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Abstract
“Enigma Variations” explores the various literary functions of riddles in medieval and early modern British literature—poetic, narrative, rhetorical, philosophical. In considering riddles and enigmatic language from a wide swathe of literary history, from the Anglo-Latin ænigmata of Aldhelm to the playful but pointed speech of Shakespeare’s fools, I examine these functions using linguistic methodologies, particularly theories of reference and speech act theories developed from Austin and Searle. I ask not only what riddles are (a question in riddle-studies that has been well-trod since Aristotle defined them in terms of metaphor) but what they do: How do riddles work to create meaning as well as reference, and how do they contribute to the conversational negotiation of understanding and power, either among speakers in the text or between the text and its reader? Riddles signify in both oral and literary settings not only by their internal form and structure, but especially by their performance in particular speech situations, accommodating the expectations of the riddling interlocutor created by genre and context, and expanding the avenues for making meaning available to a person engaged in the challenge of the riddle. With their demand for both interpretation and contribution from an interlocutor, riddles draw attention to the perlocutionary force of the speech act and thus the way that speech acts play out rhetorically in context. The way we engage, interpret, and draw meaning from riddles makes for an instructive microcosm of the way we make meaning out of literary texts in general.
