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Exploring text and discourse in the Old English gnomic poems: The problem of narrative
... It is clear, however, that Maxims I and Maxims II must be manifestations of the same genre, on account of their thematic connections and syntactic affinities (e.g., repeated use of constructions involving sceal and bið), as well as the metrical features that distinguish them from the rest of the corpus (e.g., the use of strong hypermetric openings in the off-verse; see Hieatt 1974: 239). Comparison with Maxims II suggests that the discursive style manifest in the three sections of Maxims I, with its frequent digression into narrative passages (on which see Deskis 2005), should be attributed not to the genre but to the author. 16 ...
Like many Old English poems, Maxims I has been considered both an early and a late composition. The present article offers lexical, dialectal, metrical, and cultural evidence in support of the argument that Maxims I was composed at a relatively early date. It then reopens the question of the poem’s textual integrity and contends that Maxims I is best regarded as one poem rather than three.
... Given the wealth of scholarship on the concept of wyrd (e.g., Phillpotts 1928;Timmer 1941;Kasik 1979;Weil 1989;Pollack 2006) and Old English maxims (e.g., Williams 1914;Cavill 1993Cavill , 1999Deskis 1996Deskis , 2005Deskis , 2013Shippey 1977Shippey , 1978Thayer 2003;Kramer 2010;O'Camb 2013), this proverb has enjoyed considerable scholarly attention. 1 The significance of the word unf3ge in this proverb, however, has received relatively less treatment. ...
The maxim Wyrd oft nere // unfægne eorl, / onne his ellen deah "Fate often spares an undoomed man when his courage avails" (Beowulf 572b-573) has been likened to "Fortune favors the brave," with little attention to the word unfægne, which is often translated "undoomed". This comparison between proverbs emphasizes personal agency and suggests a contrast between the proverb in 572b-573 and the maxim G3 a wyrd swa hio scel "Goes always fate as it must" (Beowulf 455b), which depicts an inexorable wyrd. This paper presents the history of this view and argues that linguistic analysis and further attention to Germanic cognates of (un)f3ge reveal a proverb that harmonizes with 455b. (Un)fæge and its cognates have meanings related to being brave or cowardly, blessed or accursed, and doomed or undoomed. A similar Old Norse proverb also speaks to the significance of the status of unfæge men. Furthermore, the pronominal position of unfægne is argued to represent a characterizing property of the man. The word unfægne is essential to the meaning of this proverb as it indicates not the simple absence of being doomed but the presence of a more complex quality. This interpretive point is significant in that it provides more information about the portrayal of wyrd in Beowulf by clarifying a well-known proverb in the text; it also has implications for future translations of these verses.
Maxims I and Maxims II are Old English gnomic poems presenting wisdom about the powers of God, the elements of nature, and the ways of humanity. Maxims I, from the Exeter Book, is divided into three sections. Both poems combine gnomic sentence structures with passages of description and brief narrative.
The Fortunes of Men is an Old English poem listing predominantly negative outcomes a person might suffer in life as maturation into youth and adulthood distances the child from his parents. Following the list of fortunes, a shorter list gives examples of some of the skills people receive in life, and the poet declares that God distributes the gifts and directs the fortunes of all people.
This article examines the concept of ‘truth’ (soð) in Maxims II in order to argue for the emendation of the poem’s tenth line. It contends on the basis of a holistic analysis that the tenth line of Maxims II must have originally characterised ‘truth’ not as ‘most deceptive’ (swicolost) but as ‘most transparent’ (swutolost).
The tripartite Exeter Maxims, or Maxims I, is an Old English verse catalogue of proverbs and gnomic utterances that is often assumed to be a Germanic repository of pre-conversion lore. Departing from this critical assumption, this essay identifies book twelve of Isidore’s Etymologiae as the probable source for an evocative passage featuring predatory wolves who threaten travellers in Maxims I.C, lines 7–14. This Isidorean analogue introduces several new rhetorical contexts for interpreting this proverb poem as a sophisticated cultural synthesis of vernacular traditions and imported Latin learning. Comparing the wolf of Maxims I.C with lupine imagery in the writings of ecclesiastics like Wulfstan, Æthelwold and Ælfric—and with several early English wolf proverbs—emphasises the spiritual symbolism and didactic value of wolves in the poem and Anglo-Saxon culture more generally. It also connects the diction of Maxims I.C with the legal vocabulary of the “Durham Proverbs” and Old English law codes meant to adjudicate secular feuds and the cultural practice of church sanctuary. Thus, this intertextual source study sheds light on the intellectual preoccupations and compositional context of the Maxims-poet and some of the rhetorical resources available to the poetic community he composed for.
