Are we reading poetry yet? Old English Verse, Media, and Poetic Form

Table of Contents

Song & Poetry

Media & AuthorshipManuscripts, Copies, and the Idea of Authoritative Sources

Text & TranslationOld English Verse

Genre & FormRiddles, Gnomic, and Historical Poems

Subjectivity, Modernity, & the (Literary) Historian Elegy, the Elegiac, and the Self in Old English poetry

Song & Poetry“What we now know as poetry . . . began as song, though the tunes and the music have been lost beyond recall” (ix).

Song & Poetry

William Bascom: “Myths are prose narratives . . . ” (9).

Does a myth have to be prose?

Does a myth have to be narrative?

Genre: Drama, Prose and Verse

Mode: Didactic, Narrative and Lyric

Form: Meter, Rhyme, Alliteration, Structure

Song & Poetry“What we now know as poetry . . . began as song, though the tunes and the music have been lost beyond recall” (ix).“Lyric”

Poetry sung to the lyreA modern conception (Virginia Jackson)

Anglo-Saxon Warrior-PoetBraveheart

Apostrophe (Jonathan Culler)First-person speaker (“I”)

Fictional or absent addressee (“you”)

Lyric “thou” and the “overheard” (John Stuart Mill)

Song & Poetry“. . . the tunes and the music have been lost beyond recall” (ix).

What separates a poem from a song?

How are these Old English poems different from Beowulf?

Can myth be sung? Can it be sung without story? Can it be hummed?

“Lyric” vs “Narrative”What is the difference between a song and a story?

Ballads: Story-Songs“Rocky Raccoon”

“Candle in the Wind”

Media & AuthorshipFrom Gilgamesh to Beowulf: Tablets, Manuscript[s], and Author[s]

Media as Method

What do cuneiform tablets and YouTube have in common?

History of the Book

Cultural Bibliography vs. Descriptive Bibliography

Media Studies

Media: Old English Manuscripts

Only four major Old English poetic manuscripts:

Junius Manuscript: aka “the Caedmon manuscript”

Exeter Book: anthology

Vercelli Book: found in Vercelli, Italy

Nowell Codex: aka “the Beowulf manuscript”

Media: Old English Manuscripts

Beowulf manuscript

Damaged in fire

Editorial insertions

Authority?

Exeter Book

131 original leaves (?)

First 8 leaves are lost

10th Century

Largest extant collection of OE literature

Spills, cuts, and burns interfere with legibility of text

Authorship: Old English Poets

Only four known Old English PoetsCaedmon (mid 7th century)

Bede (c. 672-735)

Alfred the Great (849-899)

Cynewulf (c. 770-840)

Other referencesWilliam of Malmesbury: Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne

Authorship: Old English Poets

Caedmon: First Old English Poet

Bede: Historia EcclesiasticaAn illiterate shepherd

Given poetic inspiration in a dream

Christian poet who sets the stage for Bede

“Caedmon’s Hymn”: only surviving poem

Nine lines

Three versions

Nineteen manuscripts

Bede: The Smartest Man in Europe

Scriptural commentary

Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People

“Bede’s Death Song”five lines

two versions

Authorship: Old English Poets

Alfred the GreatKing of the Anglo-Saxons

King of Wessex, 871-899

Self-promoted

Warrior-poet“the Great”

Translations and Metrical Prefaces

Gregory: Pastoral Care

Promoting literacy among the English nobility

Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy

Metrical PsalmsAuthor or Patron?

CynewulfLittle known; early c9th

Vercelli ManuscriptElene

Authorial presence

Dream of the Rood?

References the same cross discussed in “Elene”

Cross suffers with Christ

Dreamer = Poet?

Old man’s lamentation

Exeter Book

Media & Authorship: The Epics of Gilgamesh and

BeowulfGilgamesh

MediaStone tablets

Cuneiform

Many copies

AuthorshipMany multiforms

Many authors

No “authoritative” version

Beowulf

MediaManuscript

Old English

Single surviving copyUh-oh . . .

AuthorshipMultiforms:

The Fight at Finnsburh

Scribal Authoring?Clear indications of different world-view between speaker and story

Media & Authorship: “Caedmon’s Hymn”

“Bede’s story . . . indicates that it was normal at an Anglo-Saxon drinking-party for a harp to be passed round so that everyone could sing” (x).

