Vernacular Traditions: Exploring Anglo-Saxon Mentalities

Abstract

Abstract Two recent books on Anglo-Saxon ideas about psychology have variants of the word “tradition” in their titles and develop theoretical paradigms around that term: Leslie Lockett’s Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (2011) and Britt Mize’s Traditional Subjectivities: The Old English Poetics of Mentality (2013), both from the University of Toronto Press.1 While not primarily about the nature of traditions,2 both books rely on that term to frame their discussions of the psychology of the self and of how subjectivity manifests within different fields of Anglo-Saxon culture. In the earlier of the two books, Lockett offers a comprehensive account of Anglo-Saxon philosophical and theological concerns with the relationship among body, mind, and soul. In doing so she elaborates a distinction between two psychological models (and their variations) that were influential and productive in the Anglo-Saxon period. Mize’s project is narrower and deeper: he argues that the definition of the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition itself should include a thematic and formulaic preoccupation with mentality. To read these books side-by-side is to see two authors’ projects weaving in and out of one another’s areas of interest and, in doing so, illustrating how fruitful psychology and mentality in Anglo-Saxon England can be as research topics. At the same time, they remind us how difficult it is to perceive pre-Christian “traditional” attitudes—whether about poetic conventions or psychological ideas—in the relatively late manuscript evidence we have.