Journal of the British Academy, 8, 295–399 DOI https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/008.295 Posted 9 December 2020 Alcuin and Cynewulf: the art and craft of Anglo-Saxon verse Andy Orchard Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, read 11 April 2019. Abstract: The essentially bilingual nature of Anglo-Saxon poetry is explored through the verse of two of the most prolific poets from the period, namely Alcuin and Cynewulf, composing primarily in Latin and Old English, respectively, but each reflecting knowledge and appreciation of verse in both languages. Both Alcuin and Cynewulf are shown to have consciously copied the works of their predecessors, and both in turn had their own verse evidently echoed by contemporary and later poets in both Anglo-Latin and Old English, so much so that they seem to have been the centres of closely identifiable ‘schools’ of verse, active at around the same period, within a decade or two either side of the year 800, and sharing a similar background, attitude, and training. An Appendix considers the authorship and identity of Cynewulf, and suggests that, like Alcuin, he too may be best situated at the interface of orality and literacy in contemporary Northumbria. Keywords: Alcuin, Cynewulf, Anglo-Saxon, Old English, Anglo-Latin, literacy, orality, Northumbria. Note on the author: Andy Orchard is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. [email protected] © The author(s) 2020. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License 296 Andy Orchard Around 60,000 lines of Anglo-Saxon poetry survive, split almost evenly between Latin and Old English, the twin main literary languages of the period. Yet while the modern scholarly study of Old English verse has flourished continuously for over two hundred years, witnessed in hundreds of books and thousands of papers and presentations, there has been far less scrutiny of Anglo-Latin poetry, with several of the current editions of leading poets more than a century old, and comparatively few dedicated studies.1 This paper seeks to compare and contrast two of the most prolific of those poets whose works have survived, namely Alcuin of York (c. 735–804) and Cynewulf (750 × 850), and whose poetic backgrounds and training, it will be suggested, seem to have been somewhat similar. Alcuin wrote his verse mostly abroad and in Latin (though it seems clear that he had some knowledge of Old English verse),2 while 1 There are some notable exceptions, especially Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 600–899 (London, Hambledon, 1996) and Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066 (London, Hambledon, 1993), here- after ALL I and II. W. F. Bolton, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature I. 597–740 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1967). See too R. Dérolez, ‘Anglo-Saxon Literature: “Attic” or “Asiatic”? Old English Poetry and its Latin Background’, English Studies Today, 2nd ser. (1961), 93–105; M. Lapidge, ‘Aldhelm’s Latin Poetry and Old English Verse’, Comparative Literature, 31 (1979), 209–31; M. Lapidge, ‘The Anglo-Latin Background’, in A New Critical History of Old English Literature, ed. S. B. Greenfield & D. G. Calder (New York, New York University Press, 1986), 5–37; M. Lapidge, ‘Poeticism in Pre- Conquest Anglo-Latin Prose’, in Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose (Proceedings of the British Academy, 129; 2005), 321–37; M. Lapidge, ‘Two Notes on the Medieval Hexameter’, in Ingenio Facilis. Per Giovanni Orlandi (1938–2007), ed. P. Chiesa, A. M. Fagnoni & R. E. Guglielmetti (Florence, SISMEL, 2017), 123–47. See too A. Orchard, ‘Latin and the Vernacular Languages: The Creation of a Bilingual Textual Culture’, in After Rome, ed. T. Charles-Edwards (The Short Oxford History of the British Isles, 1; Oxford, OUP, 2003), 191–219; A. Orchard, ‘Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle- tradition’, in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe & A. Orchard, 2 vols. (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2005), I, 284–304. 2 On Alcuin in general, see S. Allott, Alcuin of York: his Life and Letters (York, William Sessions, 1974); E. Dümmler, ‘Zur Lebensgeschichte Alchvins’, Neues Archiv, 18 (1892–3), 51–70; D. Bullough, ‘Alcuin and the Kingdom of Heaven: Liturgy, Theology and the Carolingian Age’, in Carolingian Essays, ed. U.