Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:35:05.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The influence of Christian doctrine and exegesis on Old English poetry: an estimate of the current state of scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Philip B. Rollinson
Philip B. Rollinson
Affiliation:
The University of South Carolina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although it is a commonplace of history that Anglo-Saxon England was receptive to Christianity and to Christian-Latin culture and that English churchmen such as Aldhelm, Bede and Alcuin made an important contribution to that culture, it is only in recent years that scholars have explored and emphasized the importance of Christian tradition to the understanding of Old English poetry, especially those poems without explicit Christian content. Increased investigation of Old English prose, which is largely Christian, and the well-known work on Beowulf by Frederick Klaeber, Marie Padgett Hamilton, Dorothy Whitelock and others, seems to have redirected ‘the search for Anglo-Saxon paganism‘ into a search – sometimes opposed – for reflections of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon poetry. While in some quarters this critical and scholarly attention has been confined to the influence of Christian doctrine, ritual and interpretation of the bible, in others it has taken into account the broader cultural influences of the church, especially its transmission of the literature and learning of pagan antiquity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 2 , December 1973 , pp. 271 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 271 note 1 See Fr. Klaeber's introduction to his 3rd ed. of Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (Boston, 1950), pp. xlviii–liGoogle Scholar; Hamilton, Marie Padgett, ‘The Religious Principle in Beowulf. PMLA 61 (1946), 309–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whitelock, Dorothy, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951).Google Scholar

page 271 note 2 Described in Stanley's, E. G. essay of this title published in nine parts, N&Q n.s. 11 (1964), 204–9, 242–50, 282–7, 324–31 and 455–63Google Scholar and 12 (1965), 9–17, 203–7, 285–93 and 322–7.

page 271 note 3 Two recent examples are Moorman, Charles, ‘The Essential Paganism of Beowulf’, MLQ 28 (1967), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Halverson, John, ‘The World of Beowulf, ELH 36 (1969), 593–608CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kenneth Sisam's opposition is noteworthy in that he suggests that the poet is relatively indifferent to matters of religion, Christian or pagan (The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965), pp. 72–9Google Scholar, esp. 78).

page 271 note 4 René L. M. Derolez sceptically surveys many of the important areas of potential influence in ‘Anglo-Saxon Literature: Attic or Asiatic? Old English Poetry and its Latin Background’, English Studies Today 2nd ser., ed. G. A. Bonnard (Berne, 1961), pp. 93–105Google Scholar. More recently Jackson J. Campbell examines rhetorical and literary studies in the schools and the importance of classical rhetoric to Old English poetry in ‘ Knowledge of Rhetorical Figures in Anglo-Saxon England’, JEGP 66 (1967), 1–20Google Scholar, and ‘Learned Rhetoric in Old English Poetry’, MP 63 (1966), 189–201Google Scholar. B. K. Martin discusses some echoes of classical Latin topoi in ‘Aspects of Winter in Latin and Old English Poetry’, JEGP 68 (1969), 375–90Google Scholar. I attempt to evaluate some poems in the Old English canon in terms of generic expectations established by classical and late classical authorities on grammar, and rhetoric, , ‘Some Kinds of Meaning in Old English Poetry’, Annuals Mediaeval: 11 (1970), 5–21Google Scholar. This list is obviously not exhaustive.

page 272 note 1 ‘Notes on the Old English Exodus’, Anglia 80 (1962), 373–8.Google Scholar

page 272 note 2 ‘The Vision of Eve in Genesis B’, Speculum 44 (1969), 86–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 273 note 1 ‘The Theme of Judgment Day II’, ELN 6 (1969), 161–4.Google Scholar

page 273 note 2 ‘Patristic Psychology in the Old English Vainglory’, Traditio 26 (1970), 324–35.Google Scholar

page 273 note 3 ibid. p. 327.

page 273 note 4 ibid. pp. 334–5.

