older. 3 New Oxford Book of English Light Verse, ed. Amis, v. 4 Penguin Book of Light Verse, ed Ewart, 33–34; see also Ewart’s remarks on 27. 5 Norton Anthology of English Literature, ed. Greenblatt and Abrams, 1: 6 and 1: 7. 6 Oxford Book of Light Verse, ed. Auden, viii–ix. 7 Hollander’s introduction to his collection American Wits is particularly insightful in its discussion of form, but see also, e.g., Bishop, “Case for Light Verse,” 33, and New Oxford Book, ed. Amis, viii. 8 Quoted from Fierce Pajamas, ed. Remnick and Finder, 465. 9 Byron, Don Juan, ed. McGann, 1.108 (1819 text). 1

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Quoted from Perrine, Sound and Sense, 190, where it is printed without authorial attribution. 11 American Wits, ed. Hollander, xxi, describes such form as “exoskeletal.” 12 ASPR, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, 6.109. Here and elsewhere, macrons are my addition unless otherwise noted; and all translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 13 All statements about word frequency are based on searches of diPaulo Healey, the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus and (where possible) the Dictionary of Old English, A to I Online, ed. Cameron et al. 14 See Bosworth and Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; sol, solian. 15 Not only would ācōlað make the second b-verse metrically identical to every other verse in this passage (all are Type 1A1 in Bliss’s notation), but with a short root vowel, ācolað would resolve, leaving its verse unmetrical (effectively, a syllable too short). Interestingly, all the Latin verses also conform to Bliss’s 1A1 or 1A*1, although they obey Latin rather than English principles of word-stress. (The metrical framework in this chapter is effectively that expounded in Bliss, Metre of “Beowulf ”, though with a somewhat reduced emphasis on the placement of word-boundaries.) 16 Old English Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 34. All quotations from the Rhyming Poem are from this edition unless otherwise noted. 17 Metrical resolution is intermittently controversial in Old English: for an overview of the debate, see Suzuki, “In Defense of Resolution.” I mainly accept the commonly held understanding of its parameters, on which see most conveniently Terasawa, Old English Metre, 30–31 and 55–56. 18 Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 35 (the Anglian form caldað was also a popular choice). 19 Ic cealdige appears in the Harley Glossary as a calque on frigesco; ācealdian, however, appears twice, in Ælfric’s homily for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (First Series, ed. Clemoes, 483, line 233), and in the Old English Pastoral Care (King Alfred’s West Saxon Version, ed. Sweet, §58, line 6). Neither caldian nor ācaldian are attested. 20 From the digital facsimile of fol. 94r of Exeter, Dean and Chapter, MS 3501: Exeter Anthology, ed. Muir. 21 Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 30 and 38–39. 22 This did not, however, daunt a number of early editors, again following Ettmüller: Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 30. 23 See Hogg, Grammar of Old English, 285–86. 24 Vespasian Psalter, ed. Kuhn, 42 (Ps. 44: 5); Old English Version, ed. Miller, 144, line 5 (=2.16) and 438, line 29 (=5.13); Der altenglische Regius-psalter, ed. Roeder, 82 (hēow), 83 (hīw) (Ps. 44: 3, 12). (The hīw spelling is frequent in the Royal Psalter.) 25 That said, the hypothesis of Abram, “Errors in The Rhyming Poem,” that the Rhyming Poem was originally lineated in couplets like the Latin rhyming octosyllables in Vienna, Nationalbibliothek MS lat. 751, remains appealing: visual juxtaposition of the variant spellings would have drawn attention to their peculiarity, and led even more readily to scribal “correction.” 10

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Campbell, Old English Grammar, §735(b). Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 16. Ferdinand Holthausen was the most active pursuer of this theory (as can readily be seen from Macrae-Gibson’s apparatus). 28 If cinnan were, like winnan, onginnan, and sinnan, a strong Class III verb, its first preterite would be cann; but OE cann (inf. cunnan) derives from what was already a preterite-present verb in proto-Germanic: see Birkmann, Präteropräsentia, 70. 29 While the Old English is clearly not intended as a translation, lines 45–56 echo the imagery and language of Ps. 7:14–16 (including burning arrows and a downward fall), which likewise depicts the destruction of a sinful man. For the Old English glosses, see most conveniently Old English Glossed Psalters, ed. Pulsiano, 63–64. For the Royal Psalter, see Regius-psalter, ed. Roeder, 10. 30 Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 54. 31 For the most convenient exposition of the basic model as currently understood, see Terasawa, Old English Metre. For the (not uncontroversial) four position theory, see esp. Cable, Meter and Melody. 32 The other is line 30, “burgsele beofode, beorht hlīfade” (the fortified hall trembled; bright, it towered ...). Here, the first two syllables of beofode must resolve, while those of hlīfode cannot. One might certainly read a rhetorical purpose in this contrast too. 33 Macrae-Gibson culls the highlights of the little subgenre of Rhyming Poem abuse at Riming Poem, ed. Macrae-Gibson, 12. 34 Old English Metrical Calendar, ed. Karasawa. All quotations from the Menologium are taken from this edition, though, as elsewhere, I have added macrons. 35 Metrical Calendar, ed. Karasawa, 66–70. 36 As in Menologium 75b. See, e.g., Bliss, Metre of “Beowulf,” 53–54. 37 For example, in Genesis A 6b the MS reads “ne nū ende cymþ” (with cymþ indeed monosyllabic/resolved); but at Genesis B 806a, the same scribe writes “gif hēr wind cymð,” even though cymð must occupy two metrical positions or render the verse unmetrical, just as in Menologium 12b. (The Genesis poems are quoted from ASPR 1.) 38 This can be clearly seen from Karasawa’s apparatus: for instance, verse 76a is missing, while the month name Þrymilce is misspelled þrymlice in 78a. For an overview of problems, see Metrical Calendar, ed. Karasawa, 8, as well as the commentary. 39 See Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. Baker and Lapidge, 88–92. Byrhtferth also likened the twenty-four morae in a hexameter to the hours in a day. Though Byrhtferth and the poet of the Menologium share some significant intellectual background, Karasawa is most likely right that they were different people: Metrical Calendar, ed. Karasawa, 71; cp. Hart, Learning and Culture 2: 177–96. 40 In a similar vein, American Wits, ed. Hollander, xix–xx, links the scarcity of light verse in contemporary America to the decline of metrical competence as something nearly all readers could be assumed to have. 41 Aldhelm, Opera, ed. Ehwald, 524. 42 Old English gisl is commonly metathesized to gils in personal names. See Orchard, Poetic Art, 20. For the art of the Anglo-Latin octosyllabic form, see 19–72. 26 27

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Frank, “Unbearable Lightness,” 500. See esp. Frank, “Some Uses of Paronomasia.” 45 For valuable advice at various points I should like to thank Eric Weiskott and Irina Dumitrescu; a supportive audience at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Toronto; and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe. For inspiration, I thank Lyn Hejinian, and most of all Roberta Frank, whose work has shown me (and many others) how much lightness, wit, and joy could be found in Anglo-Saxon literature—and Anglo-Saxon scholarship. 43 44

WORKS CITED Abram, Christopher. “The Errors in The Rhyming Poem.” Review of English Studies 58 (2007): 1–9. Ælfric. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series: Text. Ed. Peter Clemoes. EETS SS 17. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Aldhelm. Opera. Ed. Rudolf Ehwald. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919. Der altenglische Regius-psalter: eine Interlinearversion in Hs. Royal 2.B.5 des Brit. Mus. Ed. Fritz Roeder. Halle: Niemeyer, 1904. Amis, Kingsley, ed. The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Auden, W.H., ed. The Oxford Book of Light Verse. Corrected 2nd printing. Oxford: Clarendon, 1939. Birkmann, Thomas. Präteropräsentia: Morphologische Entwicklungen einer Sonderklasse in den altgermanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987. Bishop, Morris. “The Case for Light Verse.” Harper’s Magazine, March 1, 1954, pp. 32–34. Bliss, A. J. The Metre of “Beowulf ”. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958. Bosworth, Joseph, and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press, 1898. Byrhtferth. Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion. Ed. Peter Baker and Michael Lapidge. EETS SS 15. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron. The Complete Poetical Works. Vol. V: Don Juan. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. Cable, Thomas. The Meter and Melody of “Beowulf.” Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al., eds. Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018. https://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/index.html. Campbell, Alistair. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. diPaolo Healey, Antonette, with John Price Wilkin and Xin Xiang. Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2009. Ewart, Gavin, ed. The Penguin Book of Light Verse. London: Allen Lane, 1980.

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Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2006. Hart, Cyril. Learning and Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England and the Influence of Ramsey Abbey on the Major English Monastic Schools. 3 vols. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen, 2003. Hogg, R. M. A Grammar of Old English: Phonology, Volume 1. Oxford: Blackwell, 2011. Hollander, John, ed. American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse. New York: Library of America, 2003. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. Ed. Henry Sweet. EETS 45 and 50. London: Trübner, 1871–1872. Krapp, George Philip, and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records [ASPR]. 6 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–1953. Muir, Bernard J., ed., with software by Nick Kennedy. The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: The Exeter DVD. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006. The Old English Metrical Calendar [Menologium]. Ed. Kazutomo Karasawa. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. The Old English Riming Poem. Ed. O. D. Macrae-Gibson. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Ed. Thomas Miller. EETS 95, 96, 110, and 111. London: Trübner, 1890–1891 and 1898. Orchard, Andy. The Poetic Art of Aldhelm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Perrine, Laurence. Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. New York: Harcourt, 1956. Pulsiano, Phillip, ed. Old English Glossed Psalters: Psalms 1–50. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Remnick, David, and Henry Finder, ed. Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Scott, Bede. On Lightness in World Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Smith, A. J. M. “Light Verse.” In The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger, Frank J. Warnke, and O.B. Hardison, Jr., 446–49. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Suzuki, Seiichi. “In Defense of Resolution as a Metrical Principle in Beowulf.” English Studies 76 (1995): 20–33. Terasawa, Jun. Old English Metre: An Introduction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. The Vespasian Psalter. Ed. Sherman M. Kuhn. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965.

The Paris Psalter and English Literary History Eric Weiskott

UDGING BY SIZE, MANUSCRIPT context, and literary impact, Jthe Paris Psalter could be considered the most important Old English

poem.1 At over 5,000 lines of alliterative verse, it dwarfs the secondplace finisher, a secular historical narrative we call Beowulf (3,182 lines). Surviving textual evidence implies that a further 2,500 lines or so, representing Psalms 1–50, have been lost.2 As it is, the Psalter comprises over one sixth of Old English poetry by volume. The major manuscript witness and namesake of this colossus, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 8824 (“Paris Psalter”) (early/mid eleventh century), is a deluxe book that enjoyed a glamorous life in lavishly appointed libraries.3 It boasts an ambitious bilingual textual format, unique among Anglo-Saxon psalters, in which Latin and English meet on equal terms across each page. The Psalter achieves a full-scale vernacular translation of a devotionally significant sacred book, executed in a flagrantly unconventional poetic style. The poem mobilizes the intellectual heft of Old English glossed psalters and early medieval biblical exegesis but is not based upon any known gloss or commentary.4 Excerpts from the Psalter appear in three other manuscripts apart from latin 8824, in contexts that suggest the prestige accruing to the poem in English literary culture.5 With four manuscript witnesses, the Psalter is the most widely attested freestanding Old English poem.6 To judge from literary and manuscript evidence, the Paris Psalter was one of the greatest hits of early English poetry. Modern readers have taken a different view. In almost all prior scholarship, the Paris Psalter appears as a dead end in literary history, the last gasp of a poetic tradition. In advancing such a judgment, students of the poem have appealed especially to its metrical and literary style. In a dissertation on the meter of the Psalter, Benno Tschischwitz considers the question, “Is the poem exceptionally bad, or are other poems of the tenth century just as bad?”; Kenneth and Celia Sisam opine that the style of the poem “has no poetic quality; rather, a distinctive flatness”; Daniel

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Donoghue judges the poet to be “unimaginative and scarcely competent”; Patricia Bethel diagnoses the poem’s “metrical waywardness”; Mark Griffith, in an illuminating discussion of the poem’s style, nonetheless begins by deprecating the Psalter as “a pedestrian and unimaginative piece of poetic translation,” heralding “the disintegration of the Old English poetic mode”; R. D. Fulk describes its “degenerate metrics”; and Monika Opalińska, echoing the Sisams, speaks of “a certain flatness and workmanlike effect of the whole composition.”7 Apart from cameo appearances as the harbinger of metrical and stylistic dissolution, the Psalter has stood on the sidelines of Old English studies. Poor Paris Psalter: it is rarely used as a prime example of anything about early England except cultural decadence. In the modern critical fortunes of the Paris Psalter, one can read the normative force of a paradigm of literary history with which Old English poets and their audiences were unacquainted: the narrative of the decline of English literature around the time of the Norman Conquest of England (1066). The importance of a political conquest as a landmark in English literary history was both a cause and an effect of the fragmentation of early English scholarship into “Old English” and “Middle English” subperiods in the late nineteenth century. Over the course of the twentieth century, even as isomorphy between political and literary history ceased to be an operating assumption of literary criticism, 1066 became further entrenched as a subdisciplinary boundary. Positioned near the dividing line between the Old and the Middle, the Paris Psalter has necessarily seemed like a bridge to nowhere. Within Old English studies, Beowulf exerts its own imposing influence. Ever since it came to scholarly attention in the early nineteenth century, Beowulf has embodied the mountain peak from which English literary history descends. Measured against Beowulf, a poem with quite different stylistic priorities, the Paris Psalter has necessarily seemed like a poetic failure. New metrical and literary scholarship promises to correct these critical distortions by restoring the Paris Psalter (and other late Old English and Early Middle English poems) to a more diverse and continuous English literary history. Recent work in alliterative metrics demonstrates formal continuity between Old and Middle English alliterative meter, running directly through Lawman’s Brut (ca. 1200) and other Early Middle English alliterative poems. Thomas Cable, Donka Minkova, Geoffrey Russom, Nicolay Yakovlev, and others describe a set of metrical transformations that connect poetic corpora across subdisciplinary boundaries.8 In so doing, these metrists establish a firmer historical basis

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for stylistic comparison. On a broad view of a continuous alliterative tradition, Beowulf has no greater claim to authority as a paragon of style than the Paris Psalter, or the Brut. (How different Old English studies would be if scholars lamented the Beowulf poet’s failure to follow the Psalter poet’s meter! Then it would be necessary to say: poor Beowulf.) From a literary perspective, meanwhile, Emily Thornbury recuperates the Psalter and similar poems from charges of decadence by grouping them within a “Southern mode” of late ninth- and tenth-century English poetry. 9 According to Thornbury, the Southern mode is distinguished from other Old English poetry by its modernized lexicon, Latinate style, and southerly provenance. Thornbury provocatively describes the Southern mode as “the apotheosis of Old English verse” and “the apex of Old English as a language of high culture.”10 Enrolling stylistic analysis in the service of cultural and intellectual history, Thornbury turns the critical reputation of the Paris Psalter on its head. This chapter brings together several kinds of evidence—metrical, linguistic, syntactical, lexical, stylistic, codicological, and cultural—in support of a revaluation of the position of the Paris Psalter in English literary history. A basic assumption behind this project is that the details of poetic style are themselves an important historical archive. The historical archive that the Paris Psalter comprises, or to which it belongs, has been occluded by misapprehensions about its style; conversely, the achievement of its style has been occluded by misapprehensions about its historical significance. Ultimately, I will follow Thornbury in arguing that the Paris Psalter is a remarkable poem not because of its belatedness but because of its ambition. Seen in the longue durée of alliterative style, the Paris Psalter does not fail to live up to Beowulf; it succeeds in anticipating a later alliterative bestseller, Piers Plowman. A richer historical perspective onto late Old English metrical styles has been made newly possible by advances in the study of the Beowulf meter and the Brut meter. Yakovlev, the author of a fundamental study of alliterative meter (never published), discloses a new theoretical paradigm for Old English meter and advances the first systematic description of the meter of the Brut. Moreover, Yakovlev connects these two systems (and the meter of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) as points in a larger metrical lineage.11 Minkova and Russom make the same demonstration from different theoretical assumptions. Broadly speaking, Yakovlev describes the development of alliterative meter from Old English to Early Middle English as a gradual shift between two systems, exemplified by Beowulf

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and the Brut. In the Beowulf meter, half lines consist of four metrical positions, “lifts” or “dips,” where no two dips can be adjacent. Thus Beowulf 1a Hwæt we Gar-Dena scans xxSSx, four positions, where S represents a lift and x represents a metrically unstressed syllable in a dip. Here, Hwæt we makes up a single, long dip. In the Brut meter, the metrical repertoires of the two halves of the long line, “a-verse” and “b-verse,” begin to diverge, and the b-verse comes to require exactly two lifts and exactly one long dip. Increasingly into the fourteenth century, the b-verse also comes to require a final short dip. There is significant overlap between the two synchronic systems (Beowulf 1a is metrical in both, for example), and metrical change was probably slow enough to escape the consciousness of individual practitioners. By erecting Lawman’s Brut as a new signpost in metrical history, Yakovlev effectively undermines the narrative of metrical decline and decay in the tenth and eleventh centuries. According to Yakovlev, the net change in regularity from Old English to late Old English to Early Middle English alliterative meter was virtually zero: to the extent that one synchronically coherent configuration of metrical norms began to be effaced, a new configuration began to take shape. The alliterative meter of the Paris Psalter is only “defective,” “waywar[d],” “aberrant,” or “degenerate” when viewed from a typologically earlier moment in metrical history.12 That is, the metrical eccentricities isolated by Helen Bartlett, Bethel, Fulk, Opalińska, and Tschischwitz are no longer eccentricities when viewed in diachronic perspective. Bartlett notices the lack of the quantitative principle known as “metrical resolution” in certain verses in the Psalter; this accords with Yakovlev’s contention that, from Old English to Early Middle English alliterative meter, resolution survived but softened into an optional feature.13 Bethel discusses “the extension of [...] an initial dip” to certain Old English metrical types, e.g., Paris Psalter 54.8.2b geond þas woruld wide (xxSxSx); this pattern, vanishingly rare in Beowulf, fulfills the minimum b-verse requirements of one long dip and two lifts and is common in the Brut.14 Fulk likens the Paris Psalter to the Battle of Maldon, whose meter he describes as “anomalous.”15 Yet Maldon, like the Psalter, shows b-verse patterns that look ahead to Early Middle English alliterative meter—e.g., Maldon 66b To lang hit him þuhte (xSxxSx). Opalińska likewise notes five-position patterns in the Psalter as “peripheral” vis-àvis the metrical system instanced in Beowulf.16 Tschischwitz, working at an earlier moment in disciplinary subspecialization than Bethel, Fulk, or Opalińska, takes a more flexible view. He identifies a suite of innovative

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metrical tendencies in the Psalter, all occasioned by the incipient b-verse requirements: the disappearance of three-lift patterns in the b-verse; the preference for the pattern x...xSxSx over the pattern x...xSxS; the obligatory expansion of dips; and the addition of new dips to the fourposition patterns. 17 Even as he presciently describes these changes in terms of a movement toward Middle English alliterative meter, however, Tschischwitz dismisses them as expressions of metrical decay when they occur in the Psalter.18 By contrast, Yakovlev’s metrical model effectively projects the meter of the Paris Psalter as forward-looking. In a signal study of the translator’s techniques, M. J. Toswell notes that “[t]he main work of the translation is generally done in the a-verse,” unlike in most other Old English verse, where the b-verse does much of the heavy lifting, but as in Middle English alliterative verse.19 A second kind of metrical evidence for the style of the Paris Psalter comes from metrical phonology—i.e., the linguistic forms that fill out metrical positions. As Opalińska and Fulk note, and Tschischwitz demonstrates in detail, the Psalter shows many linguistically innovative features when compared with Beowulf.20 For example, Paris Psalter 61.12.2b wuldor stande (SxSx) shows the disyllabic, spoken form of wuldor “glory,” whereas the meter of Beowulf (and other Old English poems) shows the monosyllabic, prehistoric form of wuldor and similar words (“nonparasiting”). 21 Throughout his History of Old English Meter, Fulk, like Tschischwitz before him, takes metrical phonolog y as a diagnostic of poetic chronology. For Fulk, verses like Paris Psalter 61.12.2b are symptoms of lateness. However, asymmetry between metrical and linguistic word-forms was a defining feature of the alliterative tradition as a whole. From Old to Middle English, alliterative poets versified with a large number of phantom syllables no longer pronounced in everyday speech and sometimes no longer represented in scribal orthography. If so, innovative metrical phonology in the Psalter must be understood as a stylistic choice, a pointed departure from the phonological conservatism of the mainstream of alliterative verse. Among Old English poems, the Paris Psalter is also idiosyncratic in its syntax. Toswell observes that the Paris Psalter is highly end-stopped. All psalm verses, and most membra within psalm verses, are made to end at the end of an alliterative line.22 This is in contrast with the heavy enjambment of most Old English verse but anticipates the end-stopped syntax of Middle English alliterative verse.23 Though the end-stopped style may seem pat to modern readers, it must have struck Anglo-Saxon ears as

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daring and exotic, especially when carried out on the scale of 5,000 lines. Moreover, the Psalter poet was capable of reversing this stylistic choice on occasion, as when a line-break divides a possessive pronoun from its noun at Paris Psalter 118.98.1–2a: “Þu me snoterne gedydest | swylce ofer mine / feondas on foldan” (You have made me wise over my enemies on earth) (“super inimicos meos prudentem me fecisti,” Psalm 118: 98).24 The traditional syntax bursting forth from experimental syntax makes poetic tradition new twice over. In comparison with other Old English poets, the Psalter poet is also less respectful of Kuhn’s Laws of poetic syntax, generalizations about the stress assignment and syntax of function words in Germanic alliterative meters. Bethel observes that the Psalter contains an exceptionally high proportion of b-verses beginning with an alliterating and metrically stressed finite verb, a pattern of avoidance in most Old English verse in accordance with Kuhn’s Laws.25 Here again the impression of laxity of technique (Bethel: “Kuhn’s Law has [...] been ignored [...] by the versifier”) turns out to be an illusion caused by taking Beowulf as a transhistorical ideal.26 Kuhn’s Laws no longer apply in Early Middle English and Middle English alliterative verse. The different syntax of the Paris Psalter is another locus of its affiliation with the most innovative English poetry of its time. The poetic vocabulary of the Paris Psalter is similarly unusual. The Psalter contains a large number of hapax legomena reflective of the translator’s techniques, including loan translations, direct borrowings from Latin, and evident translations of terms from psalter commentaries. 27 Representative hapax forms include 54.12.2a on anmede “of one mind,” a loan translation of Latin unanimis; 77.46.1a eruca “caterpillar,” as if mentally revising the Latin erugo “rust” to eruca “caterpillar,” a sensical reading in context; 108.28.3b brechrægle “breeches,” rendering Latin diplois “double garment”; and 135.12.2a eallmihte “omnipotence,” evidently a loan translation of Latin omnipotentia, itself not attested in the corresponding Latin but theologically relevant to it according to medieval commentary. Each of these words represents an apparently unique solution to a problem of translation or interpretation. At the same time, the poet uses relatively few of the poetic words that set alliterative verse apart from contiguous literary forms.28 Those poetic words that do occur in the Psalter tend to be used sparingly.29 Poetic words in the Psalter, especially nouns, are less likely than other words to be directly translating Latin.30 When the poet does use a poetic word found elsewhere, it is often in a strikingly unconventional way. Griffith documents the lengths to which the poet went to

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avoid using poetic words in traditional formulaic expressions.31 For example, instead of combining nergend “savior” with a genitive plural as in the common collocation sawla nergend “saver of souls,” the Psalter poet applies to God the otherwise unattested epithet nergend dryhten “saving Lord” (113.9.1b).32 Or again, consider the poet’s unprecedented use of “shalk.” “Shalk” functions as a colorless alliterating synonym for “man; warrior” in much Old English and Middle English alliterative poetry, but in the Paris Psalter it is the regular equivalent for servus, “servant.” The Paris Psalter contains more instances of “shalk” than any other Old English poem: the word appears fourteen times in the Psalter, thirteen times as a simplex and once in the compound onbyhtscealcas, “attendants.”33 The use of “shalk” in this context was a marked stylistic choice, as appears by comparison with Old English prose translations and glosses, in which servus is rendered with the unmarked synonyms esne, þeow, and þræl (as also at other points in the Paris Psalter). In deploying “shalk” like a gloss-word, the Psalter poet suppressed its poetic associations in what was perhaps an etymologizing gesture. That “shalk” was formerly an unmarked word for “servant” is suggested, though not proved, by its occasional application to servants in poetry, for example Daniel 230a, and by comparison with its less poetically charged cognates in Gothic (skalks, “servant”), Old Norse (skálkr, “servant; rogue”), and Old Saxon (skalk, “servant”), as well as the related Old English word scylcen “female servant,” which occurs only in prose and glossaries. Thus, even where the Psalter poet reached for a conservative poetic word, the word served new rhetorical priorities and achieved new literary effects. The Paris Psalter shows more flamboyant stylistic innovations, as well. Most long Old English poems begin with a conventionalized prologue, taking the form of a précis, a call for attention, or a dramatization of theme.34 I take prologues to be exceptionally dense expressions of style, serving a programmatic function for readers even if also “standing in a complex relation to the works they preface.”35 A well-known example is the opening of Beowulf, which advertises the authority of the narrative by marking its antiquity (Beowulf 1b “in geardagum” (in the days of yore)). In addition to heading long poems, prologues are sometimes placed in the mouths of exceptionally wise characters, such as Elene (Elene 670 ff. and 852 ff.) and Widsith (Widsith 10 ff.). More commonly, they appear in the bodies of poems without ascription to a speaking character. The Psalter poet employs very few recognizable prologues, but in one case he manages to squeeze two prologues into a single psalm: 65:1 “Iubilate Deo

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omnis terra” becomes “Ealle eorðbuend | ecne drihten / wordum wislicum | wide herian” (May all who dwell on the earth widely praise the eternal Lord with prudent words) (65.1.1–2), while 65:16 “uenite et audite me et narrabo uobis ...” becomes “Gehyrað me | and her cumað; / ic eow mid soþe | secgean wylle ...” (Hear me and come here; I will tell you truly ...) (65.14.1–2). The verbs herian and secgan are keywords for what I have elsewhere termed the “let-us-praise-God” and “I-will-tell” prologue types. 36 One might suppose that Psalm 65 particularly impressed the Psalter poet with its universal address (“omnis terra”), prompting him to adorn it with two kinds of familiar rhetorical set pieces from the vernacular poetic tradition. The poet also chose to compose a “let-us-praise-God” prologue at 94.1.1–2, answering 94:1 “iubilemus Deo”; in two other places in the Psalter (94.2.3 and 99.1.1–2), forms of iubilare used with respect to God (94:2 “iubilemus ei” and 99:2 “Iubilate Deo”) inspire other poetic flourishes.37 The use of prologues is a stylistic feature that connects the Paris Psalter to other Old English poetry. Nonetheless, prologues embedded in a vernacular psalm text precipitate a different literary effect and a different reading experience. In 65.1.1–2, the poet offers a traditional stylistic gesture previously withheld. The “let-us-praise-God-prologue” in Psalm 65 is the stylistic equivalent of the unexpected enjambment at 118.98.1b–2a, discussed above. In 65.14.1–2, the poet fulfills a vernacular poetic convention, not around the edges of biblical translation, but as biblical translation. The “I-will-tell” prologue in Psalm 65 vernacularizes scripture and sacralizes vernacular poetic style, a quite different stylistic strategy from, for example, the imputation of a poetic prologue to Widsith. Where much Old English poetry seeks to domesticate the pagan past, the Paris Psalter seeks to defamiliarize contemporary religious belonging. Experiencing the Paris Psalter as a reader entailed rediscovering oneself as a spiritual subject in Augustine’s regio dissimilitudinis “land of unlikeness” through familiar literary techniques deployed anew. The shape and layout of latin 8824 facilitates such translingual reading experiences. The material details of the manuscript, considered in relation to the text of the Paris Psalter, reinforce the impression of an exceptionally stylish poem. In Toswell’s words, MS latin 8824 is “a high-status, deluxe, illuminated double psalter,” commissioned by someone with “a very clear vision” and executive oversight.38 The manuscript once boasted an elaborate lock, possibly surmounted by two halves of a topaz.39 Its impractically tall, narrow shape may have been meant to evoke the tall, narrow books held by sacred and religious figures in early medieval insular iconography.40

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The sheets are arranged hair–flesh–flesh–hair, a relatively recent continental importation in insular bookmaking.41 The manuscript once had a program of full-page illustrations and a frontispiece depicting David with a harp, now lost.42 It shows no signs of being a copy but is “a once-only collection,” compiled to purpose from several sources, most notably the Roman Psalter, an Old English prose translation of the Psalms (for Psalms 1–50), and the Paris Psalter (for Psalms 51–150).43 Latin stands on the left column of each page, with the corresponding English on the right. Thirteen line drawings appear between psalm verses in the first quire only (the plan later abandoned), including one on the English side of the page responding to an English prose introduction to a psalm.44 The script, “artificial and preciouslooking, generally too small for easy reading,” is almost as impractical as the shape of the book.45 The English script and Latin script, executed by a single (unidentified) scribe, are unusually similar in size and duct.46 Like the poet, the scribe took pains to draw out equivalences between the two languages. More surprisingly, the mise-en-page of the psalm texts in the manuscript is organized around the English rather than the Latin,47 implying that the intended user(s) felt more at home in the vernacular.48 Thornbury argues that the English psalm texts of latin 8824 were designed to give readers “the comforting sense that they were receiving everything the Latin had to offer, and perhaps a bit more.”49 (In part, however, the prioritization of the vernacular is a consequence of the greater length of most of the English psalm verses in relation to the corresponding Latin.) The manuscript’s welldocumented post-Conquest provenance is equally revealing. In 1402 latin 8824 is recorded as belonging to the famed bibliophile Jean, duc de Berry, who by 1404 had donated it to the library of the Sainte Chapelle at Bourges, which he founded, whence it passed to what was then the Bibliothèque royale.50 Toswell argues that late Anglo-Saxon psalters, and latin 8824 in particular, are forerunners of the late medieval book of hours, a bestselling genre that the duc de Berry patronized and collected assiduously.51 She also likens latin 8824 to the tall, thin manuscript of the Ormulum and to later medieval “holster books,” as in four copies of Piers Plowman—two other English poems invested in pushing the stylistic envelope by engaging Latin literary culture.52 In many ways, then, latin 8824 makes a fitting home for a fashion-forward poem. From a modern perspective, the compiler of the manuscript is responsible for both the preservation and the loss of the Paris Psalter. The English verse translation, originally covering all 150 psalms but used here only for Psalms 51–150, was apparently a second choice after the available text of the English prose translation ran out.53

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A survey of the manuscripts of the Paris Psalter demonstrates, geographically and stylistically, why it belongs in the Southern mode. The four manuscripts center on the southeast, though the precise location of the production of latin 8824 has not been identified.54 Thornbury’s concept of a Southern mode of Old English poetry lends cultural significance to this geographical distribution. The three fragments of the Psalter found outside latin 8824 support the picture of a poem with an imposing cultural profile. The unique eleventh-century manuscript text of the calendar poem Menologium, in London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.i (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle “C”) (mid eleventh century, Abingdon), quotes Paris Psalter 117.22.1–3 and attributes the lines to the song of “se witega” (“the wise one,” 59b).55 Here, two poems of the Southern mode interpenetrate, and the result is song. The shared passage expresses the cultural prestige of the Paris Psalter and its stylistic compatibility with the Menologium. In Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 121 (“Benedictine Office”) (late eleventh century, Worcester), fragments from the Paris Psalter, including from Psalms 1–50, accompany “a treatise on the content and purpose of the eight daily Offices” as well as three liturgically oriented Old English poems (Creed, Gloria I, and Lord’s Prayer III), also assigned by Thornbury to the Southern mode.56 Like the Paris Psalter, Junius 121 appears to presuppose a lay or less learned reader, perhaps someone interested in joining a monastery.57 Finally, two small portions of the Psalter appear as part of the interlinear English gloss and a marginal annotation in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1 (“Eadwine Psalter”) (mid twelfth century, Canterbury), suggesting the Paris Psalter “carried great authority at Canterbury in the middle years of the twelfth century.”58 The Paris Psalter transmutes glossation into poetry, and the Eadwine Psalter returns the favor. The manuscripts of the Paris Psalter, spanning the mid eleventh to mid twelfth centuries, are contemporaneous with the later alliterative verse whose style the Psalter anticipates, such as the Death of Alfred (1036–1045), the Death of Edward (1066), the Grave (mid/late twelfth century), and Sweyn Forkbeard Razes Wilton (1003–1045). 59 Each of these poems has connections to the south, and all but the Grave are contained in the text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Tiberius B.i, to which the Menologium is prefixed. In light of its relatively large number of surviving textual witnesses, the Paris Psalter may have exerted significant influence on later alliterative poets. Its copying and excerpting provide one model for the propagation of literary style in poetic communities over

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time. Developments in alliterative meter posterior to the composition of the Psalter, in turn, could explain how its text came to stand in a clutch of eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts.60 As the mainstream of the alliterative tradition gravitated closer toward the style of the Paris Psalter in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the poem could have escaped its avant-garde status and reached new, larger audiences. Perhaps the same kinds of (monastic and peri-monastic?) readers who sponsored and executed a new copy of Beowulf around the year 1000 would have cheered on a very different kind of poetry, more like the Paris Psalter, 150 years later. Whatever the precise socioliterary reasons for the poem’s outsize success, the manuscript tradition of the Paris Psalter affords us a glimpse of a poet creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed. Psalm 60 illustrates the features of this taste: 1 Gehyr, halig god,  hraþe mine bene, beheald mine gebed  holde mode. Nu ic of eorðan  utgemærum cleopige to þe,  nu me caru beateð heard æt heortan,  help min nu þa; ahefe me holdlice  on halne stan. 2 Þu me gelæddest  mid lufan hyhte, wære me se stranga tor  stið wið feondum. 3 Ic eardige  awa to feore on ðinum selegesceote;  þær me softe byð, þær ic beo fægere beþeaht  fiðerum ðinum. 4 Forðon ðu gehyrdest,  halig drihten, hu min gebed to ðe  beorhte eode; yrfe þu sealdest  anra gehwylcum, se þe naman ðinne  þurh neod forhtað. 5 Dæg byð ofer dæge,  þær byð gedefe cynincg; beoð his winter eac  wynnum iced, oð þone dæg þe he  on drihtnes sceal on ansyne  andweard gangan, and þær to worlde  wunian ece. 6 Hwylc seceð þæt  þe soðfæst byð? Swa ic naman ðinum  neode singe, þæt ic min gehat  her agylde of dæge on dæg,  swa hit gedefe wese. (Readily hear my prayer, holy God, observe my prayer with a gracious mind. I cry out to you now from the extremities of the earth, now that troubles sorely

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vex my heart, help me now; graciously raise me up on a secure rock. You led me with the hope of love, you have been for me the strong tower unyielding against enemies. I will dwell forever and ever in your tabernacle; it will be gentle for me there, where I am pleasantly enveloped in your wings. For you have heard, holy Lord, how my prayer to you lucidly traveled; you have given inheritance to each one who earnestly fears your name. There will be day upon day, where there is a proper king; his years, too, will be filled out with joys, until the day that he will go before the countenance of the lord, and there remain forever and perpetually. Who will seek that which is righteous? So I will earnestly sing to your name, that I may here render my vow for all time, as it is fitting.)

Metrically, Psalm 60 falls near the Beowulf meter but already on the path to the Brut meter. The poet still avails himself of metrical resolution and the optional discounting of verbal prefixes in meter (“prefix license”), as in 3.3a þær ic beo fægere beþeaht (xxxSrxpS, where Sr represents a resolved lift and p a discounted prefix). In this verse, the prefix license spares a violation of the constraint against a long dip in the third or fourth metrical positions. Resolution, the prefix license, and the constraint against long dips in the second half of the verse were all disappearing from the alliterative metrical system by the turn of the eleventh century. On the other hand, 5.5a and þær to worlde (xSxSx, with metrical promotion of þær) shows a fiveposition pattern avoided in earlier and more conservative alliterative verse but favored throughout the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. The syntax of the psalm is heavily end-stopped, so that the two instances of moderate enjambment (1.3b–4a and 5.3–4) stand out as special moments of suspenseful pathos. In most other Old English poems, enjambment of this sort would blend into the syntactical surround. Conjunctions such as 1.3a Nu and 3.2b þær subordinate one clause to another without warrant from the paratactic Latin original, and to that extent the poet domesticates the psalm’s rhetorical address to God. Yet syntactical structures nearly always come to a predictable conclusion at the ends of lines, like Latin psalm verses but unlike the lines of Old English narrative or lyric poetry. The vocabulary of Psalm 60 likewise expresses its stripped-down Latinate aesthetic. A number of colorless and non-poetic phrases without direct counterparts in the Latin, such as 1.2b holde mode “with a gracious mind; graciously” and 6.2b neode “earnestly,” complete the requirements of meter

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and alliteration. These additions are not filler; they bring the psalmic verse into contact with alliterative poetics, transforming both. The pleonastic use of on at 5.4a (repeating 5.3b on) is particularly idiomatic. The word utgemære “extreme boundary,” found also at Paris Psalter 71.8.4b, is otherwise unattested and is conceivably the translator’s own solution for the biblical “ends” of the earth (finibus at 60.1 and terminos at 71.8). The rare word selegescot “tabernacle” is found elsewhere only in psalm glosses, rendering tabernaculum, and in Christ III (1480a), a poem notable for its unconventional style and homiletic sources.61 Apart from the prosaic noun 60.5.4a ansyne “countenance,” these are the only compound nouns in the psalm. That they are non-poetic compound nouns deepens the contrast with Beowulf and other mainstream alliterative poetry. The psalm contains a high proportion of non-poetic simplexes, for example gebed “prayer,” lufa “love,” and cyning “king.” Like other psalms in the Paris Psalter, Psalm 60 achieves emotional depth and stylistic texturality through lexical simplicity. David’s voice adjures God in a pointedly non-poetic poetic style. The Psalm is quite unlike heroic or biblical-historical narration but equally unlike the high-poetic lamentation of lyric compositions such as the Seafarer, Wanderer, and Wife’s Lament, in which the alliterative wordhoard stylizes an individual subjectivity. The phrase dedisti hereditatem (Psalm 60:6) offered the poet the opportunity to take up the language of retainers and ring-givers, but the poet declined the opportunity. Verse 4.3a yrfe “inheritance” and sealdest “gave” are non-poetic words. Psalm 60 searches out a new poetic style beyond the conventions of short and long poems as represented by the four major Old English poetic codices. In sum, the meter, language, syntax, vocabulary, style, and manuscript presentation of the Paris Psalter confirm its place in Thornbury’s Southern mode. Like other poems in this style, such as the Menologium and the Meters of Boethius, the Paris Psalter represents a newly cosmopolitan disposition toward (English) poetic tradition after ca. 950. Thornbury introduces the Southern mode as “a new mode of verse, one designed to provide readers of English with a convincing simulacrum of the experience of reading Latin texts.”62 The Paris Psalter, in which, for example, the poetic word “shalk” becomes fraught with the affective intensity of spiritual devotion, or in which Latin pelicanus “pelican” can enter English grammar and meter (Paris Psalter 101.5.1b pellicane, a dative singular), answers well to this description; so do the eerily similar scripts used for Latin and the vernacular in latin 8824.63 Metrically, linguistically, syntactically, lexically, and stylistically, the Psalter is the work of a poet who picked up the alliterative tradition, shook it off, and set it to

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a new purpose. The corpus of southern poems assembled by Thornbury shows that he was not alone. Thornbury connects the Southern mode with West Saxon hegemony, the cosmopolitanism of the tenth-century English royal courts, and the consolidation of power between ecclesiastical and secular elites.64 As the longest poem in a literary and cultural avant-garde (not to mention the Old English poetic corpus generally), the Paris Psalter should be a major crossroads in the study of early medieval bilingualism, translation, and biblical exegesis. More than any other Old English poem, the Psalter fills in the crucial prehistory of some of the most productive concepts in the study of late medieval English language and literary culture, variously termed “the idea of the vernacular,” “medieval literary theory,” and “vernacular theolog y.” 65 It should also serve as a major signpost on the path from Old to Early Middle English alliterative meter. If the style of the Paris Psalter is the literary complement of political centralization, then Early Middle English alliterative verse, in normalizing the vocabulary and metrical profile of the Psalter, illustrates how political centralization shapes the history of style. The major impediment to a historically contextualized appreciation of the style of the Paris Psalter has been the automatic and unflattering comparison with Beowulf, a poem whose dating and relationship to political centralization are hotly contested in modern scholarship.66 Below I will return to the comparison with Beowulf, armed with Thornbury’s Southern mode and the preceding stylistic discussion. However, I submit that an apter comparison is with an alliterative poem of the fourteenth century: William Langland’s Piers Plowman (ca. 1370–1390). Written at a later moment in the history of style, in the wake of the promotion of nonalliterative English meters beginning in the twelfth century, Piers Plowman is nonetheless the alliterative poem that most resembles the Paris Psalter. Griffith’s essay on the vocabulary of the Psalter ends with a comparison to Piers Plowman, but it is a closer comparison than Griffith can recognize within the terms of his argument. The Psalter, exactly like Piers Plowman, redirects more conservative and more innovative trends within alliterative verse, rather than dividing an “ancient tradition” from “rhythmical prose,” as Griffith argues.67 Each of the Psalter’s stylistic innovations finds its amplified echo in Piers Plowman. In the modern study of Middle English alliterative meter, Piers Plowman has always been regarded as eccentric.68 Recent research suggests that Langland adheres to the same metrical principles as other poets but differs in the placement of alliteration and, like the Psalter poet,

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in metrical phonology.69 While the syntax of the English alliterative lines of Piers Plowman is conventional, Langland serially interrupts it with Latin prose (e.g., C.16.273), Latin rhythmical and quantitative poetry (e.g., 17.285a–b), French poetry (13.203–4), and even French song (Prol.229b). 70 The habitual interleaving of text in other languages and literary forms renders Langland’s line exceptionally phenomenologically complex. Langland largely avoids the vocabulary of alliterative romance, including “shalk” (which appears just once in over seven thousand lines: 10.160b), while the poem’s alliterative lines incorporate a large number of French and Latin terms and tags—notably, many snippets from the Psalms.71 Like the Psalter poet, Langland makes selective and extraordinary use of poetic prologues. Piers Plowman is a poem that keeps beginning ;72 dream-vision prologues punctuate the traditional division of the poem into visio and vita (Prol.1 ff.; 9.347 ff.; 10.1 ff.). Like the Psalter, Piers Plowman is extant in a relatively large number of manuscripts: full copies in three authorial versions, spliced texts combining two or more versions, and short excerpts. Piers Plowman is far and away the most widely copied alliterative poem of the fourteenth or any other century. Like the scribe of latin 8824, the scribes of Piers Plowman manuscripts employed a number of strategies to come to terms with the persistent confrontation between English and Latin in the poem.73 Like the Paris Psalter, Piers Plowman is a conspicuously southern, non-narrative entry in a poetic tradition dominated (in modern scholarship, anyway) by northern, narrative compositions. More generally, Langland’s poem marks an important stage in the internationalization and diversification of English writing, a historical development to which Piers Plowman itself possibly made an important contribution.74 Piers Plowman, like the Paris Psalter before it, cuts an imposing cultural profile. Both poems take alliterative verse to the literary mainstream. Both poems have been accused by modern scholars of being literary texts that fail to be literary, as in the Sisams’ opinion that the Psalter’s style “has no poetic quality” and C. S. Lewis’s judgment that Langland “hardly makes his poetry into a poem.”75 There are differences, too, of course. Piers Plowman is a more conceptually, structurally, linguistically, and spiritually demanding poem than the Paris Psalter. Langland had the additional option (or burden) of putting English into conversation with French. In Piers Plowman, the text of the Psalms is ingested (sometimes literally: C.15.25 ff.) into a more wideranging sociopolitico-spiritual exegesis. From the perspective of the history of style, one might say that Langland has traveled far down the path

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that the Psalter poet forged. While it would be highly speculative (and unnecessary) to posit any direct literary connection between the Paris Psalter and Piers Plowman, the two poems are the two major exemplars of a subset of stylistically innovative southern alliterative poetry. Coming to terms with an ambitious and innovative Paris Psalter also means tempering and reorienting critical opinion of the “tradition” from which the Psalter departs, that is, the corpus of long, undated narrative poems such as Andreas and Beowulf. Heretofore, the purpose of comparisons between Beowulf and the Psalter has always been to diagnose the Psalter’s deformations. Hence Griffith, who has pursued such comparisons in the greatest detail, frames his conclusions in negative terms. The Psalter is “unimaginative,” “not formulaic,” “insipid” (etymologically, not sapidus “tasteful”), and “incongruous,” its poet “incapable”; its style presages “disintegration” and “destruction.”76 In other words, the Psalter is not Beowulf. Reinsertion of the Paris Psalter in a more continuous history of alliterative style enables the directionality of the comparison to be reversed. Following on the arguments of the metrists and of Thornbury, one may now ask: what do the stylistic differences between Beowulf and the Paris Psalter reveal about Beowulf? Metrically, linguistically, syntactically, lexically, and stylistically, Beowulf is a highly mannered composition, invested in resurrecting a glittering Scandinavian antiquity.77 By illustrating a path not chosen, the style of the Paris Psalter reveals the extent to which the style of Andreas, Beowulf, and similar poems—the “tradition” invoked by Griffith’s subtitle—was a historically conditioned mode and a marked literary choice. Like Piers Plowman, the Paris Psalter ostracizes, and hence throws into relief, the habits and paraphernalia of more stylistically conservative alliterative verse. These differences are, perhaps, as geographical and ideological as they are chronological, as often supposed in Old English studies. Taking Thornbury’s socioliterary idea to its logical conclusion, one could categorize many of the long, undated narrative Old English poems, less as expressions of eighth- and early ninth-century literary culture writ large, than as a Northern mode (or modes) standing at a great geographical and ideological distance from Alfred’s court. Griffith’s argument, like most others about the Paris Psalter, assumes the unity of Old English alliterative verse as a matter of course; the style of the Psalter points instead to the diversity of Old English alliterative verse.78 It is a diversity which literary criticism has not fully registered, but one which Roberta Frank’s scholarship consistently illuminates.79

