MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Angela B. Fulk Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________ Director Britton Harwood _______________________________________ Reader Catherine Karkov _______________________________________ Reader Patrick Murphy _______________________________________ Graduate School Representative Charlotte Goldy ABSTRACT “ON ANGINNE”: ANGLO-SAXON READINGS OF GENESIS by Angela B. Fulk My dissertation focuses on the plethora of references to the book of Genesis that are found in Old English literature, easily more than exist for any other book of the Bible. The project traces both the ways that this Scriptural narrative impacted the newly-Christianized society of the Anglo-Saxons and the unique interpretations of Genesis that this culture produced. Central texts for this analysis include Beowulf and the Genesis poem, along with the illustrations of the Genesis narrative found in the Junius Manuscript and the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch. The methodology is modeled on current paradigms in cultural history, such as the “contact zone” theories of Mary Louise Pratt, the research of Caroline Walker Bynum, and the comparable analysis of the Exodus poem published by Nicholas Howe. Section One examines the pagan religious beliefs and practices of the Anglo-Saxons, insofar as these may be ascertained by the scant surviving textual evidence and archeological relics, and demonstrates how the narratives of Genesis were used to provide a bridge for the Anglo- Saxons between pagan and Christian culture. Section Two discusses the political implications of Anglo-Saxon retellings of Genesis. Genealogies and other texts that incorporate Genesis material not only provided the Anglo- Saxons with a new sense of cultural identity based on their perceived role in history, but also served to strengthen the institution of Anglo-Saxon kingship. The discussion of the impact of Genesis on Anglo-Saxon social customs in Section Three centers on examining the story of Cain and Abel in light of the Germanic tradition of blood-feud and on considering how Anglo-Saxon concepts of gender roles shaped their interpretations of the female characters of Genesis, such as Eve. “ON ANGINNE”: ANGLO-SAXON READINGS OF GENESIS A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English by Angela Beth Fulk Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2007 Dissertation Director: Britton J. Harwood © Angela B. Fulk 2007 Contents Introduction 1 Section One: Genesis in the Context of Religious Change Chapter One: Pagan Religious Worldviews 23 Chapter Two: Genesis and the Christianization of Anglo- Saxon Religion 47 Section Two: The Political Impact of Genesis Chapter Three: A Unifying History 84 Chapter Four: A “Gōd Cyning” 107 Section Three: The Social Context of Anglo-Saxon Genesis Narratives Chapter Five: Blood Feud 157 Chapter Six: Peace-Weaving 180 Conclusion 214 Works Cited 217 iii “On Anginne”: Anglo-Saxon Readings of Genesis Introduction The prominence in Old English literature of allusions to the Scriptural book of Genesis is a phenomenon worthy of note. In Beowulf, the most famous literary contribution of the Anglo-Saxons, the scop in Hrothgar’s great hall of Heorot sings of the creation of the world by the Christian God, and Grendel is identified as a descendent of Cain. Genesis was certainly not the only section of Scripture with which the Anglo-Saxons were familiar, but in addition to references such as those in Beowulf, an epic poetic treatment of the book, the Genesis poem, has survived, and Genesis was one of the very few books of Scripture to be translated into Old English in its entirety. In her 2000 article “The Anglo-Saxon Genesis: Text, Illustration, and Audience,” Catherine Karkov identifies “an awareness of audiences for and responses to Genesis that was arguably greater than that for any other subject in Anglo-Saxon England” (202). The prominence thus given to this book indicates that it was of special significance to the Anglo- Saxons. Its use in Beowulf, a work long noted for its combination of pagan and Christian elements, suggests that the narratives and images of Genesis may have played a crucial part in the assimilation of Christianity into Anglo- Saxon culture. This dissertation examines the role of Genesis in the transformation of Anglo-Saxon society from pagan to Christian through a detailed study of various treatments of the book of Genesis by Anglo-Saxon authors. By placing these writings into their cultural context, it describes the distinctive ways in which an emerging Anglo- Saxon Christian culture interpreted the stories of Genesis, 1 as well as how the book facilitated the Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity. As a cultural studies project, it concerns itself primarily with popular theology, the dissemination of Genesis material in the vernacular and its received interpretations, rather than the scholarly debates conducted by learned theologians among themselves. The greatest obstacle to any