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Landscape and Community in Old English Poetry

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FORESTS OF THOUGHT AND FIELDS OF PERCEPTION: LANDSCAPE AND COMMUNITY IN OLD ENGLISH POETRY by MARY ELIZABETH WARD A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham September 2017 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract. Old English poetry is centred on the concept of community and the importance of belonging. Landscape was a component of any community since, during the period when Old English poetry was being composed and written down, the landscape was a far more important constituent of daily life than it is for the majority of people today. Landscape dictated the places that could be settled, as well as the placing of the paths, fords, and bridges that joined them; it controlled boundaries, occupations, and trading routes. In the poetry of the period landscape, as part of the fabric of community, is the arbiter of whether each element of a community is in its proper place and relationship to the others. It is the means of explaining how a community is constructed, policed, and empowered. Erring communities can be corrected or threats averted through the medium of landscape which also positions communities in place and time. Landscape is presented as the cause of dissension in heaven, the consequent creation of hell, and the key to comprehension of the fundamental difference between them. The linguistic landscapes of Old English poetry are a functional component of the meaning inherent in the narratives. Dedication. For Gnome, who introduced me to Old English poetry Acknowledgements I acknowledge with gratitude help and support from many people. Ann Cole and Oliver Padel were especially generous in sharing their expertise and knowledge; Linda Hutton, Tim O’Mara, and John Young gave much time to discussions and also to reading and commenting on parts of this dissertation in draft. In particular, Naomi has never ceased to urge me on and has provided much help through her insightful and incisive comments, while Philippa Semper has proved a patient supervisor who has drawn out from me more than I thought I was capable of giving. In addition, those of my family and friends who are not medievalists have yet supported and encouraged me, and borne patiently with being told more about Old English poetry than most of them wanted to know. Thank you. Contents. Abbreviations. Introduction 1 I. Landscape and Community: Composition, Control and Power 33 The expression of community in Maxims II 35 The imprisoning landscape of The Wife’s Lament 57 The landscape of power in Exodus 67 Conclusion 79 II. Reflections in the Water: Landscapes of Harmony and Dispute 81 The desirable landscape of balanced elements 84 The instructive harmony of metaphor: The Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care 91 The landscape of dispute in Genesis 101 Conversion through coercion: changing hearts by changing landscape in Andreas 108 Conclusion 125 III. Cleansing the Compromised Landscape 127 Symbolizing otherness: the monstrous landscapes of the Grendelkin in Beowulf 128 Change by Charm: healing and defending the landscape in Æcerbot 151 Conclusion 170 IV. Places in Time: Landscape and the Positioning of Community 171 The active landscape and the community of time in Durham 173 Static landscape and the gifts of time in The Menologium 185 Conclusion 211 V. Landscapes of the Word: Heaven and Hell 213 Dividing the cosmological landscape 214 Disunited: the landscape of hell 230 Unity of being: the landscape of heaven 243 Conclusion 254 Conclusion 256 Appendix 264 Bibliography 319 Abbreviations ASPR The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records DOE Dictionary of Old English A-H online Introduction Landscape holds a rather inconspicuous place in Old English poetry. This thesis originated in an attempt to discover the function of such an apparently minor component of the texts. Closely analysing the poems, the vocabulary, phrases and formulæ used in connection with topographical features, revealed that landscapes in the Old English poetic corpus engage fully with both events and protagonists to widen and deepen the meaning, to explain and describe things that are not otherwise explicit in the texts. They are neither panoramic verbal visualisations nor a backdrop for the narrative action. As is demonstrated in this dissertation, through the narrative context the landscapes of the poetry articulate the perceptions of the Anglo-Saxons as regards the way the world is structured and functions, in particular its ordering on both a microcosmic and macrocosmic scale. The basis of order in Old English poetry is the community, which is a central motif in the poetry of the period: ‘a concern with ideas of community and of the relationship of individuals to communities is widely evident in surviving Old English 1 poetic texts’. The structure of community as it is revealed in the poetry is one of innate orderliness; each component of any community has its own function and position, and it is only when all are in place and fulfilling their purpose that the community as a whole can work smoothly. The importance that the poetry attaches to the concept of a rightful habitation for every element is demonstrated by the final line of The Dream of the Rood. The culmination of Christ’s triumph is not glory, honour, and praise, but that he came ‘þær his eþel wæs’ (where his homeland was, line 156). His sacrifical acts, the power he displays in liberating souls from hell, his rejection of Satan’s temptations, his redemption of humanity, result simply in his return home. 1 Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.1. 1 The climax of the poem is that he is now in his rightful place, his homeland, his native land. He is in the place where it is right and proper that he should be, in his own community of heaven. In the poetry of the period, the concept of community and the rightful place of each element of which it is composed, is extended, not only to the whole of creation, but beyond it to such abstractions as qualities and emotions. It is universal in application: such disparate entities as wisdom, hills, kings, nations, and worlds, are all part of some kind or type of community and have their own appointed position within it. The relationship of each element with all the others and the interactions between them are what form a community and this is only possible when each individual part, every single thing of whatever type or origin, is both functioning and positioned correctly. Landscape is a fundamental part of the structure of thoughts and ideas that inform the concept of what the Anglo-Saxons understood a community to consist of, and how it should function. It is the contention of this thesis that landscape is the poetic arbiter of what is right in this context. The rightness of something may be expressed in terms of space, place, location, or time; it is not a human-based legal, moral, or ethical correctness but a more absolute constituent of the structure of the cosmos. That being so, there is no questioning, in the poetic corpus, as to why things should be thus arranged, only a developing exploration of how they work together when each is in its rightful habitation, the consequence of which is the ordered cosmos. Landscape is the means of expressing whether an individual or a community is in its proper place and therefore in a satisfactorily harmonious relationship with the remainder of its own community or with other communities or with God. The research that yielded these insights was, firstly, a detailed examination of the entire corpus of Old English poetry to see how much landscape it contained and of 2 what type. This included making my own translations of many of the texts which appeared to make significant use of landscape. The production of a database containing all instances and their place in the poems was the next stage, once it became apparent that landscape was a feature of many more of the poems than is usually recognised, but in ways that do not conform to a modern understanding and categorisation of landscape features. The vocabulary that these texts employ, it was clear, is governed more strongly by the demands of the verse form as to stress and alliteration than it is by any attempt to depict a visualised geographical setting for the narratives, whether imaginary or otherwise. Studying the landscape through the medium of the database, differences of genre were revealed to be insignificant in the Anglo-Saxon understanding and appreciation of landscape. Landscape is a constant presence throughout the corpus but the use that is made of it in the texts is incremental rather than immediate in each case; studying the poems in detail shows an awareness of landscape as a component of daily life and a constituent of what is to be understood by community. The texts that have been analysed in this study are therefore those which exemplify most clearly the cast of mind that appreciated landscape as part of the fabric of society, regardless of any genre or categorisation that might be applied in regards to purpose or function.
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