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Set against a longer alliterative tradition, not a self-contained Old English tradition, the Psalter marks a high point in the modernization of alliterative verse. That the apotheosis of alliterative style could for so long appear to modern critics as its nadir suggests the need to recalibrate our historical sense of style and its manifold points of entry into the social and political world.80 NOTES 1 The Paris Psalter occupies a similar position in Old English studies to the Prick of Conscience in Middle English studies. See Cornelius, [Review of Prik of Conscience, ed. Morey], 400. 2 Fragments of psalms in Oxford Bodleian MS Junius 121 suggest that the Paris Psalter once included Psalms 1–50: Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 308–10. 3 On the provenance of the manuscript see Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 100–104 and 114–23. 4 Toswell, “Relationship of the Metrical Psalter.” Cp. Keefer, Old English Metrical Psalter, who argues that one or more glossed psalters, now lost, underlie the Paris Psalter. 5 Paris Psalter, ed. Krapp, xix–xxi, and Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 307–19. 6 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 307–8, and Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 228. By specifying “free-standing” I mean to exclude those poems that circulated in more than four copies, but only encased within Latin or Old English prose texts, viz., the Battle of Brunanburh and Capture of the Five Boroughs (in the AngloSaxon Chronicle), Bede’s Death Song (in the Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae), Cædmon’s Hymn (in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and the Old English translation of it), and the Metrical Preface to the Pastoral Care (in the Old English Pastoral Care). 7 Tschischwitz, Metrik der angelsächsischen Psalmenübersetzung, 94 (“Ist das Denkmal ausnahmsweise schlecht, oder sind andere Denkmäler des 10. Jahrhunderts ebenso?”, a section heading); Sisam and Sisam, “The Psalm Texts,” 17; Donoghue, Style in Old English Poetry, 35; Bethel, “Anacrusis in the Psalms,” 33; Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 167 (both quotations, the first echoing Campbell, [Review of Paris Psalter, ed. Colgrave], 107: “The metrical Psalms are not so much decadent as pedestrian”); Fulk, History of Old English Meter, 410; and Opalińska, “Between Translation and Paraphrase,” 84. To the last cp. Opalińska, To the Rhythm of Poetry, 73–158. 8 Russom, “Evolution of Middle English Alliterative Meter” and Evolution of Verse Structure, 54–258; Putter, Jefferson, and Stokes, Studies in the Metre, 260–62; Yakovlev, “Development of Alliterative Metre”; Cable, “Progress in Middle English Alliterative Metrics”; Minkova, “Diagnostics of Metricality” and

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“On the Meter”; Weiskott, English Alliterative Verse; and Cornelius, Reconstructing Alliterative Verse. Standing outside this cluster of research activity but partly compatible with it is Bredehoft, Early English Metre, which focuses on late Old English and Early Middle English alliterative verse. 9 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 223–37. Cp. Momma, “Old English Metrical Psalms,” and Leneghan, “Making the Psalter Sing,” who set the Paris Psalter in the larger field of early English psalms translations in verse, and in a similar vein but focusing on a different poem of the Southern mode, Karasawa, “Lexical Choice.” 10 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 224 (first quotation) and 232 (second quotation). 11 Yakovlev, “Development of Alliterative Metre,” 42–88 (Old English), 188–265 (Early Middle English), and 267–79 (development from Old English to Early Middle English). 12 Bartlett, Metrical Division, 42 (first quotation); Bethel, “Anacrusis in the Psalms,” 33 (second quotation); and Fulk, History of Old English Meter, §355.7 (third quotation) and 410 (fourth quotation). 13 Bartlett, Metrical Division, 41. Cp. Opalińska, “Between Translation and Paraphrase,” 85. On metrical resolution see Stockwell and Minkova, “Old English Metrics” (Old English), and Yakovlev, “Development of Alliterative Metre,” 212–21 and 252–60 (Early Middle English). 14 Bethel, “Anacrusis in the Psalms,” 38 (Paris Psalter 54.8.2b listed in Appendix I). Quotations of the Paris Psalter are from Paris Psalter, ed. Krapp. 15 Fulk, History of Old English Meter, §303. Fulk cites Maldon 66b as anomalous. Cp. 414: “most of [the Paris Psalter’s] metrical faults are like those of Maldon and other presumably late verse.” 16 Opalińska, “Between Translation and Paraphrase,” 85. 17 Tschischwitz, Metrik der angelsächsischen Psalmenübersetzung, 109–10 (the disappearance of Types D and E—i.e., those with three lifts, in the b-verse), 110–11 (the preference for “Typus B mit klingendem Ausgang” [110]—i.e., x... xSxSx, over Type B, i.e., x...xSxS), 111 (the dominance of “für [Types] B und C die Variante mit 2-silbiger Eingangssenkung, für A die mit 2-silbiger Mittelsen­ kung”—i.e., the obligatory expansion of dips), and 111–12 (the generalization of “anacrusis” [“Auftakt,” 111]—i.e., the addition of new dips beyond four positions). The heading of this section is “In welcher Weise meldet sich schon der Uebergang zum Mittelenglischen?” (109). For the terminology and typology used by Tschischwitz (and Bartlett, Bethel, Fulk, and Opalińska) see Sievers, Altgermanische Metrik. 18 Particularly acute is the remark that the Paris Psalter shows “den tiefsten Verfall der altenglischen Stabreimtechnik” (Tschischwitz, Die Metrik, 94). 19 Toswell, “Translation Techniques,” 404. 20 Tschischwitz, Metrik der angelsächsischen Psalmenübersetzung, 98–108, and Fulk, History of Old English Meter, 410. Opalińska, “Between Translation and

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Paraphrase,” 85, posits “inflectional levelling and vowel deletion” in Paris Psalter 52.1.3b gewordene, 52.1.4b besmitene, and 52.6.3a gehyrwede. In these cases, however, scribal spelling might be masking uninflected participles, which would yield normative scansions without innovative metrical phonology. 21 Cp. Fulk, History of Old English Meter, §88 and 410 (citing Paris Psalter 61.12.2b). 22 Toswell, “Translation Techniques,” 404. Cp. Tschischwitz, Metrik der angelsächsischen Psalmenübersetzung, 109. 23 On Old English poetic syntax see esp. Andrew, Syntax and Style; Kendall, Metrical Grammar; Mitchell, “Apo Koinou”; and Blockley, Aspects of Old English Poetic Syntax. On the syntax of Middle English alliterative verse see Lawton, “Larger Patterns of Syntax” and “Alliterative Style,” 234–36. 24 Quotations of the Roman Psalter are from Le Psautier romain, ed. Weber. 25 Bethel, “Anacrusis,” 35–36. Examples of b-verses beginning with a stressed finite verb are Paris Psalter 51.7.4b, 52.1.3b, and 54.7.2b. This arrangement is sporadically attested in other Old English poems, e.g., Beowulf 1128b and 2899b, Deor 32b, Judith 25b, Rune Poem 47b and 57b, Whale 61b and 70b, and Widsith 45b. For a fuller list see Weiskott, “Old English Poetry,” 124. On these types of half lines see Kendall, Metrical Grammar, 54–57, and Blockley, Aspects, 153–72. On Kuhn’s Laws see Kendall, Metrical Grammar, 16–26, and Blockley and Cable, “Kuhn’s Laws.” 26 Bethel, “Anacrusis in the Psalms,” 36. 27 Tinkler, Vocabulary and Syntax, 15–21 (loan translations; cp. Sisam and Sisam, “The Psalm Texts,” 17), 21–22 (Latin loans), and 33–48 (words illuminated by psalter commentary). 28 Griffith, “Poetic Language.” On the lexicon of Middle English alliterative verse see Borroff, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, 52–69, and Turville-Petre, Alliterative Revival, 78–80, and “Alliterative Horses.” 29 Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 168–70. Cp. Toswell, “Translation Techniques,” 394; and Weiskott, “Grass-Bed,” 590–92. 30 Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 173–75. 31 Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 178–82. But cp. Tinkler, Vocabulary and Syntax, 78–80, a short list of “Echoes from Other Old English Poems” (78, the section heading). 32 Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 179. 33 Paris Psalter 85.2.2a, 85.3.3a, 88.18.1a, 89.15.2a, 89.18.1a, 101.12.1b, 101.25.1a, 104.15.2b, 104.22.2a, 115.6.2b, 118.94.1a (translating tuus sum ego, perhaps in anticipation of 118.125 servus tuus sum ego—where, however, the translator chose the prosaic synonym esne), 133.1.2b (onbyhtscealcas), 134.1.2a, and 134.9.4a. 34 Weiskott, English Alliterative Verse, 53–70.

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Evans, “Afterword on the Prologue,” 371. To Paris Psalter 65.1.1–2 cp. the openings of Cædmon’s Hymn, Genesis A, and Kentish Hymn, as well as Seasons for Fasting 39 ff. To Paris Psalter 65.14.1–2 cp. the openings of Dream of the Rood, Seafarer, Whale, Wife’s Lament, etc., as well as Beowulf 2069 ff., Judith 152 ff., Seasons for Fasting 208 ff., etc. For a full list see Weiskott, English Alliterative Verse, 55–56. 37 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 324–25. 38 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 99 (second quotation) and 100 (first quotation). 39 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 101–3. 40 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 125. 41 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 105. 42 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 101–2 and 109. 43 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 100 and 125–27 (quotation at 127). 44 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 122–23. 45 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 110. 46 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 104 and 110. 47 Ker, “The Handwriting,” 14; Emms, “The Scribe of the Paris Psalter”; Opalińska, “Between Translation and Paraphrase,” 77; and Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 228–29. 48 Emms, “The Scribe of the Paris Psalter,” 179. Cp. Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 127: “The choice of a bilingual edition may well have been because Latin was familiar but not completely comfortable for the patron.” 49 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 229. 50 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 100–4. 51 Toswell, “Late Anglo-Saxon Psalter,” and Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 127–28 and 205. 52 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 124–25 and n. 90. On Orm as an exponent of an avant-garde Latinate English style, see Thomas, “Orm’s Vernacular Latinity.” On the holster book format for Piers Plowman see Horobin, “Manuscripts and Readers,” 192 and n. 30. 53 Sisam and Sisam, “The Psalm Texts,” 16. But cp. Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 127: “it would be foolhardy to argue that the compiler of the manuscript preferred the prose to the poetry on grounds of literary merit.” 54 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 226, and Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 318–19. Emms, “The Scribe of the Paris Psalter,” makes a conjectural argument that the scribe of latin 8824 worked at Canterbury. 55 Toswell, “Metrical Psalter and the Menologium,” and Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 310–19; and Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 231–32. 56 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 225–26 and 229–30, and Toswell, AngloSaxon Psalter, 308–9 (quotation at 309). I would argue that Worcester, though situated in historical Mercia, belonged to the same socioliterary network as Abingdon and Canterbury in the eleventh century and therefore is meaningfully 35 36

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southern, notwithstanding its different categorization in the present-day United Kingdom. 57 Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 310. 58 Baker, “Little-Known Variant Text”; O’Neill, “Another Fragment”; Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 228; and Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 308. 59 For the Chronicle poems, termini post quem correspond to the dates of the events, being the date of entry except for Death of Edward (recte 1066). Termini ad quem are given by the date of the hands of the earliest witness (in all cases, BL MS Cotton Tiberius B.i), fixable with some precision due to scribal changeovers. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts, item 191, identifies two relevant stints: to 1045 and to 1066. Sweyn Forkbeard Razes Wilton was first noticed by Bredehoft, “OE yðhengest.” 60 Cp. Momma, “Old English Metrical Psalter,” 105: “For the Anglo-Saxon receptor audience [...] the Metrical Psalms commanded an exceptional degree of textual authority precisely because, I believe, they were different from traditional verse.” 61 See Biggs, “Fourfold Division.” 62 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 200. 63 Other surviving Old English translations of Psalm 101.7 pelicano use native equivalents. For a howler see Tinkler, Vocabulary and Syntax, 22. 64 Thornbury, Becoming a Poet, 224–25. 65 The idea of the vernacular/medieval literary theory: Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship; Medieval Literary Theory, ed. Minnis and Scott; Idea of the Vernacular, ed. Wogan-Browne et al.; Vulgar Tongue, ed. Somerset and Watson; Answerable Style, ed. Grady and Galloway; Johnson, Practicing Literary Theory; and Galloway, “Imagining the Literary.” Vernacular theology: Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change,” and “Visions of Inclusion”; After Arundel, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh; McMullen, “Forr þeʒʒre sawle need”; and Waters, Translating Clergie. 66 The literature on the dating of Beowulf is vast. See esp. Girvan, Beowulf and the Seventh Century; Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Chase; Fulk, “Dating Beowulf” and “On Argumentation in Old English Philology”; Liuzza, “On the Dating of Beowulf”; Frank, “Scandal in Toronto”; and Dating of “Beowulf,” ed. Neidorf. 67 Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 183. 68 Cable, “Middle English Meter,” 63 (“I suspect that Langland knew the rules [...] but felt free to break them”); Putter, Jefferson, and Stokes, Studies in the Metre, 5 (“metrically idiosyncratic”); Yakovlev, “Development of Alliterative Metre,” 25 (“metrically deviant”); and Duggan, “Notes on the Metre,” 169 (“Langland clearly did not always care to make his alliterative long line fit the conventions that governed other alliterative poets”). These late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century judgments echo Vision of William, ed. Skeat, xxxix (“William was not very particular about his metre”).

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Barney, “Langland’s Prosody,” 82–85, and “Revised Edition,” 277–88; Cole, “Rum, Ram, Ruf, and Rym,” 29–73; Cable, “Progress in Middle English Alliterative Metrics,” 247–48; Burrow, “The Endings of Lines”; and Weiskott, “Piers Plowman.” 70 Citations of Piers Plowman are from Piers Plowman, ed. Russell and Kane. 71 Nolan, “Beyond Macaronic”; Machan, “Language Contact”; Halmari and Adams, “On the Grammar and Rhetoric”; and Jones, “Articulating the Psalms.” On Langland’s alliterative vocabulary see Lawton, “Alliterative Style,” 237–38. 72 Smith, Book of the Incipit. 73 Alford, “Piers Plowman”, 12–13, and Jefferson, “Scribal Responses.” 74 This is the implication of Hanna, London Literature, which positions Piers Plowman, historically, between a local early fourteenth-century London and an international late fourteenth-century London. Cp. Lawton, “Unity of Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” and Salter, English and International, 101–79. 75 Lewis, Allegory of Love, 161, on which see Lawton, “Alliterative Style,” 246. Justice, “Literary History,” criticizes such judgments as applied to Piers Plowman. 76 Griffith, “Poetic Language,” 167 (first and sixth quotations), 178 (second quotation), 179 (third quotation), 180 (fourth quotation, of the Psalter’s “relationship with the [Old English poetic] tradition”), 181 (fifth quotation), and 182 (seventh quotation). 77 Frank, “Beowulf Poet’s Sense.” 78 Cp. Lawton, “Unity of Middle English Alliterative Poetry” and “Diversity of Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” and see Weiskott, English Alliterative Verse, 85–7 and 114–19. 79 Esp. Frank, “What Kind of Poetry,” “Three ‘Cups’ and a Funeral,” and “Sharing Words.” 80 I thank Irina Dumitrescu for inviting me to co-edit and contribute to this book in celebration of our former adviser and perennial teacher. My deepest gratitude to Roberta Frank for her innumerable acts of generosity, including showing us all that scholarship on early English poetry can be at once precise, learned, and stylish. 69

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Minkova, Donka. “Diagnostics of Metricality in Middle English Alliterative Verse.” In Approaches to the Metres of Alliterative Verse, ed. Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter, 77–113. Leeds: Leeds Studies in English, 2009. ———. “On the Meter of Middle English Alliterative Verse.” In Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms: From Language to Metrics and Beyond, ed. Jean-Louis Aroui and Andy Arleo, 209–28. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2009. Minnis, A. J. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988; repr. 2011. Minnis, A. J., and A. B. Scott, eds., with the assistance of David Wallace. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100-c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Mitchell, Bruce. “Apo Koinou in Old English Poetry?” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100 (1999): 477–97. Momma, Haruko. “The Old English Metrical Psalms: Practice and Theory of Translation.” In Early English Poetic Culture and Meter: The Influence of G. R. Russom, ed. M. J. Toswell and Lindy Brady, 93–110. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2016. Neidorf, Leonard, ed. The Dating of “Beowulf ”: A Reassessment. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Nolan, E. Peter. “Beyond Macaronic: Embedded Latin in Dante and Langland.” In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, ed. R. J. Schoeck, 539–48. Binghamton: State University of New York, 1985. O’Neill, Patrick P. “Another Fragment of the Metrical Psalms in the Eadwine Psalter.” Notes & Queries 35 (1988): 434–36. Opalińska, Monika. “Between Translation and Paraphrase – An Analysis of Metrical Patterns in The Paris Psalter Psalm 52.” Acta Philologica 42 (2012): 77–86. ———. To the Rhythm of Poetry: A Study of Late Old English Metrical Prayers. Warsaw: University of Warsaw Press, 2014. Putter, Ad, Judith Jefferson, and Myra Stokes. Studies in the Metre of Alliterative Verse. Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures, 2007. Russell, George, and George Kane, eds. Piers Plowman: The C Version. London: Athlone, 1997. Russom, Geoffrey. “The Evolution of Middle English Alliterative Meter.” In Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations, ed. Anne Curzan and Kimberly Emmons, 279–304. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004. ———. The Evolution of Verse Structure in Old and Middle English Poetry: From the Earliest Alliterative Poems to Iambic Pentameter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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Salter, Elizabeth. English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art, and Patronage of Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Sievers, Eduard. Altgermanische Metrik. Halle: Niemeyer, 1893. Sisam, Kenneth, and Celia Sisam. “The Psalm Texts.” In The Paris Psalter, ed. Bertram Colgrave, 15–17. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1958. Skeat, W. W., ed. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1886. Smith, D. Vance. The Book of the Incipit: Beginnings in the Fourteenth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Somerset, Fiona, and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Stockwell, Robert, and Donka Minkova. “Old English Metrics and the Phonology of Resolution.” In Germanic Studies in Honor of Anatoly Liberman, ed. Kurt Gustav Goblirsch, Martha Berryman Mayou, and Marvin Taylor, 389–406. Odense: Odense University Press, 1997. Thomas, Carla María. “Orm’s Vernacular Latinity.” SELIM 20 (2013–2014): 167–98. Thornbury, Emily V. Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Tinkler, John D. Vocabulary and Syntax of the Old English Version in the Paris Psalter: A Critical Commentary. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Toswell, M. J. The Anglo-Saxon Psalter. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. ———. “The Late Anglo-Saxon Psalter: Ancestor of the Book of Hours?” Florilegium 14 (1995–1996): 1–24. ———. “The Metrical Psalter and the Menologium: Some Observations.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 94 (1993): 249–57. ———. “The Relationship of the Metrical Psalter to the Old English Glossed Psalters.” English Studies 78 (1997): 297–315. ———. “The Translation Techniques of the Old English Metrical Psalter, with Special Reference to Psalm 136.” English Studies 75 (1994): 393–407. Tschischwitz, Benno. Die Metrik der angelsächsischen Psalmenübersetzung. Breslau: Fleischmann, 1908. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. “Alliterative Horses.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 (2013): 154–68. ———. The Alliterative Revival. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977. Waters, Claire M. Translating Clergie: Status, Education, and Salvation in Thirteenth-Century Vernacular Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Watson, Nicholas. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.” Speculum 70 (1995): 822–64.

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——— . “Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 145–88. Weber, Dom Robert, ed. Le Psautier romain et les autres anciens psautiers latins. Rome: Abbaye Saint Jérôme, 1953. Weiskott, Eric. English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. ——— . “Grass-Bed: A Poetic Compound in the Alliterative Tradition.” Anglia 134 (2016): 587–603. ———. “Old English Poetry, Verse by Verse.” Anglo-Saxon England 44 (2015): 95–130. ———. “Piers Plowman and the Durable Alliterative Tradition.” Yearbook of Langland Studies 30 (2016): 123–73. Wogan-Browne, Joceyln, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans, eds. The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Yakovolev, Nicolay. “The Development of Alliterative Metre from Old to Middle English.” Diss., University of Oxford, 2008.

Generative Form Sarah Elliott Novacich

R

EADING THE NOTES TO a critical edition of a Middle English text can disclose a tremendous amount of information and a significant lack of certainty. Consider this note to line 254 of Patience, one of four poems attributed to the Gawain poet, the anonymous northerner roughly contemporary to Chaucer: 254 ridlande strondes: ridlande occurs only here and at C 953, where rain is described as ridlande thikke. The word appears to be from OF rider/rideler; it is used of e.g. blood (to mean ‘run down’) and also of grooves, ripples or wrinkles (see Godefroy, Dictionnaire.) ‘Forming streaks or lines’ seems to be a key part of the sense. The rain is clearly coming down ‘in stair-rods’ in Cleanness, and the strondes [currents] in Patience are forming observable lines of motion.1

The note, from the Penguin edition generously annotated by Ad Putter and Myra Stokes, describes a phrase from the second passus of Patience, in which the central character of that poem, the biblical Jonas, is swallowed by a whale.2 Descending toward the bottom of the sea, the whale violently jostles his still-living meal; their journey passes through “rokkes ful rogh and ridlande strondes,” or through rough rocks and currents possibly “forming streaks or lines.” Following the entry in Godefroy’s Dictionnaire de l’ancien Francais, Putter and Stokes propose that ridlande relates to the Old French rider, whose similar form in modern French means “to wrinkle” or “ripple.” Other critics, however, connect ridlande to verbs meaning “to fall” or “to sift” (in Old French and Old English respectively); translations include “oozing,” “shifting,” “winnowing,” and “rolling.”3 Part of the confusion has to do with the fact that the Middle English ridlande seems to occur in only one other place: in Cleanness, another of the four texts attributed to the Gawain poet. All four texts are found in one manuscript, mercifully preserved, and thrumming with words that, similarly, we’re not

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quite sure about. We can attempt to chase down their meanings through etymological searching, but, as the note above intimates, we also sense their meanings through the context of the poem itself. This chapter proposes a thought experiment: that we think of the poem as also producing such words. By this, I mean that we approach the poem as generating its own potential neologisms, or even as producing words in general, hurling them into being through the intricate engine and seemingly unbridled energy of the long alliterative line. Admittedly, proposing that a poem generates its own words risks attributing artistic agency to something inanimate. Or, to sidestep debates over object-oriented ontology, it confers agency on what might not be there at all: a poem, incorporeal without ink, and silent without harp or voice. And although something like this does occur in Cleanness, in whose retelling of the Book of Daniel words inscribed by a disembodied hand magically appear as the writing on the wall,4 I do not quite want to argue that a piece of parchment generates ink, or that words miraculously materialize upon some accommodating surface. Instead, I am interested in a different (albeit not always wholly different) kind of verbal formation: a dynamic in which poetic form seems to become a generator of language itself, creating the impression that when the formal requirements of verse call for a word with a certain sound and syllabic length, the poem makes one. This is not to dismiss skill or style from the matrix of poetic creation, but rather to think more expansively about the creative environment out of which a particular word emerges, an environment in which both formal rules and inspiration—or restriction and excitement—matter in combination. Assisting with this generative alchemy of rules and inspiration is the volatile nature of Middle English itself. In his preface to the Eneydos, composed about a century after Cleanness, William Caxton famously employs astrological influence to account for the mutability of his native tongue, writing, “we englysshe men ben borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste / but euer wauerynge.”5 He claims the language of the “englysshe” has changed appreciably (“varyeth ferre”) even “from that whiche was vsed and spoken” when he was born.6 Such unsteadfastness might be said to characterize the history of Middle English generally, a language that emerges from a (minimally) trilingual island, its vocabulary rooted in or making use of Old English, French, and Latin, as well as Old Norse, Gaelic, and various Lowland tongues. It was altered both suddenly and incrementally by conquests, trade routes, crusades, pilgrimages, differing accents, shifting vowels, the importation of

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technical vocabularies, and the everyday exigencies of communication.7 Such historical and linguistic circumstances understandably make it difficult to track down the meaning of a particular word such as ridlande, but this linguistic fluctuation also conceivably created an environment permissive of more change. To put it another way, beneath the sign of the unsteadfast moon, a poem wrought out of a shifting language colludes in the metamorphosis of that language, its supposedly inherent mutability inviting and even catalyzing further change. A lifetime is enough to make Caxton’s childhood language somewhat strange to him, and six centuries rendered the Beowulf manuscript entirely illegible to the first readers of Shakespeare. I am interested in the kinds of freedom a multilingual world offers someone working within a strict poetic form, and how such a rapidly fluctuating vernacular—a Middle English forged in the multilingualism of those intervening centuries— alters the rules of invention. For the uncertainties associated with ridlande and other words in the Gawain corpus are far from isolated cases. In her study of Middle English alliterative verse, Christine Chism writes that late medieval alliterative poetry, in which we might group all of the poems of the Gawain poet, “abounds with neologisms, hapax legomena, and archaisms found nowhere else in Middle English but existing in Anglo-Saxon.”8 She speculates about where such words come from and, in a final question, asks why this particular type of Middle English poetry should have such a strange and extensive vocabulary and a higher incidence of special wordcategories in the first place: If Anglo-Saxon is unavailable, where do the poets get this vocabulary? From local oral retention? From regional dialects? From the importations of venturesome translator-wordsmiths? From the more elusive Old Norse loan-words surviving (or remembered) within ancient Danish settlement areas? Or from a sustained and energetic lexical conscription using any or all of the above in order to expand and vary alliterative possibilities for every letter?9

The last line suggests that not just linguistic circumstance, but also the nature of a particular poetic form gathers hapax legomena and otherwise unattested words. The passage in full, moreover, suggests that these two things—linguistic circumstance and poetic form—act upon one another. Critical response has not always been generous to the unattested words of late medieval alliterative poetry, and Chism’s description of “sustained and energetic lexical conscription” sounds particularly laudatory

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in comparison to other, vaguely accusatory ascriptions of haphazardness. In 1988, for instance, John Finlayson noted a critical tendency (“it is equally universally thought”) to approach unfamiliar words in such works “as lexical obscurities and imprecisions needed to sustain the alliterative patterns,” a formulation that replaces energetic conscription with something approaching a kind of impulsive scrambling.10 But this portrait of an anonymous, mediocre artist, clumsily abiding by formal conventions, largely disappears in the case of the Gawain poet, whose borrowings and occasional morphological freewheeling critics often describe in positive terms, sometimes even elevating other alliterative verse through association: “the Gawain-poet, like other poets who composed alliterative verse, made use of a variety of phonological, morphological, and stress doublets from other dialects to meet the demands of alliteration and verse rhythms.”11 In this description, rather than straining after suspect obscurities, the poet demonstrates linguistic reach, making use of an expansive lexical and stylistic range. Distinguishing between error and creativity—between, say, “needing” and “making use of ” less familiar words—can be tricky for all sorts of reasons, but it would seem that, besides the anonymous Gawain poet, named poets more often receive the benefit of the doubt.12 Dante’s Commedia, we know, is rife with neologisms, not errors, and Chaucer “fathers” the English language as an innovator; he does not bastardize it.13 Steven Botterill, one of Dante’s many translators, considers that poet’s formations of new words to comprise nothing less than a “victory over silence and meaninglessness,”14 and Joseph Luzzi argues that the neologisms of the Commedia indicate the “capacity of human language for renewal and rebirth.” 15 It is also helpful, of course, that Dante’s less familiar words tend not to be those whose etymologies linguists must track down, as in the case of ridlande, but rather ones that assume, in Luzzi’s phrase, “the appearance, if not the reality, of neologisms.”16 Such words include formations like incielare, or “to enheaven,” which makes clear both its root (ciel) and the rather straightforward process of its alteration through the addition of a prefix and infinitive verbal ending.17 Luzzi points out that Dante finds support for inventive license in Horace, who, in the Ars Poetica, condones the use of new words on the condition that the poet introduce them sparingly.18 Isidore of Seville also provides a number of rubrics for approaching newish words, whether spoken in haste or carefully set to meter, introduced on the street or on the page. And although he attempts to divide fault from innovation, he also ends up

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revealing how such categories inevitably overlap. Among new words that are faults (vitium), for instance, Isidore includes the barbarism (barbarismus), which occurs when a sound or letter is corrupt, or specifically when one strays from the “purity” of Latin (when Latin borrows other words, a barbarolexis might emerge).19 Usually “barbarisms” are faults in prose, writes Isidore; when they occur in poetry, they are examples of metaplasm (metaplasmus).20 Isidore thus designates metaplasm both as a vitium and as the product of poetic license; here, corruption of a known form occurs not through ignorance, but as a response to the requirements of meter.21 But, again, when are words—as Horace’s poetry puts it—newstamped and re-enkindled from older forms, and when are they simply misspelled or mispronounced? When is a word an exquisite addition to a lexicon, added by an enraptured poet who imagines unprecedented proximity to the divine and who expands his vocabulary accordingly, and when does an erring poet or scribe mar a vocabulary with suspect letters or syllabic stress? And how, in between these poles, does one distinguish between sparely inventive and recklessly proliferating language, particularly from the vantage point of one thousand years later? Furthermore (and here we return to the enigmatic ridlande), read from such a distant remove, when can a word be called incontestably new? For at this point, it seems important to acknowledge that ridlande might not be a new word at all. Though hard to trace definitively for the modern scholar, it very well might have been familiar to the Gawain poet and to his late medieval audience, if not part of everyday speech, then at least identifiable and comprehensible as a rare poetic term. Likewise, other instances of Middle English hapax legomena, whether occurring only in Patience (ruyt, forclemmed, sloumbe), in the poet’s corpus (the abovementioned ridlande, the majestic gryndellayk), or in one of the other three attributed poems (atounte in Pearl, enker in Gawain) could have been known entities to the first readers of the poems.22 A hapax legomenon (a word occurring only once) need not have been a neologism (a new word) to its original audience, though it might have been. The “new” is a category always under debate, as Patricia Clare Ingham argues.23 One can point to the radically inceptive speech of Adam, which first breaks the silence of the garden, or to the sudden multiplicity of languages emerging from the chaos of Babel,24 but new words in the great afterward by and large tend to recall old ones in some way, even if their alterations present for their first readers, writers, speakers, and hearers a sense, or even a shock, of the unfamiliar: a new sound, or a known sound made strange, a hint of error or delight.

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My aim here is not to categorize words with the scientific precision of historical linguistics, but rather to suggest that acknowledging a spirit of exhilaration, poetic expansiveness, and verbal momentum might participate in other elements we consider when we try to track down the origins or trace the generation of an unfamiliar Middle English word; in short, that we leave space for inspiration and even playfulness to account for etymological obscurity, particularly in a rapidly transitioning linguistic environment. This is not to deny linguistic facts, but to show how consideration of intertwining poetic and linguistic histories might contribute to a fuller sense of historical poetic possibility.25 For, if we are hesitant to call unfamiliar words “imprecise,” then we can explore other possibilities that might produce them. This is why the Gawain poet offers us such a useful set of texts for considering etymological obscurity. They are read both as part of a loose affiliation of late medieval alliterative poems, frequently punctuated with unattested words, and as a series of works wrought with exquisite poetic skill and embraced by a generous critical reception. This chapter, then, offers a new approach to unattested words in the Gawain corpus by pondering the conditions of their emergence, pursuing, in particular, the possibility that formal constraints and rhythmic energy act upon an already volatile language to produce them. On one hand, of course, we can attribute any hint of such miraculous word-generation to writerly sleight of hand. That is, the verse merely effects the sensation of wordgeneration, inviting us to imagine that a poem writes itself. In Patience, as I will show, such a dynamic emerges through a combination of formal technique, scenes that describe almost-uncontrolled creation, and a reveling in the elastic lexical environment of trilingual England. A reluctant prophet is trapped in the guts of a whale and then set loose; a woodbine sprouts at miraculous speed from the soil; and a scriptural text is elaborated upon, and made to spread through multiple vernaculars. I will argue that these events— physical, linguistic, and literary—are related, and that the natural world, riotously immoderate and yet made to a specific design, provides the context for a kind of poetry, similarly bound by intricate rules, with a tendency to “spradde alle aboute” (365). The dynamic in which a poetic line produces the word it needs thus relates to a plot that concerns binding, eruption, and teeming creation. Such a world offers the backdrop for an energetic, impatient poetics that, despite its restrictive, formal rules, or rather because of them, generates a profusion of unattested words, some of them (possibly) new. But what if—on the other hand, and at the same time—one also took the idea of word-generation seriously, not as a poetic motif or

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fictive possibility, but as a real condition of poetic production? Discussions of the collaborative specifics that gave rise to the medieval poetic corpus we inherit today tend to focus on relationships between oral and written traditions, or on the negotiations between poets and scribes. A number of medieval poems, however, reveal an interest in how inspiration also might contribute to poetic production. Poets’ narrative personae frequently describe different kinds of quasi-collaborative dynamics, detailing how the muse, dream figures, or oracular messages sweep up their writing selves. I propose that we also think of inspiration—when not distilled into a specific, authorizing figure—as a kind of exhilaration that builds around the act of creation itself. Creativity sparks and in turn becomes catalyzed by its own productive energy. This energy, in keeping with the etymology of inspiration, works as an animating, activating breath that, working in concert with the rhythmic momentum of a line, permits its verbal expansion. Critics have long noted the galloping energy of the Middle English alliterative long line, often citing its suitability for scenes of heroic action or extreme weather.26 I suggest that a poetic line that builds momentum through insistent, rhythmic alliteration also might contribute to linguistic excess, generating not only a crashing storm, but also the irruption of new words into a vocabulary already primed for expansion. The rest of this chapter considers the generative relationship between precision and exhilaration in the context of specific Middle English poetry, suggesting that the adherence to one and permission of the other are both constitutive of style. In this relationship, “precision” becomes the preserve of form: a set of rules or a code that, when set in motion and suffused with the inspiring energy of creation, effects surprising verbal output, potentially leading to the coinage of a new word.27 I demonstrate how Patience invites us to think of poetic form—in this case, a pattern of rhythmic alliteration28—as combining with creative exhilaration and verbal momentum to generate words, spitting them out as the whale spews out Jonas. In the last part of the chapter, I turn to Pearl, another work in the Gawain poet’s corpus, to argue that the occasional reaching for an absent word in this poem—a new word that fails to emerge— helps us to recognize our desire for an inspiring force that, in concert with a code of rules, might generate something new.

Unattested Words In this section, I examine a dynamic in which the pressures of formal requirements combine with the energy of rhythmic momentum and the

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exhilaration of poetry-making to generate a new or newish word (or the “appearance” of newness, to borrow from Luzzi and modify his application of the term). I argue that Patience invites one to imagine that verse, inspired by creative energy and hewing to a specific, preestablished code, eventually might write itself, almost in the manner of a self-perpetuating machine.29 To test out the proposition, we can turn to a series of unattested words in its fourth passus, in which Jonas falls asleep beneath a simple shelter, a “bour” he makes from the materials at hand (437). While he sleeps, God has a “wodbynde” grow over and around him (the Middle English word translates the hedera of the Vulgate, or “ivy”) (446). Both narrator and reluctant prophet delight in the beauty of the woodbine, which is “fayrest [...] þat euer burne wyste” (fairest ... that man ever knew) (444). Their shared exultation is described, according to Putter and Stokes, in words not elsewhere found in Middle English. The first of these hapax legomena is lylled, in line 447: “Loked alofte on þe lef þat lylled grene.” Putter and Stokes suggest a relationship between Middle English lyllede and the Dutch lillen, offering “quivering” as a translation (tempered with parenthetical question mark).30 The line then can be rendered as: Jonas, waking, “looked aloft on the leaf that quivered green.” Two lines down and still pertaining to the woodbine, we have bo ƺ ted: “[f ]or hit watz brod at þe boþem, boƺ ted on lofte,” or “it [the woodbine] was broad at the bottom, and possibly bent or folded aloft” (449). Putter and Stokes point out that the Middle English noun boght and the Old English byght can mean “a bend” or “a fold,” though the Middle English adjectival form that appears here is unattested elsewhere. Shortly after this, there is the wyþe of line 454—describing the blown leaves “þat euer wayued a wynde so wyþe and so cole.” The possibly related wethe / weþe occurs in Old English, according to Putter and Stokes, where it means “sweet”; the line thus possibly describes leaves that are blown always by “a wind so soothing and cool.”31 Finally, loltrande, in “Lys loltrande þerinne lokande to toune,” has a meaning that Putter and Stokes suggest can only be guessed from context; the word has not been found in other Middle English texts (at least one critic argues for scribal error32), so he [ Jonas], must remain lying “loltrande thereinne,” looking up at his gorgeous new shelter (458). The word boƺted serves as the weakest example of neologism out of the four, but the most helpful in relation to my argument regarding the production of new words. It is weak because the adjective is not all that different, in terms of orthography and presumably sound, from the

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noun form, which we know occurs elsewhere in Middle English. That is, if boƺted is new, it is not that new, but rather a simple switch across parts of speech, a transformation that occurs frequently, especially in poetry. In Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, for instance—to turn to a text less linguistically difficult—a noun is made into an adjective: “Kingdom’d Achilles” who “in commotion rages,” threatens, as Ulysses suggests, to knock himself over with intemperate pride.33 In this instance, as well as in “bo ƺ ted on lofte” (if the reading by Putter and Stokes stands), the meaning of a word (kingdom’d, bo ƺ ted) is clear enough, but receives an added frisson of invention, gaining an extra sound and sense when used in a new way. In the line, “[f ]or hit watz brod at þe boþem, bo ƺ ted on lofte,” boƺted occupies the third and final position in an alliterating set of three words: brod, boþem, and boƺted. Lines throughout Patience consistently employ at least three alliterating terms, with two typically occurring in the first half line before the caesura, and at least one in the second half line. The form thus corresponds to the one governing Old English poetry (aa/ax), a canon largely structured by a stress pattern and alliterative half lines rather than by rhyme.34 All of the Gawain poet’s works alliterate, but Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight also rhyme, the latter attaching an ABAB “wheel” by a short, metrical “bob” to long, alliterating stanzas, and the former employing alliteration and rhyme simultaneously across its lines (this being but the beginning of its formal acrobatics). The Gawain poet’s corpus thus adheres to multiple sets of rules, and in order to execute such an overlay of formal systems, it makes use of another accumulating resource: words, gathering together the lexicon of a Middle English continually expanding through its traders, pilgrims, poets, and past, that extraordinary inventory of special wordforms noted by Chism. But let me return to boƺted and to its potential usefulness when considering poetic neologism. Through the traces of alteration it retains—its marks of having been transformed across parts of speech—boƺted intimates that its coinage results less from the exigencies of an extra-textual linguistic world and more from the internal requirements of the poem. That is to say, it is forged, like Shakespeare’s “kingdom’d Achilles” or Dante’s “incielare,” for the beauty and pleasure effected by and constituent of the poetics in which it participates. It emerges because the poem needs a third alliterating word. Note now that two of the three other unattested words in the passage describing the glorious woodbine—lylled and wyþe—also are the

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third alliterating terms required by the long alliterative lines in which they are found (loltrande is a second alliterating term). What if these words, too, are coined through the needs of the poem? Not simply shifted to a new part of speech from an existing form, and not quite made out of nothing, like the game-changing speech of Adam in Eden or the vaguely derisive “rum, ram, ruf ” in the work of a more southerly poet,35 but somewhere in between: an extensive transformation of a word once heard, remembered, or dreamed, a form concatenated out of a swirl of poetic requirements and pleasurable sounds. We might even think of these words as thrust into being by the metrical momentum of the poetic line, which produces words that must, according to a superimposition of formal restrictions, begin with a certain sound and contain a specific number of syllables. Instead of a poet coining new words as a deliberate act of poetic theology (Dante, triumphing over silence), or “fathering” a language (Chaucer), we have a poem producing the very language out of which it, in turn, is wrought. The dynamic I am describing invites us to think of the poem as a kind of self-sustaining engine, machine, or code, all terms with forms in use in (or familiar to) late medieval England. In his Polychronicon, Trevisa turns to Theodocius, who “made a book of lawe,” also “i-cleped” his “code.” 36 Etymologically linked to ingenuity,37 “engine” and its forms could refer both to the clever mechanisms designed by man and the kind of radical, initial creation set in motion by God. “For vnto man,” warns Boethius in the Middle English translation of The Consolation of Philosophy, “it ne longeþ noght, / To knowen all his [God’s] wonderfull engyne” (It does not belong to man to know all of God’s wonderful engine).38 Still, attempts to understand and diagram as much of this “wonderful engine” as possible occur, as when Hugh of Saint Victor, wrapping up his treatise on mnemonic, devotional practice, stands back (as it were) to offer a crucial, finishing touch: “Once the machine of the universe [machina uniuersitatis] has been constructed in this way, in its higher part the Majesty is drawn from the shoulders upward, and the feet downward, [as though sitting on a throne], but standing out from the background, with His arms extended in either direction, so that He seems to embrace all things.”39 When divine ingenuity exceeded human comprehension and diagramming practices, one also could revel in other, less divine, but nonetheless spectacular engines. Ingham, for instance, describes a wondrous mechanism featured in the romance Floire and Blancheflor: two statues atop a tomb whose moveable parts engage and disengage with one another when the wind blows “through hollow pipes placed carefully around

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them,” 40 apparent automata moving without the assistance of human hands. Browsing through the thirteenth-century sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, one encounters design proposals for a perpetual motion machine; a saw that saws by itself; and an angel whose pointing finger follows the sun.41 E. R. Truitt suggests that by the fourteenth century, “selfmoving machines” were used in churches and court pageantry,42 and Jean Gimpel describes how machines influenced medieval economies, conceptions of labor, and the shape of days. Mechanisms set in place by human labor produced labor in excess of that human input: river-, tidal-, and windmills ground grain, powered iron forges, and increased productivity for cloth fullers. Clocks measured (or even produced) time; manuals of astrological tables, dials, weights, and churning gearwheels with internally notched teeth were fitted with clappers and bells to sound the hours.43 Time and sound entwined together; time shaped the forms that ordered sound, and mechanisms produced sounds that indicated time. Meanwhile, literature both reflected and spurred on such innovating mechanisms, containing examples such as the moving statues of Floire and Blancheflor, time-making and -saving devices, and flying machines. These mechanisms occurred or were described within a cosmos itself understood as a machine. This is the “engyne” that Boethius mentions, the one that drives the rest of creation, whose manifesting splendor can be observed, but whose initial, intricate code remains beyond human discernment. In his frequently cited work on Genesis, Augustine describes God’s initial act of creation in similar terms, positing an inceptive, discrete moment of making that will influence all subsequent, secondary appearances of creation; in the roots of time, “in radicibus [...] temporum,” God perfects a design, which will be realized—in, for example, the sprouting of plants and the multiplication of species—through the progression of hours, days, and years.44 In this schema, “self-sustaining” is too strong a word for the creation from which God never wholly withdraws, but part of the ingenuity of his creative act still has to do with the self-perpetuating nature of that which he sets in motion. In the Chester play of Adam and Eve, for instance, Deus indicates the importance of such self-perpetuating mechanisms when he explains the miraculous nature of seeds: trees diverse fruite forth bringe after ther kynde eachone; the seede of which aye shalbe within the fruite of each tree.45

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God makes seeds, encoding them with rules that today we would call genetic, and the seeds then make plants, which in turn produce more seeds in a continual pattern of reproduction and transformation, the rules of which are internal to each subsequent outgrowth. Divinely crafted horticulture overspills the boundaries of Eden and multiplies in riotous variety the whole earth over. Of course, there are differences between water mills, clocks, and seeds, but medieval conceptions of the engine, code, or machine can offer a larger category within which these disparate examples might be grouped; such a grouping might demonstrate, moreover, shared aspects useful for approaching poetry. For in each instance an initial human or divine act of creation—the making of a wheel, the production of a clock, the radically inceptive designing of seeds—permits or catalyzes further, subsequent creation less under the auspices of that initial creative control. Something new or extra is produced without the direct intervention of the initial creator: grain, the ringing bell, or a plant. A maker imposes rules or restrictions—notched gears, astronomical tables—and then steps back to watch the wheels turn and hear the bell ring. I suggest that we think of the Gawain poet’s corpus as both representing and embodying this idea of a poetic engine as a way of understanding its high incidence of unattested words. The formal requirements of the poetry— variously and often simultaneously including close attention to rhyme, alliteration, meter, the “bob and wheel,” or concatenating repetition—function as an engine-like assemblage capable of producing that ringing bell or, in this case, a new word: often a third alliterating term. Again, this is not to make a historical-linguistic argument, but rather to propose a way of thinking about the use of words in a manner that attempts imaginatively to recapture that excitement of poetry-making. Thinking of poetry in terms of an engine invites examination of the relationship between strict codes and creative excess, spurring one to imagine alliterative poetry as a combination of precision and exhilarating energy.

