Copyright 2014 Jill Hamilton Clements
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Copyright 2014 Jill Hamilton Clements DEATH, WRITING, AND REMEMBRANCE IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND BY JILL HAMILTON CLEMENTS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English with a concentration in Medieval Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Charles D. Wright, Chair Associate Professor Renée R. Trilling Professor Martin Camargo Professor Jana K. Schulman, Western Michigan University ABSTRACT The Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity was as much a revolution in literacy as it was in religion. I argue that within this new textual culture, the Anglo-Saxons exploited writing’s aura of permanence to counter the social, spiritual, and physical oblivion of death. By using writing both to preserve the dead metonymically through the textualization of their absent bodies and to project their metaphorical inscription in heaven, Anglo-Saxon authors defined selfhood and community in relation to death and the afterlife. Whether inscribed on stone, inked on parchment, or carved into the very landscape, the written text was therefore a mechanism and a metaphor for remembrance of the dead. I trace the Anglo-Saxon ways of “writing the dead” and the metaphoric and metonymic uses of inscription in several genres, including Old English heroic and religious poetry, Anglo-Latin prose, and commemorative texts and inscriptions. Each chapter explores a manifestation of the power of writing to embody the dead in the community of the living. Chapter 1 examines Anglo-Saxon funerary inscriptions and libri vitae, which figure salvation as the writing of the dead in the “book of life”; Chapter 2 reads Cynewulf’s runic signature as a figure of his decomposing and sinful body, which is made whole by the reader through reconstituting his name and praying for his salvation; Chapter 3 expands on the notion of the textualized body and argues that the liturgical and biblical texts recited and written by the dying Bede (as recorded in Cuthbert’s account of his death) function as “textual relics” and mnemonics for Bede that enable postmortem prayer for his soul; and Chapter 4 demonstrates that the Beowulf-poet imagines heroic death in the familiar terms of text and inscription, mapping onto the legendary past the mechanisms of remembrance that were at work in the Anglo-Saxon present. These material and metaphorical modes of writing created fixed points in a decaying and transient world, inscribing the dead in the memories and prayers of the living. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with surely any work on dying and death, this project has much more to do with the living than with the dead; I have been constantly reminded of how important one’s community is to every manner of achievement. I am greatly indebted to many people who have seen me through, and especially to my director and mentor, Charlie Wright, whose selfless dedication to his graduate students and generosity with his time made this project possible. Charlie’s encouragement, patient guidance, and humor (particularly when it comes to death-related puns) have made this project a pleasure to work on at every stage. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee: Renée Trilling, whose observations (“…what about writing and death?”) and tireless feedback have consistently helped to anchor my ideas to the bigger picture; Martin Camargo, whose thoughtful questions continue to inspire new directions for my work; and Jana Schulman, whose sage advice has guided me for nearly a decade now and whose seminar on “Death in Anglo-Saxon England” first planted the seeds for this project. I’m also grateful for the support of Jim Hansen, Rob Barrett, Anne D. Hedeman, Andrea Stevens, Justine Murison, and Michael Rothberg, who have gone out of their way to listen and to help me to navigate new theoretical angles (and have in the process endured countless conversations about death and dead bodies). I wish to express my gratitude to the University of Illinois’ Program in Medieval Studies for funding for my research, as well as the Department of English and Graduate College for their support through the Gragg Barr Dissertation Fellowship and Liberal Arts and Sciences Fellowships. Portions of this project have been shared at conferences thanks to the Rusk Travel Fund and Graduate College Excellence Funds. The work on this dissertation would never have gotten started without the mentorship and encouragement of many teachers, colleagues, and friends. I am forever grateful to Lila (Petre) iii Long, in whose classroom I first laid eyes on an Old English poem called Beowulf (I have been hooked ever since). Also to Christine Harker, Julia DeLancey, Royce Kallerud, Patricia Burton, Johanna Kramer, and Toni Healey, who witnessed the start of this journey into medieval studies and have been a source of confidence and enthusiasm ever since. Kimberly Fonzo, Stephanie Clark, Shannon Godlove, and Amity Reading have formed a network of wisdom and intellectual support since I began the doctoral program in 2008; the foundations of this project were shaped by our conversations about medieval theology and authorship, and I am so fortunate to have these four scholars not only as colleagues but as dear friends. I also thank my medieval studies classmates at Western Michigan and Illinois—especially Theresa Whitaker, Jill Fitzgerald, and Michael Brinks—and the members of the Old English Reading Group, who always kept my spirits afloat. My tremendous colleagues in 248 also have a share in this success; they made the isolating process of writing a dissertation survivable and continue to be a source of personal and professional growth. Thanks to Ben Bascom, Patricia Sunia, and John Moore for thoughtful (and quick!) feedback. I am especially grateful for the bottomless care and inspiration of Karoliina Engstrom, Maegan Bragg, Sarah Alexander Tsai, Isabel Quintana Wulf, Rebecca Weber, and Melissa Girard, who have helped me to learn the ropes and have kept me laughing all the way. Finally, I thank my family, and especially my parents, who have always believed in me and whose prayers and words of encouragement have kept me tethered to what really matters. Foremost thanks are reserved for my husband, Jason, who in the last six years has made sure I was never too overwhelmed and who has taken on every role from scribe and editor to counselor and coach. He has willingly listened to or directly inspired all of the ideas that made it into these pages, and I have finished this dissertation because of him. His ceaseless patience, understanding, and love have sustained me throughout. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: Writing the Dead in Ink and Stone: Inscription, Identity, and Community in Anglo-Saxon England .................................................................................................. 28 CHAPTER 2: Runes, Death, and Oblivion: The Written Body in the Poems of Cynewulf ..........................................................................................................................112 CHAPTER 3: The Discourse of Remembrance in Cuthbert’s Epistola de Obitu Bedae ......172 CHAPTER 4: A Monumental Death: Remembrance and Inscription in Beowulf .................220 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................280 v ABBREVIATIONS ASE Anglo-Saxon England ASPR 1 The Junius Manuscript. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Vol. 1. Edited by George Phillip Krapp. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. ASPR 2 The Vercelli Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Vol. 2. Edited by George Phillip Krapp. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932. ASPR 3 The Exeter Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Vol. 3. Edited by George Phillip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. ASPR 6 The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Vol. 6. Edited by Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942. ASSAH Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History BAR British Archeological Reports Bosworth-Toller J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898. CASSS 1 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. 1: Co. Durham and Northumberland. Edited by Rosemary Cramp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. accessible online at http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/. CASSS 2 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. 2: Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire-North-of-the-Sands. Edited by Richard N. Bailey and Rosemary Cramp. Oxford University Press, 1981. CASSS 3 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. 3: York and Eastern Yorkshire. Edited by James Lang. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. CASSS 4 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. 4: South-East England. Edited by Dominic Tweddle, Martin Biddle, and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. CASSS 5 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. 5: Lincolnshire. Edited by Paul Everson and David Stocker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. CASSS 6 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Vol. 6: Northern Yorkshire. Edited by James Lang. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. vi CASSS 7 Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone