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Cynewulf's devaluation of heroic tradition in Juliana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Claude Schneider
Claude Schneider
Affiliation:
Portland, Oregon
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Extract

A not infrequent observation in criticism about Old English Christian poems holds that a body of diction which was inherited from a Germanic, military and heroic past forced the poets to describe Christian characters inappropriately in terms belonging to the ideals of a warrior society. In my opinion, this is a simplistic assumption which needs to be challenged, particularly in relation to Cynewulf's Juliana, where, I believe, it has been positively misleading. For instance, in her edition of this poem Rosemary Woolf states that its traditional diction might be explained either as Cynewulf's calculated glorification of Christian story or as his mere deference to convention:

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 7 , December 1978 , pp. 107 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 107 note 1 One example concerning the lack of choice and one concerning the unsatisfactory result will be enough: ‘There are not an infinite number of ways to express an idea in correct verses; there are only the traditional ways. While the poet can rely on the traditional diction to help him out of tight places in composing, he is also caught in the net of tradition, so to speak – he cannot compose in any other way. This applies not only to his actual choice of words, but to the themes and narrative techniques of his work’ (Diamond, Robert E., ‘Heroic Diction in The Dream of the Rood’, Studies in honor of John Wilcox, ed. Wallace, A. Dayle and Ross, Woodburn O. (Detroit, 1958), p. 5)Google Scholar. ‘The view that the heroic convention was never satisfactorily adapted to Christian themes has become a commonplace in the critical theory of Old English poetry. It is, moreover, a just opinion, for, even when allowance has been made for a different and more receptive response from a ninth-century audience than from one of the present day, it must be admitted that the presentation of subject-matter from conflicting standpoints cannot at any date be entirely convincing. The heroic formulae were, however, usually merely decorative, for any more integral use of the old style would have resulted in a deep-rooted incongruity; but nevertheless, even this superficial usage is unsatisfactory: the apostles, for instance, even though they are the apostles of Apocryphal tradition, rather than of the New Testament, are ill at ease in their disguise of Germanic retainers, Cristes $$$egnas’ (Woolf, Rosemary, ‘The Devil in Old English Poetry’, repr. Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry, ed. Bessinger, Jess B. Jr, and Kahrl, Stanley J. (Hamden, Conn., 1968), p. 164).Google Scholar

page 108 note 1 Juliana, ed. Woolf, Rosemary (London, 1955), pp. 18–19Google Scholar. All my quotations from Juliana are from this edition.

page 108 note 2 ‘The connotation of a name … is the set of properties that anything must have if the name is to apply to it; the properties implied by the name. The denotation of a name is just the thing the name applies to; the things which have these properties which entitle them to be called by the name’ (Richards, I. A., Interpretations in Teaching (London, 1937), pp. 372–3).Google Scholar

page 108 note 3 ‘Whether … a word is being used literally or metaphorically is not always, or indeed as a rule, an easy matter to settle. We may provisionally settle it by deciding whether, in the given instance, the word gives us two ideas or one; whether… it presents both a tenor and a vehicle which cooperate in an inclusive meaning. If we cannot distinguish tenor from vehicle then we may provisionally take the word to be literal; if we can distinguish at least two co-operating uses, then we have metaphor’ (Richards, I. A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric (London, 1950), p. 119).Google Scholar

page 108 note 4 ‘From that man was born countless peoples, which men, all earthdwellers, now call Hebrew’ (Genesis 1646b–8). All citations to poems other than Juliana are taken from The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E. V. K. (New York, 1931–1953).Google Scholar

page 109 note 1 Cf. Bosworth, J. and Toller, T. N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898), p. 1220.Google Scholar

page 109 note 2 ‘“I have not seen foreigners, so many men more courageous. I expect that you have sought Hrothgar out of greatness of spirit, not on account of exile, but from greatness of heart”’(336b–9).

page 110 note 1 Other examples include 51–7 and 134–9.

page 110 note 2 ‘“Never will you bring it about by your threats, or prepare so many cruel punishments, that I would love your fellowship, unless you abandon those deceivers, sacrifices, and wisely recognize the God of glory, the creator of spirits, the Lord of mankind, in whose power all created things are forever without end”’ (176–83).