Whales and Woodbines Patience mentions an engine specifically only once: the “joyles gyn,” or assemblage of nautical technology, sail, ropes, tiller, and “gere” from which Jonas eventually is cast into the sea and the belly of the whale (146, 148). But even though only the ship is termed a “gyn,” by approaching the engine as something initially crafted to a specific design and then self-sustaining,

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even productive of further creation, other passages in the poem begin to seem evocative of one as well, including the guts of the whale into which Jonas tumbles. Swallowed whole and sloshing in the disorienting viscera, Jonas feels a strong sense of confinement and cries out to God: I am wrapped in water to my wo stoundez þe abyme byndes þe body þat I byde inne; þe pure poplande hourle playes on my heued. (I am wrapped in water to the places of my woe; the depth binds the body that I bide in; the rank, roiling hurl-sea plays on my head.) (317–19)

Jonas bewails a multiplicity of restrictions: the body in which he, as spirit, bides; the watery, fleshly encasements that bind him; the waves, within and without the whale, in which he is “wrapped,” and the roiling sea that turns them. But then, within this shadowy space of confusing, churning anatomy, the “dymme hert” with its various bindings and slippery gaps, comes a rumbling (308). God orders the whale to “sput” out his shabby prophet (338). And he does: And þer he brakez vp þe buyrne as bede hym oure Lorde. þenne he swepe to þe sonde in sluchched cloþes: Hit may wel be þat mester were his mantyle to wasche. (There he broke / brought up the man as the Lord bid him. Then he swept onto the sand in his sluiced-up clothes. It may well be the man will need to wash his mantle.) (340–42)

The stomach of the whale, wetly binding and tossing, spews the prophet out onto the beach. Christian exegetes read the episode of Jonah as prefiguring Christ’s rising from his tomb, and Patience clearly bears the marks of such typological thinking.46 Jonas resides for three days and three nights in the “hellen wombe” before his watery resurrection, and he shoots out of the mouth as if from the jaws of hell, pried open at the Harrowing (306). But the digestive tract of the whale also suggests a kind of engine, a complex entity formatted to a specific design that produces creative excess. While the

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winding coils of viscera understandably disorient the swallowed prophet, they also reveal the functional complexity of an anatomical interior, one that, without interference from a restless meal, chugs along according to careful (divine) design. The belly of the whale, described in such detail so soon after the extended passage on the “joyles gyn,” shares a few key elements with the latter: multiple parts set in complex relationship to one another and an impatience to eject the prophet Jonas from rattling around its internal workings. Upset stomachs and poetry also share an old link, combining in the Book of Proverbs, which warns of “loosing” both “the meats you have eaten” and “your beautiful words” (23.8), and reemerging in rather fascinating detail throughout the medieval and early modern centuries. When one is sick, when some strange “mote” within the body begins to “wamel” at the “hert,” vomit flows uncontrollably through the mouth (300); what roils within needs to come out; what once is bound, breaks loose. It is an image of both vulnerability and poetic inspiration, but also, importantly, the seemingly unbridled force of poetry overwhelming the fragile authority of the poet. Egil, of the eponymous fourteenthcentury saga, offers a model for such woozily uncontrolled creation when he spouts verses between bouts of vomiting on his host. His poetic skill occupies the threshold between control and abandon, the cusp before which his apparent sprezzatura dissipates into bodily convulsion. The vomiting in Patience, however, works a bit differently from that in Egil’s Saga, as it does not present a poet unburdening himself in a mead hall; in fact, it barely offers us a whole whale. Instead, we get a system: an intricate, slimy assemblage of bindings and wrappings, a rumbling interior that “sputs” something foreign, extra, and possibly evocative of the poetic, onto shore. The other more obvious and arguably central creative act in the poem is the woodbine, the shelter of leaves and branches, enhanced while Jonas sleeps, which “God of His grace ded growe of þat soyle” (443). When Jonas falls asleep beneath his humble bower, God goes to work with such creative energy that, upon waking, the prophet (possibly) resorts to new language to describe its splendor, lying “loltrande þerinne” and gazing up at the leaves that “lylled grene.” In both cases, the poem presents a relationship between an ordered system and riotous production: slimy anatomy that spews out a drenched prophet, and a plant whose genetic code God sends into overdrive, so that it sprouts the most beautiful, lylled green branches Jonas has ever seen.

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There are connections between this creative, gardening God, the viscera of the whale, and the suddenly voluble, waking prophet. Or, to look at it from a different perspective: between the beautiful woodbine, the regurgitated man, and that series of unattested words used to praise the beauty of Jonas’s shelter. All participate in the idea of a functioning system, an engine or machine, a specific code that effects creative, productive, potentially enhanced or even erratically unpredictable output. The internal coils of the whale “sput” out a prophet; the woodbine seeds, designed to be capable, as God marvels at Chester, of flourishing reproduction, generate a gorgeous new shelter; and the prophet, wrought through a rhythmic, alliteratively precise poetic form, both shouts out and has his reaction to such a shelter narrated in what might be new words. In this last example, language produces more language, which makes sense in the context of a world begun with a word. Patience acknowledges this key point in scriptural history, pointing out that God “wroƺt alle þynges”—world, sky, wind, stars, creatures—“at a worde one,” but it also notes how God’s subsequent speaking further motors the central plot of the poem (206–8). God’s breath is an animating wind in Patience, not wholly dissimilar to the currents propelling the moving statues of Floire and Blanchefleur. He whispers in Jonas’s ear, unlocking the prophet’s recalcitrant limbs—“With a roghlych rurd rowned in his ere” (64)—and telling him to “Rys radly” (65). The roaring breath of injunction, its own kind of breathing through, compels the prophet to move, like the statues. Soon after, the “Welder of wyt” uses his voice to impel another insistent roaring, ordering the east and west winds to blow “vpon blo watteres,” making the “noys,” as well as the real heart of Jonas’s adventure, begin (129, 134, 137). God’s breathy command stirs up the windy tempest; one divine exhalation creates an earthly storm, as one word “in the beginning” eventually gives rise to multiple vernaculars. And just as an initial word gives rise to an eventually cacophonous creation, subsequent acts of speech, in turn, produce the further spread of more words. At first, God’s injunction—to bring prophecy to Ninevah— lodges within the prophet, internalized as “lore”: Ris, aproche þen to preche, lo, þe place here. Lo, my lore is in þe loke, lauce hit þerinne! (Rise, approach then to the place here to teach. Lo, my teaching / law is locked within you, let it out therein!) (349–50)

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When Jonas—eventually and belatedly obedient—lets out this law as prophetic utterance, he does so in a form obedient to the law but worded differently from that which initially is “rowned” in his ear (the word in its Old English form suggests whispering, but also mystery, a message that requires translation) (64). When Jonas finds himself on the beach covered in whale spit, a divine command again ringing in his ears, he wisely agrees to redeem himself as a prophet. His message bursts forth from locked-up “lore”: he uncoils and sets loose the words bound within him, as he once was multiply bound within the whale, and as each seed hull in Chester, or each woodbine seed, harbors its genetic code. From these knots of rules, locked carefully within, creative excess can spring, proliferate without, be “loosed” (lauce) like the words and regurgitated food in the Book of Proverbs. And indeed, in this brief phase of obedience, the prophet duly unlocks his word-hoard to deliver the judgment at Ninevah.

Concatenation In this final section, I turn to Pearl and the language of its critical reception to think further about how poetic form might produce something new, or how—in the absence of such production—we might recognize our desire that it do so. The poem Patience, as we have seen, follows an alliterative, rhythmic pattern, but its rules—or code—do not begin to compare to those governing Pearl, the most formally ambitious of the Gawain poet’s corpus. Marie Borroff, one of the most noteworthy translators of Pearl, describes some of the formal attributes of that “most intricately wrought of medieval poems”: In accordance with the scheme ABABABABBCBC, each of the poem’s 101 stanzas must contain four instances of the A-rhyme and six instances of the B-rhyme. In addition, the final link-word of each section of the poem must appear as a C-rhyme at the end of five stanzas, rhyming with five other words.47

Adhering to this considerable “in addition” component, for example, the first fitt of Pearl offers five stanzas that each end with the word spot; the first stanza of the second fitt then includes the word spot in its first line. Its five stanzas, however, will end with the word addubement, whose alternate form, dubbement, appears in the first line of the first stanza of fitt three. Critics frequently use the word “concatenation” to describe how this dynamic of repeating words joins the stanzas together like links in a

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chain (catena is the Latin for “chain” or “series”). But they also note how the meanings of those repeated words sometimes shift, corresponding to the enlightenment toward which the dreamer in Pearl falters: the formal, repetition-with-a-difference circularity evokes the imperfect spiritual progress of the one who mourns the loss of his pearl. Seeta Chaganti contends that “Pearl’s concatenating structure [...] contributes to an interaction between circular completeness and earthly fallibility,”48 and Sarah Stanbury describes the “concatenation” of Pearl as “an elaborate punnology,” which, together with rhyme and alliteration, helps to “build the paradox of accumulation and change into prosody.”49 Putter and Stokes link form, visual suggestiveness, and a sense of progression in their understanding of how concatenation works in the poem: The image of the ‘perfect pearl’ is used to concatenate and mark the gradual progression from the human and earthly to the divine and glorious [...] Concatenation is also a feature of the verse form: one word is repeated from the last line of each stanza in the first line of the following one [...] the poem is itself circular, repeating in its last line the key words of its opening line, and its 101 stanzas [...] also suggest a numerical equivalent to a cycle completed and rejoining its beginning at a higher level of significance.50

It is unclear whether a Middle English or Medieval Latin speaker would ever use a variation of this word to describe an element of poetic form, but Mary Carruthers has demonstrated how exegetes used the word “catena” (without the prefix) when referring to reading and mnemonic practice.51 The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that the term concatenate was used as early as the fifteenth century (though, at that point, only to describe alchemical process).52 The semantic range then expands; in the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson writes that “propositions are established, and at last concatenated into arguments,”53 and in the early nineteenth century, the geologist J. Pinkerton, slightly shifting the terms but not the sense of progression, suggests that “a theory is useful to concatenate facts.”54 Data analysts and programmers now use the word to describe the input of a series of values into different informational categories, with specific directions and caveats about how to combine them (“if X is greater than Y, combine with B”). One might say that in all of these various uses, concatenate means to combine information according to a set of rules in order to produce a richer, more capacious, or somehow altered unit of knowledge (or, in the fifteenth century, gold). One needs to find something out, and

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one knows how to make a set of rules to organize and combine the currently available information, but the code itself does the actual finding, producing or revealing something more. What happens when one combines the forward, productive thrust of concatenating data for synthesis and new production with the circular, multi-register poetry of Pearl’s concatenating verse? A possible response situates my earlier thought experiment regarding the kind of poetry machine that might generate new words within a larger discussion of human ingenuity and the desire for knowledge. It invites us to think of poetry—or, at least, some poetry—as a concatenating code that human ingenuity invents in order to produce the wisdom it craves. Poetry is the machine, crafted according to the rules of our own making, and input with the provisional knowledge that we have (words, thoughts, and sounds). Its gears, churning according to specific rules (e.g., ABABABABBCBC) and catalyzed by a particular kind of energy, whether inspiration, rhythmic momentum, or both, might—this is the desire, anyway—offer us something in excess of what we started with. In his work on the history of oral poetry, Paul Zumthor describes this as the particular kind of yearning wrapped up in poetic endeavor, writing that “[w]ithin poetry lies the hope that one day a word will tell all.”55 This desire for knowledge—the word that tells all—and the hope that poetry one day might produce it is foregrounded when a poem plays at its own erring, ostentatiously failing to produce an answer, whether a new word, new idea, or some higher level of wisdom. Such a moment occurs in the third fitt of Pearl, which introduces two formal changes. First, the fitt repeats a phrase—“more and more”—rather than a single word, and second, the repetition stops taking noun form. This has led at least one critic to ask, rather reasonably: “more and more of what?”56 The range of possible answers changes, depending on the stanza; consistent, however, is the desire for something further, something in excess of what there already is. The half line of verse simultaneously points in the direction toward which a surge of linguistic effort tends and indicates that such effort comes up short. More and more of what, the poem cannot say. Its concatenation cannot turn input into richer output, grain into flour, clock gears into sound, or a long line of verse into a word that tells all. These lines in Pearl nonetheless articulate a desire that poetry might somehow create a response, in the manner of a carefully engineered spreadsheet or successful alchemical mixture: that poetic form—suffused with inspiration from some external force or the catalyzing energ y of

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creation itself—might produce language offering a higher order of wisdom than the language with which it is wrought, generating, according to the requirements of the code, a third alliterating term or rhyme to break the spell of linguistic insufficiency. They play with the idea that wisdom might be forged through alliteration and syllabic count, transforming, through the exquisite, generative tool of poetry, earthly consternation into divine response, combining sounds to produce knowledge whose efficacy overspills the fictive borders of poetry. But the circularity of Pearl, the uncertain enlightenment of its dreamer, and Jonas’s patterns of disobedience in Patience all suggest that this never quite occurs. These works do not produce the word that stops the need or desire for more; no linguistic miracle disrupts the fall of one poetic line into the next, and no solution dispels the need for verses to recursively continue, moving forward and slipping back, like the wouldbe prophet of Patience. Words, if invented, quickly are subsumed into the rhythm of the poem, absorbed into a language encoded into the production of more language. But it is this sensation of a rumbling toward newness that I want to underscore, the moments when it seems as though the engine of poetic form, under excitement and duress, generates a new sound. When the prophet falters, it emphasizes the desire for the miracle of a new word, and the sense that poetry itself eventually might provide the condition for its emergence. In closing: one might be forgiven for casting Roberta Frank, too, as the oracular source that tells all. Like so many others, I admire how she combines meticulous care for languages partially lost to us with the sense that we still might recognize the other constituent parts of poetry—particularly a playfulness or pleasure in language—across the centuries, even when certainty wavers and the sounds have grown strange.57

NOTES Works of the Gawain Poet, ed. Putter and Stokes, 587. Patience uses Jonas instead of Jonah. 3 Works of the Pearl Poet, ed. Moorman, 85; Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Andrew and Waldron, 196; Patience, ed. Gollancz, 61; and Complete Works of the Pearl Poet, trans. Finch, 195. 4 “þer apered a paume, with poyntel in fyngres, / þat watz grysly and gret, and grimly he wrytes; / Non oþer forme bot a fust faylande þe wryste / Pared on þe parget, portrayed lettres” (1533–36). The lines from Cleanness are from Poems of 1 2

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the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Andrew and Waldron. All quotations for Patience and Pearl are from this edition, unless otherwise noted, and cited by line number in the main text. (Putter and Stokes slightly modernize the orthography, which is sometimes apparent when quoting from their notes.) Translations in the main text are my own. 5 Caxton, Eneydos, ed. Culley and Furnivall, 2. 6 Caxton, Eneydos, ed. Culley and Furnivall, 2. See Hsy, Trading Tongues, 124, on Caxton’s “fluid and mercurial vernacular.” 7 A number of studies chart the linguistic transformation of this period (and beyond); see Baugh and Cable, History of the English Language; Strang History of English; Millward, Biography of the English Language; and Lerer, Inventing English. Borroff, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” 133–43, provides a more specific account of how this might be seen to manifest in the works of the Gawain poet. 8 Chism, Alliterative Revivals, 17. 9 Chism, Alliterative Revivals, 17. 10 Finlayson, “Alliterative Narrative Poetry,” 421. 11 Duggan, “Meter, Stanza, Vocabulary, Dialect,” 240. 12 This is particularly true from a temporal distance; note Frank’s point that ascriptions of “faults” to Old English verse sometimes fail to recognize the activation of Old Norse poetic strategy: Frank, “Anglo-Scandinavian Poetic Relations,” 77. 13 Though note Christopher Cannon’s critique of the argument that Chaucer “invents” poetic English. Cannon nuances this historical narrative by suggesting Chaucer stages competing forms of tradition—sometimes, but not always or necessarily categorized as “English” and “European”—so that he might present “his English as the salvific form.” That is to say, the Chaucerian invention of English as a language for poetry is one of the subtle fictions of Chaucer’s poetry. See Cannon, The Making of Chaucer’s English, esp. 136–39. 14 Botterill, “Dante’s Poetics of the Sacred Word,” 160. 15 Luzzi, “As a Leaf on a Branch,” 324. 16 Luzzi, “As a Leaf on a Branch,” 323. 17 Luzzi, “As a Leaf on a Branch,” 323. 18 Luzzi, “As a Leaf on a Branch,” 324. 19 Isidore, Etymologies, ed. Barney et al., 1: xxxii–xxiv. 20 Isidore, Etymologies, ed. Barney et al., 1: xxxii.2. 21 Isidore, Etymologies, ed. Barney et al., 1: xxxv. 22 Here I am following the notes from Works of the Gawain Poet, ed. Putter and Stokes. 23 Ingham, Medieval New, 17–20. 24 Dante writes his own linguistic history, crucially shaped by these events of sacred history, in the first book of De vulgari eloquentia.

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To put it another way, poetic innovation and the constant influx of new words transforming Middle English can be seen to influence one another. And so, scholars argue, our criticism also must intertwine linguistic and literary critical methodologies. See esp. Duffell, “Chaucer’s Pentameter.” This critical strategy is present throughout Roberta Frank’s scholarship; one might think of her own critical balancing act between engagement with poetic esprit and scholarly precision, deftly able to value both an alluring Viking style borne of restlessness and the painstakingly incremental advance of etymological research. For one recent example, see Frank, “Terminally Hip and Incredibly Cool,” 23–24. 26 For instance: Mueller, Translating Troy, 10; Finlayson, “Alliterative Narrative Poetry,” 432; Turville-Petre, Alliterative Revival, 48 (where he warns, however, that it is not only good for such things), and Alliterative Poetry, 1; Jacobs, “Alliterative Storms,” 712; and, on the relation among alliteration, “power and bombast,” and “pure noise, the opposite of ordered speech” in medieval drama, Woolgar, The Senses, 98. 27 Finlayson considers a similar kind of combination between control and abandon in alliterative poetry—he terms it “bound and free”—but more in the context of the poet’s translation of sources; this is in service of a larger argument interested in poetic agency and the idea of a poet who potentially “gives himself over to an alliterative rhetoric.” See Finlayson, “Alliterative Narrative Poetry,” 425–27 and 429. 28 See Borroff, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” 191–92, on the poet’s “effect of rhythmic regularity,” even with metrical time and stress variation. 29 Here work on the poetics of digital literature becomes particularly interesting. One of the arguments to arise from such scholarship has to do with how digital poetics reflexively clarifies the more traditional figure of the author. Calvino suggests that “[w]riters [...] are already writing machines” (Calvino, “Cybernetics and Ghosts,” 15), and, as Portela elaborates, “the writing self then is the product of algorithmic and generative forms of writing” (Portela, “Between Code and Motion,” 312). For earlier connections between poetry, textuality, and engines or machines, see Sawday, Engines of the Imagination, 52–53 and 116. 30 Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Andrew and Waldron, concur with this translation; Moorman, following Grattan, suggests “hung down” (Works of the Pearl Poet, ed. Moorman, 96). 31 Finch translates as “wafting, cool” (Complete Works, trans. Finch, 203); Andrew and Waldron gloss it as “mild” (Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Andrew and Waldron, 362). 32 Gollancz suggests loltrande is a scribal error for loitrande (Patience, ed. Gollancz, 56). Bateson agrees with this possibility, but also offers a connection to “‘lolt, v.’ = ‘lounge, idle,’ of the present Yorkshire dialect” (Patience, ed. Bateson, 108). Finch offers “lolling” and “lounging” (Complete Works, trans. Finch, 203 and 436). 25

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Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, 2.3.175. Though Middle English poetry tends to be more flexible and offers increased variation on the rule. McClure, “Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo,” charts the differences between Old English, Middle English, and Middle Scots poetry and its use of alliteration and stress. 35 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 10.43 (Parson’s Prologue). 36 Trevisa, Polychronicon, 3.255. The Middle English Dictionary offers a number of similar examples. 37 Ingham, Medieval New, 80–81. 38 Boethius, De consolatione Philosophiae, trans. Walton, 4pr6. 39 Hugh of Saint Victor, Little Book, trans. Weiss, in Carruthers and Ziolkowski, Medieval Craft, 68–69, my emphasis. The Latin is from De Archa Noe: Libellus de formatione arche, ed. Sicard: “Hoc modo constructa machina uniuersitatis, in parte eius superiori Maiestas a scapulis sursum, pedibusque deorsum eminens et quasi in solio sedens formatur; ita ut expansis hinc inde brachiis omnia continere uideatur; tribusque digitis, per medium protensis usque ad orbem terre et ceteris in palmum reflexis, celos concludit” (160). Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, esp. xiii–xvii, also discusses the various ways in which medieval thinkers conceived of the machine. 40 Ingham, Medieval New, 87. 41 Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, ed. Bowie, 128 and 134. 42 Truitt, Medieval Robots, 8. 43 Gimpel, Medieval Machine, provides an overview. See also Sawday, Engines of the Imagination. 44 Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, ed. Migne, 5.4.11. 45 Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. Lumiansky and Mills, “The Drapers Play,” lines 35–38. 46 Andrew, “Jonah and Christ in Patience.” 47 Borroff, Traditions and Renewals, 124. 48 Chaganti, Medieval Poetics, 114. 49 Sarah Stanbury, “The Gawain-Poet,” in Cambridge Companion, ed. Scanlon, 144. The term “punnology” in relation to Pearl is borrowed from Tomasch, “A Pearl Punnology.” 50 Works of the Gawain-Poet, ed. Putter and Stokes, 5–6. 51 Carruthers, Book of Memory, 5–6. 52 Oxford English Dictionary online, “concatenate, adj.” The examples from Johnson and Pinkerton (see infra) also are listed by the OED. 53 Johnson, Works, 6: n.151, 66. 54 Pinkerton, Petralogy, 2: 5. 55 Zumthor, Oral Poetry, 210. 56 Spyra, “Pearl, Fitt III,” 45, my emphasis. See further, Watts, “Pearl, Inexpressibility.” 57 Frank, “Unbearable Lightness.” 33 34

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WORKS CITED Andrew, Malcolm. “Jonah and Christ in Patience.” Modern Philology 70 (1973): 230–33. Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002. Augustine. De Genesi ad litteram. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Paris: Catholique, 1887. Bateson, Hartley, ed. Patience: A West Midland Poem of the Fourteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1912. Baugh, Albert, and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951. Boethius. De consolatione Philosophiae. Edited by Mark Science and translated by John Walton. EETS OS 170. London: Trübner, 1927. Borroff, Marie. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”: A Stylistic and Metrical Study. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962. ———. Traditions and Renewals: Chaucer, the “Gawain”-Poet, and Beyond. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Botterill, Steven. “Dante’s Poetics of the Sacred Word.” Philosophy and Literature 20 (1996): 154–62. Bowie, Theodore, ed. The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959. Calvino, Italo. “Cybernetics and Ghosts.” In The Uses of Literature, translated by Patrick Creagh, 3–27. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1986. Cannon, Christopher. The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Carruthers, Mary, and Jan M. Ziolkowski. The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Caxton, William. Eneydos, 1490. Edited by M. T. Culley and F. J. Furnivall. EETS ES 57 and 59. London: Trübner, 1890. Chaganti, Seeta. The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance. New York: Palgrave, 2008. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Edited by Larry Benson. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. The Chester Mystery Cycle. Edited by R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills. 2 vols. EETS SS 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Chism, Christine. Alliterative Revivals. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Medieval Identity Machines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Duffell, Martin J. “Chaucer’s Pentameter: Linguistics, Statistics, and History.” Chaucer Review 49 (2014): 135–60.

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Duggan, H. N. “Meter, Stanza, Vocabulary, Dialect.” In A Companion to the “Gawain”-Poet, edited by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 221–42. Finch, Casey, trans. The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Finlayson, John. “Alliterative Narrative Poetry: The Control of the Medium.” Traditio 44 (1988): 419–51. Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. New York: Penguin, 1976. Gollancz, Israel, ed. Patience: An Alliterative Version of Jonah by the Poet of Pearl. London: Oxford University Press, 1924. Hsy, Jonathan. Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Hugh of Saint Victor. De Archa Noe: Libellus de formatione arche. Edited by Patrice Sicard. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Ingham, Patricia Clare. The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies. Edited by Stephen Barney et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Jacobs, Nicolas. “Alliterative Storms: A Topos in Middle English.” Speculum 47 (1972): 695–719. Johnson, Samuel. Works. 12 vols. London: J. Haddon, 1820. Lerer, Seth. Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Luzzi, Joseph. “As a Leaf on a Branch. . . : Dante’s Neologisms.” PMLA 125 (2010): 322–36. McClure, J. Derrick. “The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo: Final Fling of the Heroic Line.” In Fresche Fontanis: Studies in the Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, edited by Janet Hadley Williams and McClure, 127–42. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2013. Millward, C. M. A Biography of the English Language. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1989. Moorman, Charles. The Works of the Pearl Poet. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1977. Mueller, Alex. Translating Troy: Provincial Politics in Alliterative Romance. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Pinkerton, J. Petralogy: A Treatise on Rocks. 2 vols. London: White, 1811. Portela, Manuela. “Between Code and Motion: Generative and Kinetic Poetry in French, Portuguese, and Spanish.” Romance Notes (2011): 305–33. Putter, Ad, and Myra Stokes, eds. The Works of the Gawain Poet: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: Penguin, 2014.

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Sawday, Jonathan. Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine. New York: Routledge, 2007. Scanlon, Larry, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature, 1100–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Edited by G. Blakemore Evans et al. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Spyra, Piotr. “Pearl, Fitt III (‘more and more’).” Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary 9 (2015): 45–60. Strang, Barbara M. H. A History of English. London: Methuen, 1970. Tomasch, Sylvia. “A Pearl Punnology.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 88 (1989): 1–20. Trevisa, John. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis. Edited by Churchill Babington. London: Longman, 1865. Truitt, E. R. Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages: An Anthology. London: Routledge, 1989. ———. The Alliterative Revival. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977. Watts, Ann Chalmers. “Pearl, Inexpressibility, and Poems of Human Loss.” PMLA 99 (1984): 26–40. Woolgar, C. M. The Senses in Late Medieval England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Zumthor, Paul, and Kathryn Murphy-Judy, trans. Oral Poetry: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.

Kennings and Things Towards an Object-Oriented Skaldic Poetics Christopher Abram

I

N 1987, ROBERTA FRANK posed a typically provocative question: did Anglo-Saxon audiences possess a “skaldic tooth”? Did poets working in the Old English tradition know, enjoy, respond to, absorb, or adopt characteristic features of the Old Norse skaldic verse that was in circulation throughout the regions of Viking diaspora during the ninth through eleventh centuries? Frank suggested that, while concrete evidence of cross-fertilization between the Old Norse and Old English poetic traditions is hard to come by, “certain lines of Old English verse are extraordinarily responsive to a ‘skaldic’ reading.”1 After a characteristically astute and capacious reading of passages from Exodus and Beowulf that employ diction that would not seem out of place in an Old Norse skaldic poem, showing that something new and specially meaningful often arises out of considering members of these two traditions in juxtaposition with each other, she concluded by indicating some ways in which we can profit from comparative studies of this kind. Sometimes light is shed on the meaning of individual words or on the interpretation of a puzzling passage; sometimes the local effects that a poet sought with his figures become a little clearer. And sometimes we get glimpses, far off, of a differently shaped, differently motivated, differently worded history of Old English poetry, waiting to be written.2

My contribution to this celebration of Roberta Frank’s career is an homage to her irreplaceable contributions to the study of Old Norse–Icelandic skaldic poetry. It is perhaps also a contribution to her “differently shaped” shadow history of an Old English poetics that was open to influence from the utterly distinctive aesthetics of the skaldic verse favored among Scandinavian audiences, including those which flourished in the British Isles. This chapter focuses on Old Norse–Icelandic poetry, rather than on early English poetry per se. But I hope it is within the spirit of Roberta’s

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work on the possibilities of a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian Viking-Age poetics to suggest that if we are to understand and appreciate as fully as ever we might the way that Old English verse works, we would do well to understand as best we can the operations of all those traditions with which it interacted, or with which it had the potential to interact.

The Kenning Probably the most distinctive feature of Old Norse–Icelandic skaldic poetry, and one whose presence in Old English verse has often been claimed or assumed—though also sometimes denied—is the kenning. 3 Depending on who you ask, a kenning is 1. “A periphrasis, consisting of two or more substantive members, which takes the place of a noun” in Old Norse–Icelandic skaldic poetry.4 2. “Ein zweigliedriger Ersatz für ein Substantiv der gewöhnlichen Rede” (a bipartite substitute for a substantive in everyday speech).5 3. “Eine Spielart der Metapher und zwar eine mit dem Rätsel und dem Witze geistesverwandte” (a variety of metaphor and spiritually akin to the riddle and the joke).6 4. “A traditional, verbal, poetic figure composed of one or more nominal descriptive elements, (a pair of ) which may be in opposition.”7 5. [A figure of speech with] “the meaning of a subordinate clause in briefer space and with less emphasis.”8 6. “A more complex type of noun substitution, in which, characteristically, a noun phrase comprising two nouns in a genitival relationship (or a compound noun with an implicit genitival relationship between two distinct elements) was used by a poet as a substitute for a noun referent, which was never actually mentioned in the text of the poem itself.”9 7. “Eine barbarische Stilfigur” (a barbaric stylistic figure).10 8. “Linguistic extensions of conventional conceptual metaphors [called] kenning-models.”11 9. “A two-part figure, which can be a one-word compound or two separate words consisting of a metaphorical base (i.e., imagemetaphor) and a determinant (i.e., metonymy) which provides an associating link (Ablenkung).”12

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A kenning is all these things (and more).13 In this chapter, however, I treat kennings not as figures for things, or substitutions for things, or periphrases for things, but as things in themselves—objects with independent metaphysical realities beyond their communicative function. My approach to kennings in this chapter will be object-oriented. Object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a contemporary direction in continental philosophy that has gradually expanded its influence into other disciplines, including literary criticism and medieval studies. It is one of several camps within a loosely constituted movement known as speculative realism. The speculative realists argue for the independent metaphysical reality of things beyond the scope of human consciousness: the universe is not limited to that which the mind can access or which human language can describe. Quentin Meillassoux, for example, works to challenge “the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other,” which he calls “correlationism.”14 As the name of the movement suggests, this type of philosophy invites us to speculate about reality beyond our direct experience of it: speculation is necessary, since our access to the world is always only partial and indirect. Object-oriented ontology probes the possible natures of this reality of things-beyond-the-self. In Timothy Morton’s summary of it, “OOO is a form of realism that asserts that real things exist—these things are objects, not just amorphous ‘Matter,’ objects of all shapes and sizes.”15 Objects are the fundamental—indeed, the only—ontological units in the universe, if we look at the universe from an object-oriented perspective.16 Sydney Harbor Bridge exists to the same extent as an atom of carbon or the planet Jupiter. In these terms, love is as much an object as the cake I’m looking forward to eating is. I manifestly exist, and so do you, in just the same way as Jacques Derrida and Mickey Mouse exist. Derrida does not lose his ontological status just because he died—though of course dead Derrida is not the same as the living Derrida—and Mickey’s origins in the imagination of Walt Disney do not invalidate his existence. Graham Harman, the leading figure in object-oriented philosophy, summarizes the situation in this way: Each [object] has numerous qualities and can be turned to reveal different surfaces and uses. Furthermore, each object is a unified thing despite its multitude of features [...] Some of these objects are physical, others not; some are real, others not real in the least. But

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all are unified objects, even if confined to that portion of the world called the mind. Objects are units that both display and conceal a multitude of traits.17

Harman’s approach can be exemplified (if facilely) by considering my own case. I am a unified object, a bundle of matter and appearances and feelings. I am made up of other objects—cells and bones and organs and thoughts—but I cannot be reduced to any of these things—Harman calls the attempt at such reduction “undermining.” It would be impossible to break me down into my component parts without annihilating me as a unified object, although there are plenty of components I could lose—my tonsils, limbs, certainly a few pounds of stomach fat—without my ceasing to exist as me. I also cannot be reduced to my consciousness or my linguistic ability: I do not owe my ontological status to being conscious and communicative. However, I cannot do without consciousness to maintain myself in my present unity for myself: without my sense of subjectivity I would not be the object-for-myself that I am. If it is impossible for an object to survive the process of undermining—if, in order to prove that an icicle is nothing but frozen water, we heat it up, pretty soon the icicle will no longer exist—it is equally problematic to “overmine” the object, according to Harman.18 Overmining is an attempt to reduce the object from above, as it were, by claiming that it only exists in its relationships with some other entity. Most typically, overmining reduces the object to the qualities by which it is perceived by the human mind. An apple, to borrow Harman’s example, when overmined is “merely a collective nickname for a series of discrete qualities habitually linked together: red, sweet, cold, hard, solid, juicy”—sensory qualities as they are apparent to an external observer.19 There is always something in an object that cannot be perceived: you can never see the other side of the coin as the other side of the coin, as Morton puts it, following Husserl.20 An object can never be exhausted by overmining or undermining because it is withdrawn, according to Harman and his followers. It is always keeping something back. One object may never capture the being of another—never occupy its ontological space. Different objects relate in different ways, but their relationships never exhaust their essences. Harman claims that objects only relate by “translating” each other’s perceptual qualities: actual entities are “sensual objects” for other objects.21 Everything has hidden depths that are fundamentally inaccessible to the perception not just of the human subject but to the access of any other object. At the same time, aspects of things are apparent to other things.

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We cannot know what is on the other side of the coin or the moon, or what is in our true love’s heart, for that matter. We cannot fully know “what it is like to be a thing,” to borrow the subtitle of Ian Bogost’s 2012 book Alien Phenomenology—even if that thing is our self. But we can certainly speculate. For some readers, this call to speculation as a facet of realism has proven easy to resist. As tends to happen with anything fashionable or (perceived as) faddish, object-oriented philosophy has begun to attract considerable criticism recently from scholars both within and outside the continental philosophical tradition. Graham Harman’s work has most particularly attracted the ire of some other philosophers who accuse him of misreading Kant and ignoring medieval philosophy or of disingenuously repackaging phenomenology while claiming to render it obsolete.22 It remains to be seen whether OOO will have a lasting or central place in academic philosophy much beyond the present moment. At the same time, its influence is being felt widely beyond the boundaries of academic philosophy—object-oriented art, architecture, and literary criticism are in vogue in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and objectoriented medieval studies are already very much a thing.23 Regardless of whether these philosophers have truly unlocked the nature of ontology, viewed as a sort of critical theory, OOO offers a toolbox of approaches for decentering the human subject from thought and discourse that have heuristic potential when applied to cultural production. In this way, I share Grant Hamilton’s optimism about OOO’s value to students of literature: it encourages and permits us “to speculate on the character of a world that (we can never know but nonetheless) influences every aspect of human existence and thought.”24 Object-oriented literary criticism is still, it is fair to say, a nascent field of endeavor, but Harman and Morton both accord aesthetics (and especially poetry) a special place in their heuristics. Morton, indeed, regards aesthetics as being at the root of causality, a system he calls “realist magic.” Morton’s manifesto for an object-oriented approach to the literary text is worth quoting in full: When one object influences another one, it does so by translating that object. The Greek for translation is metaphor. It’s refreshing for literary scholarship to see how the very fuel of causality might reside in something as recognizable as metaphor [...] To study a poem is not to study meaning alone, even if we expand “meaning” beyond established parameters. To study a poem, rather, is to see

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how causality itself operates. A poem directly intervenes in reality in a causal way. As literary scholars we are familiar with ascertaining the significance of a text. An OOO approach to poetry shows how poems do something as physical as what happens when my car scrapes the sidewalk.25

Kennings have often been identified as a species of metaphor—but (to use a favorite word of the speculative realists) they are a weird sort of metaphor.26 Bearing in mind Morton’s suggestion that poetry does things as well as means things, as well as Harman’s statement that “the closest point of approach to objects turns out to be through metaphor,”27 I will now turn to an object-oriented kenning-analysis.

Kennings as Objects A kenning is an object that belongs to the realm of human communication—but that does not mean, from the perspective of OOO, that it is any less an object than a telephone or matchbox. In the Old Norse–Icelandic tradition, kennings exist within other, slightly larger verbal objects: stanzas of poetry in traditional courtly meters. Both the kenning and the stanza are irreducible to their component parts, as we can see in the following example, taken from Sturla Þórðarson’s Hrynhenda: Digla eldr var sénn í segli, sviptilundr, á dýrðar skriptum —rísa tóku roðnir hausar— Rínar logs, yfir dreka þínum. Unnar (þóttu eisur brenna Ullar fars af slegnu gulli) fasti rauð yfir flota glæstum flesta rönd (á skeiðabröndum). (The fire of crucibles [gold] was seen on the figures of glory on the sail over your dragon-headed warship, flinging-tree of the flame of the Rhine [gold > generous man]; the reddened heads began to rise. The fire of the wave [gold] reddened most of the shields above the adorned fleet; cinders seemed to burn from the hammered gold of the ship of Ullr [shield] on the warships’ prows.)28

The metrical strictures of the dróttkvætt meter—and its derivatives, like the hrynhent employed by Sturla here—are so unbending that to attempt

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to undermine the stanza by breaking it down into its component parts will simply destroy the poetry.29 The kennings—indicated by italics in both the Old Norse text and the translation, while the kennings’ referents are in small capitals, by convention—fit precisely into the stanza’s patterns of alliteration, internal rhyme, syllable count and line-end cadence. Only these words, in these positions, will allow Sturla’s poetry to function. Take them out, or attempt to replace the kennings with simplexes, and the stanza will vanish. We “solve” the kenning eldr digla (fire of crucibles) by glossing it as “gold”—but we cannot replace it with the word gull, or with any other synonym for gold, without destroying the verse. This is a serious problem with the interpretation of skaldic verse: leveling the kenning to its referent—as the “solution” to the kenning is known in scholarship— undermines the stanza. Consider the effect of retranslating the stanza with regard only for the “meaning” of the kenning: Gold was seen on the figures of glory on the sail over your dragon-headed warship, generous man; the reddened heads began to rise. The gold reddened most of the shields above the adorned fleet; cinders seemed to burn from the shield on the warships’ prows.

In a prose translation, this alteration merely makes for a less interesting text; if we attempted the same trick with the original stanza, we would destroy the meter of the verse instantly. We would no longer have a poem at all. If leveling the kennings to their referents in this way undermines the stanza as a whole, it overmines the kennings themselves, reducing them upwards in the service of making sense of what the poet “meant.” This process makes the appreciation of skaldic poetry little more than a glib party trick: can you tell what it is yet? For this reason I find unsatisfactory those theories which relate kennings to riddles. Although kennings are undoubtedly ludic at times, their purpose is not to be solved in the way that a riddle is. People who like riddles may take pleasure in considering kennings in that way, but to think of kennings only as problems that demand a single solution is a clear example of overmining. Kennings, meanwhile, are especially susceptible to undermining : if we remove one element from the kenning, or alter the relationship between its elements, the kenning vanishes. Sturla’s initial image—the eldr digla (fire of crucibles) with which his stanza begins—cannot be reduced to its components. Gold is not “fire”; its association with a crucible is not definitive. But eldr digla is entirely fiery and absolutely particular to the image of molten gold that runs from a white-hot crucible.

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The elements of the kenning fuse into a new whole that only functions as long as the elements remain in their present relationship. And we should note that the relationship between the base word (here, “fire”) and determinant (“of crucibles”) is not a simple question of the latter modifying the former. Gold is fiery, and not merely by convention in the skaldic idiom:30 it glows like fire; its appearance is mutable, as light hits it from different angles; its colors range from yellow through orange to the verge of red—flame colors.31 Gold gives an impression of warmth. Both gold and fire are essential to the heroic hall-life that was the natural habitat for skaldic verse: the lord gives his subjects gold in the flickering light of the hall-fires. Gold is fiery, fire can be golden. But fire is not gold. So the determinant of the kenning is necessary to actualize the aesthetic potential that was already in the base word “fire.” In Sturla’s kenning, the addition of digla (of crucibles) works primarily on the imagistic level. We have to allow our mind’s eye to see the white-hot molten gold bubbling in the crucible, or being poured out into a mold to make something precious: in this image, the gold itself is on fire; it is fire. It is suspended in the middle of a fundamental change of state; it is in flux. We cannot tell precisely where the fire-gold ends and where the crucible begins. For just a moment, the individual elements of the mental image fuse into one point—the glowing center. Harman suggests that we should think about the interior, withdrawn existence of an object in just these terms: “The inside of an object can be viewed as a volcano, kaleidoscope, witch’s cauldron, steel mill, or alchemist’s flask in which one thing is somehow converted into another.”32 This would not be a bad metaphor for how kennings like this work: their elements are primarily images that combine and recombine into new images, revealing, for those who are looking in the right direction, something of the “virtual proper being” of objects that exists behind and beyond any appearance that they may give out to the world.33 Sometimes it is necessary to look at kenning-objects aslant, but the truth is in there. Objective reality, not subjective fantasy, lies behind the kenning. But this reality is withdrawn from our access. We see it only in glimpses. We get a different, more culturally specific image of gold from Sturla’s other kennings: log Rínar (“flame of Rhine”) and fasti unnar (“fire of wave”). Both of these are part of a kenning-convention that imagines gold under water. The rippling of the river’s surface causes the light that shines back from the sunken treasure to resemble flames. Because fire and water are so elementally incompatible, these kennings

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display what Bergsveinn Birgisson calls the “aesthetics of contrast tension.” 34 Kennings of this type revel in apparent perversity : they combine objects from antithetical cognitive categories, with no regard for naturalism. But fire-in-water kennings are usually interpreted with regard to a narrative antecedent: perhaps the doomed treasure of the Nibelungen, which was thrown into Rhine in a vain attempt to neutralize its numinous potency, provided the prototype for the image. Alternatively, the narratives could have arisen out of a desire to explain an actual geological feature: gold flakes have been found in certain reaches of the Rhine throughout history. The important thing about the firein-water type of gold kenning, however, is that it does not depend upon knowledge of a mythological fact to allow us to interpret it. Rather, we need to allow the imagistic magic of the kenning’s relationships to do its work upon us: we see something that looks like fire under water—what can it be? 35 We know that fire and water are incompatible, impossible companions—yet there it is, glowing up at us. Gold glows like fire, as we have seen, and we can imagine circumstances in which gold might end up under water—so perhaps it could be gold. Of course, once we know that fire-in-water kennings can stand in place of the noun “gold” they become formulaic, part of the audience’s standard lexicon. The poetry becomes more readily comprehensible, but loses a fraction of its power in the process. In any case, the cultural-semantic connotations of gold are indeed qualities that the real gold possesses, just as much as its physical properties. An object-oriented approach insists merely that the gold in question can never be reduced to its weight, or its color, or its monetary value, or its symbolic freight in a given cultural situation. It is still really gold. If we take a kenning (or a whole skaldic stanza) apart to understand its components, we can find that the magic has been lost when we try to put it back together again. Although there are very considerable obstacles between us and it, an appreciation of the aesthetic work that this poetry is doing requires us to look at the kenning neither from below nor from above, but straight ahead into its depths. Deleuze and Guattari acknowledge that this is by no means an easy task: “It’s not easy to see things in the middle, rather than looking down on them from above or up at them from below, or from left to right or right to left: try it, you’ll see that everything changes.”36 Although their theory of the rhizomatic nature of culture is by no means object-oriented, Deleuze and Guattari anticipated an important stand of OOO’s thinking in this

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statement. As Morton puts it, in an object-oriented universe, there can be no “top-object” that gives meaning and reality to others; nor is there a “bottom-object” out of which everything else must be made.37 There are just objects inside objects inside objects—countless objects interacting with other objects and producing new objects from these interactions. A kenning is an object made out of words in certain combinations, but it is irreducible to those words; it stands in place of a noun but it cannot be replaced by that noun without destroying its aesthetic effect. A skaldic stanza is an object made out of kennings and other types of words in certain combinations, but it is not reducible to those words and kennings. Nor can the stanza be overmined—reduced upwards to its “meaning”— without destroying it as a work of art. Citing Cleanth Brooks, Harman suggests that this is a point of contact between New Critical approaches to poetry and the work of object-oriented literary criticism: “a poem cannot be translated into literal prose statement [...] the literal rendition of the poem is never the poem itself, which must exceed all interpretation in the form of a hidden surplus.” 38 Most skaldic poetry illustrates this point to an almost bathetic extent: what does Sturla’s verse say? It says that somebody important had some nice ships. The magic has gone. Our paraphrase has killed the poem dead, in an instant.

Kennings, Metaphor, and Magic A kenning, then, is an object that conjures an image-object out of the juxtaposition of two (or more) object-images. The kenning’s referent, the so-called “solution” to the kenning, is another object—a real object, whether its reality was physical or mental. When Sturla describes the golden decoration on Hákon’s ships’ sails, he is speaking of real ships and real sails that belonged to a real king, whether or not the poet had ever laid eyes upon them. The never-named referent is this alwayswithdrawn real object. The base word and determinant of the kenning conjure up “sensual qualities” of the real referent, as we have seen. Gold is not fire, but it becomes fire-like in appearance (a sensual quality) when it is translated by the crucible’s heat (another sensual quality— the crucible is always more than its function as a vessel in which to melt things). The triangular relationship between fire, crucible, and gold does not exhaust gold’s reality. Melt it in in the crucible until it resembles fire, and the gold is still gold. The kenning seems to illustrate quite well Harman’s statement that “every object is both a substance and a

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complex of relations.” 39 He goes on say that “When two objects enter into genuine relation, even if they do not permanently fuse together, they generate a reality that has all of the features that we require of an object. Through their mere relation they create something that has not existed before, and which is truly one.” The kenning is a thing-in-itself that arises from the relationship of the base word and the determinant. On another level, it is the relationship between fire and crucible that produces the mental image of gold. But the gold remains real, substantial, and irreducible to this interaction. A kenning is a machine for creating relationships between qualities of two or more things that produce a new thing. It is a poetic fusion reactor for objects that produces an enormous amount of aesthetic energy. As the kenning executes itself, it opens up to our view some of the previously hidden depths of its constituent objects. In this way, the kenning operates like a metaphor. I am inclined to agree with Birgisson that a kenning does not conform to many of the standard definitions of what a metaphor is, primarily because the “anti-naturalistic” tendencies of skaldic poetry run contrary to classical ideas of harmony in metaphor.40 At the same time, metaphors and kennings may help us to approach fugitive objects in similar ways. According to Harman, “metaphor generates tangible interference between two of the isolated poles of a thing.”41 This interference may help us appreciate how partially we have been considering the object—how any attempt to reduce it to a handful of qualities merely reveals how far away from the withdrawn object’s ontological reality we really are. Harman draws upon a 1914 essay by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset for many of his ideas about metaphor: Ortega’s piece is a remarkable precursor of many of the object-oriented movement’s ideas as they can be applied to literary aesthetics. For Ortega, a metaphor is an aesthetic object par excellence: The esthetic object is inwardness as such—it is each thing as “I.” Notice I am not saying that a work of art reveals the secret of life and of being to us; what I do say is that a work of art affords the peculiar pleasure we call esthetic by making it seem that the inwardness of things, their executant reality, is opened to us [...] Now then, this object that can be seen through itself, this esthetic object, is found in elementary form in metaphor. I say the esthetic object and the metaphorical object are the same, or rather that metaphor is the elementary esthetic object, the beautiful cell.42

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We cannot, if we accept the object-oriented view of the world, hope to see, touch, taste, describe, measure, or capture in any way this inwardness of things; nothing can be an object of our cognition, processed by our brain in any way, without its being reduced to “an image, a concept, an idea”—or what Harman would call its “sensory qualities.” The object’s manifestation in our sensory-cognitive equipment is no more than “an outline, a remote allusion, a shadow and a symbol” of the thing’s inwardness, its particular ontological reality. Poetic language, and metaphor in particular, creates the illusion that we can know the inwardness of an object, that we can share in its being for a moment, whether that object is our own lover, a Grecian urn, or Grendel crossing the marshes. And kennings are like metaphors in the work they do, even if their form is different. They make things happen. They change the world.

