IMC 2008: Sessions
Session 1220: Anglo-Saxon Riddles
Wednesday 9 July 2008, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Alice D. Jorgensen, School of English, Trinity College Dublin |
|---|---|
| Moderator/Chair: | Anne Marie D'Arcy, Department of English, University of Leicester |
| Paper 1220-a | 'The Wife's Lament' and 'The Husband's Message' and Their Position in the Exeter Book (Language: English) |
| Paper 1220-b | Partitions and the Construction of Identity in Riddles 14 (Horn) and 26 (Book/Bible) of the Exeter Book (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Mentalities |
| Paper 1220-c | Unmaking the World in the Exeter Book Riddles (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Mentalities |
| Abstract | A substantial corpus of Latin and Old English riddles survives from Anglo-Saxon England, affording a distinctive perspective both on the meeting of Latin and Germanic poetic tradition and on Anglo-Saxon constructions, and deconstructions, of the self and the world. Aldhelm's riddle on Creation illuminates his debt to and departure from the late antique poet Symphosius; it exemplifies how the Ænigmata explores God's world as simultaneously paradoxical and familiar. The Exeter Book riddles present inanimate speakers in human terms, producing multi-faceted personal identities. They draw on the social categories embedded in traditional heroic poetry but subvert and extend them. The world-view they reveal may be Christian but is often deeply pessimistic and violent. |