Environmental Readings of Anglo-Saxon Texts and Culture

309 Pages·2016·1.81 MB·English

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Dissertations Graduate College
12-2013
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Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar
Western Michigan University, [email protected]
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VanDonkelaar, Ilse Schweitzer, "Old English Ecologies: Environmental Readings of Anglo-Saxon Texts and
Culture" (2013). Dissertations. 216.
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OLD ENGLISH ECOLOGIES: ENVIRONMENTAL READINGS
OF ANGLO-SAXON TEXTS AND CULTURE

by

Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate College
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of English
Western Michigan University
December 2013

Doctoral Committee:

Jana K. Schulman, Ph.D., Chair
Eve Salisbury, Ph.D.
Richard Utz, Ph.D.
Sarah Hill, Ph.D.
OLD ENGLISH ECOLOGIES: ENVIRONMENTAL READINGS
OF ANGLO-SAXON TEXTS AND CULTURE

Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar, Ph.D.

Western Michigan University, 2013

Conventionally, scholars have viewed representations of the natural world in
Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature as peripheral, static, or largely symbolic: a
“backdrop” before which the events of human and divine history unfold. In “Old English
Ecologies,” I apply the relatively new critical perspectives of ecocriticism and place-
based study to the Anglo-Saxon canon to reveal the depth and changeability in these
literary landscapes. Overall, this interdisciplinary study of Anglo-Saxon texts brings
together literary and environmental sources and modes of inquiry to explore the place of
humans (and non-humans) within the natural environments of Anglo-Saxon England, as
well as the ways in which natural cycles and processes are reflected in Anglo-Saxon
literature and culture. Looking to Old English scriptural, hagiographical, epic, gnomic,
and elegiac poetry, as well as homilies, prayers, and philosophical and didactic works, I
locate imagined or figurative landscapes in these texts. Employing ecocritical theory, I
find intersections between these figurative spaces—the mead-hall, the conventional
“center” of human society in the Anglo-Saxon world, as well as the lonely worlds of exile
(water, wood, and wilderness), and the grave, the earthly body’s final “home”—and their
actual counterparts. Ultimately, the project confronts the conventional reading of the
Anglo-Saxon worldview of earth’s impending and inevitable decay with evidence that
cyclical and seasonal views of time pervade the works of the period. By juxtaposing my
ecological readings with archaeological reports and landscape histories, I am able to
expose the paradoxes of finding one’s literary, actual, and ecological place(s) in an
Anglo-Saxon landscape that is always in flux, yet trapped in stasis.
© 2013 Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, many thanks to my excellent committee: Dr. Jana Schulman, Dr. Eve
Salisbury, Dr. Richard Utz, and Dr. Sarah Hill, for agreeing to see me through to the end
of this project, for their support, and for their insightful commentary. I am especially
grateful to Eve, for her thoughtful feedback throughout my writing process, and to Jana,
for reading through what felt like a thousand chapter drafts and for helping me to write
the dissertation I wanted to write.
Second, I am extremely grateful to the WMU Department of English and to the
WMU Graduate College for finding and providing assistantships and financial support
for me beyond what I deserved. To my friends and colleagues who provided support of
another kind — thanks to Dr. Karen Vocke, Chris Triezenberg, Theresa Whitaker, Dr.
Lisa Horton, Greg Laing, Adrienne Redding, and Jamie McCandless for emotional
support and for applying peer pressure in the form of dissertation writing groups.
Finally, more thanks than I can express to my family, Joan Wiley Schweitzer,
Robert Schweitzer, and Eden Schweitzer, who encouraged me to finish. And, of course,
to my husband, Dr. Curtis VanDonkelaar, who kept me (relatively) sane through this
process and who keeps reminding me, “see... I told you could do it.”

Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................ii

LIST OF FIGURES............................................................................................................vi

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION: AN ARGUMENT FOR ECO-ANGLO-SAXONISM............1

Background and Methodology...........................................................................3

Definitions........................................................................................................13

Chapter Summaries..........................................................................................16

II. NO PLACE LIKE HOME.....................................................................................23

Cosmic Hall, Communal Home.......................................................................24

Limitations of Mixed Literary and Archaeological Studies............................31

A Guest is in the Hall.......................................................................................33

Hall and Home, Farm and Field.......................................................................38

Verbal Transformations in Agricultural Literature..........................................47

Entertainment, Edification, Exchange, Escape?..............................................59

III. THE ORDER OF THINGS...................................................................................78

Ordering the World..........................................................................................80

Everything in its Place.....................................................................................85

Poetic Architecture...........................................................................................93

Slipping Out of Place.....................................................................................102

Moving Through Time...................................................................................115

iii
Table of Contents—Continued

CHAPTER

Orderly Performance......................................................................................120

There and Back Again...................................................................................124

IV. THE PATHS OF EXILE.....................................................................................127

Exile as Universal..........................................................................................129

The Poetry of Exile........................................................................................133

I Wonder as I Wander....................................................................................137

The Song of Myself.......................................................................................148

Ofer hwæles eþel: the Whale’s Home, the Human’s Home..........................156

Paths Without End.........................................................................................170

V. INTO THE WILD................................................................................................174

Guthlac’s Westen...........................................................................................182

A Wilderness of Wanderers..........................................................................190

“A Hideous Fen of a Huge Bigness”.............................................................196

Centering the Margins....................................................................................205

Wilderness and Exile.....................................................................................209

VI. FINAL DESTINATIONS....................................................................................218

Bodily Breakdown.........................................................................................221

Houses of Bone..............................................................................................235

The Homely Grave.........................................................................................239

What Remains................................................................................................249

Linear and Cyclical Time...............................................................................261

iv
Table of Contents—Continued

CHAPTER

Enigmatic Creation........................................................................................267

Circling Back.................................................................................................276

VII. CONCLUSIONS........................................................................................... ......278

BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................285

v
LIST OF FIGURES

1. Guthlac and Tatwine travel by boat. From Harleian Guthlac Roll Y.6. ...................216

2. Guthlac and Pega. From Harleian Guthlac Roll Y.6. ...............................................216

3. East Anglian fenlands. Taken from Della Hooke,
The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 172,
based on the work of Hall and Coles. .......................................................................217

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