New Things Making Things New Kennings are new things that make things new. In Old Norse, the closest possible equivalent to the term “metaphor” is nýg jǫrving—literally, “newmaking.”43 Nýg jǫrvingar are only one of several possible forms of substitution available to the skalds, as Snorri Sturluson, the great thirteenthcentury poet and literary theorist, explains: Hvernig skal breyta háttanum ok halda sama hætti? Svá: at kenna eða styðja eða reka eða sannkenna eða yrkja at nýgj˛orvingum. Hvat eru kendir hættir? Svá sem þetta: Fellr of fúra stilli fleinbraks, limu axla, Hamðis fang, þar er hringum hylr ættstuðill skylja; holt felr hildigelti heila bœs, ok deilir gulls í gelmis stalli gunnseið sk˛orungr reiðir. Hér eru ˛oll kend í þessi vísu, en hendingar ok orðalengð ok stafaskipti fara sem fyrr var ritat. Kenningar eru með þrennum háttum greindar: fyrst heita kenningar, annat tvíkent, þriðja rekit. Þat er kenning et kalla fleinbrak orrostu, en þat er tvíkent at kalla fúr sverðit, en þá er rekit ef lengra er.44

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(How may the verse-forms be varied and the same form be kept? By using kennings or “support” or extended kennings or literal kennings or by composing with nýg jǫrving. What are the forms using kennings? As follows: Hamðir’s tunic [mail-coat] falls around the operator of the fires of the spear-clash [user of sword, warrior] where the upholder of the king’s dynasty [warrior] protects the limbs of his shoulders [arms] with rings. The outstanding one [man] covers the hill of the dwelling of the brain [skull] with a battle-boar [helmet] and the distributor of gold [generous man] brandishes the battle-fish [sword] in the hawk’s perch [hand]. Here in this verse all the concepts are expressed by kenning, though the rhymes and length of lines and distribution of staves go as we prescribed above. Kennings are distinguished by three kinds of usage: first there are simple kennings, second double, third extended. It is a kenning to call battle ‘spear-clash’, and it is a double kenning to call a sword ‘fire of the spear-clash’, and it is extended if there are more elements.)45

In the examples that Snorri gives to illustrate his typology, objects come alive in various ways, depending partly upon the complexity of the kenning in question. Limr axla (limb of shoulders) combines two images that are already too closely related in everyday speech to fuse into something really new—unless we see a pun here that exploits the similarity between masculine limr and neuter lim (specifically a limb or branch of a tree) to make a man’s arms into sprouting tendrils. Hamðis fang (Hamðir’s tunic) rests on specific cultural knowledge—if we don’t know who Hamðir is (a legendary warrior), then the kenning will be opaque. Other kennings in this stanza reveal livelier objects, however. Consider the effect produced by replacing the concept “skull” with the kenning holt heila bœs (hill of the brain’s dwelling ). The brain, for a moment, becomes an independent actant (to use Bruno Latour’s term),46 equally as capable of inhabiting a landscape as any human subject. The

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grammatical subject of this sentence, the sk ǫ rungr (outstanding man), becomes merely one object among many: he is not even in possession of his own body. His head is an environment in which a brain can live; his hand becomes, for an instant, a “perch for hawks” (stallr gelmis). It is defined not by its connection or usefulness to a human subject, but by reference to its potential interactions with another real object. Whereas a subject-centered ontology makes the subjectified entity always more than the sum of its parts, the object-oriented perspective of the kennings recognizes that the human is only one thing among many, that the person is made up of many objects (a hand, a head, generosity, a particular social status) and interacts with countless others. The sword that the king brandishes is such an object: but by transforming steel into flesh and fins in the kenning gunnseiðr (battlefish), the poet vividly evokes its actancy. This is a conventional type of sword-kenning to which poets frequently returned, and its effectiveness rests upon its imagistic (and animistic) qualities. The sword moves and shimmers and carves through battle in the way that a fish glides through the sea, as much at home in its environment as the sword is in battle, once the blood starts flowing. The fish-sword has a life of its own as it takes life away from others. Even though the king “brandishes” (reiðir) the sword, we must question who has agency in this fight: the kenning’s zoomorphic transformation diminishes the king’s agency. Imagine someone brandishing a living fish—does the brandisher seem in full control of that action? The interiority of the sword’s existence, the sense we have of its freedom of movement, its joy in the task for which it was made, becomes momentarily apparent through this superficially whimsical poetic device. The same thing happens in the stanza’s other sword-kenning , which is also the example that Snorri discusses to demonstrate the double and rekit (extended) forms of kenning : the king becomes the stillir fúra fleinbraks—the “controller of fires of spear-clash.” Swords become flames—another common identification in the corpus—and they at once seem ungovernable, capricious: fire is violent, of course, but it is indiscriminately violent, often to friend and foe alike. The warrior is called the swords’ stillir—although in context this word denotes “wielder” or “controller,” we should note that the verb stilla means “to calm, to moderate, to soothe.” It becomes the swordsman’s role to keep his weapon in check, to prevent it from indulging too freely in its violent predilections, to prevent the sword-flame from running too wild. In this

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kenning, the nonhuman object has more agency than the human subject. Vikings don’t kill people, swords do. Snorri also uses sword-kennings to elaborate his idea of nýg jǫrvingar (“new-makings”; [extended] metaphors). Hvat eru nýgj˛orvingar? Svá eru þetta: Sviðr lætr sóknar naðra slíðrbraut jǫfurr skríða; ótt ferr rógs ór réttum ramsnákr fetilhamsi; linnr kná sverða sennu sveita bekks at leita; ormr þyrr vals at varmri víggjǫll sefa stígu. Þat er nýgjǫrvingar at kalla sverðit orm ok kenna rétt, en slíðrirnar g˛otur hans, en fetlana ok umgjǫrð hams hans. Þat heldr til ormsins nátturu at hann skríðr ór hamsi svá at hann skríðr mjǫk til vatns. Hér er svá sett nýgj˛orving at hann ferr leita blóðs bekkjar at þar er hann skríðr hugar stígu, þat eru brjóst manna. Þá þykkja nýgjǫrvingar vel kveðnaref þat mál er upp er tekit haldi of alla vísulengð. En ef sverð er ormr kallaðr, en síðan fiskr eða v˛ondr eða anna veg breytt, þat kalla menn nykrat, ok þykkir þat spilla.47 (What is nýg jǫrving? It’s like this: The wise prince makes the adders of battle [swords] creep the scabbard-path. The mighty war-snake [sword] goes swiftly from the straight strap-slough [scabbard]. The sword-quarrel serpent [sword] can seek the stream of blood. The worm of the slain [sword] rushes along the mind’s path [breast] to the warm-war river [blood]. This is nýg jǫrving to call a sword a worm and use an appropriate determinant, and call the scabbard its path and the straps and fittings its slough. It is in accordance with a worm’s nature that it glides out of its slough and then often glides to water. Here the metaphor is so constructed that the worm goes to find the stream of blood where it glides along the path of thought, i.e. men’s breasts. Nýg jǫrving is

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held to be well composed if the idea that is taken up is maintained throughout the stanza. But if a sword is called a worm, and then a fish or a wand or varied in some way, this is called a monstrosity, and it is considered a defect.)48

Now the swords have become “adders of battle” (naðrar sóknar), a “mighty war-snake” (jǫfurr ramsnákr), a “sword-quarrel serpent” (linnr sverða sennu), a “worm of the slain” (ormr vals—ormr refers interchangeably to worms, snakes, and dragons). Just like the fish- and fire-swordkennings, the “inanimate” sword is transformed into a manifestly actant hybrid between flesh and metal. It is always a sword, always a snake: snakes and swords alike glide and bite—once again, we visit the possibility that the weapon is beyond the human subject’s full control. Thanks to the extension of the figure through what Snorri calls nýg jǫrving, the whole battle-world is here transformed into a sword-snake habitat: they “creep the scabbard-path,” shedding the sheath as a snake shakes off its skin; they slither into liquid bodies. The human becomes a landscape for the snake-sword to traverse, a reservoir of blood to plunge into. Snorri’s commentary on the verse makes it clear that it is in the snake’s nature to glide from its slough and into water; but the kenning’s effectiveness depends upon the sword having a similar nature. These swords are anything but inanimate. Kennings draw our attention to all objects’ status as actants: when the sword penetrates the sternum, it really is the sword that produces effects in the world—its effect upon bone and tendons is independent of the volition of its human owner. The relationship between the killer and his sword is one object-relationship, between the sword and the victim another. In a stanza with nýg jǫrving, a whole new world opens up—a world in which swords are snakes, whatever angle you look at them from, as well as being absolutely real swords. Although Snorri probably regards the term nýg j ǫ rving as a linguistic-rhetorical category, whether or not it should be equated with “metaphor,” 49 this coinage evokes wonderfully well the power of poetry in general, and kennings in particular, to make things new, to revitalize the world and the objects that comprise it. Harman, following Ortega y Gasset, writes that a metaphor compels us “to live executantly a new object born in our midst in the very moment that it is named. More concretely, it forces us to live a new feeling-thing, and not a new thing-in-itself, which can never be directly lived by any other thing.”50 Fish-swords and sword-snakes are feeling-things to us as we live

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them vicariously, but they cannot reveal to us the whole inwardness of the objects to which the kennings refer. Though quite real themselves, they are also simulacra—objects which “de-create the external images that normally identify [them], reshaping the plasma of their qualities into a hybrid structure.”51 Few poetic techniques are so effective for shaping the qualities of objects into hybrid structures as Old Norse skaldic kennings. And, as Snorri says of nýgjǫrving, “þykkir þat vel alt er með likindum ferr ok eðli” (this is all considered acceptable when it is in accordance with probability and the nature of things).52 Snorri’s idea of eðli as the “nature” or “innate characteristics” of things might be read as an anticipation of OOO’s insistence that objects have withdrawn qualities that are inaccessible to language, but without which reality would not function. For Snorri, it is the poet’s job to rebuild the world in a way that most closely conforms to this hidden inner reality, and it is the “artificiality” of the poetic language that allows us to creep up on “nature” and catch unintended glimpses of what things are really like.

The Objectification of Women (and Men, and Everything) One of the most important consequences of an object-oriented outlook on the world is anthrodecentrism—the dawning realization that “[w]e live in a universe teaming with actants where we are actants among actants, not sovereigns organizing all the rest as the old biblical narrative from Genesis would have it.”53 The world does not revolve around us. The flat ontology that Harman and others propose means that people cannot use a privileged ontological status to justify their separation from and concomitant superiority over the nonhuman world. As we have seen, OOO is particularly disruptive of the subject/object binary: all humans are objects for every other object in the universe, just as much as they are objects for us—we have no prior ontological claim to subjecthood. In order to hasten the desired collapse of the human/world, culture/nature, and subject/object binaries, object-oriented theorists sometimes advocate forms of anthropomorphism—treating things as if they were people: sharing our subjectivity with the nonhuman. Bogost sees anthropomorphism as simply inevitable: “[W]e are destined to offer anthropomorphic metaphors for the unit operations of object perception, particularly when our intention frequently involves communicating those accounts to other humans.”54 Jane Bennett goes further:

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Maybe it’s worth running the risks associated with anthropo­ morphizing (superstition, the divinization of nature, romanticism) because it, oddly enough, works against anthropocentrism: a chord is struck between person and thing, and I am no longer above or outside a nonhuman “environment.”55

Kennings can and frequently do employ anthropomorphism in their reconfiguration of the world. Inanimate objects can be brought to life and their actancy emphasized by turning them into beings that we more usually associate with movement and volition. Another stanza from Sturla’s Hrynhenda gives an example of a popular kenning type that employs the conceit of an ax being a “troll-woman of battle”:56 Syngja létu snarpir drengir sóknar gífr í fleina drífu; brandar hleyptu ǫrt ór undum ærnu blóði danskrar þjóðar. Víða fellu vegnir þollar (vígadrótt) í reknum flótta (faldin gekk þar fast at hildi) frægra málma (ægishjálmi). (Brisk warriors made the troll-woman of battle [ax] sing in the snowstorm of spears [battle]; swords made plenty of blood flow swiftly from the wounds of the Danish people. The fir-trees of famous weapons [warriors] fell slain far and wide in flight; the warband, hooded with the helmet of terror, pressed on hard in the battle there.)57

Here, as so often in Old Norse battle-poetry, weapons “sing” as they perform their grizzly work—the actual “song” they sing is presumably the noise of metal striking metal (or flesh and bone). But Sturla’s anthropomorphizing base word fully endows a notionally mute object with a voice of its own. The incongruence of an inanimate thing “singing” is both emphasized and naturalized through the superimposition of the mental image of the troll-woman—active, verbal, possessing agency, even if she is being compelled here by the warriors—upon an object that we normally regard as occupying an entirely different ontological plane to that of communicative beings. Anthropomorphism elevates the nonhuman to a position that may facilitate relatability or even empathy with it on the part of the human subject, albeit at some cost: to make a (nonhuman) thing more

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like a human (thing) is to make it less like itself, and thus runs the risk of reinforcing the subject/object divide that OOO seeks to destabilize. Skaldic poetry offers an alternative way of challenging anthropocentrism: as well as making things more like people, this poetic embraces the objectification of the human subject. As previous examples have shown, the liveliness and actancy, depth and novelty of many kenning-objects does not depend upon anthropomorphism: as kennings force objectimages together, their attributes fusing into brand new image-objects, they feel less familiar, not more familiar. Anthropomorphism can be cozy, domesticating—the tiger plays basketball with a child he should, by rights, be devouring—but kennings always make things seem weirder than before (though never as weird as they actually are, of course). When skalds use kennings to speak of people in their poetry— including moments when they speak of themselves—a different kind of magic often takes place. People are transformed into things, and their subjectivity is annihilated: a first-person kenning is impossible. Poets who wish to assume a subject position in their verse can only use ek for their image of themselves as “I”; otherwise, they necessarily objectify themselves. So far, we have seen kings and warriors being reduced from totalizing personhood to object-oriented actancy. One becomes the stillir fúra fleinbraks (operator of fires of spear-clash)—defined by his relationship with nonhuman but absolutely actant objects. Another is deilir gulls (distributor of gold), a machine for spreading wealth: while this kenning certainly refers to an aspect of human culture, a thing’s function within a culture is merely one of its myriad objective attributes. “The king” is the subject of the sentences in which these kennings appear, but the real king is so utterly withdrawn that the poet can only approach him attribute by attribute. For the sword, the king really is an operator; for the gold, the king really is a distributor. Kennings force us to look at objects—including human objects—from the perspective of other objects; we do not see the world through the king’s eyes. In skaldic kennings, it is absolutely standard to call a person a tree of some sort: the determinant will be a second nonhuman object with specific (and gendered) associations: a warrior will become the tree of weapons; a woman might be the tree of ornaments or mead-cups. 58 Snorri’s explanation of the origin of the people-are-trees trope is probably wrong: he was much addicted to this type of folk-etymological speculation. The arborocentric view of humanity seems to be an older, mythological idea. According to another part of Snorri’s Edda, the first humans, named Askr (“ash”) and Embla (possibly “elm”), were created from driftwood.59

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In contrast to Askr and Embla, whose bark and sap turn into skin and blood by divine intervention, the people-trees of skaldic poetry might be seen simply as trees with hats on. As Weber puts it: “In kennings for ‘humans,’ words for ‘trees’ are reduced to their basic qualities of ‘standing upright’ and ‘conveying the notion of male or female gender.’”60 In Weber’s analysis, this type of kenning does not really produce hybrid image-objects: rather, the determinants “of swords,” “of battle,” “of linen,” and so on, become simply a badge that marks off these tree-people as “not real trees.” A reader of skaldic verse quickly becomes accustomed to regarding every tree-word as shorthand for “man” or “woman.” Familiarity with the trope— indeed, awareness that we are dealing with a trope at all—weakens the kennings’ force. At the same time, the ubiquity of the device has a humbling, anthrodecentrizing effect: humanity and treelife are on the same ontological plane. Botanists are just beginning to explore the actancy of trees and other plants, perhaps even their participation in semiosis.61 As we speculate about the possible weird realities of tree-feeling, we see that Norse poets were uncannily aware of the possibility that people are “merely” feeling(and fighting- and loving- and drinking-) trees. Consider these examples of the kenning type that Snorri quotes in Skáldskaparmál: Aura stendr fyrir orum eik fagrbúin leiki. (The fairly adorned coin-oak stands in the way of our pleasure.) Meiðr er mǫrgum oeðri morðteins i dyn fleina. Hjǫrr far hildibǫrrum hjarl Sigurði jarli. (Beam of the killing-twig is better than many in spear-din; the sword wins land for the battle-keen earl Sigurðr.) Askþollum stendr Ullar austr at miklu trausti roekilundr hinn ríki randfárs brumaðr hári. (The powerful shield-danger-wielding grove with hair for foliage provides Ullr’s ash-firs in the east with great security.)62

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Although I’ve identified the person-as-tree kenning as something of a blind motif, these three examples still produce startling hybrids. In the first, a woman becomes fagrbúin eik aura (“beautifully adorned oak of coins”)—there are both masculine and feminine words for “oak” in Old Norse; this is the latter—as she intervenes between the poet and (presumably) the object of his sexual desire. Oaks have symbolic resonances as large, sturdy, enduring trees, but here the transformation of the woman into the tree seems much more than symbolic: it/she is an actual and actant obstacle—she has the same physical agency as a tree. The second half-stanza, which Snorri attributes to Kormákr Ǫ gmundarson, the Icelandic poet-protagonist of Kormáks saga, who lived in the second half of the tenth century, extends the metaphor by making a sword into a morðtein—a “murder-twig.” The warrior is a meiðr (“pole” or “beam”) of “murder-twigs.” Meiðr is an interesting choice of baseword (by no means uncommon) for a man-tree kenning, since this word is never applied to a living tree, only to wood that has been worked in some way.63 Here, the denatured tree seems to be reasserting its woody identity by sprouting deadly twigs that allow it to defeat its enemies in battle. In this kenning, the warrior’s humanity is entirely subsumed into his treeishness—a fusion between man and plant takes place. A similar extension of the trope occurs in the last of these examples, which Snorri states was composed by Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, an Icelandic skald who served (among others) Óláfr Tryggvason, the king of Norway from 995 to 1000. This stanza is remarkably arboreal. Both (grammatical) subject and (grammatical) object of the sentence are replaced by man-tree kennings, and both kennings are expanded beyond the basic “tree equals man” conceit. First, we have rœkilundr randfárs—the “cultivating-grove of shield-danger.” “Shield-danger” is a sword, or possibly battle, and the grove (tree—this collective noun is singular and is used as a substitution for singular referents) who cultivates or cares for the danger of shields is a warrior. The idea of a tree or forest being able to “cultivate” is intriguing and suggests a new type of nonhuman actancy: perhaps nonhumans are capable of care or stewardship. The “cultivatinggrove of shield-danger” is also brumaðr hári (budded with hair): where a tree has foliage, this hybrid has hair—it seems as though we are watching an entirely real, physical transformation between man and tree taking place before our eyes. Finally, Hallfreðr—who is clearly having tremendous fun with this stanza—uses two more tree words in his kenning askþollar Ullar. Most literally, this construction means “ash-firs of Ullr,” with firs presumably being “men” while askr Ullar is a kenning for

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“shield” that works by making askr a metonym for “ship.” “Ullr’s ship” is a conventional shield-kenning for which no explanatory narrative survives. Shields are ships; ships are trees; trees are people. We are all made of the same wood. Kennings level the ontological playing field.

Conclusion The foregoing analysis proposes that kennings are a fundamentally realistic mode of artistic expression—not merely realistic, in fact, but speculatively realistic. They offer us a radically different way to inquire into the strange existence and existential strangeness of objects—whether these objects are human or nonhuman, animate or inanimate—beyond our everyday knowledge of them. They can be anthropomorphic without being anthropocentric. They destabilize the subject–object binary by revealing the actancy of the nonhuman and objectifying the human subject. Not all kennings respond equally well to object-oriented analysis, I must admit. As we have seen, it is those kennings that operate most similarly to Ortega y Gasset’s interpretation of poetic metaphor that produce the most startling new image-objects. Kennings that belong to Snorri’s category of nýg jǫrving—a term which we often translate as “metaphor,” even if we cannot say whether Snorri would have understood it as relating to that concept—are especially potent sources of transformational objectivity. Those kennings that demand an audience to recall from memory their antecedents in myth or legendary narrative, on the other hand, will always necessarily be less susceptible to this approach: calling poetry “Óðinn’s mead” effects an alchemical transformation from evanescent verbal expression into tangible liquid that accords well with how we have seen objectoriented kennings work. But without remembering the story of Óðinn’s recovery of the mead of poetry, the effect of this kenning is null: its two elements otherwise do not recombine on the imagistic level. It is doubtless also true that kennings lose some of their potency with repetition: the frisson of aesthetic excitement and wonder that we feel when the two objects in a kenning-relationship fuse to reveal a third diminishes as the kenning become more familiar to us. Certain kennings and kenning-types simply become part of an internalized skaldic vocabulary, and we pay less attention to their aesthetic power as we hurry to recall their “solution” in order to make sense of a stanza. Meissner’s basic definition of the kenning as “a bipartite substitute for a substantive in everyday speech” becomes particularly relevant to kennings that have become rote: we recognize “fire

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of the sea” as a substitute for “gold” without paying much attention to the aesthetic effect that this elemental juxtaposition produces. The value of an object-oriented approach to kennings is that, instead of treating them merely as a “substitute for a part of speech,” it foregrounds and celebrates their aesthetic character, with “aesthetic” here being used in accordance with Morton’s recent reformulation of the term: “The aesthetic, in other words, is not a superficial candy coating on the real, but is instead the lubrication, the energy and the glue of causality as such.”64 Kennings are engines of causality—they make new things out of existing things. It matters not one bit that their building blocks are words and images—words and images are real objects that enter into relationships with other real objects, translating them afresh with each new interaction. The primary goal of an object-oriented kenning is not to produce “meaning”—skaldic stanzas say an extremely limited range of things—it is to produce effect, which is to say to create a certain change in the fabric of the world itself.65 Kennings are thus fully actant. They are anti-naturalistic, but naturalism is not natural: kennings are true, instead, to the eðli of things, to their reality as objects in a universe of objects. While the totality of this eðli is fundamentally withdrawn from us, completely beyond our reach, kennings reveal in flashes the hidden richness of objects, their variety and vibrancy. Kennings have always been object-oriented; objectoriented ontology is just beginning to help us catch up to them.66 NOTES Frank, “Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences Have a Skaldic Tooth?,” 339. Frank, “Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences Have a Skaldic Tooth?,” 352. 3 As Tim William Machan points out (“Snorri’s Edda, Mythology, and Anglo-Saxon Studies”), the term “kenning” does not occur in Old English, and nor was it ever applied to a feature of Old English poetics during the AngloSaxon period. Its application to Old English is a Victorian innovation, and while kennings are structurally essential to the dróttkvætt meter of Old Norse skaldic verse, Old English “kennings” have no relationship to the metrical structures of the poem that contains them. 4 Frank, Old Norse Court Poetry, 42. 5 Meissner, Kenningar, 2. 6 Heusler, Die altgermanische Dichtung, 131. 7 Lindow, “Riddles, Kennings, and the Complexity of Skaldic Poetry,” 315. 8 Gordon, Introduction to Old Norse, xi. 9 Clunies Ross, History of Old Norse Poetry, 107. 1 2

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Krause, Die Kenning als typische Stilfigur, 10. Birgisson, “Skaldic Blends out of Joint,” 285. 12 Broz, “Kennings as Blends and Prisms,” 183. 13 The best historical survey of changing definitions and classifications of kennings is provided by Holland, “Kennings, Metaphors, and Semantic Formulae.” 14 Meillassoux, After Finitude, 5. 15 Morton, “Here Comes Everything,” 165. 16 Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, 23–25, prefers the term “unit” to “object” on the grounds that “object” always seem to presuppose the existence of a “subject.” Bogost’s point is well taken, but it seems that “object” will hold sway as the preferred nomenclature. 17 Harman, The Quadruple Object, 7. 18 Harman, The Quadruple Object, 10–13. 19 Harman, The Quadruple Object, 11. 20 Morton, Hyperobjects, 11. 21 Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, 196–200. 22 Cole, “The Call of Things”; Wolfendale, Object-Oriented Philosophy. 23 For a review of new materialist and object-oriented approaches to the medieval world up to 2008, see Robertson, “Medieval Things”; see further Holsinger, “Object-Oriented Mythography,” Cohen, “Introduction: All Things,” and the essay collection Speculative Medievalisms, ed. Joy et al. 24 Hamilton, World of Failing Machines, 20. 25 Morton, “Here Comes Everything,” 206. 26 The “weirdness” of reality is insisted upon frequently by speculative realists. As Harman puts it (“Well-Wrought Broken Hammer,” 98) speculative realism is “not the oft-lamented ‘naïve realism’ of oppressive and benighted patriarchs, but a weird realism in which real individual objects resist all forms of causal or cognitive mastery” (his emphasis). 27 Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, 98. 28 Hrynhenda 15, ed. Valgerður Erna Þorvaldsdóttir, in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2, ed. Gade, 692. 29 Hrynhent meter employs the same verbal patterns as dróttkvætt, but in an eight-syllable rather than six-syllable line. Each couplet in the stanza must include three alliterating stressed syllables (two in the odd line and one in the even line); every odd line contains internal half-rhyme (skothending), where identical consonants or consonant groups follow different vowels—in line one of this example, digla and segli provide skothending. Even lines, meanwhile, like line two of Sturla’s verse, must have aðalhending, or full internal rhyme, between two syllables: here, we have full rhyme between svipt- and skript-. Each line must end with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. 30 Fidjestøl, “The Kenning System,” 31, notes that it would be possible to produce 2496 different “fire of the sea” kennings using attested skaldic synonyms for “fire” and “sea.” See also Nordal, Tools of Literacy, 329. 10 11

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In a stanza in which gold is the dominant image, Sturla also uses words connected to the color red—roðnir hausar (“reddened heads”) and the verb rauð (“reddened”), as the golden ornament of Hákon’s ships casts its own fiery light over the sailors and their equipment. And the intercalated clause in the second half of the stanza carries on the fire imagery of the kennings: “þóttu eisur brenna / Ullar fars af slegnu gulli [...] á skeiðbröndum.” To level the three fire-gold kennings to their referent “gold” would have the considerable demerit of wrecking Sturla’s very carefully wrought conceit that animates the whole stanza and is by no means restricted to its kennings. 32 Harman, Towards Speculative Realism, 131 33 Bryant, Democracy of Objects, 88. 34 Birgisson, “What Have We Lost by Writing?,” 166. 35 This approach to kennings is congruent with Birgisson’s ground-breaking cognitive analysis, though he approaches kennings from a subject-oriented rather than object-oriented perspective: see Birgisson, Inn i skaldens sinn, especially 160–62, 271–79, and 308. 36 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 23. 37 Morton, “An Object-Oriented Defense of Poetry,” 209. 38 Harman, “Well-Wrought Broken Hammer,” 189. 39 Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, 85. 40 Birgisson, “Skaldic Blends Out of Joint.” 41 Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, 102. 42 Ortega y Gasset, “Essay in Esthetics,” 139–40. 43 On the meaning and use of nýg jǫrving, see Clunies Ross, History of Old Norse Poetry, 108–10 and Marold, “Nyg jǫrving und Nykrat.” 44 Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Háttatal, ed. Faulkes, 5. 45 Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Faulkes, 167–68. 46 According to Latour, Politics of Nature, 237, an actant is “any entity that modifies another entity in a trial.” An actant is something that does something, which produces effects in the world, regardless of whether it is human or nonhuman, animate or inanimate. 47 Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Háttatal, ed. Faulkes, 6–7. 48 Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Faulkes, 170. 49 Clunies Ross, History of Old Norse Poetry, 109; Clunies Ross, Skáldskaparmál, 76–77. 50 Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, 109. 51 Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, 109–10. 52 Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, I, 41. The translation is from Edda, trans. Faulkes, 95. 53 Bryant, “Harman, Withdrawal and Vacuum-Packed Objects.” 54 Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, 65. 55 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 120. 56 See Meissner, Kenningar, 148. 31

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Hrynhenda 8, ed. Valgerður Erna Þorvaldsdóttir, in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2, ed. Gade, 685. 58 The base-word in these kennings, either a synonym for “tree” or the name of a specific species, will always be of the same gender as the referent: see Weber, “Of Trees and Men,” 427–28. 59 Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. Faulkes, 13; Snorri’s source for this narrative is stanza 17 of the Eddic poem Vǫluspá although, pace Weber, “Of Trees and Men,” 422, Vǫluspá does not specify from what substance Askr and Embla were made. Their tree-ish names certainly imply their woodiness, but the poem does not spell it out as Snorri does. 60 Weber, “Of Trees and Men,” 431. 61 See Hall, Plants as Persons. 62 Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, I, 64–65; Edda, trans. Faulkes, 116–17. 63 Cleasby and Vigfusson, Icelandic–English Dictionary, 422. 64 Morton, Realist Magic, 87. 65 Concomitantly, the goal of the speculative literary critic is not to pin down the text’s meaning, but “to speculate on a text in a way that results in the invention of new concepts or new ways of talking about the world,” in the words of Grant Hamilton (World of Failing Machines, 25). 66 I am grateful to Robyn Malo, Kate Marshall, and Richard Cole for reading drafts of this essay and providing me with invaluable feedback. 57

WORKS CITED Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Birgisson, Bergsveinn. Inn i skaldens sinn: kognitive, estetiske og historiske skatter i den norrøne skaldediktingen. PhD diss., University of Bergen, 2007. ——— . “Skaldic Blends out of Joint: Blending Theory and Aesthetic Conventions.” Metaphor and Symbol 27 (2012): 283–98. ———. “What Have We Lost by Writing? Cognitive Archaisms in Skaldic Poetry.” In Oral Art Forms and their Passage into Writing, edited by Else Mundal and Jonas Wellendorf, 163–81. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2008. Bogost, Ian. Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Broz, Vlatko. “Kennings as Blends and Prisms.” Linguistics ( Jeziklovlje) 12 (2011): 165–86. Bryant, Levi. The Democracy of Objects. Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities, 2012. ———. “Harman, Withdrawal, and Vacuum Packed Objects: My Gratitude.” Larval Subjects 30 May 2012. http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/ harman-withdrawal-and-vacuum-packed-objects-my-gratitude/.

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Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson. An Icelandic–English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Clunies Ross, Margaret. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. ———. Skáldskaparmál: Snorri Sturluson’s Ars Poetica and Medieval Theories of Language. Odense: Odense University Press, 1987. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Introduction: All Things.” In Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 1–8. Washington, DC: Oliphaunt, 2012. Cole, Andrew. “The Call of Things: A Critique of Object-Oriented Ontologies.” Minnesota Review 80 (2013): 106–18. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, and Brian Massumi, trans. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Fidjestøl, Bjarne. “The Kenning System. An Attempt at a Linguistic Analysis.” In Fidjestøl, Selected Papers, edited by Odd Einar Haugen and Else Mundal and translated by Peter Foote, 16–67. Odense: Odense University Press: 1997. Gade, Kari Ellen, ed. Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: from c.1035 to c. 1300. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Gordon, E. V. An Introduction to Old Norse. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Hall, Matthew. Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011. Hamilton, Grant. The World of Failing Machines: Speculative Realism and Literature. Winchester: Zero Books, 2016. Harman, Graham. Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Peru, IL: Open Court, 2005. ———. The Quadruple Object. Alresford: Zero Books, 2011. ———. Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures. Ropley: Zero Books, 2010. ——— . “The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer: Object-Oriented Literary Criticism.” New Literary History 43 (2012): 183–203. Heusler, Andreas. Die altgermanische Dichtung. Berlin-Neubabelsberg: Athenaion, 1923. Holland, Gary. “Kennings, Metaphors, and Semantic Formulae in Norse dróttkvætt.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 120 (2005): 123–47. Holsinger, Bruce. “Object-Oriented Mythography.” Minnesota Review 80 (2013): 119–30. Joy, Eileen A., Anna Kłosowska, Nicola Masciandaro, and Michael O’Rourke, eds. Speculative Medievalisms: Discography. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum, 2013. Krause, Wolfgang. Die Kenning als typische Stilfigur der germanischen und keltischen Dichtersprache. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1930.

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Latour, Bruno, and Catherine Porter, trans. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Lindow, John. “Riddles, Kennings, and the Complexity of Skaldic Poetry.” Scandinavian Studies 47 (1975): 311–27. Machan, Tim William. “Snorri’s Edda, Mythology, and Anglo-Saxon Studies.” Modern Philology 113 (2016): 295–309. Marold, Edith. “Nyg jǫrving und Nykrat.” In Twenty-Eight Papers Presented to Hans Bekker-Nielsen on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 28 April 1993, edited by Hans Frede Nielsen and Erik Hansen, 283–301. Odense: Odense University Press, 1993. Meillassoux, Quentin, and Ray Brassier, trans. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. London: Continuum, 2008. Meissner, Rudolf. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Bonn: Schroeder, 1921. Morton, Timothy. “An Object-Oriented Defense of Poetry.” New Literary History 43 (2012): 205–24. ———. “Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology.” Qui Parle 19 (2011): 163–90. ———. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. ——— . Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality. Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2013. Nordal, Guðrún. Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Ortega y Gasset, José. “An Essay in Esthetics by way of a Preface.” In Ortega y Gasset, Phenomenology and Art, translated by P. Silver, 127–50. New York: Norton, 1975. Robertson, Kellie. “Medieval Things: Materiality, Historicism, and the Premodern Object.” Literature Compass 5 (2008): 1060–80. Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Translated by Anthony Faulkes. London: Dent, 1988 ———. Edda: Háttatal. Edited by Anthony Faulkes. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. ———. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Edited by Anthony Faulkes. 2nd ed. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005. ——— . Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Edited by Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1998. Weber, Gerd Wolfgang. “Of Trees and Men: Some Thoughts on Kennings and Metaphors—and on Ludvig Holberg’s Arboresque Anthropology.” In Twenty-Eight Papers Presented to Hans Bekker-Nielsen on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 28 April 1993, edited by Hans Frede Nielsen and Erik Hansen, 419–46. Odense: Odense University Press, 1993. Wolfendale, Peter. Object-Oriented Philosophy: The Noumenon’s New Clothes. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014.

Part 3

Discordance

Lydgate’s Missing “Ballade” and the Bibliographical Imaginary Andrew Kraebel

Goo litil tretys! and meekly me excuse, To alle tho that shal the seen or reede, Giff any man thy rudenesse list accuse Make no diffence, but with lowlyheede Pray hym refourme, wher-as he seeth neede. To that entent I do the forth directe, Wher thu faylest, that men shal the correcte.1

A

S IN MANY OF his minor religious writings, the early Chaucerian poet John Lydgate (d. 1450) ends the Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary with a Troilian envoy, at once purporting to invite correction and striking a pose of pious authorial humility. Like the boy who cried wolf, Lydgate’s repeated insistence that these works have been “compylede vnder correccion,” and that readers should “do correccion [...] where as they se nede,” may cast doubt on the sincerity of such sentiments, making it seem more likely that Lydgate favored these envoys (at least in the religious poems) because they are consistent with the devotional tone of the works they conclude.2 The author presents himself modeling the “lowlyheede” his poetry seeks to cultivate. Of course, some scribes did take Lydgate’s invitation seriously, attempting (as we will see) to “refourme” and “correcte” what they apparently thought to be various points at which his poems “fayle[n].” But not all errors are so easily corrected, and none of the scribes of the surviving manuscripts of the Joys and Sorrows was able to make up for its biggest failing. Lydgate’s poem is missing a stanza, an omission that reflects the text’s presentation of itself as fragmentable and, ideally, performed in pieces, even as it renders that ideal performance impossible. In the Joys and Sorrows of Mary, Lydgate presents two series of petitions tied to moments in the life of the Virgin, “her gladynessys” and then “hyr hevynessys” (20–21), with each of these joys and sorrows (except one) contained in a single rhyme royal stanza.3 These deprecatory passages are bookended by a prologue and epilogue, with additional stanzas between

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the two effecting the transition from one series to the other. As part of this transitional material, Lydgate explains how the poem should be used, emphasizing the importance of the number of joys and sorrows: Ioyes fifteen remembrid heer-to-forn As the charge was vpon me leyd, In contemplacioun there be no tyme lorne, The Paternostres and the Aues dewly seyd, By interupcioun makyng noon abreyd, Tyl of our Lady be sayd the ful Sawteer, As heer-to-forn is shewyd the maneer. (148–54)

The final “heer-to-forn” refers back to the poem’s prologue, discussed in more detail below, where Lydgate describes how “A Pater-noster and ten tyme Auees” are to be “sayd at th’ende” of each of the joys that follow (26–27). Over the course of reading the joy-stanzas, then, one is expected to recite a total of fifteen Paternosters and one hundred and fifty Ave Marias, a devotional practice called Our Lady’s Psalter or simply a Lady Psalter.4 A similar readerly performance is then described with regard to the sorrows in the poem’s second half, with Lydgate specifying that “Off Paternostres and Aues [...] / The same noumbre” are to be said between “The hevenessys rehersyd full ffifteene” (162–64). In other words, Lydgate either expects that his reader will perform two complete Psalters of Our Lady, the first time meditating on her joys and the second time on her sorrows, or he (or she) will choose one or the other meditative sequence to support a single Psalter, a kind of partial reading facilitated by the (apparently scribal) rubrics supplied in some manuscripts of the poem.5 Since Lydgate’s verses are tied to this carefully defined devotional performance, the number of joys and sorrows—fifteen of each—is especially important. Yet each surviving manuscript of the poem includes only fourteen sorrows described over fourteen stanzas (183–280), most likely reflecting the omission of a complete stanza in the hyparchetype behind all surviving copies of the text.6 This lack is all the more readily apparent in these manuscripts by virtue of a program of marginal notes offering reminders to say (to quote from Jesus College, Cambridge, MS 56) “Pater noster x Aue” at the end of each joy and sorrow. In both Jesus 56 and BL Harley 2255 (copied in the 1460s and “seemingly in some way connected” to Bury St. Edmunds), these marginal instructions concerning the sorrows add up to only fourteen Paternosters and one hundred and forty Ave

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Marias (fols. 56r–57v and 91v–93r, respectively). 7 The same shortfall is made apparent through similar marginal notes in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.21, which (as Julia Boffey notes) includes two copies of the Joys and Sorrows in what were once two separate booklets.8 Both copies of the text in Trinity call for only fourteen repetitions of the cycle of Paternosters and Aves in the section on the sorrows (fols. 159v–161r and 240v–241v).9 Only in a fifth copy of the text, Bodl. MS Bodley 686, does a scribe manage to come up with the desired number of fifteen. Instead of the “Pater noster x Aue” tag, though, the Bodley scribe has included rubricated notes numbering each of the joy- and heaviness-stanzas in the inner margin, and he simply continues this habit such that the label “The xv heuynes” appears alongside the first stanza of the poem’s epilogue (fol. 208r). This stanza begins by observing that “thes heuynessis” have now been “reknyd oon by oon” (281), and it therefore seems likely that the Bodley scribe, knowing that there must be fifteen sorrows, simply numbered this stanza without considering its contents. That is, his rubric is a further error rather than an attempt at correction.10 The Bodley scribe was certainly willing to intervene and “refourme” the text of Lydgate’s poem, and (as we will see below) he almost wholly rewrites the second stanza of its prologue. But even if he—or any of the other scribes of the Joys and Sorrows—had noticed that his exemplar was lacking a sorrow-stanza, and even if he had wanted to make up for that lack by composing seven new verses, it would have been difficult (not to say impossible) for him to know what the subject matter of these new lines should be. By Lydgate’s lifetime there seems to have been a certain level of standardization in the joys and sorrows, but only with regard to smaller groupings. Lydgate thus identifies his eleventh joy as “Oon of thy Ioyes five” (113), alluding to a shorter sequence also reflected, for example, in a lyric on “The fif joyes” in BL Harley 2253, fol. 81v.11 The seven joys and sorrows are also enumerated in late medieval verse and prose in arrangements that persist in later devotion.12 In contrast, and despite the apparent popularity of the Lady Psalter, a standard set of fifteen joys and sorrows seems never to have been established. Indeed, in a poem by Thomas Hoccleve accounting for the origins of the Lady Psalter, the requisite one hundred and fifty Ave Marias are divided into groups not of ten but of fifty, apparently reflecting the typical scholastic division of the Davidic Psalter into quinquagenes. These groups are then associated with the Annunciation, Nativity, and Assumption, three of the joys appearing on standard lists of five and seven.13

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Anyone who, like Lydgate, wished to extend these more familiar lists to accommodate a tenfold division of Our Lady’s Psalter would have had to decide for themselves what the remaining joys and sorrows should include. On the one hand, they could turn to joyful or dolorous scenes from the life of Christ and suggest, by virtue of some implied maternal sympathy, that the Virgin also felt the emotive weight of these moments. This is the approach taken in another poem by Lydgate likely meant to support the recitation of a Lady Psalter, the Fifteen Joys of Our Lady, in which familiar Marian joys (e.g., Annunciation, Resurrection, Assumption) are supplemented with scenes from the Gospels, such as the feeding of the five thousand (134–40), and, intriguingly, the Crucifixion, apparently included because Mary knew that, though Christ suffered “dethe, pyne, and passyone,” he did so “for oure Redempcyone” (144–45).14 The same strategy is also apparent in an anonymous prose treatise on “The XV Sorowes of Oure Lady” preserved uniquely in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 546, fols. 7v–20v, with rubricated instructions for saying Paternosters and Ave Marias indicating that it, too, was meant to support the recitation of Our Lady’s Psalter.15 For his sixth sorrow, for example, this author calls to mind the moment “when thy chylde with rude ropes was streytly tyed wythout pytte to the marbylle pylloure vppon the colde Good Fryday” (fol. 11rv), while the twelfth sorrow recalls “whan þou dydest se the bytter aysylle and galle putt into thyne chyldes mowth” (17v). On the other hand, if writers wanted to include material from the life of the Virgin beyond her experience as mother, they could turn to the Marian apocrypha, texts like the pseudo-Matthew infancy Gospel or the Protevangelium of James, a tradition to which Lydgate contributed with his Life of Our Lady.16 This is the approach adopted in the Joys and Sorrows, seen, for example, in the first sorrow, “Whan the Bisshop did his besynesse / Tween the and Ioseph to make the weddyng” (185–86), and in the second, when “the bisshop” tests the Virgin’s chastity with the “watir of preeff ” (194; cp. Num. 5:18), both incidents narrated at length in the Life (1.533–763 and 2.1348–1627).17 In light of this topical diversity, and the variety of sources on which Lydgate could have drawn, it seems impossible to be certain about the specific subject matter of the missing sorrow-stanza or, by extension, where in the sequence it should occur.18 It may be easier, however, to recover some of the reasons why the stanza could have gone missing in the first place, reasons tied closely to the style and form of the Joys and Sorrows. As noted above, with only one exception Lydgate devotes a single rhyme royal stanza to each of the events

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in Mary’s life that are evoked in his poem—but this does not mean that he simply presents an abbreviated or compressed narrative of the Virgin’s life, or even a narrative of major moments in her life. The Joys and Sorrows is not a Life of Our Lady in miniature. To be sure, the use of rhyme royal in the Life seems indebted to the Chaucerian association of the stanza-form with longer narratives, religious or otherwise, a connection reinforced by the lament for “maister Chauser” with which Book II concludes.19 The use of rhyme royal in the Joys and Sorrows, in contrast, is of a piece with the poem’s lyricism, a formal association that holds true for Lydgate’s other minor religious poems in rhyme royal, as well as for those in the Monk’s stanza.20 Indeed, the Joys and Sorrows is non-narrative to the point of being almost anti-narrative, with its rejection of a linear, chronologically informed arrangement seen most clearly in the third and fourth sorrow-stanzas, presenting, respectively, the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt and then the Purification of the Virgin (197–210). Of course, the two events are described in different Gospels (Matthew 2:13–23 and Luke 2:22–40), but the composite narratives created in late medieval vitae Christi et Mariae make it clear that the Purification is (as would seem obvious) the earlier of the two events. 21 (Hence, in Lydgate’s Life, which ends with the Purification and Presentation, the flight into Egypt is not narrated.) This achronological arrangement may reflect another error in the hyparchetype of the surviving manuscripts of the Joys and Sorrows, bespeaking uncertainties or problems with the archetype that could also explain the lack of a fifteenth sorrow-stanza, but it also, regardless, reflects the poem’s larger non-narrative priorities. In addition to large-scale questions of the arrangement of stanzas, these anti-narrative tendencies inform the way Lydgate handles even the most obviously narrative material in the poem, the unfolding events in the life of the Virgin that he categorizes as either joys or sorrows. The first sorrow-stanza, as noted above, makes reference to the suffering that Mary experienced when she was compelled to marry Joseph, and it offers a typical example of Lydgate’s lyric compression: O glorious mayde, for that heuynesse Which thu haddist by a maneer compleynyng, Whan the bisshop did his besynesse Tween thee and Ioseph to make the weddyng Agayn th’entent of chaast livyng, Which remembryng, flour of virginite, On thy servauntis haue mercy and pite. (183–89)

