THE DESTROYER OF SOULS: THE RHETORIC OF FEAR IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE by THOMAS AUSTIN TUTT Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON December 2012 Copyright © by Thomas Tutt 2012 All Rights Reserved To Derry Lynn Tutt, 1950-1998 Derry Keith Tutt, 2010 David Thomas Tutt, 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was completed with the help of a remarkable team of individuals, including my committee member, Dr. Jacqueline Stodnick, Dr. Timothy Richardson, and Dr. Kevin Gustafson. In addition, I would like to thank the entire graduate faculty of UTA for their tremendous support and encouragement. I would also like to extend special thanks to the UTA Department of Graduate Studies for the Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship that I received for the summer of 2011. This fellowship gave me the opportunity to make substantial progress on writing this dissertation and provided me the momentum to keep up that work. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the organizers of the conferences of the South Central Modern Language Association and the Federation Rhetoric Symposium. Portions of this document were presented at these conferences over the years, and the feedback I received there has helped shaped what I present today. Most importantly, I would like to extend my deepest love and gratitude toward my family and friends who have given me moral support through this entire process, especially to my wife, Evelyn, and our two boys, Derry and Davey. It is difficult to find the words to say exactly what your support has meant to me, so I will simply say “thank you” and “I love you.” November 30, 2012 iv ABSTRACT THE DESTROYER OF SOULS: THE RHETORIC OF FEAR IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE Thomas Tutt, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2012 Supervising Professor: Jacqueline Stodnick This dissertation explores representations of fear in Old English literature and examines their rhetorical purposes. Although Anglo-Saxon writers were often unconcerned with or even hostile to the use of rhetorical techniques, I argue that Anglo-Saxons, particularly in their vernacular texts, tailor their writing to appeal to their audiences in specific ways. As such, this writing should be read as highly rhetorical. Reference to fear and fearful imagery in these texts play an important rhetorical role. Fear places the Anglo-Saxon subject in a world defined along rigid lines between Christian and Pagan, legal subject and outlaw, human and monster, recorded and forgotten, kept and lost. But at the same time as the rhetoric of fear establishes these rigid lines, the fear expressed in these texts often reflects anxiety about the stability of the traditions and practices that create them. This dissertation examines texts from a variety of genres and contexts, including homilies, saints’ lives. The depictions of fear in these texts sometimes confirms, sometimes challenges, the dominant ideologies of Anglo-Saxon England. The Anglo- Saxon rhetoric of fear expresses a set of anxieties at the center of Anglo-Saxon civilization: v looking backward was the comfort of tradition marred by the threat of paganism. Looking forward was the stark possibility of an earthly future of ruin and exile. Anglo-Saxon texts turn to religious traditions in order to assuage these anxieties, but this tradition could often only answer by appealing to fear. The analysis of these texts focuses on the rhetorical attempts to balance the comfort and the terror which are found side by side whenever a speaker makes an appeal to tradition. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................... ……………..iv ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................v Chapter Page 1. Fear itself: a rhetorical tradition of fear in Old English literature……………………………………..………..….. .....................................1 2. Hellfire and damnation: fear, invasion, and ideology in the eschatological rhetoric of Wulfstan and Ælfric .............................................................................26 3. Fearing no evil: the rhetoric of fear and the delimitation of holiness in Andreas and Elene .................................................................................................58 4. Broken to pieces: linguistic anxiety and the rhetoric of fear in the Exeter Riddles ........................................................................................................98 5. Alone in the wilderness: fear, antithesis, and consolation in the Old English Elegies..............................................................................................129 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................185 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ...............................................................................196 vii CHAPTER 1 FEAR ITSELF: A RHETORICAL TRADITION OF FEAR IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 1.1 Introduction Readers familiar with Old English literature will likely agree that fear is a persistent theme. This is certainly true of Beowulf, the Old English text familiar – at least in translation – to the widest audience. The central plot of this narrative poem focuses on the titular hero’s struggle against a trio of terrifying monsters. As J. R. R. Tolkien argues in his influential article “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” these monsters “are essential, fundamentally allied to the underlying ideas of the poem, which give it its lofty tone and high seriousness.”1 That these monsters make themselves known through terror is no accident: according to Michael Lapidge, “A central concern of the Beowulf-poet … is with human perception of the external world and with the workings of the human mind.”2 Focusing his analysis on the scant descriptions of Grendel, the specific language used to describe the monster, and the placement of these descriptions in relation to important events in the narrative, Lapidge concludes that Beowulf is “interested in the mechanism of fear” as a poetic technique. Much of what is memorable about the poem is due to this sensitivity to the psychology of fear. But perhaps there is more at work here than simply artistic technique. For example, shortly after Grendel’s first appearance, we are told of the Danes that Hwilum hie geheton æt hærgtrafum wigweorþunga, wordum bædon þæt him gastbona geoce gefremede 1 J.R.R Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson, Ann Arbor: U of ND P, 1963. 63. 2 Michael Lapidge, “Beowulf and the Psychology of Terror,” Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr, ed. Helen Damico and John Leyerle, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1993. 373-402. Rpt. in Beowulf: A Prose Translation, ed. Nicholas Howe, New York: Norton, 2002, 134-53. 135. 1 wið þeodþreaum. Swylc wæs þeaw hyra, hæþenra hyht; helle gemundon in modsefan, Metod hie ne cuþon, dæda Demend, ne wiston hie Drihten God, ne hie huru heofena helm herian ne cuþon, wuldres Waldend. Wa bið þæm ðe sceal þurh sliðne nið sawle bescufan in fyres fæþm, frofre ne wenan, wihte gewendan. [At times they vowed at heathen temples, honoring idols, prayed in words that the destroyer of souls would bring about help to them against the calamity of their nation. Such was their custom, heathens’ hope; thinking of hell in their minds, the Creator they knew not, the Judge of deeds, nor knew the Lord God, nor did they know how to praise heaven’s Protector. Woe is to them who shall through terrible hostility thrust their soul into the fire’s embrace, no hope for comfort to change in any way].3 In this passage, fear is shown along with its effects, as the fear of Grendel inspires the Danes to a far more fearful fate: worship practices that will doom them to eternal punishment in Hell.4 It is not hard to imagine that the Anglo-Saxon audience of Beowulf would read this as a moral lesson 3 The Old English Text of Beowulf is taken from Frederick Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd ed, Lexington: Heath, 1950, lines 175-86. Except where otherwise noted, all translations from the Old English are my own. 4 These lines, which appear to judge the pagan Danes by the standards of Christian theology, are problematic to many critics. Tolkien, in The Monsters in the Critics, suggests that these lines might have been a later addition, and that the later, Christian poet might have been attempting to draw attention to the distinction between Hrothgar’s troop and a more thoroughly pagan group within the Danes (101-3). Margaret Goldsmith’s interpretation is closer to my own: that the lines are intended to demonstrate that the Dane’s ignorance of Christianity made it easy for them to turn to idol worship (173-4). 2 for themselves.5 The Anglo-Saxons faced dangers which were perhaps as threatening as Grendel is to the Danes, and the temptation to backslide from appropriate religious devotion was perhaps just as great. An Anglo-Saxon orator, looking for that elusive connection between Ingeld and Christ, could find in this passage the important message that nothing on Earth should scare a nation as much as the potential fate of their eternal souls. The fear in this text is rhetorical as well as artistic, serving as a moment for religious instruction. A quick