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Anonymous polyphony and The Wanderer's textuality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Carol Braun Pasternack
Carol Braun Pasternack
Affiliation:
The University of California at Santa Barbar
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Extract

Old English manuscript poetry, including the text that we now call The Wanderer, remains close to its oral roots in its reliance on audible structures and traditional expressions, in its fluid relationship to other compositions and in its anonymity. It is not oral, however, and its existence in a manuscript is more than a physical fact. This change in medium has begun to affect the poetry's semiotics. Having lost the social context of oral performance, the poet attempts to provide a viewpoint in other ways. But this manuscript presentation does not share all the workings of a modern printed composition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 20 , December 1991 , pp. 99 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 O'Keeffe, K. O'Brien, in Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse, CSASE 4 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar, appropriately breaks down the opposition often hypothesized between the oral and the literate: ‘The conditions “orality” and “literacy” are the end points on a continuum through which the technology of writing affects and modifies human perception. The immediate consequence of such a definition is that it admits the possibility that residual orality might be encoded in early manuscripts’ (p. 13). She examines the differing ‘graphic conventions’ in Anglo-Saxon vernacular and Latin manuscripts to show that ‘early readers of Old English verse read by applying oral techniques for the reception of a message to the decoding of a written text’ (p. 21).

2 See Frantzen, A. J., Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990)Google Scholar, for discussion of the relationship between the concept of authorial intentionality and modern practices in textual editing.

3 That these poems are never printed with prose found in the same manuscript reflects our modern classification of poetry as fine arts, distinct from the practical art of expository prose.

4 See Opland's, J. discussion of the controversy about memorized versus improvised performances, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry (New Haven, CT, and London, 1980), pp. 75–9.Google Scholar

5 O'Keeffe also argues that scribes contribute to a text's creation. Examining poems that appear in multiple manuscripts, she asserts ‘that in the cases where variants are metrically, semantically and syntactically appropriate, the scribe has “read formulaically” and has become a participant in and a determiner of the text’ (Visible Song, p. 191), much as an oral performer would compose formulaically and create a new version of a poem. See also Dagenais, J., ‘That Bothersome Residue: toward a Theory of the Physical Text’, in Vox intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. Doane, A. N. and Pasternack, C. B. (Madison, WI, and London, forthcoming), pp. 246–59Google Scholar. In discussing manuscripts he argues, ‘One way of getting a grip on the physical text is, paradoxically, by viewing the manuscript text as a variety of oral performance. Curiously, that most ephemeral of literary events, an oral performance, comes closest to imitating that solidly physical text we seek: in its uniqueness, in the impossibility of its iteration, in its vulnerability to accidents of time and environment’ (p. 255). Cf. Machan, T. W., ‘Editing, Orality, and Late Middle English Texts’, in the same volume.Google Scholar

6 Bartlett, A.C. recognizes a number of rhetorical patterns that create these divisions. See The Larger Rhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Columbia Univ. Stud, in Eng. and Comparative Lit. 122 (Morningside Heights, NY, 1935). She characterizes the poetry as a ‘tapestry’ constructed in panels (p. 7).Google Scholar

7 Lord, A. B., The Singer of Tales, Harvard Stud, in Comparative Lit. 24 (Cambridge, MA, 1960), 99Google Scholar. Although a great deal of valuable work has been done in the thirty years since Lord published The Singer of Tales, his discussion of theme and its relation to song is still widely accepted. Useful overviews of oral theory can be found in Ong, W. J., Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Foley, J.M., Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: an Introduction and Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

8 Lord, , Singer of Tales, p. 94Google Scholar. Lord discusses movements that structure narrative scenes (an assembly, a battle, a marriage), which he calls ‘themes’. Fry, D.K., ‘Old English Oral-Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes’, Neophilologus 52 (1968), 48–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contributes the useful term ‘type-scene’ to distinguish between the set structures of certain scenes and the broader concept to which we more commonly refer with the term ‘theme’. I am using the musical term ‘movement’ because I wish to refer more broadly to any structural unit that has a distinct formal and semantic structure, whether its content is narrative or expository. For discussion of such units in oral or orally based poetry, see Fry, ibid., Lord, Singer of Tales and Renoir, A., A Key to Old Poems: the Oral-Formulaic Approach to the Interpretation of West-Germanic Verse (University Park, PA, 1988).Google Scholar

9 Lord, , Singer of Tales, pp. 55–8.Google Scholar

10 ibid. p. 55.