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The “besynesse” surrounding the wedding of Mary and Joseph neatly alludes to events that occupy over two hundred lines in the Life of Our Lady, 1.533–763, while the simple reference to Mary’s “entent of chaast livyng” could evoke either the earlier stories of her life as a temple virgin (1.182–532) or the lengthy argument (the “maneer compleynyng”) she makes in favor of this mode of living (1.568–644). Indeed, by identifying the first “heuynesse” specifically with the Virgin’s act of “compleynyng” to Abiathar “the bisshop,” these lines effect a further compression, prospectively classifying the events listed in the stanza as so many occasions for this “compleyn[t].” As a final act of lyric elision, the stanza conflates two separate events in the Life (and its Latin sources), where the fourteen-year-old Mary must first object (at length) to Abiathar’s “purpoys” that she “Sholde be weddyde [...] / Vnto his sonne” (1.544, 1.547–48), after which a plan is devised which results in her engagement to Joseph. In the latter case, Mary is not said to have voiced any objections, and she is largely absent from the actions that Lydgate narrates (cp. 1.645–764). In its simple, additive style, then, the sorrow-stanza transforms a complex narrative into a similarly complex, though uncannily static, scene. As in each of the poem’s fifteen joys and fourteen sorrows, this meditative scene is framed by an initial invocation of the Virgin (here called the “glorious mayde”) and a succinct petition for her intercessory aid (“On thy servauntis haue mercy and pite”). This structure, clearly derived from forms of liturgical prayer (e.g., the collects of the Mass), is also seen in the prose meditation on the fifteen sorrows in Lambeth 546.22 In that text, as in the stanza on Mary’s confrontation with Abiathar in the Joys and Sorrows, the entirety of each sorrow, including its invocation and petition, is presented as a single winding sentence, for example: O glorious Mother of God, whos excellencye no mowth of man may perfyȝtly expresse, accordynge to the greate dignyte thow hast by the eleccion of oure Lorde above alle creatures, whych mayste more do for thy seruantes than alle the sayntes vnder God, I, a wrechyde synner, besech the ffor the compassion that thou haddest when thou sawest the yonge blode of thy blessyd babe in his cyrcumsision rynnynge from his tender flessche the viii day of his natiuite, his clothes respersyde and bysprent with hys reed blode that he toke of thy blessyde body: pray for me, goode Lady, that I may have tru compassion of hys Passion and thy sorow, and perfiȝte contrycyon for alle the synnes that I have done syth I furste dyde

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synne, and perfiȝte wylle neuer to offende my Lorde and my maker. Amen. Pater noster Aue Maria (Lambeth 546, fols. 7v–r)

Taking his cue from prayers like these, Lydgate has crafted the stanzas of the Joys and Sorrows such that each works as a single and discrete unit, both formally (as a stanza) and grammatically (as a sentence), and this distinctness is reinforced by the marginal notes directing a reader to follow each stanza with the recitation of a Paternoster and ten Aves. The simplicity of this prayer-like style—what we might be tempted to call Lydgate’s “oriate style”—is so well suited to the performative needs of the Joys and Sorrows that it could seem almost inevitable, were it not so different from what he offers in his other Lady Psalter poem, the Fifteen Joys.23 Though nine of the joys in that poem are contained in single stanzas, the remaining six span two, three, or even four in the unique case of the final joy (169–96). In these examples, Lydgate is more diffuse in his treatment of the events in Mary’s life as well as his petitions for her intercession, and, in a way that, stylistically, has more in common with his handling of rhyme royal in the Life, he tends to run sentences across stanza breaks: for example, “As qvene of heven to sitte on his ryght syde // With a corone of hevenly stonys cler,” or, at the end of this new stanza, “That whan þat I schall parte oute of þis lyff, // I may in herte haue feythe and ful creance” (175–76, 182–83).24 In contrast to these more elaborate invocations, the self-contained stanzas of the Joys and Sorrows evince a simplicity that seems carefully cultivated. This sense of the discreteness of each of the joy- and sorrow-stanzas is reinforced by the particular word that Lydgate uses to describe them, part of an elaborate prologue indebted to the conventions of Chaucerian dream visions. Indeed, the prologue at once describes the isolable form of the poem’s stanzas and, in a way that models a particular readerly engagement, imagines them as part of a complex array of elements interacting on the manuscript page. It begins with the inscribed poet recalling a bout of insomnia, “the trouble of this vnstabil liff ” preventing him from being able to sleep in the hours “Atween mydnyht and the fressh morwe gray” (1, 4). To ease his “herte ful pensiff ” (2), he claims to have Vnclosyd a book, that was contemplatiff; Of fortune turnyng the book, I fond A meditacioun which first cam to myn hond. (5–7)

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Above the “meditacioun” in this imagined book is an image of the Virgin with a suppliant kneeling devoutly before her (on which, more below), and, according to Lydgate, this painted petitioner is meant to be performing the text that follows. Lydgate writes that the man in the image “A Pater-noster and ten tyme Auees / In order [...] sayde at th’ende of ech ballade,” and, having read the text for himself and finding that “it did myn herte good,” the inscribed poet then “took a pen, and wroot in my maneere / The said balladys, as they stondyn heere” (26–27, 31, 34–35, emphasis added). Of course, though the Middle English “ballade” typically refers to three-stanza rhyme royal lyrics on the model of the French forme fixe, it could also be used, in a derivative sense, as here, to denote an individual rhyme royal stanza.25 Many instances of this use of “ballade” appear to be scribal attempts to categorize or describe pre-existing poetic productions, as when John Shirley notes, in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.20, p. 10, that the opening of Lydgate’s Bycorne and Chychevache should be accompanied by “an ymage in poete-wyse seying þees thre balades,” or when, again, Shirley adds a marginal note to Bodl. MS Ashmole 59, fol. 27r, identifying Chaucer’s Gentilesse as “theos thre balades.”26 Likewise, in his Prologe into Seynt Kateryns Lyf, Osbern Bokenham describes fellow Augustinian John Capgrave’s lengthy rhyme royal life of the saint as “My fadrys book, [...] / In balaadys rymyd ful craftyly” (6356–59).27 In part, Lydgate also seems to be using “ballade” to describe poetry written by someone else, insofar as, in the Joys and Sorrows, the “said balladys” refer to the “meditacioun” that the inscribed poet finds in his imagined book. But, of course, by claiming to write them “in my maneere”—a vague term that may suggest simple copying, stylistic adaptation, or, perhaps, translation—Lydgate indicates that the word also applies fittingly to his own stanzas, “as they stondyn here.”28 As in Shirley’s treatment of Bycorne, Lydgate’s preference for a term that describes the constituent pieces of his poem, rather than the poem as a whole, seems to reflect an understanding of its contents as made up of so many potentially isolable units. And, indeed, this paired focus on piecemealism and bibliographical description—specifically description that reinforces the isolability of textual units—persists throughout the prologue to the Joys and Sorrows. This tendency toward description arguably begins in the first stanza, as quoted above, with the account of a textual “meditacioun” found by leafing through “a book that was contemplatiff,” perhaps a devotional miscellany—though it is unclear how (unless it reflects information conveyed in some imagined title) the poet is

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able to recognize the piece as a “meditacioun.”29 Lydgate’s account quickly becomes more detailed and specific, as he turns to describe what would inevitably be, visually, the most arresting part of this notional page, the image of the Virgin mentioned above. He writes that “To-for” (that is, before or perhaps, in this case, above) the “meditacion” he saw    ... sett out in picture Of Marie an ymage ful notable: Lyke a pyte depeynt was the figure With weepyng eyen and cheer most lamentable, Thouh the proporcioun by crafft was agreable, Hir look doun-cast with terrys al bereyned, Of hertly sorwe so soore she was constreyned. (8–14)

Here the scribe of Bodley 686, always prone to tamper with his texts, makes his most substantial and sustained alteration to Lydgate’s poem.30 In place of this stanza, he offers his own creation: To-fore which was sette oute in picture Of Marie a gracious large ymage. Glad of chere depeynt was þe figure Holdyng a childe feirest of visage, Which to beholde of hert and of hole corage Þe more Y loked þe more Y founde gladdnesses And recomfort of alle olde heuynesses (Bodley 686, fol. 204v)

The substitution of the “glad” image of a Virgin and Child for Lydgate’s dolorous pietà may seem inappropriate, in light of the “pensiff ” heart about which the inscribed poet complains at the opening of the text. The Bodley scribe suggests that, simply by looking at this pleasant image, the poet finds some relief (or “recomfort,” an unusual but Lydgatean word),31 but this quick cure would make his later recovery redundant, coming as it does “By and by” from (as we will see) consideration of the image and the text (30, a line unaltered in Bodley).32 By focusing on the effects of viewing the image, the Bodley scribe has chosen not to reproduce Lydgate’s detailed ekphrasis, which includes not only descriptions of the Virgin’s “eyen and cheer,” but also his judgment of the figure’s “agreable proporcioun,” the result of artistic “crafft.” This careful description sets the stanza apart from the treatment of devotional images in other poems by Lydgate,

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such as the Image of Our Lady and the Dolerous Pyte of Crystes Passioun. Lydgate apparently presumes that these poems will be accompanied by (or at least read alongside) an image, and he therefore offers only deictic gestures toward such illuminations: “Looke on this ffygure,” “Set this lyknesse in your remembraunce,” “Beholde and se this glorious fygure.”33 Though these poems are purportedly about such images, as Shannon Gayk notes, they are “entirely lacking in pathetic detail.”34 In contrast, nothing in the Joys and Sorrows suggests that Lydgate anticipated the inclusion of an image, and, of the surviving copies, only the second instance of the poem in Trinity College R.3.21, fol. 238r, has received such decorative treatment. (Before being bound in R.3.21, as Boffey notes, this copy of the Joys and Sorrows would have been at the head of a separate booklet, and the illumination likely reflects that positioning.) 35 When he is not encouraging his reader to look, but instead recounting his own purported experience of visual consumption, Lydgate does provide a description rich in “pathetic detail.” The inscribed poet then turns his attention to “the said meditacioun,” and he goes on to describe the appearance of this text on the (not really) material page.36 As with the pietà, his description begins with the most easily noticeable visual features—that is, he reads the text almost as though it were an image before he weighs its individual words.37 He writes, “I sauh rubrisshis, departyd blak and reed, / Of ech chapitle a paraf in the heed” (18–19). Of these two claims, the second—that he sees a “paraf ” at the head of every “chapitle”—is easier to parse. We have seen that Lydgate will go on to specify that the major textual units in this “meditacioun” are “balladys” or rhyme royal stanzas, and “chapitle” seems to be used here as a formally neutral term for these same units. In other words, he begins simply by noting that the text is divided into pieces headed by paraph marks (decoration, not coincidentally, frequently used at the start of rhyme royal stanzas), and, once he reads the text, he will be able to specify that they are “balladys.”38 Before he sees these textual divisions, though, his eye is already drawn to “rubrisshis, departyd blak and reed,” a phrase that is perhaps surprisingly vague, insofar as Lydgate (and apparently only Lydgate) at times uses “rubrissh” to mean simply “a particular chapter, section, or passage of a book.”39 It could be, then, that the term is used here to describe the same thing as “chapitle.” Though the Middle English “rubrissh” lacks the specific connotation of a text copied in red ink (a meaning preserved in contemporary Latin), some contrasting use of ink is still clearly being described, since these “rubrisshes” themselves are

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“departyd blak and reed.” At least one copy of the Joys and Sorrows, Jesus 56, uses red-ink underlining to highlight specific words in the poem, while other works in this tradition, such as the prose “Sorowes” in Lambeth 546, copy significant words in red ink (e.g., in the passage quoted above, “the viii day of his natiuite” and “pray for me, goode Lady”). If the “rubrisshis” are the stanzas in the imagined book, it is then tempting to read this reference to “blak and reed” as describing a similarly emphatic use of red ink.40 Then again, Lydgate could be using “rubrissh” in a more specific sense, referring to a piece of peritext (such as a title) copied in red, black, or some combination of the two.41 He could, in this case, be describing something like the program of incipits and explicits included in some copies of the Joys and Sorrows (e.g., “Incipiunt quindecim gaudia beate Marie,” written in the text-ink and boxed in red in Jesus College 56, fol. 53r), or he may even have in mind the marginal notes indicating when to pray “Pater noster x Aue,” written in red in some copies (e.g., Harley 2255 and Trinity College R.3.21, fols. 157r–161v) or in the text-ink and underlined or otherwise decorated in red in others (e.g., Jesus 56 and Trinity College R.3.21, fols. 238r–242r). In either case, the inscribed poet’s gaze falls first on the visual details that support the text’s presentation, specifically on those elements that divide it into pieces, and only afterwards does he discern that these “chapitle[s] [...] / Remembryd first Fifteene of her gladynessys, / And next in ordre were set hyr hevynessys” (19–21). As soon as the inscribed poet reads the text of this “meditacioun” closely enough to identify its subject matter—fifteen joys and fifteen sorrows “in ordre [...] set”—he is then able to return to the figure at the top of the imagined page and make sense of an additional detail, something he did not describe in his first account. He writes that “to that hevenlie queene,” that is, the Virgin depicted in the pietà, I sauh oon kneele deuoutly on his knees: A Pater-noster and ten tyme Auees In ordre he sayde at th’ende of ech ballade, Cessyd nat, tyl he an eende made. (25–29)

Knowing , even roughly, the content of the “ballade[s],” Lydgate can identify this suppliant as piously reading the “meditacioun” and performing a Lady Psalter. This figure provides the poet with a model for his own prayerful recitation, which Lydgate describes in a way that blurs acts of viewing and reading. That is, while his account of “Folwyng the

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order [...] / By and by” suggests the slow reading of the joys and sorrows together with the intervening prayers, Lydgate says that he did this “as the picture stood,” with continual reference to the image as a guide, and the verb he uses to describe the whole process is overridingly visual: “To beholde it” (the text? the image? the page?) “did myn herte good” (29–31, emphasis added). By returning to describe more details of the “ymage” after his increasingly detailed focus on the “meditacioun” itself, Lydgate is able to present his recitation of the Lady Psalter not just as the reading of a text or even as the reading of a text as copied in a manuscript, but as the sustained engagement with a notionally material page that includes an “agreable” image, a carefully arranged (and divided) text, and, potentially, cues for the recitation of further prayers not supplied in full on the page. Lydgate’s prologue thus cultivates what might be called a bibliographical imaginary, the written evocation of the visual details of a manuscript page, including illumination, rubrication, other decorative/structural markings (e.g., paraphs), and the arrangement of blocks of text. (And one could potentially add other details that Lydgate does not include in this poem—ruling and bounding lines, headers, underlining, hierarchies of scripts, etc.)42 Of course, a writer could put this kind of bibliographical imaginary to any number of uses, but, in the case of the Joys and Sorrows, Lydgate appears to evoke these notionally visual details to emphasize the piecemeal or fragmentable form of his imagined source. “Paraf[s]” indicate the start of discrete textual units, whether these are called “chapitle[s],” “balladys,” or, perhaps, “rubrisshis,” and, indeed, whatever the specific referent of that last word, the use of “blak and reed” serves to “depart[en]” one portion of them from another. The “ymage” further contributes to this sense of textual division, providing a consistent (and alternative) locus of visual attention, something to be considered (or “beholde[n]”) alongside each “ballade” in turn. Insofar as Lydgate’s poem purports to represent this source, now written “in [his] maneere,” and since (as we have seen) some of the visual details evoked in this description correspond to the surviving copies of the Joys and Sorrows, this sense of piecemealism inevitably applies to the Middle English poem as well. In other words, Lydgate emphasizes that his text is supposed to be used in pieces, with each joy- and sorrow-stanza becoming a discrete object of meditative focus and leading to the recitation of a full Lady Psalter. In light of the emphatic isolability of these stanzas, real and imagined, it should be unsurprising that one of them could have been lost.

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Of course, it could simply be the case that Lydgate failed to count his sorrows, and the missing “ballade” could be “missing” because the poet never wrote it. Yet his insistence, throughout the poem, that there needs to be a certain number of joys and sorrows makes it seem much less likely that this sloppiness should be attributed to him. (One need not be importing Romantic ideas of literary genius by positing a poet who can count to fifteen.) Instead, the lack of a fifteenth sorrow is almost certainly the result of a scribal omission, someone’s failure to copy a stanza in the hyparchetype common to all surviving copies. The style and form of the poem made this a relatively easy error for a scribe to commit, compared to, for example, a long narrative like the Life of Our Lady. By crafting these stanzas as discrete poetic units, and by emphasizing that discreteness in his account of the visual appearance of the manuscript page and his expectations for the text’s performance, Lydgate created a poem in which it would be easier for this mistake to happen. And, as we have seen, the unfixed status of the subject matter of each joy and sorrow would only have allowed such an omission more readily to pass unnoticed by scribes. This omission matters, but not simply because we now know that we have been deprived of seven more lines of Lydgate. Rather, the details that allow us to recognize the imperfect state of the poem also, and at the same time, suggest Lydgate’s interest in how readers would engage with the Joys and Sorrows, as a formal poetic object, as text copied in a book, and as part of a devotional practice that draws on and structures both of those categories.43 NOTES 1 The Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary, 309–15, in Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 279. All subsequent citations of the Joys and Sorrows refer to MacCracken’s edition, and, throughout, I silently repunctuate older editions of Middle English. 2 Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 1: 86 and 1: 115; for further examples see 1: 18, 1: 143, 1: 205–6, 1: 221, and 1: 286–87. On the conventionality of such invitations to correction, see Wakelin, Scribal Correction, 32–39. Lydgate’s various adaptions of the Troilus stanza, in his secular and religious poetry, will be considered in detail in Schwebel, Tropes of Engagement. 3 The one exception being the fourth joy, the Visitation, to which Lydgate devotes two stanzas (lines 57–70). In part, this longer treatment seems to be inspired by his desire to include a substantial quotation of Elizabeth’s greeting, and his treatment of this quotation over the stanza break reinforces the coherence of the

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two stanzas as a single unit. He describes how Elizabeth “Saide thes woordys, the Hooly Goost hir tawhte: // ‘Blissed be thu amongys women alle ...’” (63–64). 4 On the development of this devotional practice, see Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, esp. 13–30. At least two Middle English poems preserve versions of the same origin-story for reciting Our Lady’s Psalter, one anonymous in Digby 86, fols. 130r–132r (see Facsimile of Oxford, ed. Tschann and Parkes, ad. loc., and Minor Poems, ed. Furnivall, 777–85) and the other by Thomas Hoccleve (see Middle English Miracles, ed. Boyd, 50–55). The practice is mentioned in Mirk’s Festial, ed. Erbe, 17, and (with some skepticism) in the Wycliffite adaptation of the Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. Simmons and Nolloth, 14. Quite clearly, then, Lydgate’s poem participates in the kind of enumerative devotion that has been maligned as “unpoetical, obsessive, or mechanical,” and has consequently been under-studied in earlier accounts of late medieval religion and literature—yet, as we will see, Lydgate is able to draw on the regularity and schematization of these practices to achieve startlingly sophisticated literary effects. For a recent attempt to reassess these practices, see Fulton, “Praying by Numbers,” passim, but 203 for this quotation and 225–27 for discussion of the Hoccleve poem mentioned above; see too Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England, 224–77, with the Lady Psalter discussed specifically at 270–74. 5 In Bodl. 686, for example, the opening of the poem is titled “þe prologe to þe xv ioyes of our ladye” (fol. 204r), while the explicit reads, “Here endeth the xv heuynes of our lady” (208v), and running headers on 204r–208v supply different titles (“xv ioyes”; “xv heuynesse of oure ladye”) for each half of the poem. Similarly, in Jesus College, Cambridge, MS 56, the poem is titled “Quindecim gaudia beate Marie” on fol. 53r, and the first half ends with a simple “Explicit” on 55v. The second half is not given a title. 6 For one hypothesis on the pre-collected circulation of Lydgate’s shorter verse, see Fredell, “‘Go litel quaier’: Lydgate’s Pamphlet Poetry.” 7 Edwards, “Fifteenth-Century Middle English Verse Author Collections,” 104. Jesus is mentioned in passing by Boffey, “Short Texts in Manuscript Anthologies,” 71–72. For further discussion of BL MS Harley 2255, see Reimer and Farvolden, “Of Arms and the Manuscripts,” and Grossi, “Cloistered Lydgate.” 8 Boffey, “Lydgate’s Lyrics,” 144–46. 9 Of these four copies of the text, only BL MS Harley 2255 correctly omits the marginal call for a Paternoster and ten Aves after the first of the two Visitation stanzas (see above, n. 3), meaning that only Harley 2255 contains the proper instruction to recite a full Psalter of Our Lady in the sequence of the joy-stanzas. 10 Similarly, the Bodley scribe failed to number the first joy-stanza, the last of five stanzas to be copied on fol. 204v, but he made up for this omission by labeling both of the Visitation stanzas (see above) on 205r. This error reinforces the sense of the lack of care taken in these rubrications. For further discussion of Bodl. MS Bodley 686, see Text of the Canterbury Tales, ed. Manly

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and Rickert, 1: 64–70, and Partridge, “Minding the Gaps,” 57–60. In addition to the manuscripts discussed here, this poem is preserved in one further nowfragmentary copy (BL Cotton MS Appendix XXVII, fols. 1r–2v), while the final stanza is included among other Lydgate envoys in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean 182, fol. 49r). 11 See Facsimile of British Museum MS Harley 2253, ed. Ker, ad loc., and Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XIV Century, 13–14. For further examples, see Brown, English Lyrics, 27–29, 32–33, and 65–67, Religious Lyrics of the XIV Century, 29–31, 44–46, 216–17, and Religious Lyrics of the XV Century, 53–56. Cp. the allusion to the “fyue joyez” in the account of Gawain’s shield: Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Andrew and Waldron, 232 (at line 646). 12 For late-medieval textual examples, see Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XV Century, 56–65, and Meliga, “Les sept douleurs.” For further discussion, see Schuler, “Seven Sorrows”; Sutch and Van Bruaene, “Seven Sorrows.” WinstonAllen, Stories of the Rose, 38–43, discusses different earlier instances of the five/ seven joys and sorrows (especially in imagistic form) as they may relate to the development of the rosary. 13 Hoccleve, “The Monk and Our Lady’s Sleeves,” 64–84, in Miracles of the Virgin, ed. Boyd, 52–53. Cp. the first, second, and fifth joy in the BL MS Harley 2253 lyric, cited above. 14 Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 1: 260–67. The Crucifixion is also described in detail in another lyric on the joys, though following after an account of the Resurrection and without identifying the crucifixion itself as a joy; see Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XIV Century, 30 (lines 21–28). It seems likely that, in the Fifteen Joys, Lydgate is depending upon Christine de Pisan’s Les XV Joyes Nostre Dame (in Œuvres poétiques, ed. Roy, 3: 11–14), which overlaps consistently in the content of the joys, though Lydgate’s treatment is much more elaborate and expansive. In BL MS Cotton Titus A xxvi, fol. 157v, the Fifteen Joys is said to have been “translatid out of Frenshe into Englissh by daun John the Monke of Bury” for Isabel (d. 1439), wife of Richard de Beauchamp. See Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 1: 260. The colophon is almost certainly the work of John Shirley, from whose exemplar Titus derives: Boffey, “Lydgate’s Lyrics,” 141. Schirmer, John Lydgate, 94, notes that the Fifteen Joys is a translation prepared for Isabel, and Pearsall, John Lydgate, 71 and 168, repeats the patronage information preserved in Titus, but neither identifies Christine as the likely source. 15 The text is unedited and, apparently, unstudied. Pickering and O’Mara, Manuscripts in Lambeth, 49, offer a brief description and suggest that “the fourth sorrow does not occur,” implying a similar problem to the one I have identified in Lydgate’s poem—but this is not the case with the Lambeth text, which does indeed identify fifteen sorrows. The fourth is “that sorowe thou haddeste whan þou haddeste loste thy chylde iij dayes in the tyme of thy pylgrymage, and with

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bytter terys and greate sorowe wentyste aboute to seke hym, whych was alle thy solace” (fol. 9r–v). 16 See the discussions of sources in Life of Our Lady, ed. Lauritis et al., 57–182. For the influence of this apocryphal tradition in earlier English Marianism, see Miles, “Origins and Development.” Here and throughout the following, the Life is brought up as a convenient repository of the apocryphal vita Mariae tradition, and I do not mean to suggest that it was a source for the Joys and Sorrows, or indeed that one poem was composed before the other. On the problems of dating the Life, see Hardman, “Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady: A Text in Transition,” and Meyer-Lee, “Emergence of the Literary,” 324 and n. 7. 17 The same recourse to apocryphal Marian material is taken in the first sequence of the Joys and Sorrows—e.g., the first joy, when Mary is “offryd by Ioachim and Anne / In-to the temple” (40–41), and the second, when Mary was a young girl in the temple and “angelis gan hem dresse / For thy meritis the to do seruise” (45–46). As a consequence, the Joys of Our Lady and the early sequence in the Joys and Sorrows only overlap in about half of the joys they include: seven joys are common to both, while two separate events in the Joys (the adoration of the shepherds and that of the Magi, lines 85–91 and 92–98) are treated as a single unit in the Joys and Sorrows (lines 85–91). 18 For an earlier Anglo-Latin example of meditations on fifteen joys, see the text by Stephen of Sawley in Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels, 317–60. The suggestion of Pearsall, John Lydgate, 274, that “the sorrows correspond to the joys, a traditional and typically medieval piece of inventio through contraries,” would appear to offer help in identifying the missing sorrow, but Pearsall exaggerates the degree to which the joys and sorrows “correspond.” 19 See Meyer-Lee, “Emergence of the Literary,” with comparable passages adduced by Pearsall, Lydgate, 64–65. On Chaucer’s use of rhyme royal in religious narratives, see further Nolan, “Chaucer’s Tales of Transcendence.” 20 For the use of these stanzas in forme fixe lyric, see Wimsatt, Chaucer and His French Contemporaries, 58–69, Hiatt, “Genre without System,” 284–86, and Butterfield, “Mise-en-page,” who notes the influence of such lyric forms on the presentation of Chaucer’s long narrative poem. Relatedly, see now Nuttall, “Vanishing English Virelai.” 21 See, e.g., Love, Mirror, 9–10, ed. Sargent, 47–55. 22 Cp., e.g., the various collects printed in the Sarum Missal, ed. Legg. 23 For a useful recent discussion of Lydgate’s aureate style, see MeyerLee, “Emergence of the Literary,” building on his earlier Poets and Power, esp. 49–87. 24 Comparable examples in the Life are legion. For just one, see Life, ed. Lauritis et al., 420–21: “The more on hir they loken and byholde, // The more she was to her sight fayre” (1557–58). 25 See Wimsatt, Chaucer and His French Contemporaries, 58–69.

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See, respectively, Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 2: 433, and Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, 1189. Connolly, John Shirley, 159, points out that Shirley’s note in Ashmole is meant to distinguish Gentilesse from the “Moral Balade” attributed to Scogan, in which it was embedded. On Shirley’s treatment of Bycorne, see Connolly, John Shirley, 84. Likewise, the two rhyme royal stanzas of “The worlde so wide” attributed to “Halsam Squiere” are called “thes ij balades” in BL MS Harley 7333, fol. 148r, a manuscript “derived from [a] Shirley exemplar” (Connolly, John Shirley, 39). In Pilgrimage, 23270–72, ed. Furnivall and Locock, 2: 621, Lydgate describes Deguileville’s French and Latin macaronic acrostic as “set out by lettars [...] in eche ballad.” In Bodl. MS Bodley 686, fol. 186r, Lydgate’s Stans Puer ad Mensam is described as “compiled in balade.” In the continuation of the Brut in Lambeth Palace Library MS 84, a poem in five Monk’s stanzas in praise of Henry VI against the Flemmings is called “this Englishe yn baladdys” (in Brut, ed. Brie, 2: 600). 27 Bokenham, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Serjeantson, 173; for Capgrave, see Life of St. Katharine, ed. Horstmann. 28 For other examples of poets describing their own poems as written in “ballades,” see The Craft of Lovers, 1, in Chaucerian Apocrypha, ed. Forni, 71, and Knyghthode and Bataile, 53, ed. Dyboski, 3. Lydgate also refers to writing “on my maner” as part of his “charge this story to translate” in Troy Book 5.3464–67 (cited from Troy Book, ed. Bergen). For discussion of this passage, see Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power, 74–75. 29 In light of the argument offered below, it seems relevant that Lydgate’s minor religious works were preserved in such anthologies: see, e.g., Boffey, “Short Texts in Manuscript Anthologies,” and Boffey and Thompson, “Anthologies and Miscellanies.” 30 For readings of creative scribal intervention in Bodl. MS Bodley 686, in addition to Partridge, cited above, see Boyd, “Social Texts,” and Pinti, “Governing the Cook’s Tale.” 31 Cp., e.g., Lydgate, Temple of Glass, 330, in Boffey, Fifteenth-Century Dream Visions, 41; Prayer to St. Leonard, 3, in Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 1: 135; and On the Departing of Thomas Chaucer, 63, in Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 2.659. 32 This focus on the Virgin’s curative “Glad [...] chere,” like the contrast between the viewer’s “gladdnesses” and “heuynesses,” would seem to exclude any potential benefits of contemplating Mary’s sorrows, perhaps reflecting the Bodley scribe’s preference to read the poem as two more-or-less separate series, rather than as a unified whole (as noted above). 33 Dolerous Pyte, 2, 9, in Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 1: 250, and Image of Our Lady, 1, in Minor Poems, ed. MacCracken, 1: 290. See further Woolf, English Religious Lyric, 199, and Pearsall, Lydgate, 181–83. 34 Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform, 100. 26

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Boffey, “Lydgate’s Lyrics and Women Readers,” 145. Detailed consideration of the illumination in MS R. 3. 21 is offered by Mary Wellesley, “Textual Lyricism,” 135–36. Wellesley’s valuable reading of the poem appeared too late to be considered in this study, but it generally supports the arguments offered here. 36 In her brief treatment of this poem, Carruthers, Book of Memory, 279, mistakenly claims that “the picture itself is termed the meditation.” This conflation leads her to conclude that, in this stanza (lines 15–21), rather than describing the text in front of him, the poet imaginatively transforms the pietà into the visual arrangement of the text he is about to compose in response to it. (This misreading is reiterated and expanded by Rust, Imaginary Worlds, 19–21.) As what follows will indicate, Carruthers is not entirely wrong to say that “Lydgate thinks of his poem as laid out in his memory like a written page,” but this is only true insofar as his poem reproduces the text as presented in the book he now purportedly describes. 37 The recent art-historical interest in “script as image,” though generally germane to this point, has tended to focus on the treatment of decorated initials and on an earlier period: see, e.g., Hamburger, Script as Image, and “Iconicity of Script,” ed. Hamburger. 38 Of the surviving manuscripts of the Joys and Sorrows, only BL MS Harley 2255 and Jesus College MS 56 feature prominent initials: gold lombards on blue and red fields in Harley; simple red lombards in Jesus. Neither copy in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.21 regularly employs decoration at the start of stanzas. For other Middle English manuscripts with paraphs at the start of rhyme royal stanzas, see, e.g., BL MSS Add. 12044 and Harley 2280 and Durham Cosin MS V.II.13, all copies of Troilus and Criseyde. 39 MED s.v. rubrich(e), 1c, with all of the examples coming from Lydgate’s works. 40 Cp. the “red or blak” clothing donned by embodied “speche[s]” in the House of Fame 1078 (quoted from Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, 360), discussed by Carruthers, Book of Memory, 279–80. On the Latin, see DMLBS s.v. rubrica, 2–3. 41 See, e.g., Shirley’s Secret of Secrets, which describes the text’s chapter-list as “the rubriches” (Secretum Secretorum, ed. Manzalaoui, 1: 253), and Capgrave, Life of St. Augustine, who refers to “þe rubrich befor þe bok” of one of his sources (Lives of Augustine and Gilbert, ed. Munro, 5). In his own Secret of Secrets, Lydgate provides what he calls a “rubryssh” naming “Philip, born in Parys” (i.e., Philip of Tripoli) as the translator of his source (Secrees of Old Philisoffres, ed. Steele, 7). 42 See further Griffiths, “Book Production Terms.” 43 This chapter benefited greatly from conversations with Jenni Nuttall and Leah Schwebel, both of whom have my thanks. I must also acknowledge the generosity of Stephen Heath in allowing me to consult Jesus College, Cambridge, MS 56. 35

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ABBREVIATIONS

BL London, British Library Bodl. Oxford, Bodleian Library DMLBS  Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, logeion. uchicago.edu EETS ES Early English Text Society, Extra Series EETS OS Early English Text Society, Original Series EETS SS Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series MED Middle English Dictionary, quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med WORKS CITED

Primary Sources and Facsimiles Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002. Boffey, Julia, ed. Fifteenth-Century Dream Visions: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Bokenham, Osbern. Legendys of Hooly Wummen. Edited by Mary S. Serjeantson. EETS OS 206. London: Oxford University Press, 1938. Boyd, Beverly, ed. Middle English Miracles of the Virgin. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1964. Brown, Carleton F., ed. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1932. ———. Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century. 2nd ed., revised by G. V. Smithers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957. ———. Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1939. Brut: Or, The Chronicles of England. Edited by Friedrich W. D. Brie. 2 vols. EETS OS 131 and 136. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1906–1908. Capgrave, John. The Life of St. Katharine of Alexandria. Edited by Carl Horstmann. EETS OS 100. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1893. ——— . Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert of Sempringham, and a Sermon. Edited by John J. Munro. EETS OS 140. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1910. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Edited by Larry D. Benson. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. ——— . The Text of the Canterbury Tales. Edited by John M. Manly and Edith Rickert. 8 vols. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1940. Christine de Pisan. Œuvres poétiques de Christine de Pisan. Edited by Maurice Roy. 3 vols. Paris: Didot, 1886–1896.

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Facsimile of British Museum MS Harley 2253. With an introduction by N. R. Ker. EETS OS 255. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86. With an introduction by Judith Tschann and M. B. Parkes. EETS SS 16. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Forni, Kathleen, ed. Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Selection. TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005. Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, Part II. EETS OS 117. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1901. Knyghthode and Bataile: A XVth Century Verse Paraphrase of Flavius Vesetius Renatus’ Treatise “De Re Militari”. Edited by Roman Dyboski and Z. M. Arend. EETS OS 201. London: Oxford University Press, 1935. Lay Folks’ Catechism: or, The English and Latin Versions of Archbishop Thoresby’s Instruction for the People, Together with a Wycliffite Adaptation of the Same. Edited by Thomas F. Simmons and Henry E. Nolloth. EETS OS 118. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1901. Love, Nicholas. The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition. Edited by Michael G. Sargent. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005. Lydgate, John. Life of Our Lady. Edited by Joseph A. Lauritis, Ralph A. Klinefelter, and Vernon F. Gallagher. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1961. ———. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate. Edited by Henry Noble MacCracken. 2 vols. EETS ES 107 and OS 192, London: Oxford University Press, 1911 and 1934. ———. The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man. Edited by Frederick J. Furnivall and Katherine B. Locock. 3 vols. EETS ES 77, 83, and 92. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1899–1904. ———. Troy Book. Edited by Henry Bergen. 4 vols. EETS ES 97, 103, 106, 126. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1906–1935. Lydgate, John, and Benedict Burgh. Secrees of Old Philisoffres: A Version of the Secreta Secretorum. Edited by Robert Steele. EETS ES 66. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1894. Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies. Edited by Theodor Erbe. EETS ES 96. London: Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1905. Sarum Missal. Edited by J. Wickham Legg. Oxford: Clarendon, 1916. Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions. Edited by Mahmoud A. Manzalaoui. EETS OS 276. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Secondary Studies Boffey, Julia. “Lydgate’s Lyrics and Women Readers.” In Women, the Book, and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda’s Conference, 1993, edited by Lesley Smith and Jane Taylor, 139–49. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.

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——— . “Short Texts in Manuscript Anthologies: The Minor Poems of John Lydgate in Two Fifteenth-Century Collections.” In The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, edited by Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, 69–82. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Boffey, Julia, and John J. Thompson. “Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts.” In Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375– 1475, edited by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, 279–315. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Boyd, David L. “Social Texts: Bodley 686 and the Politics of the Cook’s Tale.” Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1996): 81–97. Butterfield, Ardis. “Mise-en-page in the Troilus Manuscripts: Chaucer and French Manuscript Culture.” Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1995): 49–80. Carruthers, Mary J. Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Connolly, Margaret. John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Edwards, A. S. G. “Fifteenth-Century Middle English Verse Author Collections.” In The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, edited by Edwards, Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna, 101–12. London: British Library, 2000. Fredell, Joel. “‘Go litel quaier’: Lydgate’s Pamphlet Poetry.” Journal of the Early Book Society 9 (2006): 51–73. Fulton, Rachel. “Praying by Numbers.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 4 (2007): 195–250. Gayk, Shannon. Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Griffiths, Jeremy. “Book Production Terms in Nicholas Munshull’s Nominale.” In Art into Life: Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval Symposia, edited by Carol G. Fisher and Kathleen L. Scott, 49–71. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1995. Grossi, Joseph. “Cloistered Lydgate, Commercial Scribe: British Library Harley 2255 Revisited.” Mediaeval Studies 72 (2010): 313–61. Hamburger, Jeffrey F., ed. “The Iconicity of Script: Writing as Image in the Middle Ages.” Word & Image 23.3 (2011). [A special issue.] ———. Script as Image. Paris: Peeters, 2014. Hardman, Phillipa. “Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady: A Text in Transition.” Medium Ævum 65 (1996): 248–68. Hiatt, Alfred. “Genre without System.” In Middle English, edited by Paul Strohm, 277–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Meliga, Walter. “Les sept douleurs et les sept joies de la Vierge en occitan du ms. London, British Library, Egerton 945.” In Études de langue et de littérature médiévales: Offertes à Peter T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème

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anniversaire, edited by Dominique Billy and Ann Buckley, 163–75. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Meyer-Lee, Robert J. “The Emergence of the Literary in John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 109 (2010): 322–48. ———. Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Miles, Laura Saetveit. “The Origins and Development of the Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation.” Speculum 89 (2014): 632–69. Nolan, Barbara. “Chaucer’s Tales of Transcendence: Rhyme Royal and Christian Prayer in the Canterbury Tales.” In Chaucer’s Religious Tales, edited by C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, 21–38. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990. Nuttall, Jenni. “The Vanishing English Virelai: French Complainte in English in the Fifteenth Century.” Medium Ævum 85 (2016): 59–76. Partridge, Stephen. “Minding the Gaps: Interpreting the Manuscript Evidence of the Cook’s Tale and the Squire’s Tale.” In The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, edited by A. S. G. Edwards, Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna, 51–85. London: British Library, 2000. Pearsall, Derek. John Lydgate. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1970. Pickering, O. S., and V. M. O’Mara. Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library, Including Those Formerly in Sion College Library. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999. Pinti, Daniel. “Governing the Cook’s Tale in Bodley 686.” Chaucer Review 30 (1996): 379–88. Reimer, Stephen R., and Pamela Farvolden. “Of Arms and the Manuscripts: The Date and Provenance of Harley 2255.” Journal of the Early Book Society 8 (2005): 239–60. Rust, Martha D. Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007. Schirmer, Walter F., and Ann E. Keep, trans. John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961. Schuler, Carol M. “The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: Popular Culture and Cultic Imagery in Pre-Reformation Europe.” Similous 21 (1992): 5–28. Schwebel, Leah. Tropes of Engagement: Chaucer’s Italian Poetics. In preparation. Sutch, Susie Speakman, and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene. “The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary: Devotional Communication and Politics in the BurgundianHabsburg Low Countries, c. 1490–1520.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61 (2010): 252–78. Swanson, R. N. Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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Wakelin, Daniel. Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts, 1375–1510. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Wellesley, Mary. “Textual Lyricism in Lydgate’s Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary.” In Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems, ed. Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead, 124–37. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018. Wilmart, André. Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen âge latin: Études d’histoire littéraire. Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1932. Wimsatt, James I. Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Winston-Allen, Anne. Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Woolf, Rosemary. English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968.

Spoiled and Eaten Figures of Absorption in Medieval English Poetry Irina Dumitrescu

Jerusalem stone is the only stone that can feel pain. It has a network of nerves. Yehuda Amichai, “Jerusalem 1967”

I

N ONE OF THE oddest scenes of the very odd Old English narrative poem Andreas, the apostle Andrew recalls how Jesus performed miracles in the presence of unbelieving Jews in order to prove his divine origin and authority. In the Temple at Jerusalem, Jesus spots wondrous sculptures of angels on the wall. He commands one of them to speak to the assembled doubters and declare his lineage. The stone angel dutifully detaches itself from the wall and lectures the Jews, explaining that the man before them is the Son of the same God who created the world and gave gifts to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Jews respond with stunned silence, then accusations of magic, so upon Jesus’s command the angel heads off to Mambre, where the three patriarchs are buried. It bids them rise from their graves and make the Creator known to the people. The revenant patriarchs dutifully do so, to the horror of all watching. In his article on “spolia-inflected poetics” in Andreas, Denis Ferhatović explains the vivification of the angel using the concept of the spolium. Originally a term for the skin or hide of an animal, spolium came to refer to arms or other treasure taken from a conquered enemy.1 In art historical usage, spolia denote older objects or artifacts that are placed into a new architectural setting. The latter practice was common in the ancient period and the Middle Ages—including in medieval England—although the use of the term spolia for it is early modern. 2 Strictly speaking, the angel is not a spolium, but, as Ferhatović argues, Christ makes him into one, commanding the “detachment of [the] artifact from its immediate context so that it could fit itself in the largest context possible, that of the arc of Christian history.”3

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The stone angel suggests a tidy story of Christian textual and spiritual triumphalism, one at the core of both Andreas and the Siege of Jerusalem, also a poem about the radical spoliation of Jerusalem stone. At Christ’s word, the angel comes to life, springs from the wall of the Jewish Temple, and marches on. In doing so, the artifact serves as a model for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to do the same—in other words, it models a textual process by which the dead letter of Jewish scripture is quickened by the living spirit of Christian revelation through the spoken word of Christ. However, while this miracle seems to offer us a standard master narrative of Christian historiography, in fact it resists such easy allegorizing. First, the story is one of failure: the Jews do not come to believe in Jesus as a result of this spectacular miracle, and more importantly, even Andrew relates it in the context of his own loss of faith. 4 Second, the poem models an audience response to the miracle, but that response is silent horror. Finally, there is an unbridled quality to the miraculous artifact. As Ferhatović has pointed out, in the Greek analogue that is closest to Andreas, both the stone sculpture and the patriarchs are explicitly commanded to return to their places, and they do so. In Andreas, the stone angel tells the patriarchs to seek heaven, but it is not clear if they obey. The angel itself remains at large, presumably wandering through the landscape, terrifying the locals. The scene with the stone angel throws light on the way Andreas uses artifacts to reflect on textual tradition, and in this case, on Christian appropriation of Jewish text. Both Andreas and the Siege of Jerusalem are intensely interested in two parallel material processes: one is spoliation, the capture or reuse of treasured artifacts, and the second is consumption, with its related network of themes and images: hunger, regurgitation, cannibalism, and, by extension, the Eucharist. While at first glance spoliation and consumption seem to do different kinds of work in these poems, they are in fact closely linked—subtly in Andreas, explicitly in the Siege of Jerusalem. Beat Brenk recognized the common purpose of these processes in an article on the ideology and aesthetics of spolia: When someone removes the hide of a building or tears out its innards, he resembles a cannibal. A cannibal does not devour his enemies mainly because he wants to nourish himself but because he hopes that in so doing he will acquire his destroyed enemy’s strength.5

Guiding these romances’ use of appropriable, consumable materials is a third element, whose power Christianity aims to absorb: Jews, or characters

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coded as Jews. Andreas and Siege use spoliation and consumption as figures for how Christianity both incorporates and supersedes Judaism, highlighting their interest in Jewish text: the Psalms, Exodus, the Ten Commandments, or the historical books of the Hebrew Bible. Augustine offered the standard positive view of spoliation when he compared the secular learning of the pagans to “the gold and silver vessels and ornaments as well as the clothes” (vasa atque ornamenta de auro et de argento et vestem) the Israelites took from the Egyptians: stealing precious objects from the faithless is a figure for taking what is valuable from the heathen past, and leaving what is dangerous—like idols—behind.6 In his letter to Jovius, Augustine’s contemporary Paulinus of Nola used the same figure to claim that using pagan rhetoric and eloquence in Christian poetry was like “grabbing spoils from enemy weapons” (quasi quaedam de hostilibus armis spolia cepisse).7 The uses of spolia in Andreas and the Siege of Jerusalem would thus seem to figure the process of taming a textual tradition, in this case Jewish rather than pagan, either by picking what one likes and leaving the undesirable bits behind, or by turning weapons against their original owners. Things, however, are not that simple. I want to suggest that both these medieval English poems offer evidence that spoliation is dangerous, that spolia are weapons that have not been fully laid to rest. Spoils from the past are not simply passive objects that can be used and reused at will, as the ideal would have it. Rather, they become active agents, potentially destructive to the people who take them up. We might even speak of a “dangerous” or “accursed spoil.”8 In the classical tradition, the Aeneid offers several literary instances of this motif. At the end of Nisus and Euryalus’s bloody night raid on the Latin forces in book 9, Euryalus takes booty from the slaughtered men, among them Messapius’ helmet (9.365).9 The helmet gives him away: “the helmet betrayed heedless Euryalus in the shadows of dim night, and flashed back the rays” (galea Euryalum sublustri noctis in umbra / prodidit immemorem radiisque aduersa refulsit) (9.373–74). This gleam of light reveals him to the approaching Latin cavalry, who eventually kill both men. Similarly, in book 12, when Aeneas and Turnus meet in single combat and Turnus begs for his life, Aeneas spots Pallas’s balteus and cingula (possibly a sword belt and shoulder belt) on Turnus. Turnus had taken these spoils after killing the young Pallas, and now they spell his doom: “are you to be snatched away from me, wearing the spoils of my people?” (tune hinc spoliis indute meorum / eripiare mihi?) (12.947–48).10 The Hebrew Bible also features forbidden spoils, as when Saul counteracts the Lord’s instruction to destroy

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Amalek completely, allowing his people to take the best livestock and offer it to God. For this infraction, Samuel denies Saul the kingship of Israel (1 Samuel 15). It is a passage Prudentius recalls in the Psychomachia, when Sobrietas names “Samuel, who forbids laying hands on the spoil of a rich enemy” (Samuel, spolium qui divite ab hoste / adtrectare vetat) (388–89). In discussing Avaritia, too, Prudentius decries the son who discovers his father fallen in battle and delights in stripping off his father’s belt with its gleaming studs and his bloody vestments” (fulgentia bullis / cingula et exuvias gaudet rapuisse cruentas) (475–76).11 In both classical and Christian Latin literature, the desire for spoils can kill or corrupt. Closer to England, and a direct source for Andreas, Beowulf features multiple instances of old artifacts that turn against their new owners. One example is the sword Grendel’s mother keeps in her underwater lair, which Beowulf uses to kill her. It is not a traditional spolium, as there is no indication that she won it in battle—indeed, only Beowulf seems strong enough to carry it to war (“hit wæs mare ðonne ænig mon oðer / to beadulace ætberan meahte”) (1560–61).12 Still, the poet insists on it being an ancient object, an “ealdsweord eotenisc” (old sword of giants) (1558a), a “giganta geweorc” (work of giants) (1563b). The implication is that even found or inherited objects can betray their proprietors. Later in the poem, Beowulf predicts that the Danish Freawaru’s peace marriage with the Heathobard Ingeld is bound to fail. When the families feast together, he imagines, an older Heathobard will notice an heirloom that brings back memories of the fight: Þonne cwið æt beore  se ðe beah gesyhð, eald æscwiga,  se ðe eall geman garcwealm gumena. (Then, during the drinking, an old spear-warrior will speak, seeing a torque, remembering the spear-death of men.) (2041–43a)

The old fighter is prompted to remember the massacre of his comrades by the sight of one battle spoil, and he has his revenge by drawing the attention of a younger warrior to another looted object. “Meaht ðu, min wine, mece gecnawan / þone þin fæder to gefeohte bær” (My friend, can you recognize the sword your father bore to battle?) (2047–48), he asks, pointing out one of the young Shieldings who inherited the blade.

