JONAH AND GENRE IN "RESIGNATION B"

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Resignation B is the title generally applied to the second half of a longer text Resignation - found in the tenth-century Exeter Book. The poem is anonymous and undated, and, indeed, was not recognized as a separate piece until fairly recently. Using codicological, lexicographical, and stylistic evidence, Alan Bliss and Allen J. Frantzen argued convincingly in 1976 that lines 70-119 of Resignation in fact constituted a separate poem, one that requires interpretation independent of the lines that precede it in the manuscript.' This essay proceeds from that assumption. Due in part to its acephalic preservation, Resignation B presents special problems of interpretation. The poem is a monologue in which the speaker laments certain difficulties and outlines his ambiguous relationship with God; this speaker is not explicitly identified in the poem. As early as Ig Ig, Levin L. Schcking expressed the belief that the latter half of Resignation could be fully understood only as the lament of a specific character from a recognized narrative.2 Although Schiicking's opinion has occasionally been cited in the years since he offered it,3 no scholar has ventured a guess as to exactly which narrative might provide the necessary background to the poem. It is my intention in this paper to offer such a narrative - the biblical story of Jonah and to support its connection with Resignation B. The first clue leading from the speaker of Resignation B to the prophet Jonah is the repeated emphasis on God's anger. In the Vulgate Ionas i.4, God's wrath manifests itself as the great tempest afflicting Jonah and the sailors; Jonah subsequently admits that the storm is directed against him: `scio enim ego quoniam propter me tempestas haec grandis venit super vos' (Ionas i.12). In Resignation B, the speaker also admits that God is (or has been) angry with him: [however, I will have courage in all this, and laugh, and trust in myself, ready myself for departure and hasten on that journey that I must travel, prepare my spirit.] The first word of the fragment, the contrastive 'hwepre', implies that the idea immediately preceding this one would have been in opposition to it. We have no way of knowing what the missing lines contained, but the grammar and logic of what remains suggest that the complete thought might have run along the lines of 'I do not want to undertake this journey, but as I am compelled, I will prepare my courage and spirit for it.' Reconstruction aside, the speaker of Resignation B is preparing himself for a journey he does not relish, but has been ordered by God to undertake; in this he resembles Jonah before his trip to Nineveh. The journey, made reluctantly or not, is a common image in Old English poetry and would not by itself support a connection with a specific background narrative. However, Resignation B also comprises several less common images and motifs, most of which find parallels in the career of Jonah. In order to fit these details into a coherent narrative, we may imagine the speaker to be Jonah after he has been released from the whale but before he has arrived at Nineveh. The Old English narrative is not linear, so some of 'Jonah's' statements will refer to events preceding or following that 'present' time. For example, the speaker claims: Lack of skill in public speaking or arbitration is not a complaint found elsewhere in the poetry,6 but it does constitute a plausible excuse for the reluctance of a man sent to preach repentance in a notorious city. We may even perceive a bit of irony here, as later in his career Jonah complains that God's decision to spare the Ninevites will make him look like a false or inept prophet.7 Certain difficult and seemingly contradictory statements made by the speaker of Resignation B focus on his relationships with other people. In the third-person passage, he explains that his prototypical exile ('anhoga' (gob), 'wrxcca' (gza)) is assisted by other people but that this kindness only increases his suffering; the speaker also notes that he endures men's reproaches or complaints: The seeming paradox of this passage has occasioned competing explications. …