A context for the sexualization of monsters in The Wonders of the East

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 79-99
Author(s):  
Christopher Monk
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Sexual Behaviour ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Sexual Deviancy ◽  
Poetic Imagination ◽  
A Performance ◽  
Genesis A

AbstractThe belief that monsters had a human genealogy originating at a point of transgressive sexual behaviour is something attested to in early medieval texts that either circulated or were written in Anglo-Saxon England. The Hiberno-Latin Reference Bible, a widely known text of the period, and the Old English poem Genesis A both suggest that the sexual deviancy of the progenitors of monsters is perceivable as reiterated stigmata on the monstrous bodies of their progeny. It is within this context of theological exegesis and poetic imagination that the Anglo-Saxon drawings of monsters in The Wonders of the East were produced. What one sees in the depiction of monsters therein is a performance of sexual monstrosity that links monsters to their human forbears; but also, by means of the illustrated interaction of monster and human, the monster is brought perilously close to the here-and-now of the Anglo-Saxon reader-viewer's imagined world.

scholarly journals Old English poem «Judith» as a reflection of Anglo-Saxon early medieval mentality

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-68
Author(s):  
Ihar A. Yeutukhou
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Old English ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
English Poem ◽  
New Information ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Stability Of Structures ◽  
Motivation To Participate

The article analyzes the reflection of the Western European early medieval mentality in the Оld English poem «Judith». The following research methods were used: clustering (formation of a cluster of verbal reflections of mental attitudes) and historical-semantic analysis of objects included in the cluster. Poem «Judith» information, connected with the mentality, concerns two lines: the motivation to participate in the battle, and the posthumous punishment of the main antagonist of Holofernes. The analysis allowed the author to draw the following conclusions. Firstly, the poem «Judith» is not a direct poetic paraphrase of the eponymous book of the Оld Testament. The text contains a number of additions that carry completely new information, revealing in particular problems associated with the mentality (Judith speech, the posthumous fate of Holofernes). Secondly, the poem «Judith» allows us to distinguish two levels in the mentality of Anglo-Saxon society – basic one and emerging. The first of them is represented by the concept of «glory» (wuldor and tir). The use of the word wuldor indicates a significant stability of structures associated with the foundations of the mentality of society. For Anglo-Saxon society such a basis was war and glory. The glory had been denoted by the word, rooted in the days of the Old German community (linked to the Gothic language), and unknown to the Vikings. The same stability shows respect for the leader of the enemy troops. The second level is represented by the image of «snake hall» (wyrm-sele), which was formed during the wars with the Vikings in the 10th century for the liberation of the occupied territories. Thirdly, the presence of two levels in the mentality allows author to consider the period of its formation as open. Thus the innovation, arised under Scandinavian influence, was not entrenched in mentality.

scholarly journals The situation of conflicting loyalties and the Old English Genesis’ version of the story of the Fall

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Zoya Yu. Metlitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
English Poem ◽  
The Social

The paper addresses the idiosyncratic version of the story of the Fall presented in the Old English poem Genesis from the perspective of religious and political moral of Early Medieval Society. The methodology of the research bases on the analysis of the social functions of texts. To understand the didactic message of the poem the poet’s conception of “fall” should be looked attentively. “The Fall” of angels and men is presented in the text as the failure of choice, due to overconfidence or the appellation to the wrong authority. As could be seen from historical sources the problem of choice in the situation of conflicting loyalties was essential for Anglo-Saxon society. Person’s behavior in this situation was judged according to the results of his or her actions, not according to his or her initial reasons.

Sepulchral Jews and Stony Christians

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy Lavezzo
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Temple

This chapter examines the unstable geography of Christian and Jew during the Anglo-Saxon period through an analysis of Bede's Latin exegetical work On the Temple (ca. 729–731) and in Cynewulf's Old English poem Elene. It takes as its starting point how Bede and Cynewulf tackle a material long associated with Jewish materialism, stone, in comparison with Christian materialism and descibes their accounts of the sepulchral Jew as well as the stony nature of Jews. It also considers how Bede and Cynewulf construct Christianity by asserting its alterity and opposition to an idea of Jewish carnality that draws on and modifies Pauline supersession. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how Bede's and Cynewulf's charged engagements with supersession and “Jewish” places contribute both to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon material culture and to the important role that ideas of the Jew played in such materialisms.

