Exeter Book Research Articles

Objects That Object, Subjects That Subvert: Agency in Exeter Book Riddle 5

A sequence of Old English riddles from the Exeter Book allow an implement to speak. This article focuses on one example, Riddle 5, generally solved as either a shield or a cutting board, to show how each interpretation gives voice not just to an inanimate object but also to a non-elite member of early medieval English society—either a foot-soldier or a kitchen hand. The two solutions come together because the two answers are captured in a single Old English word—“bord”—and also because the two interpretations resonate in parallel ways, creating sympathy for down-trodden members of society who rarely get so much attention in the surviving poetic record. This article argues that Old English riddles provide an enduring legacy of social critique crafted through humor.

MANUSCRIPTS OF ANGLO-SAXON PROSE AND POETRY

There are actually four manuscripts in which Old English or Anglo-Saxon poetry is preserved. The vast majority of all extant Old English poetry is contained in these four books. Though damaged partially, they are safe today at various places. These manuscripts are mainly known as The Exeter Book, Junius Manuscript, Nowell Codex and Vercelli Book. These books are unique in their own way. These manuscripts are the only sources by which we would know something of Old English poetry or prose today. In this paper, I would try to give brief explanation of how significant these manuscripts are in connection with Old English literature. The Old English Period or the AngloSaxon Period begins from the fifth century till 1066 i.e. from the arrival of Jutes, Angles and Saxons into England around 450 AD until the Norman Conquest in 1066. During this period, lot of literature was written anonymously; most of the poems were not titled; lot many works were burnt; some works were also lost due to invasions; everything had to be written manually due to lack of printing press; until first printing press was introduced in England by William Caxton in 1476, there was hardly any guaranty for the survival of any work; so survival of any text should be treated as a ‘luck’. Despite all these problems, there are some important works which could survive and are preserved in four manuscripts, which I will discuss in this paper.

An Old English Poetics of Comfort

Despite the robust tradition of consolatio in medieval writing, historians of the senses have argued that the idea of physical comfort developed from post-medieval commodity cultures. This article considers the ways in which the reading scripted or supported by Old English poems might have enabled feelings of physical comfort and its related somatic conditions: health, ease, and balance. I first discuss Classical and monastic ideas about reading as a form of exercise that facilitates homeostasis before exploring how the Exeter Book Riddles and other cryptic poems encourage readerly exertion. I'm especially intrigued by the possibility of thinking about hermeneutically difficult works as prompts for heat-generating somatic regimens.

Dream, Bliss, and the Shaping of Emotional Meaning in Beowulf

<i>Dream</i>, <i>Bliss</i>, and the Shaping of Emotional Meaning in <i>Beowulf</i>

Weather and the Creation of the Human in the Exeter Book Riddles,

Weather and the Creation of the Human in the Exeter Book Riddles,

Birds of Creation in the Old English Exeter Book

Birds of Creation in the Old English Exeter Book

Exeter Book Riddle 48, Line 7b

Abstract The emendation of the manuscript reading beþuncan to beþencan in line 7b of the Exeter Book’s Riddle 48 has been widely accepted. The Old English Dialogues, however, provide evidence that a strong passive participle beþuncen had been introduced into the paradigm of the weak verb beþencan (to entrust) in the Mercian dialect, admitting the possibility that beþuncan is a genuine preterite plural form. The passive participle brungen, attested in Mercian, is a possible analogical basis for the development of beþuncen in the same dialect, from which other strong forms may subsequently have arisen. The meter and the motives for scribal alteration in Riddle 48 make it probable that beþuncan is original and that it is rather ongietan in line 6a that should be emended.

Exeter Book Riddles 48 and 59 and the Malmesbury Ciborium

Most commentators on Riddles 48 and 59 in the tenth-century Exeter Book relate them to church plate, the solution supposedly being a gold paten or chalice or pyx. Yet these answers are not compelling. Problems remain. Recent discussion of the Malmesbury Ciborium and other twelfth-century ciboria in London or New York now permits a fresh approach. The solution to both Old English riddles will be ciborium, a vessel of precious metal used to contain consecrated wafers or hosts at the eucharist. The Malmesbury Ciborium and similar pieces make this clear. Round and made of gold, they had a shorter and squatter outline than a chalice; they possessed lids, inscriptions, and representations of Bible scenes (the Crucifixion amongst them); they were yet larger than a pyx (used not in services but to carry a few wafers only, as on visits to the sick). These aspects parallel those of the object in the two riddles: a ring-like item of gold which is gazed upon and revered by people in a hall, which makes no noise and yet conveys a message of salvation, and which (in the second riddle) displays Christ’s wounds. If this analysis is sound, it deepens understanding of early English poetry. It also informs us on Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths, who produced magnificent works of art (as the literary sources prove) now lost, the gold having long been melted down for the purpose of exchange or as loot. Study of the two poems indicates as well how philologists and experts on material culture can work together, especially for the Exeter Book’s other riddles.

