Vernacular Cosmologies: Models of the Universe in Old English Literature

Abstract This article describes a tradition of early medieval cosmological thought in the prose and poetry of the Old English corpus. This Old English cosmology uses a small set of cosmological building blocks and a relatively limited vocabulary to describe and explore a variety of structural models of the Universe. In these texts – which include but are not limited to the Old English Prose Boethius, Ælfric’s De temporibus Anni, the Old English Phoenix, and The Order of the World – each structural model relies on a combination of terms for heaven, the firmament, and a cosmic-scale ocean and seafloor. These models, each distinct, appear to fall into two loose categories which may represent two schools of thought in vernacular cosmology.

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Beginnings continued: a decade of studies of Old English prose

Anglo-Saxon England ◽

10.1017/s0263675100000855 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 225-243

Author(s):

Milton McC. Gatch

Keyword(s):

Title I ◽

Old English ◽

English Literature ◽

Old English Literature ◽

Present Survey ◽

English Prose ◽

Current Trends ◽

Recent Scholarship ◽

Current Concern ◽

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

When this article appears, a decade will have passed since the publication of Continuations and Beginnings, edited by E. G. Stanley, a collection of studies in Old English literature, three of which deal with aspects of Old English prose. Each of these essays is a superb and expert summary of recent scholarship by someone who has made major contributions in this field; and they may, therefore, serve as an approximate terminus a quo for main sections of the present survey of the état des questions which are of current concern in the study of Old English prose. One hears from time to time more-or-less facetious attempts at explication of the title Continuations and Beginnings and I hope not to have compounded an issue by playing on that heading myself. I take Stanley to have meant that the essays he edited are intended both as summaries of the achievements of English philologists who studied the prose of the Anglo-Saxons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and as pointers to newer trends. By my title I mean to convey that I am concerned here primarily with current trends.

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