11 Havelock, E.A., Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA, 1963), p. 185.Google Scholar

12 See my dissertation, ‘Disjunction: a Structural Convention in Old English Poetry’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of California at Los Angeles, 1983)Google Scholar. In ‘Stylistic Disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood’, ASE 13 (1984), 167–86Google Scholar, I attempted to show in detail the way a poet can define distinct syntactic modes to differentiate movements.

13 Some people conceive of this third-person description as a kind of straw-man figure that the eardstapa uses in his speech. See, for example, Greenfield, S.B., ‘The Wanderer: a Reconsideration of Theme and Structure’, JEGP 50 (1951), 451–65, at 459Google Scholar. Lumiansky, R.M., ‘The Dramatic Structure of the Old English Wanderer’, Neophilologus 34 (1949), 104–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 108, similarly thinks that the eardstapa is ‘widening the application’ here of his own loss and grief. Leslie, R.F., The Wanderer, Old and Middle Eng. Texts (Manchester, 1966)Google Scholar, thinks that although the lines are part of the monologue they constitute a ‘change of tone’ (p. 7); Mandel, J., Alternative Readings in Old English Poetry, Amer. Univ. Stud., Ser. 4, Eng. Lang, and Lit. 43 (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, asserts that ‘at 1. 29b the poem shifts perceptibly but not significantly … the point of view from which we understand the events of the poem remains that of the wanderer’ (p. 21). Dunning and Bliss note no structural division at this point (Dunning, T.P. and Bliss, A.J., Introduction to The Wanderer, Methuen's OE Lib. (London, 1969), pp. 82–6).Google Scholar

14 Most critics think that a major change takes place somewhere between 58a and 65b. Sieper, E. (Die Altenglische Elegie (Strassburg, 1915), p. 197)Google Scholar and Craigie, W.A. (‘Interpolations and Omissions in Anglo-Saxon Poetic Texts’, Philologica 2 (1923), 5–19, at 15)Google Scholar thought that the original poem ended with line 57, before the more universal reflections begin. B.F. Huppé analyses 58–62a as completing the eardstapa's monologue and 62b–65a as an ‘introductory generalization’ for the next section (‘The Wanderer: Theme and Structure’, JEGP 42 (1943), 516–38, at 533)Google Scholar; Lumiansky says 58–62a ‘mark an important step’ in the speaker's development into a wise man (p. 108); Greenfield believes 58–62a must be part of the eardstapa's speech because of the reappearance of the first person but also declares that they ‘begin, as it were, to ripple across the waters of all human experience’ (‘Reconsideration’, p. 458); Dunning and Bliss believe the poem's second of two movements begins at 58 and that 58–63 expresses its ‘distinctive character’ and is a ‘generalization … leading to the universalization of lines 62b–63’ (The Wanderer, pp. 86–7); J.C. Pope proposes, in an analysis he later retracts, that the first person of line 58 introduces a second speaker and new character (‘Dramatic Voices in The Wanderer and The Seafarer’, Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr., ed. JrBessinger, J.B., and Creed, R.P. (New York, 1965), 164–93, at 168)Google Scholar; Mandel believes the ic at 58 is ‘the same speaker who began the poem, speaking now from a different point of view … the poet now adopts a contrastive point of view, looks outward, and focuses on the anguish of all men’ (p. 32).

15 Sieper, , Die Altenglische Elegie, pp. 197–9.Google Scholar

16 Rumble, T.C., ‘From Eardstapa to Snottor on Mode: the Structural Principle of “The Wanderer’”, Mod. Lang. Quarterly 19 (1958), 225–30, at 229–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 I distinguish between ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’. ‘Modern’ contrasts with ‘medieval’ and more specifically ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and refers to the Enlightenment and later. ‘Modernist’ refers to that specific type of literature written between the wars and the criticism that came later but similarly challenged ideas of coherence and unity. T. Moi uses the term ‘“modernist theory” as distinct from a mere theory of modernism’ in describing the group of structuralist and post-structuralist theorists who gravitated around Tel Quel in the late sixties, including Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva; see Moi's Introduction to The Kristeva Reader, ed. Moi, T. (New York, 1986), pp. 1–22, at 4.Google Scholar

18 As soon as I give voice to Kristeva's generalization I can hear the objections. Of course, Madame Bovary, among others, does not fit the term, but on the whole the distinction holds true.