Caedmon: First Old English PoetBede: Historica Ecclesiastica

“Caedmon’s Hymn”: only surviving poemNine lines

Three versions

Nineteen manuscripts

Can we be sure about Caedmon?

Text & TranslationOld English Verse Form

Translation: Old English Verse

The Alliterative Long LineTwo half-lines

the on-verse (a-verse) and the off-verse (b-verse)

Each verse = two feeteach verse must contain at least one stressed syllable

the first foot is stronger than the second

On-verse: two strong-stressed positions (alliterating)

Off-verse: only the strong-stressed syllable of the first foot is allowed to alliterate

Text & Translation: Old English Verse

Strong-Stress Meter & Alliterative Verse

Variation [Epithet]Oral-Formulaic Theory

Caesura

Simile & Metaphor

Genre & FormThe Generic & Media Contexts of “Other Old English Poems”

Genre & Form: Heroic or Historical Poems

“The Battle of Malden”Medium: Only Manuscript destroyed in 1731

Incomplete anyway: beginning and end missing

“Deor”Form: Stanza & Refrain (p. 138)

Medium: Exeter Book

Genre: Heroic Lyric? What is the difference between story and song?

Genre & Form: Exeter Book Riddles

Medium: Exeter Book90 in Exeter

Latin and Old English originals

Form: RiddleFormal markers: “What am I?” etc

Double entendre vs. Third-person descriptive

Genre & Form: Gnomic or Wisdom Poems

Genre: Didactic & Moralistic

Rhetorical Play

Form: Turn on the slipperiness of language

Maxims: Ambiguity

Charms: Substitution

What do Maxims, Charms, and Riddles have in common?

Subjectivity, Modernity, and the Literary HistorianThe “Elegy” and English Lyric from Old to Modern

Elegiac “Form”

Elegy defined by “elegiac speaker”Know the [literary] historian: “elegy” a Victorian designation

Contemporary with invention of “lyric” and J.S. Mill

Not “formal”

Classical “elegy”: metrical form

Modern “elegy”: poem of lamentation (mode)

“Genre” can be defined byMode/Voice

Form

Medium: Exeter BookSource for all four of our “elegies”

Elegiac “Form”Old English “elegies”:

An isolated or exiled speaker who laments a loss

Longing for earlier days of joy with loved ones

Bad weather reflecting the wintry storms of mental life

Fluctuating mental states (memory, dream, hallucination)

The use of reason to try to understand life’s misfortunes

Recognition that life is . . . “transient, fleeting”

Use of occasional proverbial wisdom to generalize one’s lot

Searching for consolation, sometimes finding it in religious belief

(143)

Elegiac: “The Wanderer”

“By shifting from first-person lament to third-person description or reflection, he both generalizes his own condition and establishes some distance between the suffering man and the reflective man . . . he must use his mind to cure his mind” (145).

1st person/3rd person

Elegiac: “The Seafarer”First Half:

The Ocean

Second Half:Radical tonal shift

Ezra Pound’s translation omits

Elegiac: “The Wife’s Lament”

Is the speaker male or female?

Elegiac:“Wulf and Eadwacer”

If he comes home here to my people, it will seemA strange gift. Will they take him into the tribeAnd let him thrive or think him a threat? It’s different with us. (1-4)

Elegiac: “Wulf and Eadwacer”

Medium: Exeter BookOnly surviving copy

Not mentioned anywhere else

Title is a modern editorial convention

Genre: Notoriously difficult to classifyRiddle

Elegy

Ballad

Form: Stanza and Refrain? Not a convention of Old English

Borrowing?

Elegiac: “Wulf and Eadwacer”

If he comes home here to my people, it will seemA strange gift. Will they take him into the tribeAnd let him thrive or think him a threat? It’s different with us.

Wulf is on an island; I am on another. Fast is that island, surrounded by fens. There are bloodthirsty men on that island. If they find him, will they take him into the tribeAnd let him thrive or think him a threat? It’s different with us.

I’ve endured my Wulf’s wide wanderingsWhile I sat weeping in rainy weather–When the bold warrior wrapped me in his arms –That was a joy to me and also a loathing.

Wulf, my Wulf, my old longings, My hopes and fears, have made me ill; Your seldom coming and my worried heartHave made me sick, not lack of food. Do you hear, Eadwacer, guardian of goods?Wulf will bear our sad whelp to the wood.