page 273 note 5 Lass, Roger, ‘Poem as Sacrament: Transcendence of Time in the Advent Sequence from the Exeter Book’, Annuale Mediaevale 7 (1966), 3–15Google Scholar and Robert Burlin, B., The Old English ‘Advent’: a Typological Commentary, Yale Stud, in Eng. 168 (New Haven, 1968).Google Scholar

page 273 note 6 ‘Patristic Exegesis in the Criticism of Medieval Literature’, Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958–1959, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (New York, 1960), pp. 1–26Google Scholar, esp. 1–5.

page 274 note 1 MÆ 27 (1958), 37–53Google Scholar

page 274 note 2 ‘The Dream of the Rood and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, Traditio 22 (1966), 45–72Google Scholar. Fleming appropriately observes that ‘the monastic vocation is, after all, merely the Christian vocation par excellence’ (pp. 60–1). He does insist, however, on the essentially ascetic, non-secular point of view in the poem.

page 274 note 3 See for example Burlin, Robert B., ‘The Ruthwell Cross, The Dream of the Rood and the Vita Contemplativa’, SP 65 (1968), 23–43Google Scholar and Canuteson, John, ‘The Crucifixion and the Second Coming in The Dream of the Rood’, MP 66 (1969), 293–7Google Scholar. Canuteson justly modifies one of Miss Woolf's interpretative inferences (p. 296). Faith H. Patten uses Miss Woolf's essay as a point of departure in ‘Structure and Meaning in The Dream of the Rood’, ESts 49 (1968), 385–401Google Scholar, esp. 388–9. The Dream of the Rood has, of course, been extensively commented on. Complementing Miss Woolf's essay is one by Burrow, J. A., ‘An Approach to The Dream of the Rood’, Neophilologus 43 (1959), 123–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Burrow sheds an interesting and significant light on the poem by comparing its technique to that of later medieval versions of the same theme. For a current bibliography of criticism of the poem see The Dream of the Rood, ed. Michael Swanton (Manchester, 1970), pp. 82–7.Google Scholar

page 274 note 4 ‘The Conception of the Old English Phoenix’, Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert P. Creed (Providence, R. I., 1967), pp. 129–52.Google Scholar

page 274 note 5 See esp. ibid. pp. 135–6 and 140–5.

page 274 note 6 PQ 43 (1964), 1–13Google Scholar. Mrs Kantrowitz's article should be read in conjunction with N. F. Blake's introduction and notes (esp. that on the image of the seed, p. 74) to his edition of The Phoenix (Manchester, 1964Google Scholar) and his essay, , ‘Some Problems of Interpretation and Translation in the Old English Phoenix’, Anglia 80 (1962), 50–62Google Scholar. Cross appropriately affirms the reality of the bird (‘The Conception of the Old English Phoenix’, p. 138) in the face of Blake's unnecessary exaggeration that to the poet the bird is only a symbol and nothing more (‘Some Problems’, p. 50). At the same time Mrs Kantrowitz's essay proves conclusively a number of Cross's assertions (e.g. that it was not necessary for the Old English poet to interpret every symbol and that the literal details of the historical bird intentionally anticipate their symbolic implications; see ‘The Conception’, pp. 140 and 136–7) and answers some other questions raised by Cross and O. F. Emerson (see ‘The Conception’, pp. 153–6).

page 275 note 1 ‘Symbolism in Medieval Literature’ (1958), repr. Bloomfield, Morton W., Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas, language, and Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 88Google Scholar, n. 13, and 94–5.

page 275 note 2 ‘The Anglo-Saxon Phoenix and Tradition’, pp. 5–9.

page 275 note 3 ibid. p. 13.

page 275 note 4 ibid.

page 276 note 1 An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Indiana, 1963)Google Scholar. Cabaniss's essay, ‘Beowulf and the Liturgy’ (pp. 223–32), first appeared in 1955 and is the more cautious of the two; McNamee's ‘Beowulf- an Allegory of Salvation?’ (pp. 331–52) first appeared in i960.

page 276 note 2 ‘The Literal Meaning and Symbolic Structure of Beowulf’, Classica et Mediaevalia 25 (1964), 151–201.Google Scholar

page 276 note 3 ibid. p. 185.