19 Kristeva, J., ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, The Kristeva Reader, p. 42.Google Scholar

20 ibid.

21 See Barthes, R., S/Z, trans. Miller, R. (New York, 1974), pp. 3–13Google Scholar. Compare Iser's, W. discussion of ‘gaps’ in ‘The Reading Process: a Phenomenological Approach’, New Lit. Hist. 3 (1972), 279–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; repr. in his The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Banyan to Beckett (Baltimore, MD, 1974), pp. 274–94Google Scholar. He implies that we follow the text's directions: ‘Whenever the flow is interrupted and we are led off in unexpected directions, the opportunity is given to us to bring into play our own faculty for establishing connections – for filling in the gaps left by the text itself.’ ‘Modern texts’, as he says, ‘frequently exploit’ this quality (p. 280). One part of the reading dynamic that they encourage is ‘the process of grouping together all the different aspects of a text to form the consistency that the reader will always be in search of … By grouping together the written parts of the text, we enable them to interact, we observe the direction in which they are leading us, and we project onto them the consistency which we, as readers, require’ (pp. 283–4).

22 Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. and trans. Harari, J. V. (Ithaca, NY, 1979), pp. 73–81, at 75 and 80.Google Scholar

23 This method of creating associations has been discussed generally by Kintgen, E. R. in ‘Echoic Repetition in Old English Poetry, especially The Dream of the Rood’, NM 75 (1974), 202–23Google Scholar, and more specifically for The Wanderer by Rosier, J.L. in ‘The Literal-Figurative Identity of The Wanderer’, PMLA 79 (1964), 366–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cornell, M. in ‘Varieties of Repetition in Old English Poetry, especially in The Wanderer and The Seafarer’, Neophilologus 65 (1981), 292–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bjork, R. E. in ‘Sundor at rune: the Voluntary Exile of the Wanderer’, Neophilologus 73 (1989), 119–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kintgen, in ‘Word-Play in The Wanderer’, Neophilologus 59 (1975), 119–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hieatt's, C. B. work in this area in ‘Dream Frame and Verbal Echo in The Dream of the Rood’, NM 72 (1971), 251–63Google Scholar, and ‘Modþryðo and Heremod: Intertwined Threads in the Beowulf-Poet's Web of Words’, JEGP 83 (1984), 173–82Google Scholar. For a discussion of the method's cognitive aspects, see ‘The Question of Unity’ in Pasternack, ‘Disjunction’. For a discussion of echoes in relation to oral formulae, see Foley, J.M., ‘Genre(s) in the Making: Diction, Audience and Text in the Old English Seafarer’, Poetics Today 4 (1983), 683–706CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who designates this kind of system as ‘modern’ to the Anglo-Saxons, as opposed to the traditional, oral-generated system of echoes that resound among poems. (The traditional system that he looks at includes metrical as well as semantic parameters, though he distinguishes these traditional phrasings from the accepted definitions of formula.)

24 See how Cynewulf describes his experience composing Elene, 1236–56a, as an experience of mystery revealed.

25 There are others as well; see Kintgen, ‘Word-Play’; Cornell, ‘Varieties’; and Bjork, ‘Sundor œt rune’, for more comprehensive discussions.

26 I interpret ‘are gebideð’ as ‘awaits grace’. Dunning and Bliss point out that whether gebideð means ‘experience’ or ‘wait for’ is a matter of critical judgement that depends on how one understands the poem as whole. See Dunning and Bliss, pp. 41–2; Mitchell, B., ‘Some Syntactical Problems in The Wanderer’, NM 69 (1968), 172–98Google Scholar; and Greenfield, , ‘Reconsideration’, pp. 464–5Google Scholar. In general, my analysis of the text is based on The Wanderer in The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E. V. K., ASPR 3 (New York and London, 1936), 134–7.1Google Scholar have also consulted Leslie's and Dunning and Bliss's editions, as well as the facsimile edition, The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, ed. Chambers, R.W., Förster, M. and Flower, R. (London, 1933), 76v–78rGoogle Scholar. All translations of The Wanderer are my own.