This article addresses both the sources and the structure of the Old English poem Maxims I.A. The proverbial status of a statement in the poem can be determined not only by analyzing its syntactic form, but by locating proverbial analogues to it. Eleven of the sententiae of Maxims I.A can thus be shown to be drawn from a cultural pool of existing proverbs in Latin and the vernacular. Many of the non-proverbial sentences in Maxims I.A are nonetheless gnomic in form. These gnomes tend to appear in clusters, by which the instructional discourse type of the poem is reinforced. They also provide transitions between proverbial and non-proverbial discourse in the poem. This transitional function plays an important role in the compositional process for the gnomic poet.
This article presents a source history of lines 167-68 in the Old English wisdom poem Maxims I. A classical Latin sententia by Terence ("Quot homines, tot sententiae") has been identified as source or analogue for line 167 ("Swa monige beop men ofer eorpan, swa beop modgeponcas"), but no detailed examination of the validity of this identification, of the Latin proverb's transmission, or of possible intermediate sources has been offered. This article first shows that the Old English analogue to the original proverb extends over two instead of only one line, paralleling a longer version of the Latin proverb than previously assumed. After an excursus on the status of Terentian material in Anglo-Saxon England, I suggest that, besides Terence as ultimate source, a line in Ovid's Ars Amatoria may have more immediately influenced the Old English poet's phrasing. In addition to investigating the source history of two specific lines, this article demonstrates the valuable contributions that source study continues to make to the larger field of Anglo-Saxon studies by presenting a case study that illustrates how source analysis can be used to map more accurately and more completely the intellectual landscape of Anglo-Saxon England.
This article surveys the major developments in paremiology (the study of proverbs) in Anglo-Saxon literature over the last fifteen years as well as the major research tools currently available for the study of medieval vernacular and Latin proverbs. Through this survey, I demonstrate that proverbs need to be read not only in light of the immediate context in which they appear, but also ‘in isolation.’ Studying the history and transmission of proverbs independent from their contextual uses can lead us to a more complete understanding of an individual author's interests, reading, education, and motivations for deplying a proverb. I begin by discussing the difficulties of defining precisely paremiological terminology. Then I give an overview of the most important achievements in proverb study more generally over the last century, with an emphasis on medieval paremiology. After reviewing the two most recent book-length studies on Old English proverbial materials, I summarize individually most of the publications on Anglo-Saxon proverbs that have appeared over the last fifteen years. A number of excellent print and digital resources, which I introduce to readers in this article, assist proverb scholars in their work. Finally, I suggest some future avenues for research with which Old English proverb study can significantly contribute to the larger field of Anglo-Saxon studies.
The narrative is a naturally bound unit of discourse in which both formal and functional aspects of grammatical variation can be examined in a controlled and systematic way. This paper is a quantitative analysis of the past and the historical-present tenses as alternative ways of referring to past events in narrative. It shows how the organization of narrative delimits the area in which the historical present can occur, and how various structural and functional constraints restrict (or favor) switching between the two tenses. It also shows that the historical present evaluates narrative events because it is a use of the present tense, and that switching out of the historical present separates narrative events from each other.
The focus of the present article is on text types characterizable with the help of text-internal criteria. In the classification of authentic texts it seems expedient to distinguish two parallel levels of types, and a two-level model is thus suggested for the typological analysis of texts. Hence, from the view-point of text production, the choice of what in the article is referred to as ‘discourse type ‘ — connected with the purpose of discourse — affects the whole strategy of the text. The term ‘text type’, again, is here reserved to the same sort of categories but on a level closer to the actual texts. The superordinate discourse type need not always be realized through the corresponding text type. An apparent mismatch of a discourse type and the corresponding text type may be accounted for in terms of notions such as the ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’, or ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ uses of various text types. This suggests that text types can be ranged on a scale according to the ease with which they may serve different types of discourse. Viewing text types from the perspective of their primary and secondary use and the extent to which they may be used indirectly further raises the possibility of a ‘basic‘ type of text. This status is tentatively assigned to narrative — a hypothesis that other characteristics of this text type seem to support, rather than reject.
The Old English Genesis A , in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin sprouted and spread in evil branches from the blood of the murdered Abel:
Critical discussion of this passage has reflected a basic disagreement about the presence of allegory in the poem. Bernard F. Huppé finds three levels of meaning in the passage:
Literally, the descendants of Cain, born after his sins, are a progeny of affliction, because they perished in the Flood. Symbolically, they are children of affliction because they dwell in the City of Babylon, of which Cain is the spiritual founder. In its moral significance Cain's sin represents the earthly beginning of all mortal, Babylonian sin …