T H E E X E T E R B O O K M A X I M S I B: A N A N G L O - S A X O N W O M A N ’ S V I E W O F M A R R I A G E MURRAY MCGILLIVRAY University of Calgary C ritic a l reading of Old English poetry presents peculiar difficulties, due in large part to the distance which separates our culture from the culture of the Anglo-Saxons. We know a great deal about some aspects of Anglo-Saxon civilization, and virtually nothing about others. The poetry we have must have situated itself with respect to a large variety of contexts and levels of cultural preconception, and we are ignorant of many of them. Ian Duncan has recently reminded us of the dangers inherent in the literary-critical enterprise directed at Beowulf, about whose “coordinates of tradition and convention” (1 1 1 ) we have so little certain knowledge: Arguments for any interpretation of Beowulf have therefore described discursive configurations within the poem which have then been projected outside it to map, explicitly or otherwise, such a context of tradition, genre, ethos, Weltanshauung . The trouble is that the less aware the critic that this is his procedure, the more likely is he to be not “ finding” but forming those very intratextual orders by projecting onto the poem his own historical assumptions or the contemporary ideological and generic habits of his own reading, ( i n ) The problem Duncan raises is even more acute with respect to the class of poems commonly known as “gnomic,” because these are perhaps the most foreign to us of anything in the corpus. There are two ways in which we can unconsciously and wrongly impose our own cultural expectations on this difficult poetry. Because it seems scattered and unpoetic, it is tempting to dismiss it as incoherent. But it may seem incoherent to us simply because it does not follow our rules. If we reject it, we are liable to build a picture of the corpus of Old English poetry which is false because it emphasizes what we are most equipped by our own culture to understand and dismisses the rest. On the other hand, we can impose our cultural biases by projecting onto “ gnomic poetry” our own ideas and attitudes, “botch the words up fit to [our] own thoughts” (as hearers did with Ophelia’s ravings), and see sense in them, but our own sense. English Studies in Canada, xv, 4, December 1989 The second of these dangers most threatens the present project, a demon stration that Part B of the Exeter Book Maxims I is more coherent and mean ingful poetry than has usually been thought. Ian Duncan prescribes selfawareness in the critical act, and close attention to what the text itself is doing, its intratextuality, as remedies for the situation he describes. But while caution and acknowledgement of our ignorance are sensible and maybe even sufficient adjuncts to a critical reading of most old English poetry, they are probably not sufficient for the case of Maxims I B. This difficult poem might be translated as follows, though any translation of it is bound to involve more than a little guess-work: Frost freezes, fire burns wood, earth grows; ice bridges — water wears a helm — wondrously locks up the shoots of the earth. Very-mighty God alone binds [them] in with the fetter of frost. [He] shall cast away winter, good weather come again, summer with its hot sun, unquiet water. The deep way of the dead is hidden longest. Holly is burned, the property of the dead man distributed. Honour is best. A king acquires a queen with property, with cups and rings. Both ought first to be good in their giving. Battle, war, shall grow in the man, and the wife prosper, dear among her people; be light-hearted, keep her own counsel, be generous with horses and treasures; always everywhere greet the lord of nobles first in dispensing mead before the troop of retainers — quickly reach the first cup into the lord’s hand; have counsel for him, for the householders both...