page 276 note 4 Nicholson (ibid., p. 186) attributes to Scyld's retainers the pessimistic questioning about the destination of his corpse, but the text indicates that it is the poet's view: the description of the funeral (26–503) is, understandably, in the past tense (citations from Beowulf are to Klaeber's 3rd ed.), but when the poet remarks that no one can know who took Scyld, he shifts to the present tense of narrator and audience (50b–2). The comment has an appropriate tone of wonder and mystery but dubiously reflects any Christian assurance.

page 277 note 1 ‘A Symbolic Word-Group in Beowulf’, Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley, ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970), pp. 33–4Google Scholar. Interestingly enough Cassidy's word of caution concludes his own suggestion, in the manner of Nicholson, that reference to the sun in Beowulf alludes to Christ (pp. 28–33).

page 277 note 2 ‘The Literal Meaning’, pp. 15 2–66. Nicholson credits Margaret Goldsmith with reviving the idea that the narrative is intentionally cast in a historically pre-Christian setting (p. 152).

page 277 note 3 ‘Beowulf and Christian Tradition: a Reconsideration from a Celtic Stance’, Traditio 21 (1965), 55–116Google Scholar, esp. 58–74. Donahue thus avoids the problem Nicholson mentions (‘The Literal Meaning’, p. 152) of possible actual historical allusions to events of the fifth and sixth centuries. Morton W. Bloomfield discusses this problem briefly and suggests a setting under the natural law in ‘Patristics and Old English Literature: Notes on Some Poems’, Comparative Lit. 14 (1962), 39–41Google Scholar. Larry D. Benson shows that even without Irish Christianity and Pelagianism there is ample warrant for the poet's presentation of pagan heroes as virtuous and admirable, ‘The Pagan Coloring of Beowulf’ Old English Poetry, ed. Creed, pp. 202–6.

page 278 note 1 ‘Beowulf and Christian Tradition’, pp. 86–110. My quotation is from p. 85.

page 278 note 2 ibid. pp. 110–16.

page 278 note 3 See esp. ibid. p. 116.

page 278 note 4 ibid. pp. 86–116.

page 278 note 5 The Structure of Beowulf, p. 60.

page 278 note 6 A recent reading of Beowulf as Christian allegory without patristic notation is by Ziegelmaier, Gregory, ‘God and Nature in the Beowulf Poem’, ABK 20 (1969), 250–8Google Scholar. T. M. Pearce notes the Christian implications of a ‘southern sun’ in ‘Beowulf and the Southern Sun (Beowulf, lines 603–6)’, Amer. Notes and Queries 4 (1966), 67–8Google Scholar. Thomas D. Hill similarly investigates the Christian implications of heat and cold in ‘The Tropological Context of Heat and Cold Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, NM 69 (1968), 522–32Google Scholar. See also Hill's, ‘Two Notes on Patristic Allusion in Andreas’, Anglia 84 (1966), 156–62Google Scholar (with suggestions for Beowulf, pp. 160 and 162) and his ‘“Byrht Word” and “Hæendes Heafod”: Cristological Allusion in the Old English Christ and Satan’, ELN 8 (1970), 6–9Google Scholar. A similar perception of allusive Christian implication is by Taylor, Paul Beekman, ‘Heofon Riece Swealg: a Sign of Beowulf's State of Grace’, PQ 42 (1963), 257–9Google Scholar. Elsewhere Taylor argues that the Christian allegory of Beowulf is simply part of a larger inclusive pattern of myth, , ‘Heorot, Earth, and Asgard: Christian Poetry and Pagan Myth’, Tennessee Stud. in Lit. 11 (1966), 119–30Google Scholar. Of related interest is the suggestion by Morton W. Bloomfield that the characterization of Unferth may have been influenced by the allegorical personifications of Prudentius's Psychomacbia, , ‘Beowulf and Christian Allegory: an Interpretation of Unferth’, Traditio 7 (1949–1951), 410–15Google Scholar. John Gardner attempts to construe Beowulf in more or less the same way as that in which Fulgentius interprets Vergil's Aeneid, , ‘Fulgentius's Expositio Vergiliana Continentia and the Plan of Beowulf: Another Approach to the Poem's Style and Structure’, Papers on Lang. and Lit. 6 (1970), 227–62.Google Scholar N. F. Blake's interpretation of Byrhtnoth as a saintly hero of the faith, ‘The Battle of Maldon’, Neopbilologus 49 (1965), 332–45Google Scholar, is opposed by the contemporaneous essay of Cross, J. E., ‘Oswald and Byrhtnoth: a Christian Saint and a Hero who is Christian’, ESts 46 (1965 ), 93–109Google Scholar. For further resolutions of this question see Swanton, Michael J., ‘The Battle of Maldon: a Literary Caveat’, JEGP 67 (1968), 441–50Google Scholar, and Clark, George, ‘The Battle of Maldon: a Heroic Poem’, Speculum 43 (1968), 52–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 279 note 1 The Mode and Meaning of ‘Beowulf’ (London, 1970)Google Scholar. This study, as Mrs Goldsmith observes (pp. vii-viii), is the culmination of a number of years of enquiry which produced several articles along the way.

