9 - Conclusion: community and power in later poetic and other texts

Summary

The preceding chapters have illustrated the breadth of interest in ideas of community in poetic texts being read in late Anglo-Saxon England. We have seen that Old English poems tell of striving for community and of absence of community. They demonstrate a preoccupation with questions of social harmony and of order and rule, under which shared lives can be carried on. This preoccupation is expressed most insistently through exploitation of the complex of imagery associated with the hall and with the burhlcivitas. Old English poems also make use of place and setting in their treatment of community, integrating these with the hall-burhlcivitas imagery. We have observed differing approaches to place and setting in the poetry, as we have to the imagery of the hall, but seldom are place and setting neutral in significance. Even in a poem as eremitical in spirit as Guthlac A, the location of the action is defined with respect to ideas of human community and use.

Perversion of community is an especial concern in Christian narrative poems, both biblical and hagiographical. It is a concern which often finds its focus in the presentation of a particular place. In Andreas and Juliana the perverted communities of Mermedonia and Commedia, respectively, are transformed through conversion to Christianity. Christian narrative poems deal also with the theme of the good community under threat, as that of Bethulia in Judith.