Sagacious Liminality: the Boundaries of Wisdom in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic
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Sagacious Liminality: The Boundaries of Wisdom in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic Literature By Brett Trevor Roscoe A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in English Language and Literature in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada May, 2014 Copyright © Brett Trevor Roscoe, 2014 Abstract This dissertation examines the relationship between wisdom and identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. At present, the study of medieval wisdom is largely tangential to the study of proverbs and maxims. This dissertation makes wisdom its primary object of study; it sees wisdom not just as a literary category, but also as a cultural discourse found in texts not usually included in the wisdom canon. I therefore examine both wisdom literature and wisdom in literature. The central characteristic of wisdom, I argue, is its liminality. The biblical question “Where is wisdom to be found?” is difficult to answer because of wisdom’s in-between-ness: it is ever between individuals, communities, and times (Job 28:12 Douay- Rheims). As a liminal discourse, wisdom both grounds and problematizes identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. After a preliminary chapter that defines key terms such as “wisdom” and “wisdom literature,” I examine heroic wisdom in three characters who are defined by their wise traits and skills and yet who are ultimately betrayed by wisdom to death or exile. The implications of this problematic relation to wisdom are then examined in the next chapter, which analyzes the composition of wisdom in proverb poems. Like the wise hero, the poets represented in these poems blend their own voices with the voice of community, demonstrating that identity is open and therefore in need of constant revision. Next I examine how the liminality of wisdom is embodied in the figure of the wise monster, who negatively marks the boundaries of society and its desires. This then leads to a study of the reception of wisdom in chapter six, which focuses on instruction poems. Like narratives of wise monsters, these texts present lore as the nostalgic remnant of a tradition that defines identity, in this case the identity of a community. However, ii nostalgia assumes loss, and these texts also reveal an underlying fear that wisdom, the basis of the community’s identity, will be forgotten. Whether communal or individual, identity in this literature is both formed and threatened by liminal wisdom. iii Acknowledgments No work is the product of one person, and this dissertation is no exception. My sincere thanks go to Dr. George Clark, who, even though retired, voluntarily went through each chapter multiple times in great detail, saved me from many embarrassing mistakes, and offered insightful suggestions. Also to my supervisor, Dr. Scott-Morgan Straker, and my second reader, Dr. Jane Tolmie, for their constructive criticism and challenging questions, questions which even now invite me to think and think again about the nature of wisdom. I also wish to thank my wife Joo- young and my daughter Isabel, without whose patience and support this thesis would not have been possible. And finally, thanks be to the Source of all wisdom, the One who “shut in the sea with doors” and “laid the foundation of the earth” (Job 38:8, 4 ESV). Permissions: Figure 1: Berig. “U 1163, Drävle.” Photograph. 2007. Wikimedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U_1163,_Dr%C3%A4vle.JPG (accessed March 15, 2014). iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Defining Wisdom 11 Chapter 3 Heroic Wisdom 54 Chapter 4 Writing Wisdom 110 Chapter 5 Monstrous Wisdom 157 Chapter 6 Reading Wisdom 214 Chapter 7 Conclusion 273 Bibliography 276 v List of Tables Table 1 Old Norse-Icelandic Terms Related to Wisdom 19 Table 2 Old English Terms Related to Wisdom 19 Table 3 Old Norse-Icelandic Terms Related to Wisdom Literature 26 Table 4 Old English Terms Related to Wisdom Literature 26 vi List of Figures Figure 1 U 1163 176 vii “But where is wisdom to be found, and where is the place of understanding?” (Job 28:12 Douay- Rheims) Chapter 1: Introduction In Old English Verse, T. A. Shippey writes, Mrs N. K. Chadwick tells an amusing story of a Russian traveller in Central Asia during the last century who, finding that his host had begun to speak in cryptic rhyming couplets, concluded that the man was insane—whereas “in reality it seems clear that the chief was merely entertaining his guest with the most formal and polite kind of conversation with which he was familiar,” that is, compressed, proverbial verse. Many readers of Old English jump to the same wrong conclusion as the Russian traveller when they first encounter the dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, the