page 279 note 2 Malone, Kemp, Speculum 46 (1971), 369–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 279 note 3 ‘The Religious Principle in Beowulf’. Nicholson reprints this essay in his Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, pp. 105–35.

page 279 note 4 ‘The Religious Principle’, pp. 314–22.

page 279 note 5 See Augustine's De Civitate Dei, xv.ii, iv, v-viii and xvii.

page 279 note 6 See esp. 67b–70.

page 279 note 7 The Mode and Meaning of ‘Beowulf’, esp. pp. 112 and 248.

page 280 note 1 ibid. pp. 230–44.

page 280 note 2 This suggestion is, of course, not new for the dragon in Beowulf or for other dragons in literature and art. See, for example, DuBois, Arthur E., ‘The Dragon in Beowulf’, PMLA 72 (1957), 819–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. What is new is the extent to which Mrs Goldsmith attempts comprehensively to analyse the aesthetic workings of such internal/external relationships in Beowulf.

page 280 note 3 Opposition to the allegorists has not been lacking. Some recent examples are Stevick, Robert D., ‘Christian Elements and the Genesis of Beowulf’, MP 61 (1963), 79–89Google Scholar; Halverson, John, ‘Beowulf and the Pitfalls of Piety’, Univ. of Toronto Quarterly 35 (1965–1966), 260–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whallon, William, Formula, Character, and Context: Studies in Homeric, Old English, and Old Testament Poetry (Washington, D.C., 1969), pp. 117–38.Google Scholar

page 280 note 4 Smithers, G. V., ‘The Meaning of The Seafarer and The Wanderer’, MÆ 26 (1957), 137–53Google Scholar and 28 (1959), 1–22. Smithers's interpretation seems to work better for The Seafarer than for The Wanderer. Some reasons why are implicit in Roster's, James L. discussion, ‘The Literal-Figurative Identity of The Wanderer’, PMLA 79 (1964), 366–9Google Scholar and in Calder's, Daniel G. ‘Setting and Mode in The Seafarer and The Wanderer’, NM 72 (1971), 264–75Google Scholar. P. L. Henry examines and interprets in great detail all the images of The Seafarer in terms of their traditional symbolic implications in The Early English and Celtic Lyric (London, 1966), pp. 133–60Google Scholar. Stanley B. Greenfield cogently discusses the probabilities of literal versus Christian-allegorical readings of these two poems in ‘The Old English Elegies’, Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 152–60.Google Scholar

page 280 note 5 Esp. 64b–7 and 77–80a. Citations from Old English poems other than Beowulf are from The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (London and New York, 1931–53).

page 281 note 1 See Smithers, , MÆ 28 (1959), 7Google Scholar, and lines 48–52, where details of the delights of spring are joined with those of longing for the sea.

page 281 note 2 ‘A Poem of the Cross in the Exeter Book: Riddle 60 and The Husband's Message’, Traditio 23 (1967), 41–71Google Scholar. For a statement of Kaske's method see esp. 41 and 51–2.

