Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative

343 Pages·2015·3.835 MB·English

by  John F. Vickrey

Genesis B and
the Comedic Imperative

Genesis B and
the Comedic Imperative
John F. Vickrey
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bethlehem
Published by Lehigh University Press
Copublished by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2015 by John F. Vickrey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
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ISBN: 978-1-61146-167-1 (cloth) ISBN: 978-1-61146-168-8 (electronic)
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Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xi
I Deposition of a Dame 1
II Comedy, Wit, Tropology, Allegory 25
Comedy 25
Wit 34
Tropology 35
Allegory 43
III Adamic Resolve 51
Manuscript Illustrations (unpaged)
IV Adamic Failure 75
Allegorical Narrative 75
The MS Illustrations of the Fall 81
The Second Temptation of Adam 91
V Father of Lies 105
“Despaire Breeds Not . . . Where Faith Is Staid” 105
Patriarchaism and Then Some 126
v
vi • Contents
VI “God Was Himself a Warlord” 139
VII ‘No Fiend Here in the Realm’ 167
VIII Dom Is Darker and Deeper 195
IX The Boda and Gottschalk 217
X Adam and Eve and the Light 235
Endnotes 267
Bibliography 303
Index 315
About the Author 325
Preface
My almost lifelong encounter with Genesis B began as a graduate student at
Indiana University when I came to read and to like the poem. I liked it so
much, in fact, that I chose it as my dissertational subject, “Genesis B: A New
Analysis and Edition,” completed in 1960. In subsequent years I addressed,
among other projects in Old English literature, a number of the vexing prob-
lems which the poem has posed for its modern students. These efforts can be
noted in the Bibliography to the present study. In my later years of teaching at
Lehigh University I saw what might be the implications of the phrase nergend
user 536 and the suggestively nearby clause ne þu me oðiewdest ænig tacen 540—
implications which are explored here in Chapter VII. For some while other
concerns and interests supervened, but with the publication in 2009 of Beowulf
and the Illusion of History, a study of the poem’s Finn Episode and the affair of
Dæghrefn, I returned to nergend user and the matter of Adam’s curious tacen.
As I came to realize, it was importantly a construction put on the ne þu me . . .
clause which had led a goodly number of scholars to conclude that the poem’s
intention was to exonerate, or largely to exonerate, Adam and Eve, showing
them as essentially innocent of the Fall. I came to suspect that this argument
was, philologically, seriously lacking, and I expended much effort in what I saw
as a rediscovery of the poet’s intent. The result, of course, has been Genesis B
and the Comedic Imperative. For a long time, however, I had little awareness of
Genesis B as not tragic but rather, at least prospectively, as comedic, and I had
no awareness as to some imperative or other; what I now see as a strong likeli-
hood of both came only quite late in my study. Well, in these several respects
readers will have to judge for themselves.
vii

Abbreviations
ASE Anglo-Saxon England
CCCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina
diss. dissertation
EETS, OS Early English Text Society, Original Series
ELN English Language Notes
M Monacensis (Munich) MS of the Heliand
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MP Modern Philology
MRTS Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies
N&Q Notes and Queries
NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen
n.s new series
OS Original Series
PG Patrologia Graeca
PL Patrologia Latina
PLL Papers on Language and Literature
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association
PQ Philological Quarterly
QJS Quarterly Journal of Speech
RES Review of English Studies
ix