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Abstract
It has long been recognized that Old English religious verse employs traditional elements derived from secular poetry, but many of these elements have never been systematically studied in relation to an individual poem. My dissertation examines the nature of traditional poetics in Genesis A, which achieves a particularly artful fusion of sacred story and secular style, and seeks to establish how these elements can inform our reading of the poem and, by extension, of Old English religious poetry as a whole.
Chapter One, "Genesis A and the Traditional Art of Old English Religious Poetry," examines attitudes toward Old English poetry--both secular and religious--in various contemporary sources, especially Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Praefatio and Versus associated with the Old Saxon Genesis and Heliand. This discussion seeks to shed light on why poems such as Genesis A employ the traditional style of secular poetry.
Chapter Two, "Traditional Narrative: Theme," traces the history of scholarship on Old English themes, distinguishes between various kinds of thematic criticism, and offers a refined morphology of the traditional or "oral-formulaic" theme. It then examines four themes in Genesis A--"The Traveler Recognizes His Goal," "Traditional Opening," "Migration," and "Sleeping after the Feast"--and shows how these participate in the larger poetic tradition.
Chapter Three, "Traditional Rhetoric: The Echo-Word," distinguishes the term "rhetoric" from the schemes and tropes of Latin treatises, arguing that rhetoric should be understood as the art of verbal communication in general, not the particular rules codified by Latin orators and grammarians. Hence, classical rhetoric and the traditional rhetoric of Old English poetry may be viewed as independent, though similar, systems. The chapter then examines one particular kind of traditional rhetoric, the echo-word, and shows how its presence in Genesis A creates an episodic structure, connects various parts of the biblical narrative into a more coherent whole, and plays a fundamental role in characterization.
Chapter Four, "Traditional Rhetoric: Ring Structure," examines another aspect of traditional rhetoric, ring structure. Ring structure in Genesis A is used to provide emphasis and to lend coherence to the narrative, and especially to signal formality in speeches.