27 See Leslie, , The Wanderer, p. 65Google Scholar, and Dunning and Bliss, , The Wanderer, pp. 37–40Google Scholar, for discussions regarding the precise meaning and derivations of anhoga and anhoga. They both note possibilities for separate derivation but also explain their interchangeable semantics in this poem and others.

28 With Leslie, I retain the manuscript's ‘oft’, in part because emendation is not necessary and in part because it continues the theme of repeated, customary experiences of isolation.

29 For this analysis I draw on Kintgen, ‘Wordplay’.

30 ‘All is difficult in the kingdom of earth, the ordained course of fates turns the world under the heavens. Here wealth is transitory, here a friend is transitory, here man is transitory, here a kinsman is transitory, this entire foundation of earth becomes useless.’

31 Compare Bjork in ‘Sundor at rune’, Huppé in ‘Wanderer: Theme and Structure’ and Kintgen in ‘Word-Play’ for three diverse readings that make similar use of repetitions and structure.

32 Foley, J.M., ‘Orality, Textuality, and Interpretation’, in Vox intexta, ed. Doane, and Pasternack, , pp. 34–45Google Scholar. See also Foley's discussion of theme and metonymy in ‘Tradition and the Collective Talent: Oral Epic, Textual Meaning, and Receptionalist Theory’, Cultural Anthropology 1 (1986), 203–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and of formula in ‘Genre(s) in the Making’, and Renoir on type-scenes in A Key to Old Poems.

33 Kristeva, , ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, p. 37.Google Scholar

34 See Doane, A.N., ‘Oral Texts, Intertexts, and Intratexts: Editing Old English’, Influence and Intertextuality, ed. Rothstein, E. and Clayton, J. (Madison WI, and London, forthcoming)Google Scholar and also Irvine, M., ‘Anglo-Saxon Literary Theory Exemplified in Old English Poems: Interpreting the Cross in The Dream of the Rood and Elene’, Style 20 (1986), 157–81Google Scholar, for two other discussions of intertextuality and Old English poetry that differ considerably from each other and from mine.

35 Irvine, ‘Anglo-Saxon Literary Theory’. English translations of those Latin texts can be found in Allen, M. J. B. and Calder, D. G., Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry: the Major Latin Texts in Translation (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1976).Google Scholar

36 M. Riffaterre's definition is more linear than Kristeva's. As he conceives of it, an intertext is ‘an implicit reference without which the text would not make sense: either the text is incomplete and can be deciphered only through the intertext or the text is linguistically deviant, and the scandal of this departure would be a gratuitous and random ungrammaticality without the authority and the focus given it by its grammatical correspondent in the intertext’ (‘Relevance of Theory/Theory of Relevance’, Yale Jnl of Criticism 1 (1988), 163–76, at 169)Google Scholar. In Old English compositions, however, one text is not the key to another, nor is the text ungrammatical without the intertext. The meaning is simply less full.

37 Greenfield, S.B., ‘The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of “Exile” in Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, Speculum 30 (1955), 200–6, at 201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Greenfield's article came out before Fry, D.K. published his piece, ‘Old English Formulas and Systems’, ES 48 (1967), 193–204Google Scholar, defining the term ‘formulaic system’, but Fry's definition fits Greenfield's way of describing families of phrases expressing certain ideas.