II Old English

AbstractThis chapter has eleven sections: 1. Bibliography; 2. Manuscript Studies, Palaeography, and Facsimiles; 3. Cultural and Intellectual Contexts; 4. Literature: General; 5. The Poems of the Exeter Book; 6. The Poems of the Vercelli Book; 7. The Poems of the Junius Manuscript; 8. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript; 9. Other Poems; 10. Prose; 11. Reception. Sections 1, 9, and 11 are by Eleni Ponirakis; section 2 is by Rachel Burns and Colleen Curran; sections 3, 4, and 10 are by Margaret Tedford; section 5 is by Niamh Kehoe; section 6 is by Rafael J. Pascual; section 7 is by Emma Knowles; section 8 is by Rachel Burns and Kaifan Yang.

Making God's Word: Manuscript Production, Nature, and the Bible in The Secret of Kells and Exeter Book Riddle 26

Making God's Word: Manuscript Production, Nature, and the Bible in The Secret of Kells and Exeter Book Riddle 26

Old English Power Structure in the Warlike Nature in Riddles no. 3, no, 29, no. 50 from the Exeter Book

Abstract: This study focuses on Old English nature-themed riddle texts from the Exeter Book, analyzing the natural imageries that are significant in investigating how the literary content of Old English riddles, as accepted forms of poetry, reveals the Anglo-Saxon culture of their original authors. I focus on the power structure in Anglo-Saxon society revealed in the riddles, by analyzing the topic of warlike nature in them, focusing on the riddles no. 3, “Storm”, no. 29 “Sun and Moon,” and no. 50, “Fire.” Natural experience described in these riddles is rendered by the Anglo-Saxons to reflect power hierarchy between male and female, servant and master, and human with God. The Anglo-Saxon riddles identify and assign the potent warlike attributes and actions of nature, and assign them to the more powerful factions (God, Master, Male) over the weaker factions (Humans, Servants, Female). This is done by the authors as an acceptable cultural interpretation of these natural phenomena, put in the riddles to make it possible for the riddles’ intended Anglo-Saxon audience as clues to arrive at a culturally agreeable answer.&#x0D; Keywords: old English, old English riddles, natural imagery, old English poetry, war imagery&#x0D; Abstrak: Studi ini berfokus pada teks teka-teki (Riddles) Inggris Kuno (Old English) bertema alam dari the Exeter Book, dengan menganalisa imaji alam yang signifikan, untuk mengetahui bagaimana teka-teki Inggris Kuno, sebagai salah satu karya sastra berbentuk puisi, mengungkapkan budaya Anglo-Saxon dari penulis aslinya. Saya berfokus pada struktur kekuasaan (power structure) dalam masyarakat Anglo-Saxon yang terungkap dalam teks teka-teki, dengan menganalisis topik sifat suka perang di pada teka-teki no. 3, "Badai", no. 29 “Matahari dan Bulan,” dan no. 50, "Api." Pengalaman hidup mengenai alam digambarkan dalam teka-teki ini oleh para penulis Anglo-Saxon dengan mencerminkan hierarki kekuasaan antara laki-laki dan perempuan, hamba dan tuan, dan manusia dengan Tuhan. Teka-teki Anglo-Saxon mengidentifikasi dan menetapkan atribut dan tindakan alam yang suka berperang (warlike) kepada faksi yang lebih kuat (Dewa, Tuan, Laki-Laki) di atas faksi yang lebih lemah (Manusia, Pelayan, Wanita). Hal ini dilakukan oleh para penulis sebagai interpretasi budaya atas fenomena alam yang mereka lihat, dan dimasukkan ke dalam teka-teki untuk memungkinkan pembaca Anglo-Saxon sebagai petunjuk untuk sampai pada jawaban yang dapat diterima secara budaya.&#x0D; Kata kunci: old English, Inggris kuno, teka-teki Inggris kuno, imaji alam, puisi Inggris kuno, imaji perang

Exeter Book Riddle 6, Lines 7–8

Abstract One of the very few ‘rules’ that operate (almost) without exceptions in Old English prose and poetry is that in se-relatives, se is preceded by the preposition that governs it. In the entire Old English corpus, Mitchell (1985: §2244) finds only one counterexample in the Exeter Book Riddle 6, lines 7–8. In this relative clause, the preposition on governing the demonstrative þa that functions as both antecedent and relative is postposed. The present article suggests grouping the preposition on (7b) with the adverb feorran ‘far’ (8a) that immediately follows it and analysing the main verb of the relative clause as transitive. As a result, the relative clause follows the ‘rule’: the preposition on is no longer postposed, and the pronoun þa, which functions as a direct object in the principal and relative clauses, is assigned accusative by the main verbs of both clauses.

