The Manifestations of Fate in Medieval Germanic Poetry and Lithuanian Folk Songs

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Giedrė Buivytė
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
Old Icelandic ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Poetic Narrative ◽  
Poetic Edda ◽  
Poetic Texts

Reflections of mythical worldview are embedded in traditional oral poetry, viz. Old Icelandic collection of poems Poetic Edda, Old English poem Beowulf, and Lithuanian folk songs. Archaic motifs and archetypal imagery are conveyed by means of poetic grammar (alliteration, kennings, epithets, etc.). Through interpretation, the hidden (symbolic) meaning of the poetic grammar is unveiled, and the connection between the two worlds, the sacred (the divine) and the profane (the human) (Eliade 1959), is exposed. To advance the analysis of poetic narrative, the methodology employed in the paper combines comparative Indo-European poetics (Watkins 1995) and oral-formulaic theory (Kiparsky 1976; Foley 1996). The paper focuses on the poetic narrative’s motifs that encode the archetypal image of the goddess(es) of fate in the Germanic and Baltic traditions. Selected passages from Old Icelandic, Old English, and Lithuanian poetic texts reveal the motif of fate in the following contexts: the establishment of the laws governing human life, the courtship and wedding narrative, the inescapable decrees of misery and death, the warrior’s fame and fate, and the connection between the goddess of fate and the cuckoo bird (in the Lithuanian tradition). The poetic grammar and poetic formulas, in particular, reveal the prototypical characteristics of the supernatural beings who rule fate – Norns, Wyrd, and Laima – and present them as an integral part of the Indo-European mythological system.

DHAMMONG : A RAIN RITUAL IN MADURA (A STUDY ON ITS HISTORY, FUNCTION, AND HISTOR ORY SIMBOLIC MEANING)

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-227
Author(s):  
Nor Hasan ◽  
Edi Susanto
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Time Sequence ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Younger Generation

This article attempted to trace the existence of Dhâmmong tradition in the following scopes, namely: (1) Madurese perception against Dhâmmong , (2) the function and symbolic meaning of Dhâmmong in human life, and (3) the efforts of the Madurese community to preserve the Dhâmmong tradition. Through a descriptive phenomenological analysis, this study revealed that Dhâmmong is a hereditary tradition carried out by the Madurese community, it is urged by the community’s anxiety caused by the long dry season (némor lanjheng). Dhâmmong functionsas a means for salametan, paying respect for the ancestors, strengthening human relations (silaturrahim ), Bhek Rembhek, and nguri berkah (the fertility of the earth). The offerings and mouth-music by imitating the sounds of animals represent a strong desire and wishof the community for the immediate rainfall that could pour out blessings for the community. Hence, the community’s efforts to preserve Dhâmmong are: (1) introducing and involving the younger generation in the ritual, and (2) setting and changing the time sequence of Dhâmmong implementation from night to daytime.

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.

LIX. The Address of the Soul to the Body

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 957-983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolph Willard
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
The Body ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Conspicuous Feature ◽  
University Library ◽  
Intermediate Time ◽  
The Moment

There exist in Old English a number of compilations in which an address of the soul to its body is a conspicuous feature. The best known is the poem in the Vercelli and the Exeter Books, in which the soul returns to its body once a week and communes with it, the sinful soul reproaching it vituperatively, the righteous comforting it lovingly and joyously. The fourth Vercelli homily has a remarkable scene, an elaborated account of the judgement of the soul at Doomsday, in which the souls address their bodies as they stand in the presence of the Judge. The Last Judgement is again the scene of an address, and that in one of the homilies presented by Assmann. There is, finally, the Old English vision, printed by Thorpe and Napier, of the bringing forth of the soul, wherein the newly-released soul of a sinner vituperates the body it has just left. To this literature, I wish to add passages from two unpublished Old English homilies, in which the address is made, not at the moment of death, as in Thorpe and Napier, nor at the Last Judgement, as in Vercelli Homily iv and in Assmann, but at some intermediate time, when the soul returns intermittently to its body for that purpose, as in the Old English poem. These two texts are Homilies ii and iv of MS. Junius 85 of the Bodleian Library, and Homily xl of MS. Ii. 1.33 of the Cambridge University Library.

Patterns in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature. A. C. Bouman

Speculum ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-499
Author(s):  
Robert Kellogg
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Old Icelandic

Hebrews, Israelites, and Wicked Jews: An Onomastic Crux in ‘Andreas’ 161-67

Traditio ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 358-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas D. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poem

In the Old English poem Andreas, the narrative begins with the imprisonment and suffering of Matthew, who is blinded and forced to drink a magic potion which is intended to reduce him to bestiality. This drink, which literarily is directly descended from Circe's potion, fails to be effective in this case, and Matthew prays to God for help in his affliction. God responds directly and tells Matthew that He will bring help. God's help is mediated by the apostle Andrew, and immediately before God summons Andrew He is apostrophized in the following passage: þa w æs gemyndig, se Ðe middangeardgestaÐelode strangum mihtum.hu he in ellþeodigum yrmÐum wunodebelocen leoÐubendum, þe oft his lufan adregfor Ebreum ond Israhelum,swylce he Iudea galdorcræftumwiÐstod stranglice.1

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