study of the Anglo-Saxon transition from paganism to Christianity is that the pre- existing pagan culture was almost completely preliterate. All Old English writings that have survived are the products of a Christian milieu that sought to speak as little as possible of the old pagan ways. Tracing the customs and beliefs of Anglo-Saxon paganism is therefore a highly difficult task, though one that has inspired the efforts of scholars for generations. Until the last few decades, historians and literary scholars have repeatedly attempted to dissect cultural relics such as Beowulf in order to separate them into recognizably “Christian” or “pagan” fragments.1 More recent work has recognized, however, that 1 This approach has been especially common in Beowulf criticism because the oral-formulaic nature of the text indicates that it may have been originally a solely pagan composition, passed down through oral tradition and eventually transcribed in an altered form by a Christian writer. Alvin A. Lee, one of the earliest scholars to reject this approach, comments on its shortcomings and describes the “hypothetical principle of unity” his own work will assume in the introduction to his book, p.6. Lee’s hypothesis is that Anglo-Saxon poetry exhibits an “imaginative unity…that is at once heroic, Germanic, didactic, and Christian” (6). My own assumptions are similar, though my interest is in cultural patterns that may demonstrate cohesion more than unity. 2 the two categories of pagan and Christian are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Both cultural elements occurred side by side in the Anglo-Saxon era, as they do within poems such as Beowulf. How cross-pollination took place between the two seems a more productive question than how to separate them; certainly it will lead to a more complex understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture than the previous method. As Michel Foucault remarked in a 1984 interview, “What is interesting is always interconnection, not the primacy of this over that, which never has any meaning” (169). In order to examine a site of interconnection, however, one must define the separate elements that are identified as meeting at that site. Hence, this project entails a certain amount of speculation about pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon culture, in order to provide a context for the site of that culture’s initial encounters with Christianity, but its primary focus is on that locus of contact. Here, the narratives of Genesis rise to prominence. The examination of Anglo-Saxon literary treatments of Genesis that this project undertakes demonstrates not only how the narratives and themes of Genesis aided in the Christianization2 of the 2 Following the terminology of James C. Russell in his work, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity, I use the term “Christianization” rather than “conversion” to describe the process of religious transformation undergone by the Anglo-Saxons as a collective body. “Conversion” implies a total and radical shift of belief undergone at a measurable point in time, and as such seems better applicable to individuals than to an entire social group. “Christianization” is meant to suggest a gradual process of change, whose effects within Anglo-Saxon society remained 3 Anglo-Saxons by speaking directly to pagan customs and concerns, but also how the already existing beliefs and customs of the Anglo-Saxons influenced the interpretations of Genesis, and indeed of Christianity, that their society eventually produced. Project Description and Outline Writing of “Anglo-Saxon culture” in any sense is somewhat of a definitional problem for any scholar. In this project, I use the term “Anglo-Saxon” to designate the society formed by a group of Germanic tribes that began to make their homes on the island of Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman empire from that island. Angles and Saxons were two of these original tribes; Jutes and Frisians also played a large role in the migration, as did other more minor groups. The native Britons who remained and survived the invasion were also absorbed into the emerging society, as were the Vikings who arrived later. From an extremely loose coalition of Germanic tribes, kingdoms were formed, and by the time of the Norman invasion, it was possible to speak of England—a word derived from “Angla-land” or “land of the Angles”—as a single nation with a distinct culture. The extreme difficulty of dating the composition of most surviving texts from the Anglo-Saxon period, not to mention establishing authorship of them, is only a minor obstacle within the context of this project precisely because its definition of Anglo-Saxon culture is so inclusive. In examining the continental Germanic roots of this culture, I make use of the invaluable record of the Roman historian Tacitus, even though it was written several centuries before the earliest migration of these tribes to Britain. Even though the portion of the Genesis poem known uneven for centuries.