A "Secret and Feverish Genesis": The Prefaces of the Old English Hexateuch

Abstract

The open folios of a medieval manuscript, like parts of the human body, phenomenologically generate meaning. The first opening of the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, a translation of the first six books of the Old Testament produced in eleventh-century England, contains two prefaces: an illustration of the Fall of the Rebel Angels and AElfric of Eynsham’s Preface to Genesis. Previously read by scholars as separate discourses, these two structures together introduce the translated text that follows, situating the reader/viewer between a series of dichotomies: proper and improper interpretation, good and evil, incorporation or exclusion from the Christian community.