God's Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry by John D. Niles

Reviewed by: God's Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry by John D. Niles Greg Waite Niles, John D., God's Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2019; cloth; pp. xv, 288; R.R.P. £75.00; ISBN 9781905816095. John Niles contextualizes the 'Exeter Anthology' (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3501) in the English Benedictine reform, and reads it as a collection of poems chosen purposefully to celebrate and teach 'God's exiles', the monks and nuns whose lives of heroic self-denial and prayer anticipate their journey to a heavenly home. He argues that the poems are the work of 'craft-poets', or monastic writers schooled in theology, liturgy, and rhetoric both in Latin and in English. Niles proceeds along varied lines of literary analysis framed within a model of 'monastic poetics' (a term employed by Brian O'Camb in his 2009 University of Wisconsin– Madison doctoral thesis and his subsequent studies of Exeter poems, read in the light of the monastic reform). As Niles puts it, 'monastic poetics is […] a hybrid poetics, based on Latinate and Germanic models yet striving to achieve expansive new forms of expression in the medium of Old English alliterative verse' (p. 5). Part 1 of the book sets out the background of the Exeter Anthology in relation to later tenth-century reformed monastic culture. While the manuscript cannot be traced to a specific centre, Niles argues that it is the product of a literary culture in the south-west of England emanating from Glastonbury Abbey. Part 2 explores individual poems and how they relate to one another. Chapter 4, 'An Overview of the Book's Contents', surveys the poems in manuscript order. Niles argues for various principles of ordering, but the main one is hierarchical: the weightier items are placed first, establishing the encyclopedic scope of the work, encompassing the whole of creation. Within this structure, nevertheless, the volume's 'intratextuality' is enhanced by the separation of poems that might be considered closely related, such as Widsith and Deor. An outstanding part of this chapter is the exploration of ethopoeia and prosopopoeia under the headings 'The Voice of the Sage: A Father's Precepts and Related Poems' and 'Voices from the Germanic Past: Widsith and Related Poems'. Together with other methods of relating poems to one another, such as the exploration of 'keywords' in Chapter 8 (the words focused upon are sīþ 'journey', ellen 'courage', bōt 'redress' or 'recompense', and hām 'home'), or Chapter 9's 'Intratextual Hermeneutics', this book offers fresh and challenging insights into the poems of the Exeter Anthology that vindicate Nile's critical approach, even if questions remain about the thesis of origin. Niles often illustrates his readings with reference to key texts of the Benedictine reform, the Rule of Benedict itself, and the Regularis Concordia (see p. 101, for example, on the preparation of a body for burial). Yet many of the same points might be made with reference to passages from other texts such as Bede's Historia. That is to say, they involve widely accepted tenets and practices of English monasticism over a long period (whether strictly Benedictine or not). Niles claims that the Exeter Anthology poets can all 'reasonably be taken to have been active during the period c.880–970' (p. 23). 'c.970' is the terminus supplied [End Page 250] by the palaeographical dating of the Exeter manuscript. Presumably 'c.880' marks the beginning of Alfred's program of intellectual revival. In the light of Sisam's 1934 observations (in a review of the Exeter Book facsimile, reprinted in Studies in the History of Old English Literature, Oxford, 1953) that the Exeter Book is a fair copy of a pre-existing collection, and that its spellings signal a probable early West Saxon copying of the poems subsequent to their compilation, should not consideration be given to an Alfredian or earlier tenth-century context of production? Megginson's work (for example, his 1995 essay 'The Case against a "General Old English Poetic Dialect"') suggests that Sisam's views on this matter are not outmoded. Niles interestingly...

Seeing Red: Visuality, Violence, and the Making of Textiles in Early Medieval Enigmatic Poetry

This essay explores a group of thematically related, enigmatic poems in Old English, Anglo-Latin and Old Norse that play with gender through their representations of violent textile production. The tenth-century Exeter Book’s Riddle 56, eighth-century archbishop Tatwine’s Enigmata 11 and 13, and the traditional eddic-style poem Darraðarljóð merge the highly gendered activities of textile production and warfare, questioning binaries and naturalized categories in the process. This process ends with the containment of gender play during the act of solving and interpreting the enigmatic, which restores the status quo. In analysing the space that enigmatic poetry provides for subversive gender play, this essay argues that both types of gendered labour feed into a culture of spectacle, making witnessing and sight essential to the way the texts navigate both domains. Exploring the visibility of both textile production and violence in early medieval England, it further emphasizes that the latter encompasses not only warfare, but also criminality and martyrdom, disability, and sexualized violence. Ultimately, the visceral and highly visual nature of the poetic representations reflects a cultural familiarity with both textile-making and violence that readers with temporal distance risk overlooking.