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Eventually, Beowulf suggests, one of Freawaru’s men will lie dead, and the oaths between the two sides will be broken. The catalyst for the violence will be carrying an inherited battle spoil. Finally, the denouement of Beowulf is full of arrogated treasure that does nobody any good: the theft of a cup causes the dragon to wreak havoc on the Geats; the dragon’s appropriation of the cursed heathen treasure indirectly leads to its own death; and at the end of his life, Beowulf suggests that he fought not to defend his people, but to win the dragon’s treasure for them: “Nu ic on maðma hord mine bebohte / frode feorhlege” (Now I have sold my old life for a hoard of treasures) (2799–800a). The poem opens up the possibility that Beowulf ’s desire to win spoils in battle with the dragon might have spelled his downfall, and that of his people. When spoliation is seen in this light, the Geats seem wise to bury Beowulf ’s hoard treasure with him. Andreas and the Siege of Jerusalem use the motif of dangerous artifacts articulated in the Aeneid and Beowulf to communicate a certain unease with textual spoils. Consumption also serves as a way to imagine the dark side of appropriation. Both poems feature cannibalism prominently and memorably, a motif that also invites an easy reading that is not quite right. At first glance, cannibalism seems to serve its traditional purpose in Andreas and Siege: it delineates those who are barbaric, subhuman, or monstrous from the civilized. It is also a crime of which Jews were frequently accused in the Middle Ages, and thus a fitting concern for texts interested in Christian triumphalism. In the poems at hand, however, cannibalism ricochets back on the Christian figures; while they convert or annihilate literal cannibals, they themselves turn out to be metaphorical cannibals. This is in keeping with Heather Blurton’s observation that “although [...] the figure of the cannibal may symbolize a demonized ‘other,’ this is not necessarily the case, as the act of cannibalism is also marked by a disconcerting similitude—the cannibal by definition eats only those who are just like itself.”13 I propose that fleeting hints of cannibalism ascribed to Christian figures in these poems reflect the potential monstrosity of appropriation, just as occurrences of spoliation reveal the danger of taking an enemy’s treasure. Spoliation and consumption are both about taking something—an object, a person, a civilization, a verse—and making it your own. But if those things are too much like you, you risk becoming a monster; if you attempt to pick and choose the bits you like and use them to your ends, you risk that they may turn against you. In uncovering the inadvertent effects of Christian metaphors of

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supersession, Andreas and Siege also reveal a conflict between ideology and poetry, between a desire to annihilate the past and a pleasure taken in recording and preserving its treasures.

Andreas The Old English Andreas is found in one copy, in the tenth-century Vercelli Book.14 It is a poetic adaptation of an apostolic adventure story found in Greek and Latin texts, though we do not have its direct source.15 Andreas is also remarkable poetically. While the poet drew on the shared stock of Old English formulas used to compose poetry, he also borrowed heavily from the poems of Cynewulf and from Beowulf.16 Alison Powell’s 2002 Cambridge dissertation demonstrated this conclusively, but it also showed something interesting about how the Andreas poet incorporated these borrowings: Cynewulfian lines are worked seamlessly into the verse, while phrases taken from Beowulf tend to show a concern for contrast and irony.17 In other words, they draw attention to themselves as borrowings. The result is a fantastical story about the Apostolic Age that is littered with echoes of Scandinavian events that took place, as it were, centuries later. The plot consists of a voyage and a conversion. Matthew has been captured by the monstrous, cannibal Mermedonians, whose only food is the flesh of unfortunate travelers to their land, and Andrew is sent to rescue him.18 The first part of the poem is a sea voyage, in which Christ, disguised as a helmsman, interrogates Andrew about the miracles Jesus performed to convince the Jews of his identity, including the vivification of the stone angel and the awakening of the patriarchs. Once in Mermedonia, Andrew is captured and tortured, an ordeal he more or less willingly undergoes in imitation of Christ. His marvelous resistance is supposed to convert the Mermedonians, but in fact it converts nobody. He does manage to release the prisoners meant to be used as food; in anticipation of their hunger, the despairing Mermedonians turn to eat their own people. Finally, Andrew commands one of the prison columns to set forth a flood that will kill the Mermedonians. In sheer terror, the Mermedonians agree to convert to Christianity, and Andrew prays to the Lord to bring a number of dead young people back to life. There are two sets of Jews in Andreas: the Jews proper, who appear mainly in Andrew’s recollection on the ship, and the Mermedonians. Andrew Scheil has demonstrated that the Mermedonians are coded as Jewish in a number of ways. They behave toward Andrew as the Jews

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behave toward Christ; both they and the Jews are repeatedly described as unable to recognize or acknowledge the truth, as blind or causing blindness; both are perverted of mind and encouraged by Satan.19 Finally, the Mermedonians’ illicit eating practices recall the association of Jews and gluttony in Vercelli Homily 7, in the same manuscript as Andreas.20 The Andreas poet did not simply borrow heavily from Cynewulf and Beowulf, but he used the motifs of cannibalism and spoliation already present in the Andrew legend to reflect on this process of borrowing, on his own poetic practice. Throughout the poem we are treated to variations on the theme of cannibalism, and they are burdened with a maximum of symbolic weight, at least as compared to the story’s analogues. The most obvious instance occurs in a scene where the Mermedonians’ cannibalism comes to look like the Eucharist. When Matthew leads the Mermedonians’ future victims out of their prison, the Mermedonians despair. They know no food but dead people, so the loss of the foreign prisoners spells starvation for them. They cast lots among themselves to see who will be the first to be sacrificed for the common meal, a process the poem describes as “hellcræftum, hæðengildum” (devilish arts, heathen rites) (1102). One of the chief men is chosen and immediately fettered. His reaction is typical for this miscreant people: Cleopode þa collenferhð  cearegan reorde, cwæð he his sylfes sunu  syllan wolde on æhtgeweald,  eaforan geongne, lifes to lisse.  Hie ða lac hraðe þegon to þance. (The courageous one called then with a troubled voice, said that he would give his own son, his young offspring, into their power, as mercy for life. They immediately and willingly received that sacrifice.) (1108–12)

As many critics have noted, this is a travesty of the Eucharist, one that emphasizes the cannibalism implied by the sacrament. Robert Boenig claims that this “distorted Eucharist creates no literary blasphemy.” 21 Rather, he argues, the selfishness of the father who sacrifices his son to save his own skin is meant to contrast with the generosity of God’s sacrifice of Christ.22 Boenig reads Andreas as falling squarely on the Radbertian side of the First Eucharistic Controversy, its thick cannibalistic echoes supporting an understanding of the Eucharist as the true body and blood of

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Christ. And yet it is not clear why the parody should not be a critique of the cannibalistic understanding of the Eucharist rather than a buttress for it. Andrew’s own reaction to the father’s sacrifice is that it is terrible: Ða þæt Andrea  earmlic þuhte, þeodbealo þearlic  to geðolianne, þæt he swa unscyldig  ealdre sceolde lungre linnan. (Then it seemed wretched to Andreas, a grievous evil to endure, that he, so innocent, should quickly lose his life.) (1135–38a)

Not only is the Andreas poet thinking of the Eucharist in cannibalistic terms, but he forces the audience to face the full horror of an innocent young person’s death. The poem plays other variations on this motif. When Andrew and the disguised Christ first meet on the seashore, Andrew asks him where he comes from. Christ’s answer is surprising: “We of Marmedonia mægðe syndon / feorran geferede” (We have traveled from afar, of / from the tribe of the Mermedonians) (264–65a). Unlike any of the analogues, where Christ says he is going to Mermedonia, Andreas here opens the possibility that Christ is one of the cannibals.23 Boenig argues that the poet thus adds a “theological dimension” to the narrative: “if we momentarily view Christ as a Mermedonian, the normal eucharistic relationship between the Lord and his disciple is inverted. In other words, Christ, for a moment, allows Andrew to take his place, to imitate him.”24 I argue rather that this is an instance of reflection on the process of textual cannibalism. The Mermedonians are described early on as sylfætan, or self-eaters. Christ, too, is a self-eater—as teacher and Messiah he repeatedly quotes the Old Testament, bringing it into the narrative of Christian history.25 Andreas subtly gestures to this process at the end of Andrew’s third day of torture. Wearied by his travails, Andrew seems to lose faith—and in a prayer he reminds Christ of his own words on the cross:         Hwæt, ðu sigora weard, dryhten hælend,  on dæges tide mid Iudeum  geomor wurde, ða ðu of gealgan,  God lifigende, fyrnweorca frea,  to fæder cleopodest, cininga wuldor,  ond cwæde ðus:

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“Ic ðe, fæder engla,  frignan wille, lifes leohtfruma;  hwæt forlætest ðu me?” Ond ic nu þry dagas  þolian sceolde wælgrim witu! (Lo, ruler of victories, Lord saviour, you became troubled on that daytime among the Jews, when you, living God, lord of creation, called to the father from the gallows, and spoke thus: “I wish to ask you, father of angels, life’s beginning of light; why have you forsaken me?” And now for three days I have had to suffer violent tortures!) (1406b–15a)

Andrew understands his suffering to be an imitation of Christ’s, but it is not clear what he is imitating.26 He cites Jesus’s cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” from Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, suggesting that even the Savior despaired when tortured. He seems not to understand that the line was not a spontaneous expression of suffering, but itself a citation of Psalm 22, or Psalm 21 in the Septuagint numbering. Jesus’s cry could be a sign of his human frailty, as Bede held, but it could also refer to the end of the psalm, which closes with faith in the Lord: “He hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. Neither hath he turned away his face from me: and when I cried to him he heard me.”27 In Augustine’s view, Jesus was not complaining of being forsaken, but drawing attention to the fact that he was the Messiah prophesied in the psalm.28 Andrew does not understand that Christ is citing the Psalms, that he is, figuratively speaking, a textual self-eater.29 If Andrew’s suffering takes place against the background of biblical citation, it also takes place, quite literally, on architectural spolia. Mermedonia is a place full of old, crafted things. Not only do they suggest a possible previous civilization (depending on how savage you consider the Mermedonians), but they are textual spolia too, borrowings from Beowulf. The Mermedonians torture Andrew partly by dragging him through the streets of their city: these ways are “enta ærgeweorc” (ancient work of giants) (1235a) and “stræte stanfage” (paved stone roads) (1236a). “Enta ærgeweorc” is also line 1679a of Beowulf, where it describes the famous sword hilt, and the Mermedonian street recalls Beowulf 320a, “Stræt wæs stanfah”—the stone road Beowulf and his men take to Heorot. Lori Ann Garner has noted the ominous quality of both built and natural features of Mermedonia, at least before it is converted.30 Notably, much of the foreboding that permeates this description

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comes through objects that are spoliated from Beowulf, bringing with them echoes of that poem’s sense of doom. The columns that release the genocidal flood also recall Beowulfian artifacts. Trapped in the Mermedonian prison, Andrew looks around and spots an unusual architectural feature: He be wealle geseah wundrum fæste under sælwage  sweras unlytle, stapulas standan,  storme bedrifene, eald enta geweorc. (He saw great columns by the wall, wondrously fixed below the hall wall, pillars standing beaten by storm, old work of giants.) (1492–95a)

The problem with these storm-beaten columns is, of course, that they seem to be inside the prison. Ferhatović argues that these are architectural spolia: once outdoors and subject to the ravages of weather, they have been incorporated into a Mermedonian building.31 His point is supported by the line “eald enta geweorc,” a marker for such found objects and ruined structures. Not only are the columns borrowed artifacts, put to a new purpose, but in this moment Andrew is as well. As Powell notes, this passage contains multiple echoes of the scene at the end of Beowulf, in which the dying hero looks at the dragon’s hall:       Þa se æðeling giong þæt he bi wealle wishycgende gesæt on sesse;  seah on enta geweorc, hu ða stanbogan  stapulum fæste ece eorðreced  innan healde. (Then the prince went so that he sat on a seat by the wall, thinking wisely. He looked at the work of giants, how the arches and columns held the eternal earth-hall fast from the inside.) (2715b–19)

Andrew regards a physical spoil from Mermedonia’s past that is also a textual spoil from Beowulf—where it also seems to be an architectural spoil from an ancient civilization. In both cases, speechmaking and death soon

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follow. Spoliated objects, even the simply architectural ones, seem to exist close to violence—and this force eventually turns back on the objects’ owners. The Mermedonians’ use of these columns might speak to some prior, implied conquest of another people. More concretely, the columns hold up the prison where the Mermedonians prepare their innocent victims for the slaughter. It is fitting, then, that the columns will kill so many of the Mermedonian folk. While the columns seem to be remnants of Roman building, the poet deliberately connects them to Jewish law. Whereas the story’s analogues feature a statue on top of one of the columns that opens its mouth to let forth a deadly deluge, in Andreas the killer column is inscribed with the ten laws given to Moses—inscribed, in fact, by God himself.32        on ðe sylf cyning wrat, wuldres God,  wordum cyðde recene geryno,  ond ryhte æ getacnode  on tyn wordum, meotud mihtum swið,  Moyse sealde, swa hit soðfæste  syðþan heoldon, modige magoþegnas,  magas sine, godfyrhte guman,  Iosua ond Tobias. (On you yourself the king, the God of glory, wrote, revealed in words marvelous mysteries, and signified the right law in ten sentences. The Lord, mighty in power, gave it to Moses, just as the righteous, brave retainers held it afterwards, his kinsmen, the godfearing men Joshua and Tobias.) (1509b–16)

If the Mermedonians saw this writing, they seem not to have understood it, as they put the column in a place where the injunction not to kill would have been bitterly ironic. Andreas’s prison columns have much to hold up: the destructive potential of spoliated artifacts, and the lethal quality of Jewish text appropriated, but not understood.

The Siege of Jerusalem The Siege of Jerusalem, a fourteenth-century alliterative poem, also features a tale of travel and conquest—though not of conversion—and a similar nexus of Judaism, cannibalism, and spoliation.33 It begins with Titus

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and his father Vespasian, whose troubling physical ailments are healed by Christian faith. When Nero hears that the Jews refuse to continue paying tribute to Rome, he sends Titus and Vespasian to make war on Judea. The war has, from the start, two justifications: Jewish refusal of taxation, and religious vengeance for Christ’s death. The Jews retreat to Jerusalem, and a lengthy, brutal siege ensues, one in which Jewish suffering reaches a variety of ghastly extremes, including, at its worst, cannibalism. Finally, Jerusalem is conquered, plundered, razed, and the ground is sown with salt. Siege is notorious for its brutal treatment of the Jews, and by extension, in more recent scholarship, for the difficulty of interpreting its antiSemitism. The author sometimes betrays admiration for Jewish military trappings or behavior and betrays empathy with the extent of Jewish suffering. As Elisa Narin van Court has argued, Siege testifies to the ambivalence of Christian doctrine with respect to Jews, and counteracts the “myth of a univocal, universal medieval anti-Judaism.”34 Accordingly, the Romans are polyvalent figures: they are ancient Romans who serve as proto-Christians and act like late medieval knights.35 Moreover, while the Siege narrator explicitly justifies their crusade against the Jews, they are also frequently portrayed as brutish and sinful. In David Lawton’s words, “The Siege of Jerusalem is organized around [...] a recognition of the unwelcome but necessary affinity of enemy and friend.”36 Even more powerfully than Andreas, Siege is concerned with the translation of Jewish cultural heritage from Jerusalem to Rome. Here too this is expressed through its use of cannibalism and spoliation, but it makes the connection to the Old Testament more explicit. At the beginning of the battle, Caiaphas and his men come out of the city with his clerks, the group resembling monks as much as ancient Jews: Lered men of þe lawe  þat loude couþe synge With sawters seten hym by  and þe psalmys tolde Of douȝty David þe kyng  and oþer dere storijs Of Iosue þe noble Iewe  and Iudas þe knyȝt. Cayphas of þe kyst  kyppid a rolle And radde how þe folke ran  þroȝ the rede water Whan Pharao and his ferde  were in þe floode drouned, And myche of Moyses lawe  he mynned þat tyme. (477–84)

Soon after this, Vespasian recalls Christ’s Passion, suggesting that the dominant Christian narrative supersedes the story of Exodus, so central to

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Judaism.37 Accordingly, Andrew Galloway has proposed two possible readings of the singing of psalms in Siege. One is a celebration of Jewish history, one which presents Christianity as “minor, recent, and derivative.”38 The other is ironic, in which the Jews are not up to the heroism suggested by Joshua and Judas Maccabeus.39 But the Psalms suggest, I think, neither heroism nor its disappointment: rather, they attest to a common Jewish and Christian vocabulary of solace and despair, a language that unifies both faiths in a single lamenting voice. Although the Siege of Jerusalem seems to focus on Jewish cannibalism under duress, most instances of the practice in the poem lead back to the proto-Christians of the story or to Christian ritual. The implication is that Christianity is a cannibal religion, figuratively eating itself much like Christ in Andreas. The first case of cannibalism in the story is in fact one where the Jews are completely passive. After Caiaphas and his men have been executed in a mock crucifixion, Vespasian orders the bodies to be burned and the ashes to be blown toward Jerusalem: “Þer is doust for ȝour drynke”,  adoun to hem crieþ, And bidde hem bible of þat broþ  for þe bischop soule. (723–24)

This is a mock Eucharist, but one born out of the brutality of Christians, not from the despair of Jews.40 Moreover, the scattering of Caiaphas’s ashes highlights the way forcing cannibalism on the Jews threatens to make cannibals out of Christians as well. For, one might assume, the soldiers tasked with throwing the ashes in the wind were likely to breathe some of them in, thus joining the Jews in their grotesque communion. The Siege also features a much more famous mock Eucharist, in which a “mild woman” named Marie, driven mad by hunger, roasts her own child and eats part of it, offering the rest to the other starving citizens: Þan saiþ þat worþi wif  in a wode hunger, ‘Myn owen barn haue I brad  and þe bones gnawen, ȝit haue I saued ȝou som’,  and a side feccheþ Of þe barn þat ȝo bare,  and alle hire blode chaungeþ. (1093–96)

This scene is not new to the Siege, present as it is in the poem’s sources distant and close, including Josephus’s The Jewish War (available in the Middle Ages in Latin translation), its Latin adaptation by Pseudo-Hegesippus, and Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon. 41 In his perceptive analysis of the

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passage, Alex Mueller demonstrates that the Siege author adapted the scene to present the Jews in a sympathetic light. Marie is a “myld wyf ” (1081), recalling the Virgin Mary. By inviting the other starving Jews to partake in her meal, “the Siege-poet highlights the contaminated Eucharistic structure” behind her act, as he does with the earlier imbibing of ashes. 42 In contrast to Josephus and Pseudo-Hegesippus, however, the Siege poet presents the Jews as desperate and horrified, not barbaric.43 Instead of using an inverted Eucharist to portray Jews as monstrous and cannibalistic, as one might expect from a late medieval anti-Semitic text, Siege uses their horror to underscore the grotesque nature of the Eucharist itself. Years ago, Alan Dundes proposed that Christians promulgated the idea of blood libel as a result of “projective inversion”: their guilt over the requirement of Christ’s death for their salvation, as well as the cannibalistic aspects of the Eucharist, led them to accuse Jews of child-killing, cannibalism, and particularly, baking matzot with blood.44 While this is but one of a number of theories for the origin of blood libel, it is true that, in the early years of Christianity, it was Christians who were accused of cannibalistic feasts featuring child sacrifice.45 Whatever the merits of Dundes’s theory for understanding the complex historical phenomenon, the scene of Marie eating and sharing her child in Siege is constructed so as to highlight Christian/Roman culpability.46 Not only is this Eucharist due to the starvation caused by Romans, but even as the Jews consider killing women and the elderly before seeking a truce, it is made clear that “Tytus nold no trewe to þe toun graunte” (1110). The theme of illicit eating joins that of spoliation in the killing of Jewish prisoners of war near the end of the poem. A number of desperate Jews come out of the city and beg Titus for grace, which he grants them, committing them to jailers. Bot whan þey metten with mete,  vnmyȝty they were Any fode to defye,  so faynt was here strengþe. Ful þe gottes of gold  ilka gome hadde; Lest fomen fongen hem schold,  here floreyns they eten. Whan hit was broȝt vp abrode  and þe bourd aspyed, Withouten leue of þat lord  ledes hem slowen, Goren euereche a gome  and þe gold taken, Fayner of þe floreyns  þan of the frekes alle. (1165–72)

This scene obviously recalls anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish gluttony, greed, and “wrong eating.” It suggests eucharistic error, often associated

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with “the passing of bad coins.”47 But it also makes monsters out of the Roman soldiers. They are insubordinate in betraying the leniency Titus had granted the Jews, and they turn out indeed to be greedier than Jews, putting gold above men’s lives. The killing of the prisoners offers an alternative view on the symbolic spoliation of Jerusalem that the poem as a whole seems to celebrate. It may seem possible to take just the gold and leave the Jew behind, it seems to say—to take what is good about Jewish tradition and be rid of the hated people—but doing so only makes you like them, or rather, like your very worst stereotypes about them. The Siege of Jerusalem ends with the plunder of the Temple, this spoliation forming a key part of the poem’s establishment of Rome as a “spiritual capital of Christianity”:48 The Romayns wayten on þe werke,  warien þe tyme Þat euer so precious a place  scholde perische for synne. Out þe tresour to take  Tytus commaundyþ, “Doun bete þe bilde,  brenne hit into grounde.” (1261–64)

The brutish Romans now become connoisseurs, wistfully admiring the beautiful creation they are about to destroy. We are given to understand it is the sinfulness of the Jews that resulted in this devastation, but the phrase “for synne” leaves the question tantalizingly open. The action also recalls the Roman avarice of previous passages. In the five stanzas that describe the Temple and its despoliation, the word gold appears four times, and of course the conquerors find more gold and treasure in the city and sell the Jews off as slaves. The result is a fantasy of perfect pillage: take the riches and annihilate the architecture that serves as their context, make exchangeable currency out of a tradition and its people.49 And yet the moment, as “warien” suggests, is a cursed one, and curses, like spolia, have a tendency to turn against those who wield them.50

Conclusion Andreas and the Siege of Jerusalem present us with the triumph of Christianity over Judaism, be it through conversion or annihilation. And they are insistent about their point, with a kind of didactic monotony we know from the Song of Roland: “Pagans are wrong and Christians are right” (Paien ont tort e chrestiën ont dreit) (1015).51 But when they look at the process of religious succession more closely, the metaphors they use undermine the victory. In making inhuman cannibals out of Jews or their

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literary stand-ins, Christians are faced with their own faith’s cannibalistic relationship to Judaism. In attempting to acquire desirable “gold” by killing the Jews who owned it, Christians come into possession of a cursed spoil, bound to kill or pervert them. These medieval English poems are about conquest, but they are also about desire: for the richness of an inherited textual tradition, for a city doomed but eternal. One might describe this dilemma as the clash between ideology and poetry. Ideology in this case aims to destroy the past. Poetry cannot help but try, greedily, to preserve it. It is a longing Yehuda Amichai once also connected to Jerusalem, almost nineteen centuries after the most famous of its sieges: Poets come in the evening into the Old City and they emerge from it pockets stuffed with images and metaphors and little well-constructed parables and crepuscular similes from among columns and crypts, from within darkening fruit and delicate filigree of hammered hearts.52

NOTES Latin Dictionary, ed. Lewis and Short, “spolium”; Ferhatović, “SpoliaInflected Poetics,” 202; and Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia.” 2 Ferhatović, “Spolia-Inflected Poetics,” 202. 3 Ferhatović, “Spolia-Inflected Poetics,” 209. 4 Dumitrescu, Experience of Education, 92. 5 Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne,” 103. 6 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. Green, 124–27, 2.144–47. See also Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue, 87–88. The despoliation of Egyptian goods posed a problem for both Jewish and Christian interpreters, since it seemed to suggest that the Israelites deceived the Egyptians into lending them goods they did not plan to return. For the commentary tradition see Allen, The Despoliation of Egypt. 7 Paulinus of Nola, Epistolae, ed. Migne, 16.234B. Reference from Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue, 87–88. On Paulinus’s letters see Trout, Paulinus of Nola; Conybeare, Paulinus Noster. 8 According to H. S. Versnel, with certain exceptions Romans, unlike Greeks and Germans, “shrank from the enemy armour they had captured. It was, loaded as it was with enemy power, dangerous and not to be brought within the walls of Rome” (Versnel, Triumphus, 309.) I have not, however, found direct evidence for his historical claim: Romans seem to have been fond of taking war booty. 9 Quotations of the Aeneid from Virgil, Opera, ed. Mynors. 10 Roger Hornsby notes that this is a recurring motif in the Aeneid: “On three different occasions in the Aeneid, men put on armor of a slain victim, and in 1

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each instance the man dies. On two other occasions a person tries to wear armor that does not become him, and death again is his lot.” Hornsby understands the Aeneid as presenting a changing heroic code, one in which captured arms are best dedicated to the gods. Hornsby, “The Armor of the Slain,” 347, 56. 11 Quotations of the Psychomachia from Thomson, Prudentius. 12 Quotations of Beowulf from Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles. 13 Blurton, Cannibalism, 9. 14 For edition and background information, see Andreas, ed. Brooks. 15 The Greek version of the text is the Πράξεις ᾽Ανδρέου καὶ Ματθεία εἰς τὴν χώραν τῶν ἀνθρωφάγων (Acts of Andrew and Mathias in the City of the Cannibals). Edition is Acta apostolorum apocrypha, ed. Tischendorf 132–66. Andreas is assumed to be based on a Latin source, however. The closest surviving Latin text is found in the twelfth-century manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 1104, and another key version is found in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 1274. For editions of the important Latin recensions, see Die lateinischen Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt. Translations of the Greek, Latin, and Old English versions are in Boenig, The Acts of Andrew. There is also an Old English homily relating the story of Andrew, with a full version in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 198, and a shorter text in the Blickling Homilies. Editions are in Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, 228–49; Bright’s Anglo-Saxon Reader, ed. Bright and Hulbert, 113–28. 16 Peters, “Relationship of the Old English Andreas”; Schabram, “Andreas und Beowulf ”; Hamilton, “Andreas and Beowulf”; Riedinger, “Andreas and the Formula”; and Riedinger, “Formulaic Relationship.” 17 Powell, “Verbal Parallels,” 235. 18 On the monstrous and otherworldly nature of Mermedonia, see Bolintineanu, “Land of Mermedonia.” 19 Scheil, Footsteps of Israel, 228–39. 20 Scheil, Footsteps of Israel, 253–59; Godlove, “Bodies as Borders.” 21 Boenig, Saint and Hero, 73. 22 Boenig, Saint and Hero, and “Andreas, the Eucharist, and Vercelli.” 23 Boenig, Saint and Hero, 64. 24 Boenig, Saint and Hero, 66. 25 Dumitrescu, Experience of Education, 119–20. 26 For Andrew’s torture as an Imitatio Christi, see Biggs, “The Passion of Andreas,” and Godlove, “Bodies as Borders,” 151. Amity Reading notes, however, Andrew’s intransigence, his need to be repeatedly converted to Christ: Reading, “Baptism, Conversion.” 27 Bede, In Marci evangelium expositio, ed. Migne, cols. 290C–91A. 28 Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes, ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, 123. 29 Dumitrescu, Experience of Education, 99–100. 30 Garner, Structuring Spaces, 104–11, and “Old English Andreas.” 31 Ferhatović, “Spolia-Inflected Poetics,” 214.

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Die lateinischen Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, 87. Edition used is by Siege of Jerusalem, ed. Hanna and Lawton. Square brackets and + sign (indicating editorial removal of words or letters) silently excised. Siege survives in its entirety (more or less) in six manuscripts, with significant fragments in two more, and a single leaf in a ninth manuscript. As Millar, Siege of Jerusalem, 30, points out, its manuscript contexts suggest religious and historical interests on the part of its readers (four of the manuscripts are religious miscellanies and two others contain religious works), and a learned audience who were interested in Latin texts as well. 34 Narin van Court, “The Siege of Jerusalem and Recuperative Readings,” esp. 154, 163. 35 On the encoding of the Romans as Christians, see Yeager, “Siege of Jerusalem,” 71. 36 Lawton, “Titus Goes Hunting and Hawking,” 114. 37 Narin van Court, “The Siege of Jerusalem and Augustinian Historians,” 230–31. 38 Galloway, “Alliterative Poetry,” 88. 39 Galloway, “Alliterative Poetry.” 40 Mueller, “Corporal Terror,” 300. 41 Millar, The Siege of Jerusalem, 60–70, 85–86. See also Moe, “The French Source.” 42 Mueller, “Corporal Terror,” 300. 43 Mueller, “Corporal Terror,” 301–2, and Narin van Court, “The Siege of Jerusalem and Recuperative Readings,” 159. 44 Dundes, “Ritual Murder.” 45 McGowan, “Eating People,” 416–23. 46 Narin van Court, “The Siege of Jerusalem and Recuperative Readings,” 161–62. For a brief survey of theories see Rose, Murder of William of Norwich, 10–11. 47 Rubin, “Whose Eucharist?,” 204. 48 Yeager, “Siege of Jerusalem,” 73. Yeager also points out that in one interpretation of the Siege of Jerusalem available to medieval Christians (through Gregory the Great and Joachim of Fiore), the suffering of the Jews stood for the plight of the Christian Church: “the typological interpretation necessitates a counter reading of the Siege wherein the Roman aggressors become the adversaries of Christendom, and the Jewish siege victims occupy a martyr-like role as Christians” (Yeager, “Siege of Jerusalem,” 95–96). The English had long looked to Rome as a spiritual capital, and long thought of themselves as participating in the culture of a Latinate, Christian empire centered on that city. See Howe, “Rome,” and Dumitrescu, “Bede’s Liberation Philology.” 49 Chism understands Siege as actively promoting a “muscular Christianity” with respect to the Jews, one in which contemporary economic anxieties about both Jews and Muslims are focused on the poem’s Jewish figures. See also the 32 33

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earlier version of her chapter: Chism, Alliterative Revivals, 178, and “Siege of Jerusalem.” Nicholson, “Haunted Itineraries,” also understands the poem as using Jews to describe a fear of demonized Muslims. 50 Yeager, “Jewish Identity,” has argued that the Siege could have been read as an apocalyptic warning to Christians, a reading of the poem that would require identification with its Jewish figures in order to avoid their doom. In contrast to my interpretation, Diamond, “Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem,” argues that extreme depictions of violence were an expected pleasure of medieval romance, especially the alliterative kind. 51 Chanson de Roland, ed. Jenkins. 52 Amichai, “Jerusalem, 1967,” 59. I thank Andrew James Johnston for inviting me to present an early version of this chapter at the SFB 980 in Berlin, Denis Ferhatović for rewarding conversations about Andreas, and Eric Weiskott for the brilliance and energy he has brought to this book. Most of all, I am grateful to Roberta Frank for years of friendship, encouragement, and devilish wit. I’m still working out how the gerbils fit in.

WORKS CITED Allen, Joel Stevens. The Despoliation of Egypt in Pre-Rabbinic, Rabbinic and Patristic Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Amichai, Yehuda. “Jerusalem 1967.” Translated by Stephen Mitchell. In Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition, 38–63. Riverdale-onHudson, NY: Sheep Meadow, 1992. Augustine. De doctrina christiana. Edited by R. P. H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Bede. In Marci evangelium expositio. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 92. Paris, 1844–1864. Biggs, Frederick M. “The Passion of Andreas: Andreas 1398–1491.” Studies in Philology 85 (1988): 413–27. Blatt, Franz, ed. Die lateinischen Bearbeitungen der Acta Andreae et Matthiae apud anthropophagos. Gießen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1930. Blurton, Heather. Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2007. Boenig, Robert. The Acts of Andrew in the Country of the Cannibals: Translations from the Greek, Latin, and Old English. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991. ———. “Andreas, the Eucharist, and Vercelli.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 79 (1980): 313–31. ———. Saint and Hero: Andreas and Medieval Doctrine. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1991. Bolintineanu, Alexandra. “The Land of Mermedonia in the Old English Andreas.” Neophilologus 93 (2009): 149–64.

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Brenk, Beat. “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 103–9. Bright, James W., and James R. Hulbert, eds. Bright’s Anglo-Saxon Reader. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1963. Brooks, Kenneth R., ed. Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. Chism, Christine. Alliterative Revivals. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. ———. “The Siege of Jerusalem: Liquidating Assets.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 309–38. Conybeare, Catherine. Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Dekkers, D. E., and J. Fraipont, eds. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos i-l. Turnhout: Brepols, 1956. Diamond, Arlyn. “The Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem: The Poetics of Destruction.” In Boundaries in Medieval Romance, edited by Neil Cartlidge, 103–13. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008. Dumitrescu, Irina A. “Bede’s Liberation Philology: Releasing the English Tongue.” PMLA 128 (2013): 40–56. ———. The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Dundes, Alan. “The Ritual Murder or Blood Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization through Projective Inversion.” In The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes, 336–76. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Ferhatović, Denis. “Spolia-Inflected Poetics of the Old English Andreas.” Studies in Philology 110 (2013): 199–219. Fulk, R. D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf. 4th ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. Galloway, Andrew. “Alliterative Poetry in Old Jerusalem: The Siege of Jerusalem and its Sources.” In Medieval Alliterative Poetry: Essays in Honour of Thorlac Turville-Petre, edited by John A. Burrow and Hoyt N. Duggan, 85–106. Dublin: Four Courts, 2010. Garner, Lori Ann. “The Old English Andreas and the Mermedonian Cityscape.” Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 53–63. ———. Structuring Spaces: Oral Poetics and Architecture in Early Medieval England. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. Godlove, Shannon N. “Bodies as Borders: Cannibalism and Conversion in the Old English Andreas.” Studies in Philology 106 (2009): 137–60. Hamilton, David. “Andreas and Beowulf: Placing the Hero.” In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation. For John C. McGalliard, edited by Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese, 81–98. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

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Hanna, Ralph, and David Lawton, eds. The Siege of Jerusalem. EETS OS 320. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hornsby, Roger. “The Armor of the Slain.” Philological Quarterly 45 (1966): 347–59. Howe, Nicholas. “Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004): 147–72. Jenkins, T. Atkinson, ed. La Chanson de Roland. Boston, MA: Heath, 1924. Kahlos, Maijastina. Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures c. 360–430. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Kinney, Dale. “The Concept of Spolia.” In A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, edited by Conrad Rudolph, 233–52. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Lawton, David. “Titus Goes Hunting and Hawking: The Poetics of Recreation and Revenge in The Siege of Jerusalem.” In Individuality and Achievment in Middle English Poetry, edited by O. S. Pickering, 105–17. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short, eds. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon, 1879. McGowan, Andrew. “Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism Against Christians in the Second Century.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 413–42. Millar, Bonnie. The Siege of Jerusalem in Its Physical, Literary, and Historical Contexts. Dublin: Four Courts, 2000. Moe, Phyllis. “The French Source of the Alliterative ‘Siege of Jerusalem.’” Medium Aevum 39 (1970): 147–54. Morris, R., ed. The Blickling Homilies. EETS OS 58, 63, and 73. London: Oxford University Press, 1967. Mueller, Alex. “Corporal Terror: Critiques of Imperialism in The Siege of Jerusalem.” Philological Quarterly 84 (2005): 287–310. Narin van Court, Elisa. “The Siege of Jerusalem and Augustinian Historians: Writing about Jews in Fourteenth-Century England.” Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 227–47. ——— . “The Siege of Jerusalem and Recuperative Readings.” In Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, edited by Nicola McDonald, 151–70. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004. Nicholson, Roger. “Haunted Itineraries: Reading The Siege of Jerusalem.” Exemplaria 14 (2002): 447–83. Paulinus of Nola. Epistolae. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 61. Paris, 1844–1864. Peters, Leonard J. “The Relationship of the Old English Andreas to Beowulf.” PMLA 66 (1951): 844–63. Powell, Alison M. “Verbal Parallels in Andreas and its Relationship to Beowulf and Cynewulf.” DPhil thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002.

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Reading, Amity. “Baptism, Conversion, and Selfhood in the Old English Andreas.” Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 1–23. Riedinger, Anita. “Andreas and the Formula in Transition.” In Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, edited by Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, 183–91. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989. ———. “The Formulaic Relationship Between Beowulf and Andreas.” In Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., edited by Helen Damico and John Leyerle, 283–312. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993. Rose, E. M. The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Rubin, Miri. “Whose Eucharist? Eucharistic Identity as Historical Subject.” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 197–208. Schabram, Hans. “Andreas und Beowulf. Parallelstellen als Zeugnis für literarische Abhängigkeit.” Nachrichten der Giessener Hochschulgesellschaft 34 (1965): 201–18. Scheil, Andrew P. The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Thomson, H. J., ed. Prudentius. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949. Tischendorf, Constantin, ed. Acta apostolorum apocrypha. Leipzig: Avenarius and Mendelssohn, 1851. Trout, Dennis E. Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Versnel, H. S. Triumphus: An Inquiry Into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph. Leiden: Brill, 1970. Virgil. Opera. Ed. R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Yeager, Suzanne M. “Jewish Identity in The Siege of Jerusalem and Homiletic Texts: Models of Penance and Victims of Vengeance For the Urban Apocalypse.” Medium Ævum 80 (2011): 56–84. ———. “The Siege of Jerusalem and Biblical Exegesis: Writing About Romans in Fourteenth-Century England.” Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 70–102.

“Gehyre se ðe wille” Sonic Worlds in Old Testament Poetry Jordan Zweck

R

OUGHLY FOUR HUNDRED LINES into the Old English poetic adaptation of the biblical Exodus, in the midst of a digression on the patriarchs that derives from the Book of Genesis, Abraham draws a sword to slay his son Isaac. Unlike the account in the Vulgate, in Exodus, Abraham’s sword makes a curious sound: the “ecg grymetode” (blade resounded) (408b).1 Grymetian typically means “to roar,” as animals do, though it can also denote other terrible sounds, such as the moaning of the damned in hell.2 In a series of articles, Roberta Frank has pointed to the Old Norse associations of the verb as evidence for the ways in which Old English poetry reflects Scandinavian influence.3 Building on Frank’s attention to this peculiar word, in this essay I explore the sonic worlds of Old English Old Testament poetry, focusing especially on the swords and horns of the Old English Exodus. The poem is filled with sounds—the terrible evening songs of birds and beasts eager for battle; the awful rasping of the blade Abraham draws to sacrifice Isaac, counterbalanced by the voice from the heavens that calls him to cease; and the wailing of Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea, counterbalanced by the Israelites’ songs of praise for God. These kinds of sounds are often pointed to as evidence of the ways in which noise—and especially sounds produced by nonhuman animals or inanimate objects—was understood to be a form of violence. Drawing on theorists like Jacques Attali as well as medieval grammarians, scholars have argued that medieval noise is necessarily aggressive, unethical, and othering. But this has led us to overlook the ways in which noise could also be a joyous celebration or a way of marking space as one’s own, as well as pointing to the violence latent in all sound. Inspired by the work of Ruth HaCohen and Olivia Remie Constable on the intersections of Jewish and Christian music and Muslim vs. Christian religious noise, respectively, I argue that the poem’s sonic experience achieves a blurring of boundaries (sonic and otherwise) between Egyptians and Israelites, and perhaps also between Israelites and Anglo-Saxon Christians.4 After considering the

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way horns in Exodus order the movements of both the Israelites and their enemies, the bulk of the essay turns to the sounds of swords, and the terrible, yet comforting, leonine roar of Abraham’s ecg. The poem has a coherent (if clanging) sonic aesthetic. Far from creating permanent associations between noise and terror, on the one hand, and sound and celebration on the other, the poem insists throughout on the ambivalence of all auditory phenomena, and an appreciation for discordant style. Despite the ubiquity of sounds in Exodus, they have received little sustained attention.5 Attending to the sounds in the poem reveals the complexity of Anglo-Saxon sound theory. It is too often taken for granted that disharmonious noise is bad, while carefully ordered sound is positive, but, in this poem, Israelites and Egyptians use the same instruments to produce the same sounds, which are described by the poet using the same vocabulary. Therefore we cannot conclude that certain words for sounds or noises are inherently positive or negative. Instead, what matters is the context in which a sound is heard. The sound of Abraham’s sword further frustrates our ability to interpret sounds, and to distinguish positive from negative sounds, because its roar is neither fully human, nor fully animal; neither fully damned, nor fully angelic; neither fully threatening, nor fully triumphant. As I will argue, in this poem, the sounds of battle horns can order movement of troops, evoke terror (when echoed by the birds and beasts of battle), and reflect and express emotion, both positive and negative. Above all, sounds resist categorization. The poem’s acoustic environment, including both the blaring of war horns and the ringing of Abraham’s blade, is typical of the poem itself: it blurs the boundaries between friend and foe, sound and noise. The poem’s sonic aesthetics do not conclude that song is good, noise bad, but rather that sounds of many kinds can both cross and establish borders, just as the poem itself encourages audiences to contemplate how characters like Moses and Abraham straddle the divide between Jew and Christian, Israelite and Anglo-Saxon. The Exodus poet gives voice to trumpets, swords, wolves, and humans as a way to create discordant concord. The poem’s sometimes confusing structure— it whips back in time to scenes from Genesis—and frequent conflation of heroes and enemies is reinforced by the poem’s sense of sonic style. The sounds of the poem both provide order and lead us astray, confuse and cross boundaries and suggest deliberate associations between noise and triumph. When the narrator closes his brief introduction to the poem by challenging : “gehyre se ðe wille” (let him hear [it] who will) (7b), he encourages his audience to listen carefully to God’s word and the poet’s

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words, listening across and through temporal, geographic, and religious boundaries that are constantly being drawn, redrawn, and blurred, even as these sounds also call Israelites and Anglo-Saxons to form and defend their communities.6

The Order of Trumpets The anonymous Old English Exodus, preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11,7 is a rather free poetic adaptation of the account of the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus: 12–14. While the manuscript is dated ca. 1000, the poem’s original date of composition is unknown, though some have advocated for a date as early as the eighth century.8 The author of the poem likely did not have access to a complete Bible, but may have known a Latin version of Exodus or been influenced by baptism rituals and the liturgy of the Easter Vigil.9 Earlier scholarship on the poem focused on the question of its unity10 and themes,11 including whether the poem was to be read allegorically or not. 12 More recently, attention has been paid to what it can tell us about Anglo-Saxon attitudes to Jews and to Old Testament literature.13 Some of the most striking sounds in Exodus are the blasts of horns and trumpets.14 The poem itself is given form and structure by repeated references to the battle trumpets that organize the movement of both Israelites and Egyptians, calling armies together, telling them where to go and demanding they obey (a major theme of the poem). To cite just a few examples, after the appearance of the pillars of cloud and fire, the Israelites rouse the army with horns: Þa ic on morgen gefrægn  modes rofan hebban herebyman  hludan stefnum, wuldres woman. (Then I heard in the morning the ones courageous in spirit raised battle trumpets with loud voices, the noise of glory.) (98–100a)

Pharaoh’s army also has horns and trumpets: as they massed in preparation to attack the Israelites, their “byman sungon” (trumpets sang) (159b), and a “horn” (horn) signaled to young warriors where they should carry their equipment (191b–93). In Numbers 10:1–10, God tells Moses which

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trumpet signals should be used to order specific troop movements; what is surprising here is not that trumpets move armies, but that trumpets move opposing armies. Israelites and Egyptians alike understand the sound of trumpets as a way to impose order. Sound has long been recognized as a tool for organizing and controlling society; according to Timothy McGee, medieval “[t]rumpets were mostly ceremonial instruments [...] Their use was to represent the power and authority of governments.” 15 The ninth-century abbot Walahfrid Strabo justifies the use of bells to mark time and call monks to perform the office by comparing bells to trumpets, a recognized symbol for preaching and assembly. He describes the ways in which these instruments police behavior and create community: “Therefore, because bronze and silver trumpets are recorded in the Old Testament, and because the prophet orders that the ‘voice’ of teaching be lifted up ‘like a trumpet,’16 we properly use these vessels [bells] to call the faithful together. In this way we will express our teaching in church purely in silver, durably and sonorously in bronze.”17 In medieval religious contexts, both bells and trumpets could preach to the faithful, direct bodies to gather, and demand attention. Though sound may imply order, it does not therefore follow that noise must be unaesthetic and disordered. Alice Jorgensen has written a nuanced treatment of battle sounds in Exodus, in which she repeats the idea, commonly held in both medieval and postmedieval sound studies, that harmonious sound is good, while chaotic, unstructured noise is violent. The tendency in recent scholarship to associate noise with violence derives from Attali, who bluntly argued that “noise is violence: it disturbs. To make noise is to interrupt a transmission, to disconnect, to kill. It is a simulacrum of murder.”18 Likewise, Jorgensen argues that “In Exodus we encounter an opposition between, on the one hand, harmonious sounds used for communication and, on the other, clamorous, disordered noise instilling or expressing fear.”19 While I appreciate Jorgensen’s suggestion that the poem is so noisy precisely because it wants to imply battle in a poem with very little actual combat,20 and I agree that noise can have psychological effects and to some extent “can itself be regarded as a species of violence,”21 what strikes me about the acoustics of the poem is that there is very little distinction between sound and noise, and what is a bad sound in one context might be a triumphant sound in another. Egyptians and Israelites, humans and wolves, are all producing the same sounds, but to different ends. We cannot say that harmonic sounds are communicative, and discordant noises are violent. In fact, what has sometimes been absent from conversations about

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violence in medieval noise is the recognition that all sound was understood to be bound up with violence; as Susan Boynton puts it, “[a]ccording to Aristotelian tradition, violence is inherent to sound.”22 While AngloSaxons did not have direct access to Aristotelian theory, they did know, via the grammarians, the idea that vox (voice or speech) is “struck air.” Isidore expresses the idea thus: “Voice (vox) is air beaten (verberare) by breath, and from this also words (verbum) are named.”23 Ælfric’s Grammar opens by declaring that vox (Old English stemn) is “struck air”: “stemn is geslagen lyft.”24 Priscian articulates a fourfold division of vox into sounds that can and cannot be written, and sounds that are and are not meaningful. Valerie Allen demonstrates that noise properly belongs to the subtype of this vox that is non-scriptable and non-meaningful, like cows lowing. According to Allen, this noisy vox represents a threat inherent in speech: “Far from being sound alien to language, voice-noise as a subset of vocal utterance inhabits grammar, as dissonance within.”25 But as Boynton acknowledges, this potential dissonance was not limited to Priscian’s fourth type of vox, but part of all speech. Because vox was understood to be the product of a physical blow, even meaningful, grammatically appropriate speech was always defined by the violence required to produce it. Untangling the relationship between sound and noise in medieval thought is difficult at best; it is not sufficient to say that noise is violent and sound is not. Constable and HaCohen offer a more complex view of the medieval religious soundscape that reflects the centrality of context to distinguishing harmless sound from unwanted noise. Constable has studied the ways in which Muslims and Christians in the later medieval Mediterranean sought to control their shared acoustic environment. This control went both ways; Constable analyzes Christian attempts to avoid hearing loud Muslim prayers, as well as Muslim prohibitions on Christian bell ringing. Likewise, HaCohen has traced “the historical categorization of the Jew as a producer of noise in a Christian universe conceived of as dominated by harmonious sounds.”26 According to HaCohen, synagogues became associated with noise because they employed different musical norms than Christians did. Jews similarly rejected Christian musical traditions, and these mutually distinct musical practices “were formative in the perceptions of the collective Self and the collective Other for generations to come.”27 There are several difficulties with applying Constable’s and HaCohen’s arguments to our understanding of sound in Exodus. First, they are making arguments about Christians, Muslims, and Jews being in spaces that overlapped sonically, but there were (officially) no Jews in

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Anglo-Saxon England. Second, the poem pits Israelites against Egyptians, not Christians against Jews or Muslims. The relationship of medieval Christians to the patriarchs of the Old Testament was complex. Many Anglo-Saxon theologians espoused anti-Semitic ideas, but still saw the Jews of the Old Testament as their heroic forefathers.28 Despite the differences between Anglo-Saxon encounters with Jews and the contexts described by Constable and HaCohen, their arguments remain apropos: sonic boundaries are easily blurred, and communities whose sonic borders were threatened often sought to enforce them. In Constable’s, HaCohen’s, and Allen’s accounts, sounds that cross borders are perceived as distinct or other. But in Exodus, the same sounds—described by the poet using the same words and phrases—are produced by both Israelites and Egyptians. Egyptian trumpets do penetrate the Israelite camps, in frightening ways, but, like Israelite trumpets, Egyptian trumpets also sing (as in line 159, quoted above). Perhaps because Anglo-Saxons did not experience religious sonic border crossing in their daily lives (except in the form of secular vs. religious music), the poem lets Israelite and Eg yptian sounds intermingle without creating either clear difference or lasting threats to the other. In Exodus, trumpets can temporarily instill fear in enemies and threaten the boundaries of a community.29 When the Israelites recognize that they are being pursued into the desert by the Egyptians, they are struck with terror. This moment of doubt for the Israelites is described primarily via sound. They hear the call of the Egyptian trumpets (159), and this sets off a howling chorus of the birds and beasts of battle, who shriek, scream (“hreopon”) (162, 168), and sing a terrible evening-song (“atol æfenleoð”) (164–65). In response, the Israelites raise up lamentation (“wop”) and their own “atol æfenleoð” (200–201). As Steven F. Kruger remarks, the fact that the same phrase is applied to the sound of the wolves of battle and the frightened Israelites is one of the many ways in which “the central antagonists begin to resemble each other; the line dividing them begins to become unclear.”30 The sonic boundaries between human and wolf, or hero and enemy, are blurred. The sound of the evening-song, like Constable’s and HaCohen’s examples, temporarily threatens to unite groups that are unlike. The production of shared sound (not noise, but song, however ironically named) creates, along with the shared affective response, the possibility of new communal structures and forms of identity. But in the morning , trumpet sound restores order and discipline. Moses assembles the Israelites’ troops with brass horns (“ærnum

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bemum”) (216b). The horns impose order and discipline where, the night before, there was chaos and tumult. Moreover, the trumpets “folc somnigean” (bring together the people) (217a). A community forms, or reforms, because they are called together by familiar and reassuring sounds. They now hear and obey the trumpets, and instead of a terrible eveningsong, the assembled troops offer a “wigleoð” (battle-song) (221).31 Thus, the world of Exodus, at least as it is expressed through sound, is not a world of clear moral and symbolic codes. The same sound can be terrible in one context, and wondrous in another, even within this one poem. All these sounds interpenetrate each other until, as Peter Lucas notes, the pillar separates them, and Egyptian and Israelite sensory experiences cease to intersect.32 But, as I will demonstrate, the poem does not represent a linear progression from noise to harmony, or from interpenetrating, ambiguous sounds to clearly defined good and bad ones. The sonic effects of the poem do not imply progress or resolution, but remain frustratingly, delightfully, ambivalent.

