AGE MATTERS in OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE Jordi Sánchez-Martí

AGE MATTERS IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

Jordi Sánchez-Martí

For the scholarly recovery and understanding of extinct societies we are dependent primarily on extant cultural artefacts in the form of either written records or archaeological remains. In general, expressions of a society’s cultural tenets are rarely to be found explicitly mentioned in early historical records, but are more likely to surface indirectly in literary texts. In the case of Anglo-Saxon England, while the pres- ervation and study of both textual objects and material remains has contributed to articulate scholarly accounts of this historical period,1 our knowledge about this age continues to be imperfect, mainly with regards to the social attitudes and values of the Anglo-Saxons. Taking into account that Old English literature, the poetry in particular, has been considered to be ‘the great collective medium through which the Anglo-Saxons conceived of their changing social world’,2 this article explores how Old English literary texts represent the cultural qualities of and expectations about the different stages in the development of Anglo-Saxon males. By surveying the Old English literary corpus I hope to recapture some of the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons constructed and thought about the biological process of growing from boyhood to old age. In so doing I will approach the literary sources not as a reﬂ ection of an historically accurate reality, but as an expression of the Anglo-Saxon social outlook on matters of age.3

1 Still useful is the overview presented by Bruce Mitchell, An Invitation to Old English & Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1995), pp. 73–243. More recently, see The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England: Basic Readings, ed. by Catherine E. Karkov (New York, 1999). For a summary of archaeological contributions to the study of age, see Heinrich Härke, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Social Structure’, in The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: an Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by John Hines (Woodbridge, 1997; repr. 2003), pp. 125–70 (pp. 125–30). See also Shannon Lewis-Simpson, this volume. 2 John D. Niles, Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts (Turnhout, 2007), p. 1. 3 As Härke states, ‘the divergences between Anglo-Saxon literary perceptions, legal codes, and ritual expression of age grades are conspicuous’ (‘Anglo-Saxon Social Structure’, p. 129). Since the Old English corpus may be thought to be limited, reference will be made to the cognate Old Norse literature for comparative purposes. Scholars have traditionally recognized that the Old English and Norse literary traditions share 206 jordi sánchez-martí

In his ‘Homily on the Parable of the Vineyard’ (c. 992) Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham, makes an insightful comment that gives us a general view of how contemporary Anglo-Saxons may have perceived and structured the process of growing from childhood to old age: Witodlice ures andgites merigen. is ure cildhád. ure cnihthád swylce underntíd on þam astihð ure geogoð. swa swa seo sunne deð ymbe þære ðriddan tide; Ure fulfremeda wæstm. swa swa middæg. for ðan ðe on midne dæg bið seo sunne on ðam ufemestum ryne stigende. swa swa se fulfremeda wæstm bið on fulre strencðe þéonde; Seo nóntid bið ure yld. for ðan ðe on nóntide asihð seo sunne. and ðæs ealdigendan mannes mægen bið wanigende. Seo endlyfte tid bið seo forwerode ealdnyss þam deaðe genealæcende. swa swa seo sunne setlunge genealæhð. on þæs dæges geendunge.4 Even though Ælfric is translating from Pope Gregory the Great’s Homiliae in Evangelia,5 the Old English version departs signiﬁ cantly from the Latin original and presents a genuinely Anglo-Saxon view of the ages

an inheritance from a common Germanic background, and more recently it has been suggested that Old Norse literature inﬂ uenced Old English literature during Viking-Age England, thus making the introduction of analogues relevant. Although the study of literary relations between Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Scandinavia has some limitations and lacks positive certainty (see Roberta Frank, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian Poetic Relations’, ANQ , 3 (1990), 74–79 (p. 75)), I follow Robert E. Bjork’s advice, ‘to dwell in the possibility’ (‘Scandinavian Relations’, in A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford, 2001), p. 389). For a survey of recent scholarship, see Richard Dance, ‘North Sea Currents: Old English–Old Norse Relations, Literary and Linguistic’, Literature Compass, 1 (2004), 1–5. 4 Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: the Second Series, Text, ed. by Malcolm Godden, Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series, 5 (London, 1979), p. 44: ‘Certainly, the morning of our understanding is our childhood, our adolescence is like the third hour, on which our youth rises, just as the sun does about that third hour; our completed growth is just as midday, for at midday the sun is ascending to its uppermost orbit, just as the completed growth is increasing to its full strength. The ninth hour is our old age, for on the ninth hour the sun declines, and the might of the ageing man is waning. The eleventh hour is very old age, with death approaching, just as the sun approaches set- ting at the end of the day’. Unless otherwise stated, translations in this article are my own. For biographical information on Ælfric, see Malcolm Godden, ‘Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 950–c. 1010)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford, 2004), I, 387–8. 5 Patrologia Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1844–64), LXXVI, 1155. See Malcolm Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series, 18 (Oxford, 2000), p. 383.