39 Greenfield, , ‘Formulaic Expression’, pp. 203–4.Google Scholar

40 See Whitelock, D., ‘The Interpretation of The Seafarer’, The Early Cultures of Northwest Europe: H.M. Chadwick Memorial Studies, ed. Fox, C. and Dickins, B. (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 259–72Google Scholar; repr. in Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry, ed. JrBessinger, J. B. and Kahrl, S. J. (Hamden, CT, 1968), pp. 442–57.Google Scholar

41 Such a theme does not differ much from a topos, which is to say that Old English intertextuality takes in the Latin as well as the Germanic traditions. For example, P. Clemoes, ‘Mens absentia cogitans in The Seafarer and The Wanderer’, Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonsway, ed. Pearsall, D. A. and Waldron, R. A. (London, 1969), pp. 62–77Google Scholar, discusses in this light the poem's second movement, the third-person description of a lonely person's dream of being once again with his companions, who, on his waking, disappear as do the seabirds all about him. He demonstrates that the poet follows a topos expressed in Latin and in Old English ‘that this consciousness of objects beyond immediate physical surroundings is of the essence of mental activity’ (p. 62). He cites The Seafarer 58–64a, two of Ælfric's homilies, Alcuin's De animae ratione, a number of Augustine's works, and what he believes to be the source for The Wanderer's image, Ambrose's Hexaemeron.

42 See Lord, , Singer of Tales, pp. 99–123.Google Scholar

43 Zumthor, P., ‘The Impossible Closure of the Oral Text’, Yale French Stud. 67 (1984), 25–42, at 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 ibid. p. 27.

45 The poetry called Azarias in the Exeter Book resembles very closely a movement in the Junius manuscript's Daniel (279–371). See Jones, A., ‘Daniel and Azarias as Evidence for the Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, MÆ 35 (1966), 95–102Google Scholar, for the argument that they are related oral productions. A.N. Doane sees them as products of ‘different performative situations’ (‘Oral Texts, Intertexts, and Intratexts’, p. 86). The Ruthwell Cross has inscribed on it text that corresponds to lines 39–64 of the Vercelli Dream of the Rood. See É. Ó Carragáin, ‘Crucifixion as Annunciation: the Relation of “The Dream of the Rood” to the Liturgy Reconsidered’, ES 63 (1982), 487–505Google Scholar. The Exeter Book's Soul and Body corresponds to lines 1–126 of the Vercelli text.

46 I agree with J. Dagenais that neither the manuscript nor the oral performance represents ‘some underlying text’ and they should be ‘set … free of a system of representation and differences’ (‘That Bothersome Residue’, p. 249). Foley has taken a similar stance: ‘We cannot assume that a single text is “the poem”, since it is only a version of the narrative, only one possible recension of a multiform which will forever evade the fossilization of print … To establish any one text or textual feature as standard is to mistake the ontology of oral traditional structure’ (‘Editing Oral Epic Texts’, p. 81).

47 ‘Battle has taken some, carried them on the way forth, one a bird has carried off across the high sea, one the grey wolf has shared with death, one a sad-faced earl has hidden in an earth-cave.’

48 All quotations of Old English poetry other than The Wanderer are as they appear in ASPR, ed. Krapp, G.P. and Dobbie, E.V.K., 6 vols. (New York and London, 1931–1953).Google Scholar

49 ‘The soldiers were widely destroyed. Some battle took. Some not easily saved their lives in that battle. Some half-alive fled into the forest and protected their lives under the stone cliffs, guarded the place along the Danube. Some drowning took in the water-stream at the end of life.’

50 ‘To some it happens in youth that the end comes woeful to the wretched. The wolf shall eat him, the hoary heathstepper. Then the mother mourns his journey hence. Such a thing is not under a person's control! One hunger shall rob of life, one shall a storm drive to destruction, one shall a spear destroy, one battle break.’

51 ‘So variously the Mighty Lord across the earth dispenses to all, allots and decrees and governs fates, for some blessed riches, for some a portion of hardships, for some the gladness of youth, for some glory in battle … Some become learned scholars. For some wondrous gifts are prepared by the goldsmith.’

52 ‘To some he sends wise eloquence into his heart's thought through his mouth's spirit, excellent understanding. He can sing and say a great many things to whom the skill of wisdom is committed in the spirit. One can strike the harp well with fingers, loudly before men, touch the joy-wood. One can expound divine law correctly. One can tell the course of the stars, the wide creation. One can skilfully write word-sentences. To one he gives success of war in battle, when a storm of spears above the shield shooters send, flying arrows.’

