View That the Present Study Affirms
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1 CYNEWULF'S ASCENSION (CHRIST II): A CRITICAL EDITION Roland T. Williams A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 197U Approved by Doctoral Committee Advisor Department of Englzi ¿f7 iJ-l—dJ —;; WWUNG GREEN Stint UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ABSTRACT Ascension (Christ II) is one of four Old English poems (the other three are Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, and Elene) with the name "Cynewulf" embedded in runes, acrostic-fashion, near the end. The purpose of the dissertation is to present a text of Ascension, transcribed from the Exeter Book facsimile. Included, too, are textual notes and commentary, introduction, translation, and glossary. Although the poem has been edited as part of the Exeter Book, as one of Cynewulf's signed works, and in collections of Old English literature, it has never been issued before as a separate work. The first 1,664 lines of the Exeter Book have been divided by scholars into Christ I (Advent), Christ II (Ascension), and Christ III (The Last Judgment) and were considered for many years to be a trilogy called Christ. Since Benjamin Thorpe published the first edition of the Exeter Book in 1842, scholars have repeated ly attempted to discover whether Cynewulf wrote one, two, or all three parts. For the reason that Cynewulf's name appears only at the end of Ascension, current scholarship holds that Cynewulf wrote only this poem, a view that the present study affirms. The introduction includes a discussion of the background of the Exeter Book, problems relating to authorship, dating, dialect, and runic writing, and a critical analysis which ejqjlores the structure, diction, imagery, and theme of the poem. The edited text follows with proposed manuscript emendations at the bottom of each page. Also noted are the suggested emendations made by selected editors of the poem. Notes and commentary appear next with explanatory material on difficult passages. Finally, a trans lation of the poem and a glossary, with cognate words from Indo- European languages, are included. In the poem, the Ascension—seen by the early Church as signifying the completion of man’s salvation—becomes the emblem (along with the Harrowing of Hell) of Christ's struggle to gain man's soul and to reunite man with God. Using verbs of vertical movement, Cynewulf describes this struggle as occurring among heaven, earth, and hell, and creates a tension among these three planes that is resolved at Christ's Second Coming. Suggestive, too, of this tension are the choices (illustrated by images of euphony and cacophony, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance) that man on earth must make during his life. The use of such parallels and contrasts not only produces an aesthetically satisfying poem, but also reveals a high order of artistic imagination. PREFACE This, the first edition of Cynewulf's Ascension to appear singly, has as its aim the establishment of a reliable, readable text with accompanying textual apparatus, and notes and commentary that explain variant forms and difficult passages rather than nor malizing them. To this end, too, I seek in the Translation and Glossary to reveal as fully as possible the linguistic richness of the poem, while I strive in the Analysis to explore critically the background, structure, diction, and imagery of Ascension. Ultimately, it is my hope that the artistic imagination that has gone into the creation of the poem comes to appear more significant than the various disputes over the authorship of the so-called Christ trilogy or its "unity." Besides these principles that have guided my editorial work on Cynewulf's poem, I have always tried to follow the advice—borne by many years of humane, judicious scholarship— offered by Frederick Klaeber in his review of Albert Cook's edition, The Christ of Cynewulf (Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 4 E19023, 101-112): To edit a Cynewulfian text well, it is not enough to be a "Cynewulf scholar," nor even to be a good Old English scholar. To a thorough knowledge of the requisite linguistic and metrical, details should be added keen literary insight, refinement of taste, and maturity of judgment. The editor should not allow himself to be run away with by one-sided considerations, whether metrical, aesthetic, or otherwise. He should not merely count, and measure, and analyze, but as well weigh, compare, and construct. He should make himself acquainted with all the great and (oftener) small contributions to our knowledge of this particular1 field, IV lay before his readers the net results of that confusing mass of contradictory treatises, and set forth his own views in a clear and convincing manner. Last, but not least, his heart should be in the work no less than his head. (p. 101) Finally, I would like to thank Miss Joyce Packer of the Exeter Cathedral Library staff for much useful background information on the Exeter Book. I also wish to express my gratitude to my disser tation advisor Arthur Abel, whose thoughtful suggestions and com ments helped me in the writing of my dissertation. To my wife, who typed the manuscript and gave me encouragement throughout my work, I owe my greatest debt. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE....................................................................................... iii BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 The Exeter Book.................................................................... 1 Cynewulf....................................................................................11 The Poem....................................................................................25 Language and Date..................................................... 25 Unity of the Christ trilogy................................26 Sources...........................................................................34 The Runes.......................................................................38 Analysis...................................................................... 42 NOTE ON THE TEXT...........................................................................83 TEXT.....................................................................................................86 NOTES AND COMMENTARY................................................................106 TRANSLATION......................................................................................131 GLOSSARY 142 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bibliographies Anderson, George K., "Old English Literature," The Medieval Litera ture of Western Europe: A Review of Research, Mainly 1930-1960« Ed. John H. Fisher. New York: New York University Press, 1966. Heusinkveld, Arthur H. and Edwin J. Baske. A Bibliographical Guide to 0E: A Selective Bibliography of the Language, Literature, and History of the Anglo-Saxons. University of Iowa Humanistic Studies Csupplement to the University of Iowa Studies, 139Ü» Fascicle 5« Iowa City, 1931* Jansen, Karl. Die Cynewulf-Forschung von ihren Anfängen bis zur Ge genwart . no. 24- (1908) of Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik. Ed. Moritz Trautmann. Bonn: Peter Hanstein's Verlag, 1911- Matthews, William. Old and Middle English Literature. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968. Renwick, William L. and Harold Orton. The Beginnings of English Literature to Skelton, 1509« 3r(i ecL* rev. by Martyn F. Wakelin. London: The Cresset Press, 1966. Robinson, Fred C. Old English Literature: A Select Bibliography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970. Schmitz, Theodor. "Die Cynewulf-Forschung 1908 u. 1909-" Beiblatt zur Anglia, 22 (l91l), 337-^1• Dictionaries Bosworth, Joseph, ed. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, rev. T. Northcote Toller, London: Oxford University Press, I898; and Supplement, London: Oxford University Press, 1921. Grein, Christian W.M., ed. Sprachschatz der angelsächsischen Dichter. 2 vols. Ed. J.J. Köhler. Cassel und Göttingen: George H. Wigand's Verlag, 1861-6^. Hall, J.R. Clark. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ^th ed. Cam bridge: The University Press, 1966. vii Background Anderson, George K. The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1949- Bede. A History of the English Church and People, trans. Leo Sher- ley-Price. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955« Brooke, Stopford A. English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1898. ___________________ . History of Early English Literature. New York and London: Macmillan and Co., 1892. Brown, C.F. "Cynewulf and Alcuin," Publications of the Modem Lan guage Association, 18 (1903), 308-34. __________ . "Irish-Latin Influence in Cynewulfian Texts," Englische Studien, 40 (1909), 1-29« Buckhurst, Helen. "Terms and Phrases for the Sea in Old English Poetry" in A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber. Ed. Kemp Malone and Martin Rund. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1929, PP« 103-119« Chaney, William A. The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: The Transition from Paganism to Christianity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970. Ebert, Adolf. Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlände. 3 vols. Leipzig: F.C.W. Vogel, 1880-89« Gatch, Milton McC. Loyalities and Traditions: Man and His World in Old English Literature. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1971- Keiser, Albert. The Influence of Christianity