page 281 note 3 Leslie, Roy F., ‘The Integrity of Riddle 60’, JEGP 67 (1968), 451–7Google Scholar, and Whitman, F. H., ‘Riddle 60 and its Source’, PQ 50 (1971), 108–15.Google Scholar See also the introduction to Leslie's edition of Three OldEnglishElegies: The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, The Ruin (Manchester, 1961), pp. 12–22.Google Scholar

page 281 note 4 ‘A Poem of the Cross’, p. 71, n. 81.

page 282 note 1 Huppé, Bernard F., Doctrine and Poetry: Augustine's Influence on Old English Poetry (Albany, N.Y., 1959), pp. 217–23Google Scholar; and Cross, J. E. and Tucker, S. I., ‘Allegorical Tradition and the Old English Exodus’, Neophilologus 44 (1960), 122–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Huppe similarly construes the Old Testament events retold in Genesis A (pp. 131–216), as does Robert P. Creed, ‘The Art of the Singer: Three Old English Tellings of the Offering of Isaac’, Old English Poetry, ed. Creed, pp. 69–92. In the same fashion Judith, Jackson J. Campbell glosses (‘Schematic Technique in Judith’, ELH 38 (1971), 155–72Google Scholar). The interpretive problem is, of course, the same for all Old English poetic versions of Old Testament stories. Cross takes numerous exceptions to Huppe‘s method in his review of Doctrine and Poetry, JEGP 59 (1960), 561–4Google Scholar, but see the explanation in his monograph, Latin Themes in Old English Poetry (Bristol, 1962), pp. 9–10Google Scholar. Cross and Tucker feel that the Old English Exodus gives sufficient hints of its intention to imply Christian allegorical significances. For a discussion of the early suggestion by Bright (1912) that liturgical texts are the source of the Exodus and hence determine its allegorical implications, see The Old English Exodus, ed. Edward Burroughs Irving Jr, Yale Stud, in Eng. 122 (New Haven, 1953), 14–16.Google Scholar

page 282 note 2 ‘Patristic Exegesis in the Criticism of Medieval Literature’, Critical Approaches, ed. Bethurum, pp. 61–82.Google Scholar

page 282 note 3 De Civitate Dei, xv.xxvii.

page 282 note 4 So concludes E. G. Stanley in an excellent survey of verbal potentiality and problems of meaning, including problems of symbolism and allegory, ‘Old English Poetic Diction and the Interpretation of The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Penitent's Prayer’, Anglia 73 (1955), 414–47Google Scholar, esp. (on poetic versions of Old Testament stories) 418. One of the best summaries of the poet's approach in the Old English Exodus is by Irving, The Old English Exodus, pp. 34–5. He observes of the poet: ‘While he was doubtless familiar with the conventional allegorization of Old Testament narrative, he seems to have been less interested in ingenious abstract interpretations than in the stories themselves. This is not to say that he was not cognmnt of the total symbolic effect of the exodus story; but he was concerned with dramatizing it as a whole rather than in parts.’

page 283 note 1 Stephen Manning analyses varying emphases in Middle English lyrics on explicit indication of allegorical intent in combination with lines and phrases which are literally puzzling or absurd (Wisdom and Number: Toward a Critical Appraisal of the Middle English Religious Lyric (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1962), esp. pp. 90–137Google Scholar). One poem Manning discusses (pp.111–12) is most instructive (Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, ed. Carlton Brown (Oxford, 1939)Google Scholar no. 112). Line 23 reads: ‘The pasche lambe, þat on þe croce did clym.’ Since ordinary lambs do not climb crosses, the reader is forced to seek an answer to this riddling statement. In a Christian context there is only one answer: Christ who died on the cross, the Lamb of God. However, this lyric relies heavily on explicit indication of an allegorical framework: (1) it is entitled ‘Off þe Resurrectioun of crist’; (2) it explicitly refers to God, the Virgin Mary and angels; and (3) the preceding line (22), ‘The saikles lorde, þat slane was for þi slycht’, provides a parallel explication of and preparation for line 23.