53 It is possible that there are a number of themes or type-scenes that are related in complementary pairs. Hieatt, C. B., ‘Cædmon in Context: Transforming the Formula’, JEGP 84 (1985), 485–97Google Scholar, develops criteria for a creation and for a destruction type-scene that have formal similarities. Hansen, E. Tuttle, The Solomon Complex: Reading Wisdom in Old English Poetry (Toronto, 1988)Google Scholar, sees in such texts ‘a conventional association of theme and structure’, which she calls the ‘swa missenlice theme’ (p. 97).

54 ‘But “He gave gifts to men”, because, when the Holy Spirit was sent from above, it allotted the word of wisdom to one, to another the word of knowledge, to another the grace of virtues, to another the grace of healings, to another the various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues (I Cor. XII.8). So He gave gifts to men.’ Gregory the Great, Homiliae.xl. in evangelia, Hom.xxix: ‘Habita ad populum in basilica beati Petri apostoli, in Ascensione Domini’ (PL 76, cols. 1213–19, at 1218; trans. Allen, and Calder, , Sources and Analogues, pp. 79–81, at 80).Google Scholar

55 Gregory's is Homiliae .xl. in evangelia, Horn, ix:‘Habita ad populum in basilica sancti Silvestri, in die natalis ejus’ (PL 76, cols. 1105–9); Ælfric's In natale unius confessoris, Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: the Second Series, ed. Godden, M., EETS ss 5 (London, 1979), 318–26.Google Scholar

56 See Cross, J. E., ‘On The Wanderer lines 80–84: a Study of a Figure and a Theme’, Vetenskaps-Societeten i Lund Arsbok (1958–1959), 75–110Google Scholar; ‘The Old English Poetic Theme of “The Gifts of Men’”, Neophilologus 46 (1962), 66–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Latin Themes in Old English Poetry (Bristol, 1962)Google Scholar. Russom, G. R., ‘A Germanic Concept of Nobility in The Gifts of Men and Beowulf’, Speculum 53 (1978), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, musters a convincing argument against patristic writings influencing the Old English theme and cites Norse material that shows the theme's connection with ‘endowments regarded as marks of aristocratic distinction’ (p. 2).

57 Irvine, , ‘Anglo-Saxon Literary Theory’, p. 158.Google Scholar

58 J.E. Cross takes a different position. Finding it logical to identify a single source and meaning, he differentiates the various themes using this figure of repetitio and decides that catalogues of The Wanderer's type were used in homilies ‘to reiterate the dogma of the resurrection of the body, whose ultimate scriptural source was Apocalypse XX.13… The list, reflecting, as it does, an objection to the dogma of resurrection, would demand in the Christian listeners' minds the only answer’, that security will come in the heavenly home (Latin Themes, p. 6). I am not sure that prose necessarily has interpretative priority, providing the answer that excludes other associations and interpretations.

59 Kristeva, , ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, p. 37.Google Scholar

60 ibid. p. 45.

61 ‘And pray the creator that the protector of heavens may give me help, the mighty ruler, on that great day, the father, the spirit of comfort, in that terrible time, the judge of deeds, and the beloved son, when the Trinity, sitting in glory, in unity, for the race of men through bright creation will decree according to (their) deeds reward for each of men.’

62 ‘Grant us, God of hosts, that we may your face, joy of nobles, find mild in that great time.’

63 To be fair, Elene has been the major resource for biographical insights. See, for example, ten Brink, B., History of English Literature I; to Wiclif, trans. Kennedy, H.M. (London, 1895), pp. 51–9Google Scholar. Both Anderson, E. R., Cynewulf: Structure, Style, and Theme in his Poetry (Rutherford, NJ, 1983), p. 115Google Scholar and Calder, D.G., Cynewulf, Twayne's Eng. Author Ser. 327 (Boston, MA, 1981), 136Google Scholar, characterize these sections as autobiographical, Anderson placing the epilogue into a classical ‘tradition of autobiographical epilogues’ (p. 116). There is, however, no more of an authorial code here than in Juliana. Although Cynewulf introduces a first person to speak about the poem's production, he does not assert that he has created it: he has gathered his thought (1236–39a), not devised it; his poetry is an undeserved gift from God (1242b–50a) and so not personal to him, and what he has expressed about the cross he found in books (1251b–56a). The movement's highly ornamented style undercuts any sense of naturalness that might derive from the grammatical first person, the a and b verses rhyming in thirteen out of twenty-one lines. In the next movement, the first person disappears, and Cynewulf combines his runic signature with details about a ‘secg’ (1256b) that conform to a type such as we also see in The Seafarer. Through this figure we are reminded of three facts about life: treasures of the mead-hall do not allay the sorrows of human life, the joy of youth departs and all joy of life is transitory. As in Juliana, the signature movement provides no autobiography in the modern sense but rather a figure for how all people should understand earthly life, and the third and last movement turns us toward the Last Judgement on all humanity.