It’s easy to rip an unsewn stitchOr tear the thread of an untold tale—The song of us two together.

Elegiac: “Wulf and Eadwacer”

Medium:What does the absence of a confirming text change about our understanding of textual “authority”? If Beowulf is more like The Aeneid than like Gilgamesh because of its existence as a single text, can the same be said of this poem?

How does the addition of the title inform our reading of the poem?

Genre: How does our classification of the poem change our understanding of it?

What mode of address does the poem take? Is it didactic (instructive, universalizing), narrative (explanatory, sequencing), or lyric (meditative, individualizing)?

Form:What work does the refrain do in the first two stanzas? How does it build expectation? How does its absence from the third stanza onward disrupt this?

How do the pronouns create, intensify, or clarify ambiguity in the poem? Who is “us”? Who are “they”?

Mixed Genres

Riddles with elegiac or heroic motifs

Deor: Heroic or Lyric? Charm? Elegy?

Wulf & Eadwacer

The Dream of the Rood

“Deor”Let me tell this story about myself: I was a singer and shaper for the Heodenings, Dear to my lord. My name was Deor. (34-36)

Mixed Genres: “Deor”

Medium: Exeter Book

“In the Exeter Book, [‘Deor’] follows a series of homiletic or religious poems and precedes ‘The Wife’s Lament,’ ‘Wulf and Eadwacer,’ and the first group of riddles. ‘Deor’ is a poem that bridges the homiletic and the enigmatic. Both the form of the poem and its murky historical details are much debated” (139).

What does the position of the poem in the larger text tell us about the way its author, scribe, or compiler understands it? How does it shape the way the audience understands it?

Form: Stanza & RefrainUncommon in OE historical poetry

Each stanza details a particular suffering

The refrain universalizes this to common experience

Mixed Genres: “Deor”Weland the smith made a trial of exile.

The strong-minded man suffered hardshipAll winter long—his only companionsWere cold and sorrow. He longed to escapeThe bonds of Nithhad who slit his hamstrings,Tied him down with severed sinews, Making a slave of this better man. That passed over—so can this.

To Beadohild her brother’s deathWas not so sad as her own sufferingWhen the princess saw she was pregnant.She tried not to think how it all happened. That passed over—so can this.

Many have heard of the cares of Maethhild—She and Geat shared a bottomless love.Her sad passion deprived her of sleep.That passed over—so can this.

Theodric ruled for thirty wintersThe city of the Maerings—that’s known to many.That passed over—so can this.

We all know the wolfish ways of Eormanric—That grim king ruled the land of the Goths.

Many a man sat bound in sorrow,Twisted in the turns of expected woe,Hoping a foe might free his kingdom.That passed over—so can this.

A man sits alone in the clutch of sorrow,Separated from joy, thinking to himselfThat his share of suffering is endless. The man knows that all through middle-earth, Wise God goes, handing out fortunes, Giving grace to many—power, prosperity,Wisdom, wealth—but to some a share of woe.

Let me tell this story about myself:I was singer and shaper for the Heodenings,Dear to my lord. My name was Deor.For many years I was harper in the hall, Honored by the king, until Heorrenda now, A song-skilled shaper, has taken my place, Reaping the rewards, the titled lands,That the guardian of men once gave me. That passed over—so can this.

Mixed Genres: “Deor”Form: Stanza & Refrain

Each stanza details a particular sufferingFirst stanza: Weland

Second stanza: Beadohild

Third through fifth stanzas: better-known or lesser-known?“Many have heard . . .” (14)

“—that’s known to many” (19)

“We all know . . .” (21)

How does the succession of stanzas build the reader’s understanding of sorrow’s particularity?

Penultimate stanza: universal, “A man” (27)Absent refrain – can you universalize the universal?

Final stanza: Deor

Poet-as-speaker: Hero? “Deor”: “brave, bold” or “grievous, ferocious” (140)

How does the movement between particular and universal problematize our understanding of both categories?

Mixed Genres & Subjectivity: “The Dream of the Rood”

Medium: Vercelli Bookfound in Italy

One of the earliest Old English Christian poems

Author: Cynewulf (?)

Form: Alliterative Verse

Genre: Christological Dream-VisionCross suffers with Christ

Paradox: must stay strong to fulfill the will of God, but will of God is to become instrument of Christ’s death

Dream-Vision: Kubla-Khan?

The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek (2009)