Eleventh-Century Drag Acts? Three Old English Poems at Exeter Cathedral

ABSTRACT The Exeter Book was made towards the end of the tenth century; by the mid-eleventh century at the latest it was at Exeter Cathedral, where bishop Leofric had installed a community of canons living under the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang. This article seeks to recreate the reception amongst Exeter’s mid-eleventh-century canons of three Exeter Book poems: The Wife’s Lament, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Husband’s Message. I advance evidence suggesting that The Wife’s Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer were performed by Exeter canons and adduce contemporary drag as a parallel to these putative renditions of the poems. My approach affords fresh perspectives on the ambivalent gendering of the texts’ voices and the identifications that they might foster between the canons and women beyond the cathedral close. The presentation of The Husband’s Message in the Exeter Book suggests that it was destined for private reading. In this mode, I argue, the poem invites its male readers at Exeter Cathedral to perform a mental impersonation of gender by assuming the position of its second person woman addressee. Finally, I show that the three poems support a breadth of thinking about gender that might be matched at other locations in early medieval England.

Asceticism in Old English and Syriac Soul and Body Narratives

A great deal of scholarship on Old English soul-body poetry centers on whether or not the presence of dualist elements in the poems are unorthodox in their implication that the body, as a material object, is not only wicked but seems to possess more agency in the world than the soul. I argue that the Old English soul-body poetry is not heterodox or dualist, but is best understood, as Allen J. Frantzen suggests, within the “context of penitential practice.” The seemingly unorthodox elements are resolved when read against the backdrop of pre-Conquest English monastic reform culture, which was very much concerned with penance, asceticism, death, and judgment. Focusing especially on two anonymous 10th-century Old English poems, Soul and Body I in the Vercelli Book and Soul and Body II in the Exeter Book, I argue that that both body and soul bear equal responsibility in achieving salvation and that the work of salvation must be performed before death, a position that was reinforced in early English monastic literature that was inspired, at least in part, by Eastern ascetics such as fourth-century Syrian hymnologist and theologian, St. Ephraim.

God’s Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry. John D. Niles. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+288.

<i>God’s Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry</i>. John D. Niles. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+288.

II Old English

Abstract This chapter has eleven sections: 1. Bibliography; 2. Manuscript Studies, Palaeography, and Facsimiles; 3. Cultural and Intellectual Contexts; 4. Literature: General; 5. The Poems of the Exeter Book; 6. The Poems of the Vercelli Book; 7. The Poems of the Junius Manuscript; 8. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript; 9. Other Poems; 10. Prose; 11. Reception. Sections 1, 9, and 11 are by Eleni Ponirakis; section 2 is by Rachel Burns and Colleen Curran, with contributions by Eleni Ponirakis; sections 3, 4, and 10 are by Margaret Tedford, with contributions from Eleni Ponirakis in section 3; section 5 is by Niamh Kehoe; section 6 is by Rebecca Hardie; section 7 is by Emma Knowles; section 8 is by Kaifan Yang.

How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems. Daniel Donoghue. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. 238.

<i>How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems</i>. Daniel Donoghue. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. 238.

Becoming an Onion: The Extra-Human Nature of Genital Difference in the Old English Riddling and Medical Traditions

ABSTRACTThis essay addresses the means by which the male genital organs register—that is, effectively become present, meaningful, and functional (or dysfunctional)—in early medieval culture by examining sexual riddles from the Exeter Book and aphrodisiac remedies from the Medicina de Quadrupedibus. Both function within a very particular material-discursive network governing the understanding and experience of genitals during this period. Reading these texts together suggests that gender is at this time not understood as a system existing in relation to biological sex, in which genitals are understood as relatively inert signifiers of a physical difference that is coterminous with the human body itself. In fact, both the riddles and aphrodisiac remedies suggest that the penis becomes most completely itself—or becomes restored most completely to itself and capable of fremmanne or donne, performing or doing its sexual, reproductive function—only when in an assemblage with animal and sometimes plant matter. The male sexual organ is thus far from being a discretely bounded entity lending ontological weight to sexual difference, but is in fact an entity which comes into being only in a form distributed across the human and non-human spectrum.