‘“I am not afraid of your decrees, damned persecutor, or of the evil of your torments. I have for my hope the guardian of heaven, the merciful protector, the ruler of strength who shields me against your superstition, from the clutches of the fierce ones whom you consider gods”’ (210–15).

page 111 note 1 ‘“You shall confess more evil deeds, base spirit of hell, before you can get away, what great wicked deeds you have perpetrated by dark errors wronging the progeny of men.” The devil answered her, “I understand now from your statement that, impelled by afflictions, I must reveal my mind, as you order me, endure misery”’ (456–64a).

page 111 note 2 E.g. Eleusius speaks ‘frecne mode’ (67b and 184b) and her father's disposition is ‘frecne 7 ferðgrim’ (141a).

page 112 note 1 ‘“Therefore, dear people, I want to teach, fulfilling the law, that you make fast your house, lest the winds with their sudden blasts overthrow it; the strong wall the more firmly withstands the showers of storms, the thoughts of sins. With love of peace, with clear belief, with true faith, establish your foundation with strong hearts upon the living stone, and keep peace in your heart, and holy counsels through desire of the mind. Then the almighty Father will grant you mercy where you have benefit from the God of powers, greatest need after troubles. In truth, you yourselves do not know your going hence, the end of life. It seems prudent to me that you should keep guard wakefully against the hostile violence of enemies, lest fighting against you, they hinder the way to the city of glory ”’ (647–65).

page 112 note 2 ‘he killed Christians, cast down churches, heathen soldier, poured on to the plain the blood of praisers of God, of saints, of doers of righteousness’ (5–83).

page 113 note 1 ‘If I come upon any brave and bold warrior of the lord with my storm of arrows and he will not turn away from battle, but wise in mind lifts up his board, his holy shield, his spiritual armour in opposition, and will not desert God, but, bold in prayer, takes a stand, firm in the ranks, I have to flee far from there, wretched, bereft of joys, into the clutch of burning coals, lament my miseries, that I could not by art of strength overcome in battle; but I, sad, must seek out another, a man less courageous in the phalanx, a less active warrior, whom I may incite with my yeast, hinder in war. Although spiritually he may set about some good, I am immediately ready, so that I see all his inward thought completely, how his heart is fixed within, his defence wrought; through iniquity I open the gate of the wall; the tower is pierced, the entrance opened, when I first send bitter thoughts into the mind in his breast by means of a flight of arrows, by means of various desires of the heart, so that it seems better to him to accomplish sins contrary to the worship of God, pleasures of the body’ (382–409a).

page 114 note 1 ‘“Nor can he bring me to his home in any other way. He must seek out with his wealth conjugal love from another woman; he will not have any here”’ (113b–16).

page 115 note 1 ‘The fear of God was greater in her thoughts than all the treasure which resided in the noble's possessions’ (35b–7).

page 116 note 1 ‘Nor might those thanes in that dark abode, the band of retainers in the deep pit, look for allotted treasures at the hands of their chief, that they would receive rings in the wine-hall across the beer-bench, round gold’ (6–838a).

page 116 note 2 ‘Then the hope of the saint was renewed, and the virgin's heart greatly cheered, when she heard men declare their malicious counsel, that her final day of trouble had come, her life been freed’ (607–12a).

page 116 note 3 Greene, Thomas, The Descent from Heaven (New Haven, 1963), p. 14.Google Scholar

page 117 note 1 P. 114.

page 117 note 2 At 290b the word is used of the soldier who pierced Christ on the cross with his spear and at 17a, its only other occurrence in the poem, it may not be devoid of an implied connection with the conception which persecutors of Christians had of their victims.

page 117 note 3 E.g., ‘frame, fyrdhwate’ (12a).

page 117 note 4 For a discussion of Cynewulf's portrayal of Christ in the Ascension as a Germanic leader, see Clemoes, Peter, ‘Cynewulf's Image of the Ascension’, England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter, Clemoes and Kathleen, Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 293–304Google Scholar, esp. 294–6.

page 118 note 1 E.g. ‘… heroic epic based on Christian story-materials … is an apt enough definition of the term “Christian epic”’ (George K. Anderson, The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons (New York, 1962), p. 111).Google Scholar

page 118 note 2 No less a scholar than the late Kemp Malone commented on Juliana in this fashion: ‘He [Cynewulf] followed his source in the main, but left out certain objectionable features of the lady's conduct, and used phraseology drawn from English heroic tradition’ (‘The Old English Period’, Malone, Kemp and Baugh, Albert C., A Literary History of England I: the Middle Ages (London, 1948), p. 73).Google Scholar

page 118 note 3 My thanks to Professor Clemoes for helpful criticism of an earlier draft of this article.