The prefix un- and the metrical grammar of Beowulf

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin B. Kendall
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Old English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wide Area ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
English Poem ◽  
The Battle Of Maldon ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Considerable Period

Two rules of the metrical grammar of the Beowulf poet are the subject of this paper. One concerns the variation of stress on the prefix un-; the other pertains to the alliteration of compounds. The two are correlated. The paper rests on the premise that the ‘metre’ of an Old English poem is only one function of a set of regularities that make it something we call verse rather than prose. Separately these regularities may be described as ‘rules’; taken as a group, the rules comprise a metrical grammar. Each Anglo-Saxon scop absorbed such a grammar during the course of long immersion in the poetic tradition of his culture. No two scops' metrical grammars could have been exactly alike; in addition to individual differences, there must have been regional and dialectal variations, although the poetic tradition ensured remarkable uniformity over a wide area and a considerable period of time, and only at the end of the Old English period, with let us say The Battle of Maldon, are significant changes manifest. Further investigation would therefore be needed to determine to what extent the rules here described apply to other grammars.

Marking Boundaries in Beowulf: Æschere’s Head, Grendel’s Arm and the Dragon’s Corpse

2017 ◽  
Vol 77 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 521-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thijs Porck ◽  
Sander Stolk
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Poem

Abstract In the Old English poem Beowulf, several body parts are put on display, including Grendel’s arm at Heorot and Æschere’s head on top of a cliff. The first instance has been widely discussed by various scholars, who have tried to find out why and where the arm was hung. By contrast, scholarly treatments of the second instance are relatively scarce. This article places the exhibition of Æschere’s head by Grendel’s mother in the context of similar practices of decapitation and display in Anglo-Saxon England. It will be argued that the placement of the head of Æschere on top of the cliff towering over Grendel’s mere resembles the Anglo-Saxon heafod stoccan, ‘head stakes’, which acted as boundary markers. The monster’s act, therefore, would not strike as foreign to the Anglo-Saxon audience, but would be familiar. As we will show, the identification of Æschere’s head as a boundary marker, placed at the edge of the monsters’ domain, also has some bearing on the interpretation of other potential boundary markers in the poem, including Grendel’s arm and the dragon’s corpse. Lastly, we will argue for a new reading of two textual cruces in Beowulf’s speech prior to his fight with Grendel.

Junius's knowledge of the Old English poem Durham

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 231-245
Author(s):  
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old English ◽  
British Library ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
English Poem ◽  
University Library ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Original Manuscript

Until recently, the late Old English poem Durham was known to have been copied in two manuscripts of the twelfth century: Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 1. 27 (C) and London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius D. xx (V). C has been transcribed frequently and serves as the basis for Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie's standard edition of the poem in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. V was almost completely destroyed in the Cottonian fire of 1731. Its version is known to us solely from George Hickes's 1705 edition (H).In a recent article, however, Donald K. Fry announced the discovery of a third medieval text of the poem. Like V, the original manuscript of this ‘third’ version is now lost and can be reconstructed only from an early modern transcription - in this case a copy by Francis Junius no win the Stanford University Library (Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections, Misc. 010 [J1]). Unlike V, however, Junius's copy is our only record of this manuscript's existence. No other transcripts are known from medieval or early modern manuscript catalogues.