64 Schaeffer, U., ‘Hearing from Books: the Rise of Fictionality in Old English Poetry’, Vox intexta, ed. Doane, and Pasternack, , pp. 117–136.Google Scholar

65 Ó Carrágáin, ‘Liturgical Innovations Associated with Pope Sergius and the Iconography of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses’, Bede and Anglo-Saxon England: Papers in Honour of the 1300th Anniversary of the Birth of Bede, Given at Cornell University in 1973 and 1974, ed. Farrell, R.T., BAR Brit.ser. 46 (Oxford, 1978), 131–47Google Scholar. He also argues that the manuscript that preserves The Dream of the Rood, the Vercelli Book, provides another meaningful context, the compiler's intention of assembling homiletic and poetic texts on a certain theme. See ‘How Did the Vercelli Collector Interpret The Dream of the Rood?’, Studies in English Language and Early Literature in Honour of Paul Christophersen, ed. Tilling, P. M., Occasional Papers in Ling, and Lang. Learning 8 (Coleraine, 1981), pp. 63–104Google Scholar. See also Richards, M. P. on the The Battle of Maldon manuscript, BL, Cotton Otho A. xii: ‘The Battle of Maldon in its Manuscript Context’, Mediaevalia 7 (1981), 79–89Google Scholar; Hall, J. R. on the Junius manuscript: ‘The Old English Epic of Redemption: the Theological Unity of MS Junius 11’, Traditio 32 (1976), 185–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lochrie, K. on the Exeter Book: ‘Wyrd and the Limits of Human Understanding: a Thematic Sequence in the Exeter Book’, JEGP 85 (1986), 323–51.Google Scholar

66 See Schaeffer, ‘Hearing from Books’, esp. p. 124. W. Parks argues that the novel's heteroglossia ‘has reified dialogue’ since as a print genre it cannot participate in the ‘person speaking to person’ dialogue of oral performance (‘The Textualization of Orality in Literary Criticism’, in Vox intexta, ed. Doane, and Pasternack, , pp. 146–61, at p. 56.).Google Scholar

67 ‘Therefore I am not able to think throughout this world why my mind should not grow dark when I the life of men all consider …’ Dunning and Bliss's note to this line discusses an ongoing debate about whether ‘gesweorce’ means ‘does grow dark’ and is subjunctive only because it is dependent on ‘geþencan’ or whether ‘gesweorce’ itself conveys a subjunctive meaning. In my analysis, the ‘I’ here is speaking about the appropriate way of evaluating the world, not simply how he as one man feels.

68 See Pope, , ‘Dramatic Voices’; Greenfield's argument against the idea of dramatic voices, ‘Min, Sylf, and “Dramatic Voices” in The Wanderer and The Seafarer’, JEGP 68 (1969), 212–20Google Scholar; and Pope's modification of his position, ‘Second Thoughts on the Interpretation of The Seafarer’, ASE 3 (1974), 75–86Google Scholar. See Bjork, R. E., The Old English Verse Saints' Lives: a Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style, McMaster OE Stud, and Texts (Toronto, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of how the style used in speeches is iconographically rather than dramatically or naturalistically shaped.

69 ‘So spoke the wanderer, mindful of hardships, of fierce slaughters, (mindful) about the fall of friend-kinsmen.’