The Voice of the Sword as discordia concors As the tribes of Israel begin making their way across the now-parted Red Sea, the Exodus poet introduces a curious digression on Noah and the Flood, and the sacrifice of Isaac.33 As Abraham draws his sword to fulfill his promise to sacrifice his son, the blade makes a strange rasping sound, which is not part of the biblical account. In the Vulgate, Genesis 22:10–11 reads “extenditque manum et arripuit gladium ut immolaret filium. Et ecce angelus Domini de caelo clamavit dicens Abraham Abraham. Qui respondit adsum” (And he put forth his hand and took the sword, to sacrifice his son. And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.).34 Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac appears in several other Old English texts, including the poem Genesis A, 35 the prose translation of Genesis in the Old English Heptateuch,36 and Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies.37 Many of these works follow the account in Genesis 22 relatively faithfully, and do not provide clues as to where the sound of Abraham’s sword in Exodus might have originated. To take one example, in the Old English Heptateuch, we find: He geband þa his sunu and his swurd ateah, þæt he hyne geoffrode on ða ealdan wisan. Mid ðam þe he wolde þæt weorc begynnan, þa clipode Godes engel ardlice38 of heofenum: “Abraham.”39

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(He [Abraham] then bound his son and drew his sword, so that he could offer him in the old way. When he intended to begin that deed, then God’s angel called quickly from heaven: “Abraham.”)

While this adaptation is certainly moving, its only sound is the voice of God’s angel calling out to stop Abraham from killing his son. Whatever sound the blade may or may not have made when drawn is passed over in silence. In the comparable scene in the Old English Exodus, the terror of the moment is amplified by the sound Abraham’s sword makes as he draws it: He þæt gecyðde,  þa he þone cniht genam fæste mid folmum,  folccuð geteag ealde lafe,  (ecg grymetode), þæt he him lifdagas  leofran ne wisse þonne he hyrde  Heofoncyninge. Abraham æðeling40  up aræmde, wolde se eorl slean  eaferan sinne, unweaxenne,  ecgum reodan, magan mid mece,  gif hine Metod lete; ne wolde him beorht fæder  bearn ætniman, halig tiber,  ac mid handa befeng. Þa him styran cwom  stefn of heofonum, wuldres hleoðor,  word æfter spræc: “Ne sleh þu Abraham  þin agen bearn, sunu mid sweorde.” (When he seized the child fast with hands, the one known to his people drew the old heirloom, (the sword roared[?]), he made it known that for him, he did not consider life-days dearer than that he should obey the Heavenly King. Noble Abraham rose up, the earl intended to slay his own ungrown son with a red sword, his kinsman with a blade, if the Measurer allowed him; the bright father did not wish to kill his child, the holy sacrifice, but seized him with hands. Then a voice, a sound of glory, came to direct him from Heaven, spoke words then: “Abraham, do not slay your own child, your son, with a sword.”) (406–20a)

The sword’s roar gives voice to Abraham’s fidelity to God, which exceeds even his love for his own son. Abraham “gecyðde” (“made known” or

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“announced”) his loyalty by binding Isaac, and likewise, the sword offers audible proof of Abraham’s fulfillment of his oath. The greedy groaning of the blade in Exodus 408b intensifies the value of Abraham’s act—despite his love for his son, despite the terrible sound of the sword, he does not hesitate to obey God.41 The poet signals the importance of listening carefully by describing Abraham’s act of obedience using the verb hyran (410), which means both “to obey” and “to hear.” Abraham demonstrates his ability to discern sounds worth listening to from distracting or dangerous sounds by listening to (and thus obeying) God’s word rather than being dissuaded by the awful sound of the blade, and, a few lines later, halting his hand by heeding the sound of the heavenly voice (stefn, hleoðor). To the extent that the sword’s sound provokes fear, Abraham should ignore it, just as the Israelites should have resisted being made fearful by the Egyptian trumpets. But the poem’s audience should hear the sword’s complexity, a negative but meaningful sound that signals Abraham’s obedience and cautions that we, too, should listen carefully, and be attentive to the fact that what may first appear to be discordant sounds might in fact be aesthetically pleasing and semantically meaningful. Like the song of the trumpet, Abraham’s sword has a single but polyvalent voice. According to the Dictionary of Old English, the verb grymetian, which appears roughly 110 times in the corpus, can mean “to roar, bellow” like an animal, “to cry out, bellow” like a human or a damned soul, or “of things inanimate: to make a deep, continuous, harsh sound; to resound.”42 As Lucas notes of its use in Exodus 408b, “[t]he verb grymetian is normally used of animals. Here the blade ‘roared’ as if it were animate, perhaps, as BLACKBURN suggested, an allusion to ‘the ringing of the blade when drawn from the sheath’, but the phrase may simply be a vivid metaphor to convey menace.”43 Lucas’s explanation gets at the complexity of this verb. It evokes both a sound and an emotion, a human cry and a nonhuman roar.44 Tolkien’s notes on Exodus 408b similarly point up the affective response provoked by this verb: “Grymetian is applied to persons gnashing their teeth, to animals, and to the sea. It does not primarily describe a noise, but produces an emotional effect of menace.”45 In this way, the sword’s sound resonates with Priscian’s second category of vox, articulate but non-scriptable sounds such as hissing, which also provide an affective threat to reason. According to Allen, “Hissing and moaning augur an access of emotion that is prior to or beyond rational expression.”46 As Frank has remarked, pairing this verb with swords is unusual enough that a search of the corpus yields few results: “The half line occurs nowhere else

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in Old English; it is unknown in Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, Old High German, and Gothic; but there are exact parallels in the verse of the skalds (Lexicon Poeticum, s.v. grenja ‘to roar’).”47 Jorgensen has argued of harmonious sound vs. violent noise elsewhere in the poem that “[d]iscordant clamor [...] evokes fear and lack of faith.”48 But I would argue that the sword drawn by Abraham, to the extent that it makes “discordant clamor,” evokes both the potential animality of a lion roaring and Abraham’s faith. The sword’s raspy voice confirms that Abraham in fact hears and obeys God’s command to slay his son, even as it evokes the terrible trumpets of the Egyptians and the howling of wolves eager for battle. To grymetian may be ambivalent, or even polyvalent, but it is decidedly not merely faithless clamor. If we listen carefully to the ecg that grymetode, we will hear a range of voices, from lions to the shofar (the ram’s horn), all of which test our ability to police sonic boundaries and to discern which sounds should and should not be obeyed.49 While the rasping of the blade surely evokes the horror of the moment, and most literally refers to the ringing sound of metal blade being drawn from sheath, by describing this sound using the verb grymetian the poet also more subtly offers a series of comforting connections to the evangelist Mark and to Christ. Although grymetian could be applied to the roars of a variety of nonhuman creatures, it is perhaps most often associated with the roaring of lions, and in explaining the use of the verb in Exodus 408, scholars often casually refer to it as a lion’s cry.50 There is a connection between lions and horns that makes the choice of grymetode particularly striking in the context of a poem that is as frequently structured by the blaring of trumpets as Exodus is. I have found at least one image in Anglo-Saxon art that represents the voice of the lion as the sound of a horn. The portrait of the evangelist Mark in an eleventh-century book of Gospels now catalogued as Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 301, fol. 44v features a lion, Mark’s typical symbol. What is remarkable about this portrait is that the lion holds a trumpet or other tubular wind instrument in its mouth.51 Mark sits, holding a book, below an arch. Just behind the nimbus over Mark’s head, a winged lion, also nimbed, also holding a book, looks upward toward the top of the frame. In its mouth is a curved wind instrument, identified by Thomas H. Ohlgren as a trumpet.52 Given that the pictured instrument does not end in a bell, it may be intended to represent not a trumpet but some other kind of horn,53 though identifying the precise type of lip-blown wind instrument is not crucial to my argument. On fol. 45r (Ohlgren’s plate 9.19), the text of the Gospel of

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Mark begins, including Mark 1:3: “Vox clamantis in deserto parate viam Domini rectas facite semitas eius” (A voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths). The conjunction of the lion with a horn in its mouth on the verso and the words of Mark 1:3 on the recto invites contemplation of the ways in which both horns and lions’ roars can be metaphorical or literal voice. Anglo-Saxon audiences would have been expected to associate the voice of both trumpets and lions with preaching. Recall that, as Walahfrid said in justification of the connection between bell ringing and preaching, “the prophet orders that the ‘voice’ of teaching be lifted up ‘like a trumpet.’”54 As Bruce Holsinger explains, “The ubiquitous medieval notion of the Christian preacher as a tuba or trumpet could be catalogued in the ninth century as an allegorical commonplace: ‘Tuba est sonus praedicationis’ (Trumpet is the sound of preaching ).” 55 For all these reasons, trumpets were associated in the medieval mind with Christianity and spreading God’s word. The trumpeting roar of Mark’s lion in Pembroke College, MS 301 emphasizes the ways in which the voices of nonhuman animals might therefore also be understood as metaphorically standing for those who preach the word of God, or participating, despite their lack of human vox, in announcing the gospel.56 The connection to Mark 1:3 is especially potent because, in this context, the trumpeting sound of the lion becomes the voice in the wilderness calling out to make way for the Lord—that is, to make way for Jesus, of whose sacrifice Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is a type. When Abraham’s sword roars like a lion, it calls to mind the leonine symbol of Mark the Evangelist, as well as Mark’s message: make way for sacrifice and redemption. According to medieval bestiaries, lion cubs were believed to sleep (or to be dead) for three days after birth before being woken by the roar of the father;57 for this reason the lion became associated with Christ. The roar of the male lion that awakens its cubs aligns the lion with God and its cubs with Jesus, resurrected after three days. In the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham is already a type of God, and Isaac of Christ, who will be sacrificed by his father. The poet’s choice of grymetode thus adds another layer to the dense web of allusions by which the scene invites the poem’s audience to connect the Old Testament to the New. The sounds of the sacrificial scene urge the audience, like Abraham and the lion’s cubs, to listen, to obey, and to be awoken (and, eventually, resurrected) by God’s call. A final resonance of the ecg that grymetode is that it recalls the shofar, the ram’s horn. In Genesis, Isaac’s sacrificial body is replaced by a

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ram that is caught in the bushes by its horns. Jerome’s Liber quaestionum hebraicarum in Genesim explains that Jews in his time blow the shofar in commemoration of God’s mercy, as a reminder of the ram whose horns were caught in the bushes, which became the substitute sacrifice.58 In the Old English Exodus, there is no ram and no sacrifice. After the angel’s speech on God’s fulfillment of his promise to make Abraham’s seed multiply, the scene shifts rapidly to the Egyptians’ doomed attempt to cross the Red Sea.59 I noted above that, unlike the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities studied by HaCohen and Constable, Anglo-Saxons were unlikely to have lived in close proximity to places where they could have heard Jewish religious music, but may still have been anxious about religious sounds crossing borders. The connection between Isaac’s sacrifice and the Jewish shofar in patristic commentary provides some evidence, scant though it is, that some Anglo-Saxons were aware of the sounds (or if not the sounds, the instruments) of Jewish religious celebration. In the use of grymetode, the Exodus poet creates a space in which Jewish music might be heard. Thus, Jewish noise does threaten to sneak into the poem, in the form of the sound of the shofar evoked by the congruence of a verb for animal vocalization (grymetian) and the sacrifice of the ram in place of Isaac. The omission of the ram in Exodus allows the poet to resist this sonic intrusion by substituting instead a Christian association between the sword and the sound of the lion, representative of Christ, and between the sword and trumpets, symbolic of God’s preachers. There is no sacrificial ram because this might open up a possible sonic boundary crossing of a different kind, the invasion of Jewish ritual music in a space that, while Israelite, is Christian. In many ways, the sword that grymetode is emblematic of all the sounds in the poem. Ambivalent, threatening to those who hear it, an instrument of obedience, it is also a symbol of the triumph of the Israelites’ forefathers, such as Abraham, and implies the potential successes of their descendants, the Anglo-Saxons. Just as sounds throughout the poem cross borders, when Abraham’s sword resounds, it places him betwixt and between multiple categories. Does the roaring of his sword mark Abraham as more like the Egyptians with their horrible trumpets? The wolves with their terrible evening-song? Or does it align him with the Israelites, with their less horrible trumpets, or later, their triumphant battle-song? It is fitting that in this moment, the sound Abraham’s sword makes is both human and animal, just as the æfenleoð is sung by both humans and wolves. The sound of Abraham’s sword resists categorization,

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and invites the audience to consider whether Abraham, as an Israelite but also not a Christian, properly belongs among their ranks. If one accepts the narrator’s opening invitation, “gehyre se ðe wille” (let him hear [it] who will) (7b), one must both hear and obey, listening carefully to sounds that do not always communicate clearly. The poet’s choice of grymetian is wonderfully polyvalent, calling to mind terrifying nonhuman roars and the resonance of a weapon about to be used against its wielder’s son, as well as the ringing of bells and trumpets in martial triumph, and the Aslan-like roar that woke Christ and will wake Christian believers at the Resurrection. I have suggested that part of the reason the poem’s acoustic world is able to be so ambivalent is because AngloSaxons would not have had the daily experience of having their religious soundscape invaded by the sounds or noises of other religious traditions. Regardless of why the Exodus poet is able to maintain this sonic polysemy, the fact remains that the poem refuses, all the way to its conclusion, to divide the world into othered, violent noise and harmonious, orderly, and triumphant song. It seems, for a moment, as though the poem will end with a chorus of harmonious sound that casts out any trace of violent or threatening noise. After their enemies are drowned in the Red Sea, Moses addresses his people with a loud voice (“hludan stefne”) (551a) that recalls the voice of the earlier battle trumpets (99), and the army falls silent (“here stille bad”) (551b). A similar expression also appears at the conclusion of Moses’s speech urging his people to cross the Red Sea: “mere stille bad” (the sea waited calmly) (300b). The quiet peace of the army links the Israelites to the calm waters, and disassociates them from the Egyptians whose loud deaths in an unquiet sea they have just witnessed. The Israelites’ victorious trumpets do not just sound, but sing (“sungon sigebyman”) (566a), and what they produce is a “fægerne sweg” (beautiful sound) (567a). It would be easy to assert that this beautiful sound replaces the harsh and chaotic terror of enemy trumpets, or the ecg that grymetode, substituting sweg (here a musical and orderly sound) for noise. But this fægerne sweg is not the final sound in the poem, which insists on ending on an ambivalent note. As the Israelites plunder the Egyptians who have washed up on the shore, the poem reaches Exodus 15, a canticle sung in praise of God. In the Exodus poet’s adaptation, the Israelites sing in a loud voice (“hlude stefne”) (575b), but also “aclum stefnum” (579a)—with acol voices. The editors of the DOE suggest that in this line acol may mean “awed.” 60 But this is their only evidence for

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such a meaning for this word, which elsewhere in the Old English corpus means “afraid.” It would be no wonder if the Israelites were afraid—after all, they have just survived crossing the Red Sea, only to see their enemies follow them and be drowned. The harsh cries of the drowning Egyptians may well have provoked a terrified awe in the Israelites, a feeling that is simultaneously fearful and triumphant. The final sound in the poem, the Israelites’ song of praise, offered with aclum stefnum, encapsulates the ways that, within this poem, sounds refuse to be divided neatly into harmonious, Christian (Israelite) sound vs. disordered, fearful (Egyptian) noise, and the ways in which sounds of terror, even discordant ones, can also be sounds of triumph and joy.61 NOTES All quotations from this poem are from Exodus, ed. Lucas. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 DOE, s.v. “grymettan, grymetian.” 3 In response to arguments such as Hill, “The virga of Moses,” Frank, “Skaldic Tooth,” asserts that the poem is not German or Germanic, but skaldic or Scandinavian; Frank, “What Kind of Poetry,” 196–98, identifies the closest parallel to the style of Exodus in Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa. Harris, “Beasts of Battle,” defends Hill’s argument against Frank’s response. It is not my purpose to intervene on the question of whether this word is evidence of the poem’s Germanicism. 4 For other ways the poem resists the very binaries it seems to establish, see Kruger, “Oppositions and Their Opposition.” 5 Exceptions include Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” and Zweck, “Make a Noise Joyful.” 6 The poet’s demand to listen echoes the Parable of the Sower in Mark 4:9: “And he said: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (et dicebat qui habet aures audiendi audiat). See Exodus, ed. Lucas, 75 n. 7b. There are variations of this expression in Matthew 13:9 and Luke 8:8 and 14:35. All quotations from the Vulgate Bible are from Biblia sacra, ed. Fischer et al., and translations from the Douay-Rheims Bible are from Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version, rev. Challoner. 7 Gneuss and Lapidge, Handlist, item 640, and Ker, Catalogue, no. 334. 8 Remley, Old English Biblical Verse, 2, and Exodus, ed. Lucas, 69–71. For an earlier dating of the manuscript, see Lockett, “An Integrated Re-examination.” 9 On the poem’s connection to the Easter Liturgy, see Remley, Old English Biblical Verse, 168–230. Irving, who initially argued against the poem’s connection to baptism, eventually acknowledged that “a liturgical model must have inevitably given the poem some of its shape” (Irving, “Exodus Retraced,” 205). 1

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Lapidge describes the importance of sensory experience as part of Anglo-Saxon Easter celebrations: “all baptisms took place at midnight on Holy Saturday, with the lighting of the Paschal Candle and the symbolic progression from darkness to light” (Lapidge, “Hypallage,” 31). 10 It is now generally accepted that this is one poem. For an early defense of the poem’s unity, see Farrell, “A Reading of OE. Exodus.” 11 Howe, Migration and Mythmaking, understands the poem as a myth linking the past to the Anglo-Saxon present; Farrell identifies in the poem “the theme of the Help of God” (Farrell, “A Reading of OE. Exodus,” 404); Lucas believes “the theme of Exodus is Salvation by Faith and Obedience” (Exodus, ed. Lucas, 31). Hall, arguing for the unity of the entirety of Junius 11, called the manuscript “The Old English Epic of Redemption.” 12 Ames, “Old Testament Christ”; Earl, “Christian Tradition”; Hermann, Allegories of War; and Irving, “Exodus Retraced,” trouble the allegorical readings. Walton, “‘Gehyre se ðe Wille,’” proposes that the author withheld explanations of the fourfold exegesis implicit in the poem in order to force the reader to become an active interpreter. 13 On the poem’s relation to the idea of the populus Israhel, see Scheil, Footsteps of Israel, 161–68, and Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament. Other recent compelling readings of the poem include Novacich, “Old English Exodus and the Read Sea,” on the ways in which the poem models the difficulties of interpretive reading, and Ferhatović’s account of the poetics of material objects in the poem: Ferhatović, “Burh and Beam.” 14 Relatively little is known about horn-like musical instruments in early medieval England. Jorgensen notes that there are few trumpets in Old English battle poetry outside of this poem, and that while we know Anglo-Saxons had horns, we do not know if they had trumpets ( Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” 325 and 326 n. 6). Lawson, “Musical Instruments,” adds that most of the surviving wind instruments from Anglo-Saxon England are homemade, simple, and made from wood or bone, though he notes that there is textual evidence for both horns and trumpets. 15 McGee, “Introduction,” xiv. Corbin, Village Bells, famously describes the way bells were used as tools of authority as well as means of articulating community in nineteenth-century France. 16 Harting-Correa notes this is likely a reference to Isaias 58:1 (Strabo, Libellus, ed. Harting-Correa, 62 n. 2). 17 “Quia vero tubas aereas et argenteas in lege habemus et propheta ‘quasi tuba vocem’ praedicationis exaltare iubet, congrue his vasis utimur in convocatione fidelium, ut praedicatio nostra in ecclesia in argento pura, in aere significetur durabilis et sonora” (Strabo, Libellus, ed. Harting-Correa, 62–63. HartingCorrea’s translation). 18 Attali, Noise, 26; emphasis original.

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Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” 325. Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” 325. 21 Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” 319. 22 Boynton, “Sound Matters,” 1001. 23 Isidore, Etymologies, 3.19.2, 96 (translation Barney et al.). “Vox est aer spiritu verberatus, unde et verba sunt nuncupata” (Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, 3.20.2, ed. W. M. Lindsay). 24 Ælfric, Grammatik, ed. Zupitza, 4. 25 Allen, “Broken Air,” 306. Medieval thinkers disagreed about whether animals and musical instruments could produce true vox, but the grammarians who influenced the Anglo-Saxons did not exclude nonhumans from producing vox in the way that Aristotle did (Leach, Sung Birds, 25). Moreover, the Exodus poet writes that trumpets have stemn, the Old English word for vox (line 99). What is most crucial for my point is that meaningful sound (vox) is not unlike noise in being associated with violence. 26 HaCohen, The Music Libel, 1. My thanks to Dorothy Kim for drawing this book to my attention. 27 HaCohen, The Music Libel, 18. 28 On how Anglo-Saxons could imagine themselves as descendants of Abraham and yet not as Jews, see Anlezark, “Abraham’s Children.” 29 On sounds as weapons in contemporary culture, see Goodman, Sonic Warfare. Premodern peoples were certainly aware of the ways in which the vibrations of horns might shake the bodies and spirits of those who heard them. More recently, police have used LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) to disperse crowds by producing physically painful sound. 30 Kruger, “Oppositions and Their Opposition,” 167. 31 Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” 328–29, also remarks on the way trumpets spur the men to action and courage in this scene, though she contrasts it with what she has claimed is their loss of human voice on the previous night, replaced by animal æfenleoð. I do not agree that the loss of speech must necessarily signal a loss of human control, or even that to perform æfenleoð is to lose the capacity for speech. To my mind, what matters most is that the same trumpets that spark their terror one day can spur their discipline the next. 32 Lucas goes a step farther than I do, arguing that “the time for a moral distinction has come” (Exodus, ed. Lucas, 107 n. 207b). 33 On the integrity of the “patriarchal digression,” see Anlezark, “Connecting the Patriarchs”; Ferguson, “Noah, Abraham”; and Hauer, “Patriarchal Digression.” 34 It is often difficult to determine whether an Old English Old Testament poem derives from the Vetus Latina, the Vulgate, or some combination of the two. Remley believes the Exodus poet relied on both, though the source of the Genesis 22 material in particular was the Vetus Latina (Old English Biblical Verse, 19 20

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178–95). I consulted the Vetus Latina (Genesis, ed. Fischer) and did not find any significant differences in Genesis 22:10 between the Vulgate and Old Latin versions. Some texts of the Vetus Latina do use a form of the verb iugulare where the Vulgate has immolare to describe how Abraham sacrifices Isaac. Since iugulare means “to cut the throat,” it could metaphorically imply silencing. However, this does not offer any reason to invoke a verb for roaring such as grymetian. This is not the only modification the Exodus poet makes to his source material in this scene. Sharma, “Economy of the Word,” notes that the poet also added to this section references to word not found in the known sources or analogues. 35 In the moment in Genesis A comparable to Genesis 22:10, Abraham raises his sword quickly, but it makes no sound: “and þa ædre gegrap / sweord be gehiltum” (and then he quickly grasped the sword by the hilt) (2905b–6a). Any resonance between gegrap (grasped) and grymetode (roared) is minor at best. Quotation from Genesis A is from Junius Manuscript, ed. Krapp. 36 Old English Heptateuch, ed. Marsden, 47–48. 37 Ælfric, Catholic Homilies, ed. Godden, 4.33.131–35.178. 38 In Marsden’s MS C, ardlice appears as heardlice, which can mean “harshly” or “bravely.” However, the DOE gives heardlice as an attested spelling of ardlice. MS C (Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. I. 33 [Ker, Catalogue, no. 18]) dates from the second half of the twelfth century and so could not provide a direct source for images of violence at this moment in the OE Exodus. 39 Old English Heptateuch, ed. Marsden, 47. 40 The first two words of this line are not in the manuscript, but are supplied by the editor to restore meter and alliteration. 41 “Abraham’s obedience models the ideal response of mankind to the Old Testament God, where to hear God’s word is to obey” (O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience, 29). The deep terror of the sword is also emphasized in the illustration of this scene in BL MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, fol. 38r, in which Abraham raises a massive sword, roughly the length of his body, above his head. He holds the blade parallel to the altar on which Isaac is to be sacrificed. The sword hilt, the surface of the table, and the book held by the angel who comes to stop Abraham are united by the artist’s use of a yellow paint to decorate them all. 42 DOE, s.v. “grymettan, grymetian.” See also Bosworth and Toller, AngloSaxon Dictionary, s.v. “grimetan”: “To rage, roar, make a loud noise, grunt; fremere, rugire, grunnire.” 43 Exodus, ed. Lucas, 127 n. 408b. 44 On the emotional and multisensory experience of encountering medieval parchment, including recordings of blades “singing” as they scrape hair follicles away from skin, see Sauer, “Audiotactility and the Medieval Soundscape.” 45 Old English “Exodus,” ed. Turville-Petre, 67 n. 408. Irving describes grymetode as “A word used ordinarily of the roaring of animals; here apparently an exceptionally vivid description of the harsh sound of the sword being drawn from

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its sheath” (Old English Exodus, ed. Irving, 91 n. 408); Blackburn comments: “‘roared’; as a beast seeking prey. A strong metaphor to express the ringing of the blade when drawn from the sheath” (Exodus and Daniel, ed. Blackburn, 56 n. 408). Hill has also remarked that “Grymetan is a verb ordinarily used to denote the sound of an animal snarling or roaring.” He identifies a possible connection to Germanic and Celtic texts in which the sword blade “snarls or cries out as a presage of violence” (Hill, “The virga of Moses,” 166 n. 24). Harris also identifies singing swords in Old English and Old Norse literature (Harris, “Beasts of Battle,” 20 n. 30). 46 Allen, “Broken Air,” 308. It can be difficult to say whether animal roaring belongs to this category or Priscian’s fourth category, unintelligible and nonscriptable vox. 47 Frank, “Skaldic Tooth,” 348. 48 Jorgensen, “The Trumpet and the Wolf,” 330. 49 The sword may also recall the ambivalence of laughter, from which Isaac’s name was believed to derive. According to Isidore, “Isaac took his name from ‘laughter,’ for his father had laughed when Isaac was promised to him, astonished in joy. And his mother laughed, doubting in joy, when Isaac’s birth was promised by the three men” (Isidore, Etymologies, ed. Barney et al., 7.7.3, 165). “Isaac ex risu nomen accepit. Riserat enim pater, quando ei promissus est, admirans in gaudio. Risit et mater, quando per illos tres viros promissus est, dubitans in gaudio” (Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, ed. W. M. Lindsay). For Isidore, laughter is not inherently good or bad. It is simultaneously a mark of Abraham’s happiness and Sarah’s doubt. Likewise, the ringing of Abraham’s blade in Exodus 408b evokes faith in God as well as terror at the sacrifice to come. 50 There are several references to lions in Exodus. When the tribe of Judah are the first to cross the Red Sea after the waters are parted, they carry before them a lion standard (lines 319–22). On possible sources for this detail, see Wright, “Lion Standard.” The manuscript also reads leomægne at line 128b, though this is usually emended (see the note ad loc. in Exodus, ed. Lucas, 96). 51 Reproduced as plate 9.18 in Anglo-Saxon Textual Illustration, ed. Ohlgren, 410. Ohlgren dates the manuscript to the early eleventh century (p. 6); Gneuss and Lapidge, Handlist, item 138, dates it to the beginning or first half of the eleventh century. Although Anglo-Saxons would not have been familiar with it, there is an intriguing parallel here to the carnyx, a pre-Germanicmigration Celtic wind instrument with an animal head. For audio samples of reconstructed carnyces, see the performances of musician John Kenny at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVAWwWi0DbE and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=lVFGT2NX-YQ. 52 Anglo-Saxon Textual Illustration, ed. Ohlgren, 67. 53 Galpin, Old English Instruments, 136. 54 Strabo, Libellus, ed. Harting-Correa, 63.

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Holsinger, Music, Body, 45; emphasis original. Holsinger is citing Hrabanus Maurus’s Allegoriae in sacram Scripturam. 56 Aristotle and Isidore are skeptical about assigning vox to nonhumans. Though Isidore was willing to credit animals with voice, he gave the trumpet as an example of metaphorical voice that should more properly be called sound (Isidore, Etymologies, 3.19.2). Just as the illustration in Pembroke College, MS 301 gives voice to the lion in a wholly triumphant sense, the poem Exodus gives voice to sword, trumpets, and wolves, not always triumphantly, but always in complex ways that imply a more deeply considered attitude to voice than that humans with souls have it, but animals and objects do not. By pitting Israelite trumpets against Egyptian ones, and Israelite evening-song against wolfish evening-song, the poet suggests that while context and intention are important to interpreting voice, the category of instrument used—whether human vocal cords, animal throat, or musical instrument—is not. Moreover, Anglo-Saxon riddles frequently give nonhuman beings and inanimate objects voice; see Hayes, Divine Ventriloquism. 57 “When they bear their cubs, the cub is said to sleep for three days and nights, and then after that the roaring or growling of the father, making the den shake, as it were, is said to wake the sleeping cub” (Isidore, Etymologies, 12.2.5, 251). “Cum genuerint catulum, tribus diebus et tribus noctibus catulus dormire fertur; tunc deinde patris fremitu vel rugitu veluti tremefactus cubilis locus suscitare dicitur catulum dormiente” (Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, ed. Lindsay). Notably, the Latin text describes the lion’s roar as fremitu vel rugitu, both words glossed by grymetian according to Bosworth–Toller and the DOE. 58 After an explanation of the Jews’ proverbial use of Genesis 22:14 to refer to God’s mercy, Jerome adds that Jews believe “that is, just as He had pity on Abraham, He will also have pity on us. So it is that even nowadays they are accustomed to sound the horn as a sign of the ram which was provided” (Hebrew Questions, trans. Hayward, 56). “[H]oc est, sicut Abrahae misertus est, miserebitur et nostri. Vnde et in signum dati arietis solent etiam nunc cornu clangere” (Opera, ed. Lagarde, 27). Hayward’s commentary further clarifies: “And the sounding of the shōfar, or ram’s horn, at New Year’s Day services in the synagogue as a memorial of Isaac’s Binding [...] is designed to invoke the mercy of God by recalling the events on Mount Moriah” (p. 181). 59 Although there is a lacuna after line 446, Lucas believes that this section on the patriarchs is complete as it is, and what is lost came from the next part of the poem, section 48: “It seems likely that section XLVII [...] actually ended there” (Exodus, ed. Lucas, 15). 60 DOE, s.v. “acol, def 2”: “?awed.” 61 In my first semester of graduate school at Yale University, I took a seminar on the Junius manuscript taught by Roberta Frank which culminated in a party at her home in which we translated Christ and Satan over dinner. I hope this essay can serve as a much belated token of appreciation in lieu of the hostess gift I neglected to bring that night. 55

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WORKS CITED Ælfric. Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Edited by Malcolm Godden. EETS SS 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. ———. Grammatik und Glossar. Edited by Julius Zupitza. Berlin: Weidmannsche, 1880. Allen, Valerie J. “Broken Air.” Exemplaria 16 (2004): 305–22. Ames, Ruth M. “The Old Testament Christ and the Old English Exodus.” Studies in Medieval Culture 10 (1977): 33–50. Anlezark, Daniel. “Abraham’s Children: Jewish Promise and Christian Fulfillment.” In Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture, edited by Samantha Zacher, 131–55. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. ——— . “Connecting the Patriarchs: Noah and Abraham in the Old English Exodus.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005): 171–88. Attali, Jacques, and Brian Massumi, trans. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Blackburn, Francis A., ed. Exodus and Daniel: Two Old English Poems Preserved in MS. Junius 11 in The Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, England. New York: AMS, 1972. Bosworth, James, and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898. Boynton, Susan. “Sound Matters: 1. Introduction.” Speculum 91 (2016): 998–1002. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al., eds. Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online [DOE]. https://www.doe.uto ronto.ca/pages/index.html. Constable, Olivia Remie. “Regulating Religious Noise: The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World.” Medieval Encounters 16 (2010): 64–95. Corbin, Alain. Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-Century French Countryside. Translated by Martin Thom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Earl, James W. “Christian Tradition in the Old English Exodus.” In The Poems of MS Junius 11: Basic Readings, edited by R. M. Liuzza, 137–72. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Farrell, Robert T. “A Reading of OE. Exodus.” Review of English Studies 20 (1969): 401–17. Ferguson, Paul F. “Noah, Abraham, and the Crossing of the Red Sea.” Neophilologus 65 (1981): 282–87. Ferhatović, Denis. “Burh and Beam, Burning Bright: A Study in the Poetic Imagination of the Old English Exodus.” Neophilologus 94 (2010): 509–22.

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Fischer, Boniface et al., eds. Biblia Sacra, iuxta Vulgatem Versionem. 4th ed. amended. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994. Fischer, Boniface, ed. Genesis: Vetus Latina: die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel. Vol. 2. Freiburg: Herder, 1951–1954. Galpin, Canon Francis W. Old English Instruments of Music: Their History and Character. 4th ed., revised by Thurston Dart. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965. Gneuss, Helmut, and Michael Lapidge. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. Goodman, Steve. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. HaCohen, Ruth. The Music Libel Against the Jews. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Hall, J. R. “The Old English Epic of Redemption: The Theological Unity of MS Junius 11.” In The Poems of MS Junius 11: Basic Readings, edited by R. M. Liuzza, 20–52. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Harris, Joseph. “Beasts of Battle, South and North.” In Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill, edited by Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall, 3–25. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Hauer, Stanley R. “The Patriarchal Digression in the Old English Exodus, Lines 362–446.” In The Poems of MS Junius 11: Basic Readings, edited by R. M. Liuzza, 173–87. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Hayes, Mary. Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power, Anxiety, Subversion. New York: Palgrave, 2011. Hermann, John P. Allegories of War: Language and Violence in Old English Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. Hill, Thomas D. “The virga of Moses and the Old English Exodus.” In Old English Literature in Context: Ten Essays, edited by John D. Niles, 57–65 and 165–67. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980. Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version. Revised by Richard Challoner. Rockford, IL: Tan, 1971. Holsinger, Bruce W. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Howe, Nicholas. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Irving, Edward B., Jr. “Exodus Retraced.” In Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, edited by Robert RB. Burlin and Irving, 203–23. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974. Irving, Edward B., Jr., ed. The Old English Exodus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953.

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Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Translated by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ——— . Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum. Edited by W. M. Lindsay. Oxford: Clarendon, 1911. Jerome. Opera: Pars I, Opera exegetica. Edited by Paul de Lagarde. Turnhout, Brepols, 1959. ———. Hebrew Questions on Genesis: Translated with Introduction and Commentary. Translated by C. T. R. Hayward. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Jorgensen, Alice. “The Trumpet and the Wolf: Noises of Battle in Old English Poetry.” Oral Tradition 24 (2009): 319–36. Ker, N. R. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Krapp, George Philip, ed. The Junius Manuscript. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. Kruger, Steven F. “Oppositions and Their Opposition in the Old English Exodus.” Neophilologus 78 (1994): 165–70. Lapidge, Michael. “Hypallage in the Old English Exodus.” Leeds Studies in English 37 (2006): 31–39. Lawson, Graeme. “Musical Instruments.” In Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, edited by Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, and Donald Scragg, 334–35. 2nd ed. Chichester, Malden MA, and Oxford: Wiley, 2014. Leach, Elizabeth Eva. Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Lockett, Leslie. “An Integrated Re-examination of the Dating of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11.” Anglo-Saxon England 31 (2002): 141–73. Lucas, Peter J., ed. Exodus. Revised edition. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994. Marsden, Richard, ed. The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo. Vol. 1. EETS OS 330. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. McGee, Timothy J. “Introduction.” In Instruments and Their Music in the Middle Ages, edited by McGee, xiii–xxv. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Novacich, Sarah Elliott. “The Old English Exodus and the Read Sea.” Exemplaria 23 (2011): 50–66. O’Keeffe, Katherine O’Brien. Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Ohlgren, Thomas H., ed. Anglo-Saxon Textual Illustration: Photographs of Sixteen Manuscripts with Descriptions and Index. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992.

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Remley, Paul G. Old English Biblical Verse: Studies in “Genesis”, “Exodus” and “Daniel.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Sauer, Michelle M. “Audiotactility & the Medieval Soundscape of Parchment.” Sounding Out! 17 October 2016. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2016/ 10/17/audiotactility-the-medieval-soundscape-of-parchment/. Scheil, Andrew P. The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Sharma, Manish. “The Economy of the Word in the Old English Exodus.” In Old English Literature and the Old Testament, edited by Michael Fox and Sharma, 172–94. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Strabo, Walahfrid. Libellus de Exordiis et Incrementis Quarundam in Observationibus Ecclesiasticis Rerum: A Translation and Liturgical Commentary. Edited and translated by Alice L. Harting-Correa. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Turville-Petre, Joan, ed. The Old English “Exodus”: Text, Translation, and Commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981. Walton, Audrey. “‘Gehyre se ðe Wille’: The Old English Exodus and the Reader as Exegete.” English Studies 94 (2013): 1–10. Wright, Charles D. “The Lion Standard in Exodus: Jewish Legend, Germanic Tradition, and Christian Typology.” In The Poems of MS Junius 11: Basic Readings, edited by R. M. Liuzza, 188–202. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Zacher, Samantha. Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse: Becoming the Chosen People. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Zweck, Jordan. “Make a Noise Joyful: Cirm in the Old English Exodus.” Sounding Out! 13 June 2016. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2016/06/13/make-anoise-joyful-cirm-in-the-old-english-exodus/.

Notes on Contributors

Christopher Abram is Associate Professor of English and a Fellow of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Myths of the Pagan North (Continuum, 2011), the forthcoming Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature (University of Virginia Press), and a number of articles on Old English and Old Norse literature. Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. She is the author of The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and the editor of Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi (Punctum Books, 2016). Her current research interests include women’s charisma, elementary Latin education, and the charms of imperfection. Denis Ferhatović is Associate Professor of English at Connecticut College in New London, CT. His scholarly essays on Old English poetry, its reception and translation have appeared in Neophilologus, Studies in Philology, Forum for Modern Language Study, Medieval Science Fiction (ed. James Paz and Carl Kearns), postmedieval, and Comparative Literature Studies. He is the author of the forthcoming Borrowed Objects and the Art of Poetry: Spolia in Old English Verse (Manchester University Press). Mary Kate Hurley is Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University. Her research focuses on time, translation, and community in medieval literature, and has appeared in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology and Review of English Studies, as well as in The Politics of Ecology (eds. Schiff and Taylor) and American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer (eds. Overing and Wiethaus). With Jonathan Hsy and Andrew Kraebel, she is the coeditor of the fall 2017 special issue of postmedieval, “Thinking Across Tongues.” Andrew James Johnston is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern English Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin. His monographs include Performing the Middle Ages from “Beowulf ” to “Othello” (Brepols, 2008) and Robin Hood (in German, C. H. Beck, 2013). He has co-edited The Medieval

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Motion Picture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, with Margitta Rouse and Philipp Hinz), The Art of Vision: Ekphrasis in Medieval Literature and Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2015, with Ethan Knapp and Margitta Rouse) and Love, History and Emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: “Troilus and Criseyde” and “Troilus and Cressida” (Manchester University Press, 2016, with Russell West-Pavlov and Elisabeth Kempf ). Andrew Kraebel is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. His writing focuses on medieval literary criticism, especially biblical commentary, and manuscript studies. With Margot Fassler and Katie Bugyis, he has co-edited Medieval Cantors and Their Craft: Music, Liturgy, and the Shaping of History, 800–1500 (York Medieval Press), and his monograph, Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Sarah Elliott Novacich is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. She works on late medieval literature and is the author of Shaping the Archive in Late Medieval England: History, Poetry, and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Emily V. Thornbury specializes in the form, style, and context of Old English and Latin verse and is writing a book about ornament and theories of artistic value in early England. Previously at the University of California– Berkeley, she now teaches in the English department at Yale University. Eric Weiskott is Associate Professor of English at Boston College. He is the author of English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and a co-editor (with Alastair Bennett and Katharine Breen) of the Yearbook of Langland Studies. He is at work on a second book, about English meter and the division of history into medieval and modern periods. Jordan Zweck is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin– Madison. The author of Epistolary Acts: Anglo-Saxon Letters and Early English Media (University of Toronto Press, 2018), Zweck is currently working on a book on the representation of sound, noise, and silence in Anglo-Saxon literature.

