Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis

290 Pages·2012·22.98 MB·English

by  Stuart McWilliams

spine 18mm P
30 Jan 12
Mcwilliams Saints
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New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture
in Honour of Hugh Magennis N
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ANglo-sAxoN literAture ANd culture, and their subsequent P
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appropriations, unite the essays collected here. they offer fresh and r
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exciting perspectives on a variety of issues, from gender to religion P
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and the afterlives of old english texts, from reconsiderations of t
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neglected works to reflections on the place of Anglo-saxon in en
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the classroom. As is appropriate, they draw especially on Hugh ot
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Magennis’s own interests in hagiography and issues of community A

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and reception. taken together, they provide a ‘state of the discipline’ a
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account of the present, and future, of Anglo-saxon studies. the on
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volume also includes contributions from the leading irish poets sd
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ciaran carson and Medbh Mcguckian. o
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stuArt McwilliAMs is a Newby trust Fellow at the institute for lc
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Advanced studies in the Humanities, university of edinburgh. eh
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contributors: ciArAN cArsoN, MAry clAytoN, ivAN HerbisoN, ul
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Joyce Hill, MAlcolM goddeN, cHris JoNes, cHristiNA lee, Ar
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MedbH McguckiAN, stuArt McwilliAMs, Juliet MulliNs, s
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elisAbetH okAsHA, JANe roberts, doNAld scrAgg, MAry swAN, c
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JoHN tHoMPsoN, elAiNe treHArNe, robert uPcHurcH, t
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gordoN wHAtley, JoNAtHAN wilcox r
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Cover: ‘The Tower of Babel’, from the Old English Hexateuch,
© British Library Board (BL MS Cotton Claudius B IV, f. 19 r.)
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
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Saints and Scholars
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Saints and Scholars
New Perspectives
on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture
in Honour of Hugh Magennis
edited by
Stuart McWilliams
D. S. BREWER
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© Contributors 2012
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 2012
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 978-1-84384-303-0
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
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from the British Library
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such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate
Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
Stuart McWilliams
I. Hagiography and the Homiletic Tradition
1. A Note on the Sensational Old English Life of St Margaret 5
Elaine Treharne
2. A Place to Weep: Joseph in the Beer-Room and Anglo-Saxon
Gestures of Emotion 14
Jonathan Wilcox
3. Aldhelm’s Choice of Saints for his Prose De Virginitate 33
Juliet Mullins
4. Shepherding the Shepherds in the Ways of Pastoral Care:
Ælfric and Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.3.28 54
Robert K. Upchurch
5. ‘Consider Lazarus’: A Context for Vercelli Homily VII 75
Jane Roberts
6. More than a Female Joseph: The Sources of the Late-Fifth-
Century Passio Sanctae Eugeniae 87
E. Gordon Whatley
7. Ælfric, Leofric and In Natale Plurimorum Apostolorum 112
Joyce Hill
II. Aspects of Community and Consumption
8. Stories from the Court of King Alfred 123
Malcolm Godden
9. De Duodecim Abusiuis, Lordship and Kingship in Anglo-
Saxon England 141
Mary Clayton
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10. Reluctant Appetites: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes towards Fasting 164
Christina Lee
11. A Note on the Function of the Inscribed Strip from the 187
Staffordshire Hoard
Elisabeth Okasha
12. The Shining of the Sun in the Twelve Nights of Christmas 195
Marilina Cesario
13. Sin and Laughter in Late Anglo-Saxon England: The Case of
Old English (h)leahtor 213
Donald Scragg
14. Marginal Activity? Post-Conquest Old English Readers and
their Notes 224
Mary Swan
III. Reflections on Old English Scholarship
15. Old English for Non-Specialists in the Nineteenth Century:
A Road Not Taken 234
Chris Jones
16. The Beginnings of English Poetry: Philological and Textual
Challenges for the Creative Imagination
252
John J. Thompson and Ivan Herbison
Poems
The Honey Vision 261
Medbh McGuckian
The Scholar 262
Ciaran Carson
Hugh Magennis: A Bibliography, 1981–2011 263
Ivan Herbison
Index 273
Tabula Gratulatoria 280
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Contributors
Ciaran Carson, an award-winning poet and translator, is Professor of Poetry at Queen’s
University, Belfast, and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s.
Marilina Cesario is Lecturer in the Earliest Writings in English and Historical
Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Mary Clayton is Professor of Old and Middle English Literature at University College,
Dublin.
Malcolm Godden is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the
University of Oxford.
Ivan Herbison retired as Lecturer in Old English Literature at Queen’s University,
Belfast, in 2010.
Joyce Hill is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Leeds.
Chris Jones lectures in Old English and modern poetry at the University of St Andrews.
Christina Lee is Lecturer in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham.
Medbh McGuckian is a prize-winning poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at the
Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Stuart McWilliams is a Newby Trust Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in
the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, for 2011–12. His Ph.D. thesis was co-
supervised by Hugh Magennis.
Juliet Mullins is Lecturer in Old English Literature at University College, Cork.
Elisabeth Okasha is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies at University College, Cork.
Jane Roberts is Emeritus Professor at King’s College, London, and Senior Research
Fellow at the Institute of English Studies.
Mary Swan is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Studies and Director of Studies at the
Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds.
Elaine Treharne is Professor of Medieval Literature at Florida State University.
John J. Thompson is Professor of English Textual Cultures at Queen’s University,
Belfast.
Robert K. Upchurch is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Texas.
E. Gordon Whatley is Professor of English at Queens College, City University of New
York.
Jonathan Wilcox is John C. Gerber Professor of English at the University of Iowa.
vii
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Abbreviations
BL British Library
CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
CH I Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Text,
ed. Peter Clemoes, EETS, ss17 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997)
CH II Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The Second Series.
Text, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS, ss5 (London:
Oxford University Press, 1979)
CUL Cambridge University Library
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
AA Auctores Antiquissimi
EETS Early English Text Society
os Original Series
ss Supplementary Series
LS Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, 4 vols, ed. W. W. Skeat,
EETS, os 76, 82, 94, 114 (London and Oxford:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1881–1900;
reprinted as 2 vols, 1966)
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols.
(Paris: Migne, 1844–64)
viii
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Introduction
If Old English is truly ‘old’, then no one told Hugh Magennis. After all,
Hugh’s highly distinguished career has been built on a conviction – clearly
evinced in his research and teaching – that Old English has never lost its vitality.
I was fortunate enough to absorb this notion from Hugh as an undergraduate at
Queen’s University, Belfast, where he taught Anglo-Saxon literature and culture
alongside Ivan Herbison for many years, and I subsequently benefited from
his careful and generous supervision during my doctoral degree. These experi-
ences, together with the research Hugh has presented in his many seminars and
publications, have demonstrated to me that Old English texts are not merely an
‘origin’ – they percolate relentlessly through the history of literature.
Michael Alexander quipped in his 1973 verse translation of Beowulf that the
poem, and perhaps metonymically the whole of Old English, has been ‘mounted
as a sort of a dinosaur in the entrance hall of English Literature’.1 Hugh has chal-
lenged this preconception in two ways. First, he has worked to raise the profile of
other aspects of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture, including the hagiographic
tradition, and to illuminate the often complex textual histories of works which
either escape the canon of heroic poetry, or interact with it in surprising ways.2
Second, his own dealings with the dinosaur – beginning early in his career and
culminating in the recent and much-praised monograph Translating Beowulf:
Modern Versions in English Verse – have increasingly emphasised survival over
fossilisation. Here, Hugh’s connection with Belfast has been particularly fruitful,
since his pioneering work on Beowulf’s modern afterlives has naturally come to
address Queen’s University graduate Seamus Heaney’s now world-famous transla-
tion, and to place it sensitively and comprehensively in its literary, historical and
linguistic context. Hugh’s own career at Queen’s has been one of notable achieve-
ment: he has acted as head of Heaney’s own School of English as well as Director
of the Institute of Theology, and has been elected as a committee member of the
International Society of Anglo Saxonists (1997–2001), as a Fellow of the English
Association (in 2003), and as a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (in 2006).
Hugh has also worked closely with TOEBI (Teachers of Old English in Britain
and Ireland), and has been both a committee member and chair of the society.
1 Michael Alexander, Beowulf: A Verse Translation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 10.
2 See for example Hugh’s essay ‘Ælfric and Heroic Literature’, in The Power of Words: Anglo-
Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Hugh Magennis
and Jonathan Wilcox (Morgantown: University of West Virginia Press, 2006), pp. 31–60.
1
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