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© 2018 Kyle Joseph Williams ã 2018 Kyle Joseph Williams THE ASSEMBLED BODY: ANATOMICAL ENUMERATION AND EMBODIMENT IN ANGLO-SAXON DEVOTIONAL TEXTS BY KYLE JOSEPH WILLIAMS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Renée R. Trilling, Chair Professor Charles D. Wright Professor Martin Camargo Associate Professor Jim Hansen ABSTRACT “The Assembled Body: Anatomical Enumeration and Embodiment in Anglo- Saxon Devotional Texts” argues that Anglo-Saxon Christians viewed the material body as a potent site for spiritual transformation. This notion finds its fullest expression in the rhetorical scheme of anatomical enumeration which appears across a diverse collection of Old English and Anglo-Latin devotional forms that range from the seventh to eleventh century, such as anonymous personal protective charms and prayers, confessional formulae, monastic execrations, scientific writing and diagrams produced Byrhtferth, as well as a number of Ælfric of Eynsham’s vernacular homilies. This project demonstrates how Anglo-Saxon authors employed such enumerative anatomical catalogs to highlight the vibrancy of the flesh at moments spiritual uncertainty. Casting the material body as an assemblage of agents, this rhetorical disarticulation of the flesh enables readers to envision the realignment and reintegration of their disordered and disobedient limbs into the unity of Christ’s spiritual body. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was completed through the generous help of many kind people. My greatest debt is to my dissertation supervisor, Renée Trilling. Her meticulous and challenging feedback, unceasing patience to allow me the (many) opportunities to learn from my mistakes, and hearty encouragement gave me both the enthusiasm and nerve to complete this task. Renée has shown me what I should be striving for as a scholar, a teacher, and a mentor. I will be forever grateful for her example. I also wish to thank Charlie Wright, who was always incredibly benevolent with his time. His truly awe-inspiring knowledge helped shepherd this project through many challenging moments. I am deeply fortunate to have found myself among such gracious individuals. I am likewise grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their many contributions, corrections, and questions: Martin Camargo never failed to help me consider doctrinal or thematic resonance within later texts while Jim Hansen thoroughly prepared me to wrestle with the likes of Deleuze and Guattari. My project has been greatly enhanced through their expertise and kindness. I have enjoyed the many benefits of a wonderful group of colleagues and friends over the years from the University of Illinois. It has been a distinct privilege to work with Amity Reading, Shannon Godlove, Stephane Clark, Jill Hamilton Clements, Jill Fitzgerald, and Kelly Williams. I was anxious upon my move to Illinois and entry a graduate program but Amity, Shannon, and Stephanie welcomed me into the gebeorscipe without hesitation. Many good friends outside of medieval studies have also lent their support in vital ways and made graduate studies so much iii more enjoyable, including Mike Behrens, Carrie Dickison, Dan Colson, Rebeccah Bechtold, Ryan Sheets, Jessica Sheets, Ezra Claverie, and Philip Ernstmeyer. In the end, this project is dedicated to my wife Aida Sefić Williams, who has supported me both emotionally and financially through the duration of this project. Without her love, patience, and assurance I doubt my resolve could have held. Finally, I must thank my parents David Daniel Williams and Hilda Jean Putnam Williams, who instilled in me a love of learning at an early age. They encouraged me to follow my potential and seek out knowledge as a reward in itself. iv Za Aidu i Eminu Što te volim, ah što te ljubim aman, aman, bože moj v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................................vii INTRODUCTION: OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE, NEW MATERIALISMS, AND THE BODY’S POTENTIAL ………………………………………………………………………….. 1 CHAPTER 1: ENACTING PROTECTION: ANATOMICAL ENUMERATION AND EMBODIMENT IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON PROTECTIVE PRAYERS ………………...… 23 CHAPTER 2: CONFESSING THINGS: ANATOMICAL ENUMERATION AND EMBODIMENT IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON CONFESSION …………………….......……... 72 CHAPTER 3: RULING THE WORLD: THE ASSEMBLED BODY AS MICROCOSM IN BENEDICTINE TEXT AND DIAGRAM ………………………………………………….....131 CHAPTER 4: TRANSLATING THE BODY: THE ASSEMBLED BODY AND LAY PIETY IN ÆLFRIC’S HOMILIES ………..................................………………………………………... 190 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………….. 242 REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………………….. 