Index

NB: Medieval Icelandic and Norwegian names are indexed by first name. Abiathar, 196 Abingdon, 116, 126n56 Abraham, 215–16, 237–38, 243–49, 252n28, 252n34, 254n49, 255n58 absolutism, 38 academia, 4, 77n23, 85, 165 See also literary criticism accentual-syllabic meter. See meter acrostic, 207n26 actants, 173–83, 185n46 Acts of Andrew and Mathias in the City of the Cannibals, 231n15 Adam, 139, 144, 145 See also Bible address, 114, 118, 119, 249 Ælfric, 96 Catholic Homilies, 103n19, 243 Grammar, 241 Aeneas, 47–50, 54n41, 217 See also: Virgil Aeneid. See Virgil Æschere, 70, 75n7 aesthetics, 3, 40, 42, 51, 90, 118, 161, 165, 168–71, 182–83, 216, 238, 240, 245 See also style affect, 119, 242, 245 African American Vernacular English, 77n23

alchemy, 136, 151, 152, 168, 182 Aldhelm Carmen rhythmicum, 101–102 Aldhelm, Old English, 101 Alfred, King, 122 allegory, 3, 216, 218, 239, 247, 251n12 Allen, Valerie, 241–42, 245 alliteration, 69, 89, 94, 95, 97–99, 102, 112, 113, 119, 120, 137–38, 141, 143–44, 146, 149, 150, 151, 153, 167, 184n29, 253n40 alliterative meter. See meter alliterative romance. See romance alliterative tradition, 111, 117, 119, 123 alliterative verse. See poetics; style; and titles of individual poems allusion, 3, 45, 73, 172, 193, 196, 205n11, 245, 247 alterity. See Otherness Amalek, 218 Amichai, Yehuda, 215, 230 Amis, Kingsley, 85 anachronism, 2, 29n2, 33n28, 39, 43–45, 47, 50–51, 62 analepsis, 33n28 anatomy, 70–71, 147–48 Andreas, 32n20, 75n8, 122, 215–25, 226, 227, 229–30

264  Index

audience of, 216, 222 manuscript of, 220, 221 Andrew (apostle), 215–24, 231n15, 231n26 angels, 55n45, 145, 206n17, 215–16, 220, 223, 238, 243–44, 248, 253n41 Anglian, 96, 103n18 Anglophone, 65, 77n23 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 96, 116, 123n6, 127n59 Anglo-Saxon England. See England animals. See birds; dragons; fish; gerbils; lions; wolves annotation. See glosses; marginalia Annunciation of Mary, 193–94 anthrodecentrism, 177, 180 anthropocentrism vs. anthropomorphism, 177–79, 182 anti-feminism, 74, 79n43 anti-Semitism, 220–21, 225–30, 242 See also supersessionism Antony, Mark, 48 apocalypse, 30n3, 233n50 apocrypha, biblical, 48 Enoch, Book of, 48, 55n45 infancy gospel, 194 Marian, 194, 206n16, 206n17 Protevangelium of James, 194 apostles. See Andrew (apostle) and Matthew (apostle) apposition. See style arborocentrism, 179 archaeology, 37–52, 73 See also spoliation archaism, 92, 137 archetype. See hyparchetype architecture, 43–44, 51, 165, 215, 223–25, 229 Arda, Ali, 59, 74n1 aristocracy, 42, 67, 68, 72 Aristotle, 241, 252n25, 255n56

ars poetica, 138–39, 172–77, 179, 180–82 art, 1, 2, 47, 48, 72, 76n21, 115, 165, 170–71, 198–200, 202, 208n37, 215–16, 246, 253n41, 255n56 Aslan, 249 Assumption of Mary, 193–94 astrology, 136, 145 astronomy, 146 aðalhending, 184n29 Auden, W. H., 77, 85–87, 98 audience, 4, 31n9, 42, 45, 49, 51, 67, 73, 86–88, 90, 97–98, 100–102, 108, 111–12, 114–17, 119, 139, 161, 169, 180, 182, 191–92, 197, 200, 203, 216, 222, 232n33, 238, 245, 247, 248–49 Augustine of Hippo, 145, 217, 223 distentio animi, 25 regio dissimilitudinis, 114 aural. See sound automata, 145 avant-garde. See style Ave Maria, 192–93, 197–98, 201, 204n9 ballad(e)s, 85, 191–203, 207n26, 207n28 defined, 198 baptism, 95, 239 barbarism, 139, 162 Bartlett, Helen, 110 bathos, 170 battle, 23–24, 50, 59, 67–68, 174–76, 178, 180, 181, 217–19, 238–43, 248, 251n14 beasts of, 24, 71, 237, 238, 242, 246, 248, 249 sieges, 216–17, 219–220, 225–30, 232n48 Battle of Brunanburh, 123n6 Battle of Maldon, 110, 124n15

Index  265

Bede, 28, 223 Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Latin), 31n16, 39, 123n6 Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Old English), 91, 123n6 Bede’s Death Song, 123n6 bells. See music Benedictine Office. See manuscripts Beowulf, 32n20, 37–74, 107, 108–12, 113, 117–20, 122, 125n25, 161, 218–19, 220, 221, 223–24 audience of, 4, 42, 45, 49, 67, 73, 117 dating of, 39, 46–47, 73, 120, 122 genre of, 39–41 manuscript of, 42, 65–66, 67, 117, 137 meter of, 73, 109–10, 118, 122 political geography of, 39 translations of, 59–74, 74n2, 77n23 bestiaries, 247 Bethel, Patricia, 108, 110, 112 Bible, 2 Daniel, 113, 136 Exodus, 161, 217, 226, 237–50, 254n50 Genesis, 104n37, 126n36, 145, 177, 237–38, 243, 247–48, 252–53n34, 253n35, 255n58 gospels, 194, 195, 246–47 Isaias, 251n16 Jonah, 135, 139, 141–50 Joshua, 225, 227 Luke, 195, 250n6 Mark, 246–47, 250n6 Matthew, 195, 250n6 New Testament, 247 Numbers, 239–40 Old Testament, 49, 223, 226, 227, 229, 240, 242, 252n34 Proverbs, 148, 150

Psalms, 32n20, 91–92, 107–23, 123n2, 124–25n20, 193, 217, 223, 226–27 1 Samuel, 218 Tobit, 227 See also apocrypha, biblical biblical exegesis, 107, 112, 120, 121, 147, 151, 193, 248, 251n12 biblical poetry. See Cleanness; Daniel, Old English; Exodus, Old English; Genesis, Old English; Judith, Old English; Paris Psalter; Patience bibliography. See poetics and individual terms or elements bibliophilia, 115 birds, 21–24, 66, 71–74, 237–38, 242 Birgisson, Bergsveinn, 169, 171 blood libel, 228 See also anti-Semitism; supersessionism Blurton, Heather, 219 bob and wheel, 143, 146 Boenig, Robert, 221 Boethius Consolation of Philosophy (Middle English), 144–45 See also Meters of Boethius, Old English Boffey, Julia, 193 Bogost, Ian, 165, 177 Bokenham, Osbern Prologe into Seynt Kateryns Lyf, 198 book of hours, 115 booklet, 193, 200 Borroff, Marie, 3, 5, 150 botany, 180 Botterill, Steven, 138 Boynton, Susan, 241 Brazil, 75n6 Britain, 37–38, 43, 44, 51, 75n6 See also England

266  Index

bronze, 240 Bronx, the, 73 Brooks, Cleanth, 170 Brut, Lawman’s. See Lawman Brut, Middle English Prose, 207n26 Bryan, Jennifer, 60 Butterfield, Herbert, 37 Byrhtferth of Ramsay, 100, 104n39 Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron, 86–87 Cable, Thomas, 108 Cædmon’s Hymn, 123n6, 126n36 caesura, 91, 143 Caiaphas, 226–27 Cain, 48, 55n45, 64 cannibalism, 9, 59–61, 64, 69, 70, 75n6, 75n8, 216–30, 231n15 canon, literary, 37, 51, 143 Canterbury, 116, 126n54, 126n56 Capgrave, John, 198 Capture of the Five Boroughs, 123n6 Caribbean, 77n23 carnyx. See music Carroll, Lewis, 2 Cassian of Imola, 1 Caxton, William, 136–37 Celtic, 254n45 Chaganti, Seeta, 151 Chanson de Roland, 37, 229 Charlemagne, 46, 54n34 chastity, 194, 195–96 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 2, 86, 138, 144, 154n13, 191, 195, 206n19, 206n20 dream visions of, 197 Gentilesse, 198, 207 House of Fame, 49 Chester plays, 145, 149–50 Chinese, 52n6 Chism, Christine, 137 Christ and Satan, 32n20, 255n61 Christ II. See Cynewulf Christ III, 119

Christian history, 215 Christian law. See law Christine de Pisan, 205n14 chronicles, 96, 116, 123n6, 127n59, 207n26 church history, 39 Cicero, 2 circumcision, 196 classics. See metaphor; rhetoric; Virgil Cleanness, 135, 136 audience of, 139 Cleopatra, 48 code-switching, 63 codicology, 114–15, 119, 193, 198, 200, 207n29, 232n33 coins, 87, 164–65, 181, 229 colloquialism, 88 colophon, 205n14 compilation, 85, 115, 191 complaint, 195–96, 199 See also lamentation compounds non-poetic, 119 poetic, 64, 89–90, 113, 162 computer programming, 151 concatenation, 144, 146, 150–53 consciousness, 37, 45, 47, 86, 110, 163–64 See also subjectivity conservatism. See style Consolation of Philosophy. See Boethius consonants, 94, 184n29 Constable, Olivia Remie, 237, 241–42, 248 contricion, 196 conversion, religious, 220, 225, 229, 231n26 correlationism, 163 couplet. See stanzas Craft of Lovers, 207n28 Creed, Old English, 116 creoles, 77n23

Index  267

critical theory. See literary theory Crossley-Holland, Kevin, 61 crusade, 226 cultural history, 3, 4, 5, 109 Anglo-Saxon, 46 Cuthbert Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, 123n6 cyclicity. See time Cynewulf, 220–21 Christ II, 32n20 Elene, 32n20, 113 Damrosch, David, 37–38 Daniel, Old English, 113 Danish people and history, 42–46, 51, 53n15, 53n19, 61–62, 67–69, 72, 137, 178, 218 See also Beowulf Dante Alighieri Commedia, 138, 143–44 De vulgari eloquentia, 154n24 data analysis, 151 dative, 99, 119 David, Alfred, 65 Davis, Kathleen, 16, 23, 29n2, 33n30, 33n34, 34n35 Death of Alfred, 116 Death of Edward, 116, 127n59 decadence, 32n21, 108–111 decorated initials. See initials, decorated deixis, 200 Deleuze, Gilles, 169–70 democracy, 37 Deor, 33n30, 125n25 Derrida, Jacques, 33n32, 163 devotion, religious, 107, 119, 144, 191–203, 204n4 dialect, 62, 65, 89, 92–93, 95, 96, 100, 103n18, 136–38 See also provenance; spelling diaspora, 161

didacticism. See education digital. See poetics diphthong, 91 discordia concors, 243–49 distentio animi. See Augustine of Hippo dittography, 89 domestic labor. See labor Donoghue, Daniel, 107–108 double entendre. See wordplay dragons, 166, 176 in Beowulf, 40, 44, 47, 60, 65–66, 67, 219, 224 drama, 145, 149–50 Dream of the Rood, 6, 31–32n19, 126n36 dream visions, 21, 121, 197 dróttkvætt, 166–67, 183n3, 184n29 Dundes, Alan, 228 Dutch, 142 dystopia, 22 Eadwine Psalter. See manuscripts Easter, 239, 250n9 ecclesiastical history. See church history economy, 66–68, 71, 145, 232n49 Edda. See Snorri Sturluson education, 1, 39, 42, 47, 51, 61, 116, 149, 222, 229, 232n33, 240, 247 Egil’s Saga, 148 Egypt, Egyptians, 195, 217, 230n6, 237–250, 255n56 Eilífr Goðrúnarson Þórsdrápa, 250n3 Elene. See Cynewulf England, 37–38 medieval, 108, 215 early, 44, 46, 63, 69, 87, 218, 251n14 late, 144 trilingual, 140 See also Britain

268  Index

enta geweorc. See giants, work of ekphrasis, 37–52, 54–55n41, 198–99, 202 defined, 54n39 elegy, 22–23, 29n2, 33n30, 39–40, 67 elision, 96, 100 Elizabeth (wife of Zechariah), 203n3 emperors. See Nero; Octavian; Titus; Vespasian empire, 37–52, 65, 232n48 enargeia, 49 end-stopped. See style English literary history. See literary history English Style. See style enigma. See riddles enjambment, 111, 114, 118, 197, 203–204n3 enlightenment, 38 Enoch, Book of. See apocrypha, biblical envoys, 191, 205n10 epic, 2, 19, 37–52, 52n6, 53n14, 53n19 epilogues, poetic, 191, 193 ethics, 40, 237 ethnicity, 42–43, 61, 66 Ettmüller, Ludwig, 90 etymology, 104n28, 113, 122, 135–50, 155n25, 241, 254n49, 255n56 folk, 179 Eucharist, 216, 221–22, 227–29 Euryalus, 217 Ewart, Gavin, 85 exemplar, 193, 205n14, 207n26 Exeter Book. See manuscripts exile, 15–29, 30n5, 73 Exodus, Old English, 161, 237–50 audience of, 238, 245, 248–49 dating of, 239 manuscript of, 239, 253n40, 254n50, 255n61 explicits, 201, 204n5 eyeskip, 89, 92

fate, 15, 17, 22–23, 26, 30, 32n21 feminism. See gender Ferhatović, Denis, 215–16, 224 feudalism, 38 Finlayson, John, 138 fish, 69, 173–76 fitt, 150, 152 flat ontology. See ontology Floire and Blancheflor, 144–45, 149 folk etymology. See etymology food, 68–69, 150, 220–21, 255n61 See also cannibalism form, literary, 2, 87 and politics, 5, 108, 120, 123 as engine, 85–183 experimental, 59–60, 89, 112 gone wrong, 88, 96, 98, 101, 191–250 See also genre, literary; meter; register; style; syntax; tone formalism vs. historicism, 2, 4, 5, 9, 52n9 forme fixe, 198 See also lyric formula, poetic, 16, 30n4, 30n7, 44, 49, 50, 113, 122, 169, 220 Fortunes of Men, 32n20 Franconian. See Old Low Franconian Frank, Roberta, 2–5, 42, 45–46, 73–74, 122, 153, 154n12, 155n25, 161, 237, 245 Franks, 42, 46 Freawaru, 218–219 French (language), 87–88, 121, 135, 136, 198, 207n26 French (people), 37–38, 251n15 Frisian. See Old Frisian Frisians, 42, 71, 72 Fulk, R. D., 108–111 Gaelic, 2, 136 Galicia, 75n4 Galloway, Andrew, 4, 227

Index  269

Garner, Lori Ann, 223 Gawain MS. See manuscripts Gawain poet. See Cleanness; Patience; Pearl; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Gayk, Shannon, 200 Geats, 42, 45, 50, 53n15, 62, 66, 66, 71, 77n30, 219 gender, 59–74, 74–75n4, 179–81, 186n58 genealogy, 46, 61, 67, 215 Genesis, Old English, 104n37, 126n36, 243, 253n35 genetic code, 146, 148, 150 genitive, 113, 162 genre, literary, 15–16, 23, 39–41, 52n6, 85, 88, 115 geology, 151, 169 gerbils, 233n52 German. See Old High German Germanic, 38, 40, 42–47, 50–51, 54n34, 73, 104n28, 112, 250n3, 254n45 Germans, 230n8 Germany, 3, 37 giants, work of, 24–25, 44, 48–50, 218, 223–24 globalization, 38 Gloria I, 116 glosses, 96, 113, 255n57 in psalters, 32n20, 92, 107, 116, 119, 123n4 See also marginalia gnomes. See proverbs God, 15, 30n5, 31n10, 32n21, 48, 67, 113–14, 117–19, 142, 144–49, 196, 215, 218, 221, 222–23, 225, 237–40, 243–49, 251n11, 253n41, 254n49, 255n58 Godard, Barbara, 60, 63, 74n4 gold, 18, 68, 71, 151, 166–173, 179, 183, 185n31, 208n38, 217, 228–30

gospels. See Bible Gothic, 113, 246 Grady, Frank, 4 grammar, 63–64, 66, 89, 119, 173, 181, 197, 237, 241, 245, 252n25, 254n46 graphic novel. See novel Greek, 52n6, 98, 100, 165, 216, 220, 231n15 Greeks, 230n8 Grendel, 40, 48, 51, 61, 62, 64–65, 68–69, 70, 71, 75n8, 172 mere of, 43, 61, 72, 218 mother of, 40, 48, 59–74, 75n8, 218 Griffith, Mark, 108, 122 Guattari, Félix, 169–70 Gylfaginning. See Snorri Sturluson HaCohen, Ruth, 237, 241–42, 248 hagiography, 198 Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, 181 hapax legomena, 89–90, 112, 137, 139, 142 haplography, 89 Harman, Graham, 163–77, 184n26 harps. See music Háttatal. See Snorri Sturluson headers, 202 running, 204n5 Heaney, Seamus translation of Beowulf, 59, 61, 62–63, 65, 74n2, 77n23 heathens. See pagans Heffernan, James A. W., 47–48 hegemony, 43, 60, 63, 120 Hegesippus, pseudo-. See Josephus Hengest and Horsa. See Jefferson, Thomas Heorot, 43, 51, 62, 67, 69, 72, 223 Heptateuch, Old English, 243–44 heterosexual, 63 heuristic, 165 hexameter. See meter

270  Index

Higden, Ranulf Polychronicon, 227 Hildeburh, 72 historical linguistics. See linguistics historical poetics. See poetics historicism. See formalism vs. historicism historiography, 4, 33n27, 45 Christian, 216, 226–27 Whig, 37 history. See individual kinds Hoccleve, Thomas, 193, 204n4 Holland, Jane Lament of the Wanderer, 62–63, 76n15 See also Wanderer Holmes, Sherlock, 73 holster books, 115 Homer, 41, 48, 53n14, 53n19, 55n41 homilies, 34, 103n19, 119, 221, 231n15, 240, 243, 247, 248 homosocial, 63 Horace Ars poetica, 138–39 horns. See music Howe, Nicholas, 45 Hrothgar, 43, 48, 61, 67–74 Hrynhenda. See Sturla Þórðarson hrynhent, 166, 184n29 Hugh of Saint Victor Little Book, 144, 156n39 Husband’s Message, 33n30 hybridity, 76n22, 162, 176–77, 180–81 Hygelac, 61, 68, 71–72 hymns, 101, 123n6, 126n36 hyparchetype, 192, 195, 203 Iceland, 181 Icelandic. See Old Norse iconography, 114 See also art; symbols ictus, 87 ideology, 38, 52, 122, 216 vs. poetry, 2, 220, 230

illustration. See art images, 22, 26, 30n3, 42, 44, 49, 54n41, 55n43, 69, 72, 102, 104n29, 148, 151, 161–83, 185n31, 198–202, 205n12, 208n36, 216, 230, 246, 253n38 script as, 200, 208n37 imprisonment, 220–21, 224–25, 228–29 incipits, 201 Ingeld, 218 Ingham, Patricia Clare, 139, 144 initials, decorated, 208n37, 208n38 inscriptions, 1, 48, 136, 225 intellectual history, 5, 109 intercession, 196–98, 201 intertextuality, 41–42, 72, 92 inventio, 206n18 invocation, 42, 61, 196–97 Irish (language), 63, 77n23 Irish (people), 62, 76n13 irony, 220, 225, 227, 242 Isaac, 215–16, 237, 243–45, 247–48, 253n34, 254n49, 255n58 Isabel le Despenser, 205n14 Isidore of Seville Etymologies, 138–39, 241, 254n49, 255n56, 255n57 Islam. See Muslims Israelites, 217, 230n6, 237–50, 255n56 See also Jews Italian, 2 italics, 60, 64, 66 Jacob, 215–16 Japanese, 52n6 Jean, duc de Berry, 115 Jefferson, Thomas, 37 Jerome Liber quaestionum hebraicarum in Genesim, 248, 255n58 Jerusalem, 215–16, 226–27, 229–30 See also Siege of Jerusalem

Index  271

Jesus Christ, 19, 147, 194, 215–23, 226, 228, 246–49 Jewish history, 227 Jewish law. See law Jews, 215–30, 232n48, 232n49, 233n50, 239, 241–42, 248, 252n28, 255n58 Johnson, Samuel, 151 Jonah, 135, 141–53 Jorgensen, Alice, 240, 246 Josephus The Jewish War, 227–28 Joshua, 225–27 Joy, Eileen A., 4, 45 Judas Maccabeus, 227 Judith, Old English, 125n25, 126n36 Junius MS. See manuscripts kennings, 70, 161–83 defined, 162–63 Old English, 183n3 Kentish Hymn, 126n36 Kipling, Rudyard, 85 Klaeber, Frederick, 39–40, 52n12, 66 Kłosowska, Anna, 4 Knyghthode and Bataile, 207n28 Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, 181 Kruger, Steven F., 242 Kubler, George, 2 Kuhn’s Laws, 112 See also meter labor, 145 domestic, 66–68, 71 lamentation, 15, 20, 22, 25, 27, 32n21, 33n34, 33n30, 61–62, 76n15, 119, 126n36, 195–96, 199, 227, 242 Langland, William Piers Plowman, 109, 120–22, 128n74 manuscripts of, 115, 121 language. See macaronic poetry; translation; and names of individual languages language history, 3, 4

Latin, 4, 39, 50–51, 89, 98–102, 103n15, 107, 112, 115, 118–19, 121, 123n6, 136, 139, 151, 196, 200, 206n18, 207n26, 218, 220, 227, 231n15, 232n33, 239, 253n34, 255n57 See also Romans Latin–English Proverbs, 88–89 meter of, 89, 103n15 law Christian, 149–50 Jewish, 225–226 Roman, 38 Lawman Brut meter of, 108–10, 118 Lawton, David, 226 Lay Folks’ Catechism, 204n4 Lear, Edward, 86 lectio difficilior. See textual criticism Leechbook, Bald’s, 17 legends. See myths Levine, Caroline, 5 light verse, 85–102 meter of, 87–88 limericks, 94, 100 meter of, 88 Lindisfarne, 96 linearity. See time linguistics, 176 historical, 64, 100, 140, 146 lions, 246–48, 254n50, 255n56 literary criticism, 2–5, 9, 15–16, 19–20, 23, 27, 29n2, 30n5, 38–42, 52n9, 52n10, 74, 77n23, 107–109, 122–23, 135, 137–38, 140, 141, 150, 155n25, 155n29, 163, 165, 170, 186n65, 221, 226, 239–240 literary culture Anglo-Saxon, 100, 122 English, 107, 120 global, 39 Latin, 115

272  Index

literary history, 51 English, 4, 9, 107–23 literary theory, 165 medieval, 4, 120 liturgy, 116, 196, 239, 240, 250–51n9 See also music London, 73, 128n74 longue durée, 5, 109 Lord’s Prayer III, 116 Lowland. See Scots Lucas, Peter, 243, 245 Luzzi, Joseph, 138 Lydgate, John Bycorne and Chychevache, 198, 207n26 Dolerous Pyte of Crystes Passioun, 200 Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary, 191–203 audience of, 191–92, 197, 200, 203 manuscripts of, 191–93, 195, 199–203, 204n5, 204n9, 204–205n10, 207n32, 208n38 Image of Our Lady, 200 Stans Puer ad Mensam, 207n26 The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, 207n26 lyric, 33n28, 72, 73, 95, 118, 119, 193, 198, 205n14 compression, 195–96 vs. narrative, 118–19, 195–96, 203, 206n20 See also ballad(e)s; elegy macaronic poetry, 64, 88, 101, 207n26 See also multilingualism Macpherson, James, 2 Macrae-Gibson, O. D., 91, 93 macron, 65 magic, 67, 136, 169–70, 179, 215 realist, 165 Maldon. See Battle of Maldon manuscripts, 4, 191–203, 232n33

Cambridge Corpus Christi College 198, 231n15 Jesus College 56, 192, 201, 204n5, 208n38 Pembroke College 301, 246–47, 255n56 Trinity College R.3.20, 198 R.3.21, 193, 200, 201, 208n38 R.17.1 (Eadwine Psalter), 116 University Library Ii.I.33, 253n38 Durham University Library Cosin V.II.13, 208n38 Exeter Dean and Chapter 3501 (Exeter Book), 85, 89–92, 103n20 London British Library Additional 12044, 208n38 Claudius B.IV, 253n41 Cotton Appendix XXVII, 205n10 Cotton Nero A.X (Gawain MS), 135 Cotton Tiberius B.I (AngloSaxon Chronicle “C”), 96–97, 116, 127n59 Cotton Titus A.XXVI, 205n14 Cotton Vitellius A.XV (Beowulf MS), 42, 65–66, 67, 117, 137 Harley 2253, 193, 205n13 Harley 2255, 192, 201, 204n9, 208n38 Harley 2280, 208n38 Harley 7333, 207n26

Index  273

Lambeth Palace Library 84, 207n26 546, 194, 196–97, 201, 205–206n15 Oxford Bodleian Library Ashmole 59, 198, 207n26 Bodley 686, 193, 199, 204n5, 207n26, 207n32 Junius 11 ( Junius MS), 104n37, 239, 251n11, 253n40, 254n50, 255n61 Junius 121 (Benedictine Office), 116, 123n2 Paris Bibliothèque nationale latin 8824 (Paris Psalter), 107, 114–16, 119, 121, 123n2, 126n54, 127n59 Rome Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. lat. 1274, 231n15 Biblioteca Casanatense 1104, 231n15 Vercelli Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII (Vercelli Book), 220, 221 Marian apocrypha. See apocrypha, biblical marginalia, 116, 192–93, 197, 198, 201, 204n9, 207n26 See also glosses Mary, Virgin, 191, 194, 206n16, 206n17 material culture. See archaeology; poetics; spoliation Matthew (apostle), 220–21 McGee, Timothy, 240 medieval literary theory. See literary theory medieval studies, 163, 165 meditation, 15–17, 21–23, 25, 27–28, 30n3, 40, 192, 196–202, 206n18, 208n36

Meillassoux, Quentin, 163 Menologium, 95–102 audience of, 97–98, 100 manuscript of, 96–97, 116, 119 meter of, 95–100, 119 Mercia, 126n56 Mermedonians, 220–25 Messapius, 217 metaphor, 17, 18, 28, 44, 49–51, 60–61, 75n6, 100, 161–83, 219, 229–30, 245, 247, 253, 254, 255n56 classical ideas of, 171 Old Norse terminology for, 172–77, 182 See also symbols metaphysics, 2, 163 metaplasm, 139 meter, 87, 88, 166, 138–39, 172–73, 183n3 alliterative, 73, 88–111, 117–22, 136, 141, 144, 146, 183n3, 216, 233n50, 253n40 quantitative, 87, 99, 110, 121 hexameter, 104n39 syllabic, 101–102, 121, 144, 151–53, 167, 184n29 See also form, literary; metrics; rhythm Meters of Boethius, Old English, 119 metonymy, 162, 182 metrical history, 109–11 metrical phonology, 95–100, 111, 125n20 metrical position, 94, 96, 104n37, 110, 111, 118, 124n17 Metrical Preface to the Pastoral Care, 123n6 metrical promotion, 118 metrical resolution, 90, 94, 96, 99, 103n15, 103n17, 104n32, 104n37, 110, 118 metrics, 73, 108–109 See also meter; rhythm

274  Index

Mickey Mouse, 163 Middle English alliterative meter. See meter Middle English poetry. See titles of individual poems Midlands, 69 Migration period, 43–47, 50–51 Milton, John, 2 Minkova, Donka, 108–109 Minnis, Alastair, 4 miracles, 136, 140, 145, 153, 215–16, 220, 226 Mirk, John Mirk’s Festial, 204n4 miscellanies, 198, 207n29, 232n33 mise-en-page, 115, 119, 197, 200–203, 208n36 mnemonics, 144, 151 Monk’s stanza. See stanzas monks, 28, 39, 42, 116, 117, 226, 240 monsters, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47, 48, 51, 59–74, 75n8, 166, 172, 176, 178, 218, 219, 220, 224, 228, 229 See also cannibalism morae, 104n39 See also meter Morgan, Edwin, 61 morphology, 87, 90, 138 Morton, Timothy, 163–66, 170, 183 Moses, 225, 238–39, 242, 249 Mueller, Alex, 228 multilingualism, 64, 88, 101, 107, 120, 121, 136–37, 140, 149, 155n25, 207n26 Mungan, Muratha, 59 music, 116, 196, 237, 239, 240, 241–42, 248–49, 250–51n9 bells, 145–46, 240–41, 247, 249 carnyx, 254n51 harps, 115, 136 horns or trumpets, 238–43, 245–49, 251n14, 252n25, 252n29, 252n31, 255n56

shofar, 246, 247–48, 255n58 psalters, 226 See also song; sound Muslims, Islamic culture, 232n49, 237, 241–42, 248 mysteries, 150, 225 myths, 37, 46–47, 50–51, 61, 67, 72, 77n30, 169, 173, 179, 182, 221, 226 Narin van Court, Elisa, 226 narrative, 15, 18, 30n7, 40, 43, 49, 50, 59, 63, 66, 67, 69, 102, 107, 113, 122, 140, 141, 149, 169, 182, 186n59, 194, 215, 220, 222 biblical, 177 cannibal, 60, 75n8 Christian, 216, 226 embedded, 72 third-person, 20 vs. lyric, 118–19, 195–96, 203, 206n20 Nash, Ogden, 87 nationalism, 33n30, 37 Nativity of Jesus, 193 neoliberalism, 38 neologism, 135–53, 176 Nero, 226 New Criticism, 6, 170 New Style. See style Nibelungen legend, 37, 169 Nisus, 217 Noah’s flood, 49, 243 See also Bible noise. See sound nonsense poetry, 86, 87 Norman Conquest, 4 Norse. See Old Norse North, Richard, 41 North Sea. See seas Northumbrian, 92 Norway, 181 Norwegian, 74n1 See also Old Norse nostalgia, 23, 43, 45

Index  275

novel, 55n44 nursery rhymes, 86 nýg jǫrving. See metaphor objectivity, 168, 179, 182 object-oriented ontology. See ontology Octavian, 48 Odin, 182 O’Donoghue, Heather, 60 Ohlgren, Thomas H., 246 Óláfr Tryggvason, 181 Old English meter. See meter Old English poetry. See poetics and titles of individual poems Old Frisian, 246 Old High German, 246 Old Low Franconian, 246 Old Norse, 1, 2–3, 61, 113, 136, 137, 154n12, 161–83, 183n3, 237 Old Norse literature. See poetics; saga; skaldic poetry and authors of individual works Old Saxon, 113, 246 Old Style. See style ontology flat, 177 object-oriented, 136, 161–83 defined, 163–66 Opalińska, Monika, 108, 110, 111 orality, 31n15, 73, 137, 141, 152 See also sound; voice Orosius History Against the Pagans, 39 Ortega y Gasset, José, 171, 176, 182 orthography. See spelling Osborn, Marijane, 60 Otherness, 42, 73, 74n4, 219, 237, 241–42, 249 Owen-Crocker, Gale R., 45 pagans, 15, 40, 75n8, 114, 217, 219, 221, 229 paleography. See glosses; marginalia; script

Pallas, 217 parables, 230, 250n6 paraph marks, 200, 202, 208n38 paraphrase. See periphrasis parataxis, 118 paratext, 60, 101, 201 Paris Psalter, 107–23 audience of, 111–12, 114, 116, 117 manuscripts of, 107, 114–17, 119, 121, 123n2, 126n54, 127n59 meter of, 107–11, 112, 116–21, 124–25n20 paronomasia. See wordplay participle, 125n20 passus, 135, 142 Pastoral Care, Old English, 103n19, 123n6 Pater noster, 192–94, 197–98, 201, 204n9 pathos, 118, 200 Patience, 135, 139, 141–50, 153 audience of, 139 patriarchs, 215–16, 220, 237, 242, 252n33, 255n59 patristic. See biblical exegesis Paulinus of Nola, 217 Pearl, 139, 143, 150–53 audience of, 139 meter of, 151 Pearl MS. See manuscripts performance, 1, 25, 50, 60, 86, 98, 116, 191–92, 194, 196, 197, 198, 201–203, 204n4, 204n9, 239, 240, 250–51n9, 252n31, 254n51 See also song periodization, 1–2, 38 early Old English/late Old English, 4, 122 Old English/Middle English, 4–5, 108 periphrasis, 162, 170 peritext. See paratext Pharaoh, 239

276  Index

phenomenology, 121, 164–65 philology, 3, 37, 74, 76n20 philosophy, 2, 40 ancient, 97, 144 continental, 136, 161–83, 184n26 phonology, 43, 95–100, 111, 125n20, 138 See also alliteration; sound Piers Plowman. See Langland, William pietà, 199–201, 208n36 pilgrimage, 136, 143, 205n15 Pinkerton, J., 151 plot, 67, 140, 149, 220 See also narrative poetic communities, 116–17 Anglo-Saxon, 4 poetics, 143 alliterative, 119, 137 Anglo-Scandinavian, 162 digital, 155n29 historical, 5 of absorption, 31n9, 215–30 of bibliography, 191–203 of experience, 23 of impatience, 140 of material objects, 200–202, 251n13 of spoliation, 215 Old English, 3, 4, 108, 161, 183n3 Old Norse, 154n12 theories, 5 vs. ideology, 2, 220, 230 police, 252n29 Pope, Alexander, 86 pornography, 85 Portuguese (people), 75n6 positivism, 53n15 postcolonial, 51, 59–74 Powell, Alison, 220, 224 preaching. See homilies prefaces, 59–62, 136 prefix license, 118 Priscian, 241, 245, 254n46 prolepsis, 33n28, 48

prologues, poetic, 113–14, 121, 191–193, 197–203, 237–38 prophecy, 140, 142, 147–50, 153, 223, 240, 247 prose, 2, 34, 74n1, 103n19, 113, 115, 119, 121, 123n6, 125n33, 139, 148, 167, 170, 181, 193, 194, 196, 198, 201, 207n26, 221, 231n15, 240, 243, 247, 248 rhythmical, 120 prosody. See meter; metrics Protevangelium of James. See apocrypha, biblical provenance, 109, 115, 116, 126n54 See also dialect proverbs, 3, 19–20, 29n2, 32n21, 88–90, 148, 150, 255n58 Prudentius Psychomachia, 218 Psalter, Lady, 192–94, 197, 199, 201–202, 204n4, 204n9 defined, 192 psalters. See glosses; music psychology, 18, 21, 30n5, 240 puns. See wordplay Purification of the Virgin, 195 Purvis, Meghan translation of Beowulf, 59–74 Putter, Ad, 135, 142, 143, 151 quantitative meter. See meter radicalism, 38 Ramsey, Mary K., 45 realism, speculative, 163, 165–66, 180, 182, 184n26 Red Sea. See seas regio dissimilitudinis. See Augustine of Hippo register, 88, 100, 152 temporal, 16 Resignation, 33n30 resurrection, 27, 122, 147, 194, 205n14, 247, 249

Index  277

rhetoric, 1, 4, 19, 104n32, 113, 114, 118 classical, 47, 49–50, 54, 217 medieval Scandinavian, 176 Rhine, 166, 168–69 rhizome, 169 rhyme, 86–95, 101–102, 103n25, 143, 146, 150–53, 167, 172–73, 184n29 rhyme royal. See stanzas Rhyming Poem, 33n30, 89–95, 100 manuscript of, 89–92 meter of, 93–94 rhythm, 86, 89, 90, 101–102, 121, 138, 140–141, 143, 149, 150, 152, 153 See also meter; metrics rhythmical prose. See prose Ricoeur, Paul, 25 riddles, 49, 64, 76n21, 139, 162, 167, 255n56 in Exeter Book, 85 Robinson, Fred C., 45 Roman culture, 226–8 See also Latin; ruins; Virgil Roman law. See law Roman Style. See style romance, 75n6, 144, 216 alliterative, 121, 216, 233n50 Romans, 38, 44–45, 52n6, 226, 228–29, 230n8 See also Latin romanticism, 178, 203 rosary, 205n12 rubrication, 192–93, 194, 200–202, 204n10, 208n38 Ruin, 22–23, 33n30 ruins, 22–24, 30, 43–45, 49–50, 224–25, 229 ruling, 202 rum, ram, ruf, 144 Rune Poem, 125n25 runes, 55n44 Russom, Geoffrey, 108–109

sacraments. See Eucharist saga, 148, 181 saints. See names of individual persons saints’ lives. See hagiography salvation, 29n2, 228, 251n11 Samuel, 218 Satan, 221 satire, 88 Saul, 217–18 Saxon. See Old Saxon scansion. See meter; metrics Scheil, Andrew, 220 scholastic. See biblical exegesis Scots, 77n23, 136 scribes, 10n18, 104n37, 111, 115, 121, 125n20, 127n59, 141, 198, 207n30, 207n32 errors of, 89–100, 103n25, 139, 142, 155n32, 191–203, 204n10 See also spelling; textual criticism; textuality script, 48, 50, 55n44, 115, 119 as image, 200, 208n37 hierarchies of, 202 scriptural history, 149 sculpture. See art Scyld Scefing, 61, 67–68, 72 Seafarer, 33n30, 119, 126n36 seas, 15–17, 21, 23, 29, 41, 50, 68, 72, 135, 146, 147, 174, 183, 184n30, 220, 222, 245, North Sea, 43 Red Sea, 237, 239, 243, 248–50, 254n50 Seasons for Fasting, 126n36 semiosis, 180 sense percetion, 66, 72, 164–65, 172, 177, 243, 251n9, 253n44 See also images; sound sex, 181 oral, 63

278  Index

Shakespeare, William, 5, 137 Sonnets, 32n22 Troilus and Cressida, 143 shields, 48–50, 54n41, 72, 166–67, 180–82 Shirley, John, 198, 205n14, 207n26, 208n41 shofar. See music Siege of Jerusalem, 216–17, 219–220, 225–30 audience of, 232n33 manuscripts of, 232n33 sieges. See battle silver, 217, 240 simile, 69, 230 simplex, 113, 119, 167 simulacra, 119, 177, 240 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 3, 109, 143 audience of, 139 manuscript of, 135 meter of, 109 Sisam, Celia, 107–108, 121 Sisam, Kenneth, 107–108, 121 skaldic poetry, 161–83, 184n29, 185n31, 246, 250n3 audience of, 180 meter of, 166–67, 183n3 Skáldskaparmál. See Snorri Sturluson skothending, 184n29 slavery, 42, 65–67, 73, 229 smell, 66, 72 Snorri Sturluson Gylfaginning, 179–80 Háttatal, 172–77 Skáldskaparmál, 180–82 social history, 3 socialism, 86 song, 86, 116, 117–18, 121, 178, 196, 226–27, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242–43, 245, 248–50, 250–51n9, 253–54n45, 255n56

See also music; performance; sound; voice sonnet, 32n22 sound, 86, 98, 101–102, 139, 142, 144, 145, 146, 149, 152, 153, 237–50 as a form of violence, 237, 240–41, 246, 252n25, 252n29 Latin and Old English terminology for, 241, 255n56 vs. noise, 237–38, 240–43, 246, 249–50, 252n25 See also phonology source studies, 37–74, 115, 119, 155n27, 186n59, 194, 196, 205n14, 206n16, 208n41, 218– 21, 223–25, 227–28, 231n15, 239, 252–53n34, 253n38, 254n50 imaginary, 202 See also translation Southern mode (Old English poetry), 109, 116, 119–20 Spain. See Galicia Spanish (people), 171 speculation. See realism, speculative spelling, 91, 96–97, 103n24, 103n25, 104n38, 111, 125n20, 139, 142, 154n4, 253n38 See also dialect; scribes; textual criticism Spenser, Edmund, 2 spoliation, 215–30, 230n6, 230n8 Stanbury, Sarah, 151 stanzas, 72, 87, 143, 150–53, 166–83, 185n31, 186n59, 204n3, 204–205n10, 208n36, 208n38, 229 couplet, 101, 103n25, 184n29 Middle English terminology for, 200–202, 208n39, 208n41 Monk’s, 195, 207n26

Index  279

rhyme royal, 191–203, 203n3, 207n26 use in lyric vs. narrative, 195, 203, 206n20 Stephen of Sawley, 206n18 Stokes, Myra, 135, 142, 143, 151 Strier, Richard, 5 Sturla Þórðarson Hrynhenda, 166–70, 178–79, 184n29, 185n31 meter of, 167 style academic, 4 additive, 196 alliterative, 109, 116–17, 122–23 appositive, 49 as index to other matters, 2 avant-garde, 65, 77n23, 117, 120, 126n52 barbaric, 162 biblical, 2 choice of, 111–13, 119, 122 Chaucerian, 2, 191, 195, 197 Ciceronian, 2 clanging, 238 conservative, 4, 120, 122 defined, 1–2 degenerate, 108 discordant, 238, 243–49 end-stopped, 111, 118, 197 English, 2 flamboyant, 113 flat, 107–108 heavy, 85 high, 1 historical study of, 3, 123 historiography of, 2–4, 122 history of, 109, 120–22 innovative, 115, 117, 120, 122 Italian, 2 late, 1 Latinate, 109, 118, 126n52

light, 85–102 literary, 4, 107 low, 1 metaphysical, 2 metrical, 107, 109 Miltonic, 2 New, 1 non-poetic, 107, 119, 121 Old, 2 prayer-like, 197 Roman, 1 rude, 1 simple, 196–97 Tudor, 2 unconventional, 119 Viking, 155n25 See also form, literary; genre, literary; meter; register; syntax; tone subjectivity, 16, 30, 30n7, 32n22, 114, 119, 164–65, 168, 173–79, 182, 184n16 See also consciousness subjunctive, 19 subordinate clause, 118, 162 sundials, 1 supersessionism, 216–17, 219–20, 222, 226–27, 229–30 Sutton Hoo, 73 Sweden, 42, 45 See also Beowulf Swedish, 59, 74n1 See also Old Norse swords, 172–81, 217, 237–38, 243–49, 253n35, 253n41, 253n44, 253–54n45, 254n49, 255n56 in Beowulf, 43, 48–50, 55n42, 55n43, 67, 68, 72, 218, 223 syllables. See meter; metrical resolution symbols, 51, 114, 169, 172, 181, 219, 221, 229, 240, 243, 246–48 See also metaphor

280  Index

synalepha. See elision syncope. See elision syntax, 55n43, 63–64, 66, 91, 111–12, 118–19, 121, 122 poetic, 112 teleology, 37, 49 temporality. See time tense past, 64, 104n28 present, 18, 26, 27, 64, 96 Testament, Old or New. See Bible textual criticism, 65–66, 90–95, 135, 191–203, 254n50, 255n59 principle of lectio difficilior in, 90 See also scribes; spelling textuality, 63–67, 191–203, 241, 245 See also scribes; spelling Theodoric, 46, 54n34 theology, 112, 216, 221–22, 227–29, 242 poetic, 144 vernacular, 120 See also biblical exegesis third person. See narrative Thornbury, Emily, 4, 109, 119–20 time, 2, 38–39, 43–44, 48, 95–100, 116, 145, 154n12, 239 Christian, 19, 95, 100, 102, 240 epic, 19, 52n6, 53n19 linear vs. cyclical, 5, 15–29, 31n9, 195 titles, 55n50, 59, 60, 64, 71, 74n2, 107, 198, 201, 204n5 Titus, 225–26, 228–29 Tobias, 225 Tolkien, J. R. R., 39–41, 45, 52n11, 245 tone, 86, 191 Toswell, M. J., 111, 114, 115, translation, 37, 39, 59–74, 89, 104n29, 107–23, 123n6, 127n63, 142, 144, 150, 155n27, 165, 198,

205n14, 207n28, 208n41, 227, 231n15 243, 255n61 feminist, 62–67, 74–75n4 of cultural heritage Irish, 62 Jewish, 226 philosophy of, 62, 73, 76n23 See also source studies translingual, 114 Treharne, Elaine, 4 Trevisa, John Polychronicon, 144 trolls, 178 tropes, 71, 74n4, 75n6, 179–81 Truitt, E. R., 145 trumpets. See music Tschischwitz, Benno, 107, 110–11 Tudors, 2 Turkey, 75n4 Turks, 74n1 Turnus, 50, 54n41, 217 Tyler, Elizabeth, 4 typology, 147, 232n48, 247 See also biblical exegesis ubi sunt, 25, 33n34 See also lamentation Ullr, 166, 180–82 underlining, 201–202 Vercelli Book. See manuscripts vernacular, 107, 114, 115, 119, 137, 140, 149 idea of the, 120 See also multilingualism vernacular theology. See theology versification. See meter; metrics Vespasian, 226–27 Victorian, 37, 183n3 Viking Age, 162 Vikings, 64, 155n25, 161–62, 175 Villard de Honnecourt, 145 violence. See battle; cannibalism; sound

Index  281

Virgil Aeneid, 37–52, 217, 219, 230n10 Visitation of Mary, 203n3, 204n10 voice, 15–17, 27, 30n5, 31n15, 32n22, 60, 62, 63, 66, 73–74, 119, 136, 137, 141, 149, 152, 178, 221, 227, 237, 238, 239, 240, 243–50, 252n31 in the wilderness, 247 Latin and Old English terminology for, 241, 252n25, 254n46, 255n56 See also song; sound vowels, 65, 89, 90, 91, 94, 99, 103n15, 136, 184n29 Walahfrid Strabo, 240, 247, 251n17 Wanderer, 15–29, 72, 95, 119 audience of, 31n9 genre of, 15–16 translations of, 62–63, 76n15 Watson, Dr. John H., 73 Wealhtheow, 42, 67, 71 weather, 15–29, 141, 224 Weber, Gerd Wolfgang, 180 Weland, 67, 77n30

Wessex, 46, 120 West African, 77n23 West Saxon, 92, 96 Whale, Old English, 125n25, 126n36 Whig history. See historiography Widsith, 113–114, 125n25 Wife’s Lament, 33n30, 119, 126n36 wolves, 23–24, 71, 73, 238, 240, 242, 246, 248, 255n56 Worcester, 4, 116, 126n56 word studies, 2, 9, 112–13, 119, 135–53, 237, 244–50, 250n3, 252–53n34, 253n38 wordplay, 2, 3, 70–71, 85, 151, 173 world literature, 37–52 Wulf and Eadwacer, 33n30, 72–73, 77n23 Wulfstan Homilies, 32n20 wyrd. See fate Yakovlev, Nicolay, 108–111 zoomorphism, 174 Zumthor, Paul, 152