charm and medicine anthologies, the two collections of “gnomic verse,” or the many poems which exist to give advice and make general statements on the human condition.1 Most of the literature Shippey here refers to is commonly included in the category of literature called “wisdom literature.” If this anecdote is really to be used as a parable of the modern reception of medieval wisdom literature, however, a few changes must be made, and the story might be told like this: Seeing three, weary North American travellers, a chief in Central Asia invited them to stay the night. During supper, the chief entertained them by reciting proverbial verse. The first traveller kept looking around the tent and thought to himself, “Where are the beers? Where are the girls and music? When will this boring sermon end?” But the chief just 1 Shippey, Old English Verse, 61; citing Chadwick, Oral Epics of Central Asia, 181, 229. 1 kept reciting proverbs. When the chief had finished, the second traveller said, “How refreshing! How quaint! Here at last are a people pure and young at heart.” The travellers were then shown to a tent which had been prepared for them, and after they were alone, the third traveller hurriedly hushed the others and whispered, “Do neither of you realize what is going on here? We were just part of a pagan rite in which we were dedicated to be killed at tomorrow’s sacrifice! We must run for our lives!” Wisdom is an under-theorized type of literature in Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English studies. Though somewhat familiar from the continuing presence of proverbs and riddles, early medieval wisdom remains very much an alien tradition that suffers under modern biases, the most common of which are exemplified in the above parable. The first traveller assumes that a list of proverbs is dull and dogmatic, and he looks for entertainment elsewhere, assuming that no pleasure could possibly be derived from such a platitudinous speech. Often seen as failing modern aesthetic requirements, texts like Hávamál and Maxims I and II are considered by many critics to be purely didactic or cliché, a second-class kind of literature—that is, if they are admitted to be “literature” at all. Another trend, exemplified by the second traveller, is to view wisdom literature more positively as childlike, direct, and simple.2 This characterization, for example, lies behind the editorial practice of altering line 10a of Maxims II, which reads “Soð bið swicolost” (Truth is most tricky), to “Soð bið switolost” (Truth is most evident).3 The manuscript reading is apparently too sophisticated and complex for literature that is supposed to 2 Poole identifies this trend and offers the following example from Maxims II. Poole, Old English Wisdom Poetry, 23–26. 3 All quotations of Old English poetry, except Beowulf and the Old English Boethius, are from G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie’s The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. 2 be childlike in its simplicity.4 Taking the opposite stance, the third traveller assumes that anything this simple on the surface must conceal a deeper, mysterious meaning. Paul Cavill describes this tendency as the “First Law of Gnomo-dynamics,” which stipulates, “if it is obvious what it means, it must mean something else.”5 Karl Schneider, for example, assumes that the Old English Rune Poem must be more than it seems, and so reconstructs the poem, hoping to demonstrate that it preserves relics of pagan cults and fertility rituals.6 Each of the travellers in the parable responds impressionistically to the chief’s proverbs, failing to appreciate wisdom on its own terms. What Russell Poole writes of the Old English gnomic poems might be applied to Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic wisdom poems in general: they “could be described without much exaggeration as literary Rorschach blots” (25). Fortunately, the story of the three travellers is not the only story to be told. Another story begins in 1968, when Morton Bloomfield called for more critical attention to the neglected and under-appreciated corpus of Old English wisdom literature. Since then, the study of medieval wisdom has grown with important contributions by Klaus von See, T. A. Shippey, Nicholas Howe, Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Carolyne Larrington, Paul Cavill, and others.7 This growth of critical literature has offered new modern perspectives that are more attentive to wisdom literature as a distinct type of literature with its own formal qualities and and its own aims. In most of these studies, however, any discussion of wisdom is tangential to the study of proverbs and maxims. As a result, it is sometimes tacitly assumed that wisdom literature is merely another 4 A persuasive argument for keeping the manuscript reading is offered in Robinson, “Understanding an Old English Wisdom Verse.” 5 Cavill, Maxims, 2.