249 APPENDIX A: LORICA OF LAIDCENN: LATIN WITH OLD ENGLISH GLOSS AND TRANSLATION ........................................................................................................................ 283 vi ABBREVIATIONS ASE Anglo-Saxon England. ASPR Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. B&T Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, ed., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England. CH Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. DOE Dictionary of Old English: A to H online. DRBO Douay-Rheims Bible Online. EETS Early English Text Society JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology Ker N. R. Ker, ed., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. LS Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PL Patrologia Latina vii INTRODUCTION: OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE, NEW MATERIALISMS, AND THE BODY’S POTENTIAL What is an assemblage? It is a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between them, across ages, sexes, and reigns – different natures. Thus, the assemblage’s only unity is that of a co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a ‘sympathy.’ Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues II What if the body is more than its limbs, organs, and flesh as traced by an anatomical chart, as united into a finite whole? Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines Images of the body—as a whole or in pieces—permeate the Anglo-Saxon literary canon. For example, Beowulf swells with anger anticipating his heroic grappling match with the monstrous Grendel in the same codex as other freakish foreign bodies that roam the distant East; Holofernes’s disembodied head is a clear sign of Judith’s spiritual triumph while a thief’s missing hand marks his crime as well as the authority of the state; saints lives reveal the holiness of their subjects through descriptions of both physical incorruption and dismemberment; and the resurrected flesh pictured in the poetic Christ III and prose Blickling Homily 10 transmogrifies into a state like glass that reveals one’s sins at Judgement Day.1 While the Anglo-Saxon body 1 Frederick Klaeber, Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed. rev. R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, John D. Niles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Andy Orchard provides an edition and translation of the Latin and Old English iterations of The Wonders of the East in Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 175-203; Mark Griffith, ed., Judith (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997); representative examples from Æthelberht or Alfred’s law codes are found in Felix 1 has only recently become a subject for examination, especially in comparison to other fields such as Middle English or Early Modern studies, scholars of early medieval literature have quickly brought to bear a dizzying array of methodologies and theoretical approaches whose readings uncover bodies as diverse, and sometimes as contradictory, as those on the manuscript page.2 To accurately describe the current state of the body in early medieval scholarship we must necessarily broach, in broad terms, the circumspect reception of critical theory within Anglo-Saxon studies. While disciplines inside the humanities began to employ theory during the 1980s to better frame or articulate various aspects of critical discourses, chief among these the body, Anglo-Saxonists would deviate little from traditional forms of textual study rooted in philology, codicology, and source study. It is not until the early 1990’s, with Allen J. Frantzen’s seminal appeal for scholars of early medieval literature to reevaluate customary boundaries drawn between past and present, or rather what is deemed properly “Anglo-Saxon” and what is not, that aspects of theoretical perspectives would enjoy broader approval within the conventional ambit of Anglo-Saxon studies.3 Following Frantzen the body began to dominate Liebermann, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 (Halle, 1903), 3-9, 15-87: Rev. William W. Skeat collects Ælfric’s extensive catalog of vitae in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, EETS o.s. 94 and 114 (London, 1881-1890); for Christ III see George Phillip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, ed., The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 27-49 (hereafter ASPR III). For Blickling 10 see R. Morris, ed., The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, EETS o.s. 73 (London, 1880), 106-15. 2 Benjamin C. Withers anticipates this burgeoning wave of interest but views it in terms of necessity rather than a fad: “The investigation of the medieval body has arisen only recently
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