70 As Dunning and Bliss say in their note to line 7, ‘winemœga bryre has been much discussed’ (p. 106). The problem is, in Leslie's words, ‘In place of MS. bryre we should expect after gemyndig a genitive form hryres, in apposition to earfeþa (6) and wælsleahta’ (7) (p. 67); instead we have a dative form. Dunning and Bliss follow Kershaw in taking it as a comitative dative dependent on ‘wælsleahta’, translating the phrase, ‘remembering the fierce battles accompanying the deaths of his kinsmen’ (p. 106). I prefer Leslie's analysis that ‘hryre’ is ‘a dative after gemyndig, despite the genitive constructions which precede it’, and is dative because that is its usual form in phrases with a dependent genitive (p. 67). According to this analysis, ‘winemæga hryre’ functions as the third item in a variational series.

71 ‘He who this wall-foundation has wisely considered and this dark life deeply ponders, wise in heart, far back often remembers the large number of slaughters, and these words says.’ Leslie takes this instance of ‘feor’ as an adverb of time analogous to Beowulf 1701a, ‘Feor eal gemon’ (p. 85).

72 According to strict definition, ‘þisne wealsteal’, ‘þis deorce lif’ and ‘wælsleahta worn’ are not in variation with each other. The first two noun phrases are in compound phrases that define ‘se’ (he who), and the third is part of the main clause, the object of the verb ‘gemon’ (remembers). But all of these terms dwell on the same concept, defining it by shifting the terms that refer to it, which is what variation does.

73 Stanley, E.G., ‘Old English Poetic Diction and the Interpretation of The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Penitent's Prayer’, Anglia 73 (1955), 413–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the ways in Old English poetry in which the thought evokes the flower, not the flower the thought: ‘the finest OE. figurative diction is that in which a state of mind or moral concept evokes in the poem the description of a natural phenomenon, associated by the Anglo-Saxons with that mood or moral concept’ (pp. 427 and 434).

74 As Stanley says, such precision is beside the point: ‘The poet is writing on the subjects of mutability and misery, and there are two ways open to him: direct moralizing or the use of imagery. He uses both in this poem.’ The wanderer and the wise man serve him in his direct moralizing, but ‘it is the poet's teaching, whoever may be speaking’ (ibid. p. 463). For a syntactical analysis, see B. Mitchell, ‘Some Syntactical Problems’.

75 For this reading, see Leslie's note on this line (The Wanderer, p. 89).

76 On the author function, see Foucault, M., ‘What Is an Author?’ Textual Strategies, ed. and trans. Harari, , pp. 141–60Google Scholar, who says that the concept allows us to construct ‘a relationship among the texts … a relationship of homogeneity, filiation, authentification of some texts by the use of others, reciprocal explication, or concomitant utilization’, all of which contribute to the circle out of which we construct the author.

77 See Robinson's, F. C. discussion of this phenomenon in ‘“The Rewards of Piety”: Two Old English Poems in Their Manuscript Context’, Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, ed. Gallacher, P. J. and Damico, H. (Albany, NY, 1989), pp. 193–200Google Scholar. He asks us to consider An Exhortation to Christian Living and A Summons to Prayer as ‘one continuous text rather than a pair of separate poems’ (p. 195) so that he can ‘illustrate how important it can be to reconsider long-studied Old English texts in light of their manuscript settings’ (p. 198).

78 ‘Grant us, God of hosts, that we may your face, joy of nobles, find mild in that great time. Amen.’

79 The ‘O’ is two lines high and has moderate ornamentation, the ‘F’ one and a half lines, the ‘T’ one line. All three letters are bolder than those that follow. This description is based on observation of the manuscript's facsimile.

80 ‘So spoke the one wise in heart, sat apart at his counsel. Good is he who his truth keeps. A man must never his care too quickly from his breast make known unless he beforehand the remedy may know, the earl [know] how to perform it with courage. Well it is for him who seeks grace, comfort at the Father in the heavens where for us all that security stands.’

81 On the development of the concept and the law, see Rose, M., ‘The Author as Proprietor: Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy of Modern Authorship’, Representations 23 (Summer 1988), 51–85.Google Scholar

82 See Dagenais, ‘That Bothersome Residue’ and Doane, ‘Oral Texts, Intertexts, and Intratexts’, for further arguments supporting this position.

83 I must thank an anonymous reader for the term ‘harmony’ and H. Tartar of Stanford University Press for ‘virtuosity’. I also wish to thank D.G. Calder, J. Carlson, A.N. Doane, F.C. Gardiner and J. Grossman for their comments on earlier versions of this essay.