-R. Blumenthal (Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 1–69; idem, ‘Albuinus deliciosus Karoli regis: Alcuin of York and the Shaping of the Early Carolingian Court’, in Institutionen, Kultur und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Josef Fleckenstein, ed. L. Fenske, W. Rösener & T. Zotz (Sigmaringen, Thorbecke, 1984), 73–92; D. A. Bullough, Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation. Being Part of the Ford Lectures Delivered in Oxford Hilary Term 1980 (Leiden, Brill, 2003); Marie-Hélène Jullien & Françoise Perelman (eds), Clavis Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Aevi: Auctores Galliae 735–987. Tomus II: Alcuinus (Turnhout, Brepols, 1999); Mary Garrison, ‘The Emergence of Carolingian Latin Literature and the Court of Charlemagne (780–814)’, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, CUP, 1994), 111–40; Mary Garrison, ‘Alcuin’s World through his Letters and Verse’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1995); P. D. Scott, ‘Alcuin as Poet: Rhetoric and Belief in his Latin Verse’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 33 (1964), 233–57; J. del Fattore, ‘Alcuin as a Poet’, The Classical Bulletin, 53 (1976–7), 46–8. For more general background, see too G. J. B. Gaskoin, Alcuin: His Life and Work (London, C. J. Clay, 1904); E. S. Duckett, Alcuin, Friend of Charlemagne (New York, Macmillan, 1951); L. Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature (New York, Cornell University Press, 1953); D. A. Bullough, The Age of Alcuin and Cynewulf: the art and craft of Anglo-Saxon verse 297 Cynewulf wrote only at home and in Old English (though certainly with knowledge of Latin, and specifically of Latin verse).3 Moreover, both embedded their names in their verse, using different techniques and in different forms, and both readily self- identify as poets:4 Cynewulf signs himself twice in runes in that spelling, and twice in runes as Cynwulf, while in his poetry Alcuin refers to himself variously as Alcuinus, Alc(h)uine, Albin, Albinus, and Flaccus.5 The contrast and comparison between these important and influential poets, whom current opinion places at most within half a century of each other (and whose lives may even have overlapped) is, it will be sug- gested, not simply a question of shared interest but shared impetus, indeed shared training, perhaps coming from the same or similar schools: both echoed the works of previous poets, up to and including their own near-contemporaries, both came up with idiosyncratic phrasing and poetic techniques of their own, which they richly repurposed, and both became in turn models for ready reference and recycling by their students and poetic heirs. In effect, both Alcuin and Cynewulf built on Latin Charlemagne (London, Elek, 1973); D. A. Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1991). 3 Several book-length monographs have been published devoted to Cynewulf: S. K. Das, Cynewulf and the Cynewulf Canon (Calcutta, University of Calcutta, 1942); M.-M. Dubois, Les éléments latins dans la poésie religieuse de Cynewulf (Paris, E. Droz, 1943); C. Schaar, Critical Studies in the Cynewulf Group (Lund Studies in English, 17; Lund, C. W. K. Gleerup,1949); D. G. Calder, Cynewulf (Twayne’s English Authors Series, 327; Boston, MA, Twayne Publishers, 1981); E. R. Anderson, Cynewulf: Structure, Style and Theme in his Poetry (Rutherford, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983); A. H. Olsen, Speech, Song, and Poetic Craft: the Artistry of the Cynewulf Canon (New York, Peter Lang, 1984); J. D. Wine, Figurative Language in Cynewulf: Defining Aspects of a Poetic Style (Studies in Old Germanic Languages and Literatures; New York, Peter Lang, 1993). Special mention should be made of the important set of collected papers edited by R. E. Bjork, Cynewulf: Basic Readings (Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England 4; New York and London, Routledge, 1996), and of translations by C. W. Kennedy The Poems of Cynewulf (London and New York, George Routledge, 1910); Robert E. Bjork (ed. and trans.), The Old English Poems of Cynewulf (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 23; Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2013). 4 For a useful analysis, see Emily Thornbury, Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, CUP, 2014), 27–34. In the closing line of his metrical Life of Willibrord (Carm. 3.34.83), Alcuin, uniquely spell- ing his name Alcuine in the Old English style, describes himself using the nonce-compound carmiger (‘song-bearer’) evidently modelled on the fairly common compound armiger (‘weapon-bearer’; in fact, Alcuin never uses the term in his verse), but perhaps equally modelled on the Old English term woð-bora (‘speech-bearer’; ‘orator’; ‘song-bearer’; ‘poet’), witnessed some seven times, predominantly in verse (ChristA 302b; Ridd31 24a; Ridd80 9a; Gifts 35a; OrWorld 2a; DEdg 33a; also once in a gloss, glossing rhetoribus). 5 More than 130 poems by Alcuin survive, mostly in E. Dümmler (ed.), Alcuini Carmina, ed. MGH PLAC 1 (Berlin, 1880), 160–351, but also scattered through several of his letters, which are compiled in E. Dümmler, ed., Epistolae Karolini Aevi, MGH, Epist. 4.2 (Berlin, 1895), 1–481. In just under half of those poems, Alcuin names himself, most often as Albinus (thirty-three times), Flaccus (twenty-three tmes), Alc(h)uinus (eight times); Alc(h)uine (five times; only one of which is Alcuine, in the closing line of his metrical Life of Willibrord [Carm.