Episode 11: Getting Medieval on Old English*
To judge from the current debate among Anglo-Saxonists about the racism of their own field, Old English literature is simply one boss fight after another, starting with the battle between Beowulf and Grendel. It’s true! Old English poets loved a good boss fight! But it wasn’t the fight that most English professors would have you believe.
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Rejoice now in spirit, thrive in the solace
Of the Savior, take comfort in Christ.
Gather glory, guard your treasure-house,
The secure space of your heart’s holdings.
Bind up your thoughts. Be careful with vows.
A true companion sometimes proves false;
Promises can unravel so a friendship is undone.
The world sometimes weathers rough storms,
The tempests of untrusted, and suffers doom.
There is one heart’s haven: one firm faith,
One living Lord, one sacred baptism,
One eternal Father, the precious Prince
Of all peoples, our Maker who has shaped
Creation and country, firmament and fields,
The wonders of the world, its joys and blessings.
God’s glories grew, though the not yet fully
Wakened world slept in a blanket of expectation,
In a shrouded grove, a shadow of unknowing,
Imminent creation concealed in darkness—
Until one powerful, mindful maiden
Grew into her own God-given glory,
In whose treasure-cup, the virginal vessel,
It pleased the Holy Spirit to spring into life
And breathe into being God’s Son.
Bright in her breast, warm in her womb,
The inborn light began to shine.
—Homiletic Fragment II, from the Exeter Book, trans. Craig Williamson
References
Texts
All readings of Old English poems from The Complete Old English Poems, trans. Craig Williamson, with an introduction by Tom Shippey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
- Beowulf, from the Nowell Codex
- Caedmon’s Hymn
- Genesis A & B, from the Junius Manuscript
- The Fall of Angels, from the Vercelli Book
- The Dream of the Rood
- Christ III: Judgment, from the Exeter Book
- Homiletic Fragment II: Turn Toward the Light, from the Exeter Book
Old English, unasterisked- Old English (language)
- Old English Literature
Bede’s five languages of the British Isles
On the unbearable whiteness of being an “Anglo-Saxonist”
- English, British, Irish, Pictish, Latin
Dialects of Old English
- Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish, West Saxon
- ISAS: International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (provisional name)
- Dorothy Kim, “The Question of Race in Beowulf,” JSTOR Daily, September 25, 2019
- Twitter: #ISAS #MedievalTwitter #ShakeRace
What Tolkien actually said
- “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture for the British Academy, 1936
- “Sigelwara Land,” Medium Aevum 1.3 (1932): 183-196; 3.2 (1934): 95-111
The Ethiopians began their career in letters as [amumones]
‘without reproach.’ They were visited by the gods of Olympus, and were generous with hecatombs. But they changed sadly, and they appear in Old English in a most unpleasant light. Their country was too like hell to escape the comparison, and the blackness of the inhabitants became more than skin-deep. A diabolic folk, yet worthy perhaps of a note, if not a visit.
—J.R.R. Tolkien
On the “asterisk-reality” of Middle-earth
- Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
- Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (New York: HarperCollins, 1990)
On the Virgin and her vessel of light
- Joseph Goering, The Virgin and the Grail: Origins of a Legend (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005)
Images: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, fols. (as numbered in manuscript) 7 (Creation); 16-17 (Fall of the Angels)
Course Study Guide
Course Study Guide
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