The Latin textual basis of Genesis A

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 163-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Remley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Text ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Text ◽  
Textual Basis ◽  
Base Text ◽  
Genesis A

Received scholarly opinion regards Genesis A as an Old English versification of the Latin text of Genesis in Jerome's Vulgate revision of the bible. This view has prevailed in modern editions of the poem, which normally print a critical text of the Vulgate Genesis in their apparatus. The textual basis of Genesis A is perhaps ‘vulgate’ in character in so far as the poem renders Genesis readings that were commonly known in Anglo-Saxon England, but the identification of this base text with that of the Hieronymian Vulgate remains an untested hypothesis. Ten years ago A. N. Doane printed a list of readings in the Old English text which show affinity with the ancient versions of Genesis that emerged before the completion of Jerome's translation, readings associted with the Vetus Latina or Old Latin bible. Doane did not, however, challenge the long-standing belief that Genesis A follows a single, lost exemplar that contained in all essentials the text established by Jerome. The present study attempts to survey, without any preconceptions, all the details in the poem that might derive from Latin sources; its intention is to make a first step towards the recovery of the Latin textual basis of Genesis A.

Vivien Anne Law, 1954–2002

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge ◽  
Peter Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
The Relationship

Vivienne Law acquired a mastery of the field of late antique and early Medieval Latin grammar, her first task was to familiarise herself with the early medieval manuscripts in which grammatical texts were transmitted. This task necessitated constant travel to British and continental libraries in order to provide herself with transcriptions of grammatical texts; it also necessitated the acquisition of a huge collection of microfilms of grammatical manuscripts. Her work on these manuscripts soon revealed a vast and uncharted sea of unedited and unstudied grammatical texts, for the most part anonymous. A major component of her life's work was the attempt to chart this sea. Her earliest publications reveal a profound experience of grammatical manuscripts and a refusal simply to reiterate the opinions of earlier scholars. All these publications report new discoveries, such as previously unknown Old English glosses to the Ars grammatica of Tatwine, an early 8th-century Anglo-Saxon grammarian; or unsuspected aspects of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and continental learning as revealed in the transmission of the grammars of Boniface and Tatwine; or the true nature of the jumbled and misunderstood grammar attributed to the early Irish grammarian Malsachanus.

The Welsh borderlands in the Lives of St Guthlac1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Military Life ◽  
Ethnic Division ◽  
Land Control ◽  
Ethnic War

Chapter Two focuses on a corpus of Old English and Latin works about the popular Anglo-Saxon saint Guthlac of Croyland (673-714) whose Mercian youth and later career as a hermit in the fens of East Anglia link him indelibly to two of Britain’s most nebulous geographical spaces. This chapter argues that the various Lives of Guthlac depict the borderlands as a locus of military advancement for Mercian and Welsh elites. As in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, this region is a place where a young Mercian warrior can advance his career by living among the British and leading a multi-ethnic war band, features of military life in the borderlands that are also evident in contemporary Welsh and Cambro-Latin texts. The geographically fluid nature of this region is also evident in this chapter’s second significant argument: that even within this Anglo-Saxon saint’s life, the politics of land control are much less clear-cut than has been assumed. While St. Guthlac’s battles with demons have been understood to reflect Anglo/Welsh ethnic division, this chapter argues that the Old English poem Guthlac A is far more conflicted towards land ownership, reflecting the fluid boundaries of Mercia itself.

Introduction: the Dunsæte Agreement and daily life in the Welsh borderlands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Old English ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
Frontier Studies

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England argues that the Welsh borderlands formed a culturally distinctive region during the Anglo-Saxon period. The book begins with a close examination of a late Old English legal text known as the Dunsæte agreement, which governs procedure for the recovery of stolen cattle taken across the river which ran between the Welsh and English banks of the Dunsæte territory. This text reflects Anglo-Welsh equality, community, and cooperation, providing a window into the lived reality of the borderlands: it was a region where two peoples lived together for hundreds of years, not simply a space of endless warfare as it is often understood in scholarship on early medieval Britain. The introduction contextualizes this book within recent work in postcolonial studies, border/frontier studies, and the history of Anglo/Welsh relations, laying out a case for why the Welsh borderlands should be understood as a distinctive region during the Anglo-Saxon period.

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