Prelims 2 critics

Elena Collette - Judith - God

she is ‘a pious and passive instrument empowered and directed by God’

Elena Colette - Judith - vikings

As the Viking invasions turned the world upside down a heroine was needed who in similar circumstances had succeeded against all odds

C. Fee - Judith - God

Judith is ‘a vessel of God’s might’

C. Fee - Judith - inspirational

in the Old English Judith this role of hero is modified from an active one to one largely inspirational in nature

Daniel Calder - Wanderer

the ruins stand as visible projections of the growing awareness and despair that have been carefully delineated in the wanderer’s mind’

Martin Green - Wanderer - juxtaposition

the juxtaposition of past joy and present misery indicates a break between past and present

Martin Green - Wanderer - ruined wall

the ruined wall is the appropriate symbol of the collapse of the eardstoppa’s hopes and dreams, the symbol of the world he has lost and hopes to retrieve

Robert Bjork - Wanderer

the wanderer “paradoxically and voluntarily seeks a more complete separation from society than the one that seemed to be his bane at the start of the poem”

Francis Leneghan - Wanderer - christian

despite the widespread acceptance of the fundamentally Christian background of the wanderer, scholars still tend to treat the poem as essentially a secular work, closer in spirit to the heroic culture of the Germanic warband than the monastic cloister

Francis Leneghan -Wanderer - purposelessness

the wanderer… is dominated by imagery of restless and seemingly purposeless movement, both physical and mental’

Britt Mize - DOTR and Elene - comparison

the scenario in Elene is strictly a triumphant one… ”whilst the dotr emphasises the more violent reality

Britt Mize - Christ and economics

‘the thological commonplace of descrcibing the sacrifice of christ and correspondingly his body and blood in terms of economic value’

Christina Heckman - Elene - Cross’ materiality

‘as one of christ’s few surviving relics, the True Cross has extraordinary status un its materiality, simulating special concern from early English writers about tis overwhelming spirituo-material power’

Christina Heckman - Elene - void

‘in Elene, however, the True Cross is mostly unknown and lost, a void in the centre of the Christian experience’

Earl Anderson - physical journey

In OE poetry, ‘a spiritual or intellectual quest is presented symbolically as a physical journey’

Robert Burlin - DOTR - salvation

‘to gain salvation one must be prepared, like the Cross, to participate totally in the death of Christ, to taste bitter death in the name of the lord’

Robert Burlin - DOTR - contemplative life

‘the Cross has a natural affinity with the contemplative life’

Rosemary Woolfe - DOTR - triumph

‘the most remarkable achievement of the poem is its balance between the effects of triumph and suffering’

Amanda Lehr - WOTE - most critics

‘most critical readings of the creature’s behaviour revolve around ideas of foreignness and the threat of assimilation’

Amanda Lehr - WOTE - duality

The creatures in the WOTE were ‘by the standards of the time, both monstrous and human’

Amanda Lehr - Beowulf and WOTE - passing as human

‘the horror of some monsters does not derive from their success or failure to pass as a human with emphasis on their approximation to humanity but their ability to pass as a human, one bounded being that masks the populace within’

Kathryn Powell - Beowulf Manuscript - glory

‘The battles of monster-slayers as evocative of the struggles of exceptional men to achieve lasting glory in an ephemeral world.’

Kathryn Powell - Beowulf Manuscript - vikings

‘at a time when foreign aggression - in the from of Viking incursions into England - and the ability of those in power to keep that aggression at bay was such an important issue for the English’

Christopher Monk - WOTE - manuscript art

‘before they sin, the first human couple are depicted as naked but without genitals… this nakedness is indicative of their sinless innocence and an absence of lust. After they sun, and once they become aware of their sinfulness, they are depicted covering over their genital areas… the effect on the viewer is to see the nakedness of the fallen Adam and Eve as something shameful’ - WONDERS NAKED IN MANUSCRIPT ART

Peter Ramey - Beowulf - sanctity

‘The Beowulf-poet invests the traditional warrior identity of the hero Beowulf in conceptions of sanctity found in saint’s lives’

Peter Ramey - Beowulf - hagiography

‘Beowulf is not hagiographic, generally speaking, and its hero is not a saint in any conventional sense…. But in his function and in the contours of his heroic career, the hagiographic tradition has left its imprint’

Peter Ramey - Beowulf - key two word phrase

Beowulf is a ‘monkish hero’

Lawrence Beaston - The Ruin - christian poem

The poem can be read as a christian poem about ‘the mutability of the present world in contrast to the eternal city of god’

Stanley Greenfield - The Ruin - earthly prosperity

The Ruin represents the transience of earthly prosperity and happiness, whihc he claims is characteristic of The Wanderer and The Seafarer as well

Lawrence Beaston - the ruin - maker v creation

‘the poem’s point is that the things that people make out of the substances of this world have the capacity to outlast their makers’

Kathryn Hume - protection and warmth

‘the hall as a small realm of protection and warmth, within an encircling waste of winter, rain and cold, figures human life within the unknown that encompasses it and life in its brevity is like a sparrow’s flight through the hall’

Kathryn Hume - the hall in poetry

‘what the poems celebrate is, of course, not simply the hall as a building but the social system associated with it’

Kahtryn Hume - antagonist’s dwelling

‘when chaos and violence take the form of a definite antagonist, a malignant being, its dwelling becomes an anti-hall’

Kathryn Hume - The Seafarer - secular life

‘That the Seafarer is trying to persuade his audience to renounce its emotional allegiance to the kind of secular life represented by the hall seems obvious. In his eyes hall-society has the limited outlook that he yearns to escape from.’

Kathryn Hume - The Wanderer - the hall

‘the wanderer… shows a great deal of admiration for the hall and all that it represents’

Brian Cook - The Ruin - critical history

‘the critical history of The Ruin tends to focus on the mutability and transience of human life and the impermanence of physical objects’

Anne Klinck - The Ruin - actual scene

‘the poet tries to render in his traditional language features an unfamiliar architecture, and this very precision sometimes makes interpretation difficult’

Britt Mize - distinguishing feature of OE poetry

Britt Mize has identified ‘the use of a contemplative subjectivity as a distinguishing feature of Old English poetry’

Brian Cook - The Ruin - juxtaposes

‘The Ruin constantly juxtaposes past and present, bringing the two into contact at several points’

Brian Cook - The Ruin - Exeter Book

‘The Ruin’s location in the Exeter Book before the second set of riddles lends support to Lockett’s suggestion that the stones have been anthropomorphised’

Mitchell and Robinson - Judith - christianised

the Jewish heroine is not only heroicised in the traditional Germanic way but is also christianised

Mitchell and Robinson - Beowulf - admiration and pity

he admires the characters he describes… but there is poignancy in his admiration for he knows these brave and eloquent people were ignorant of the revelation generally believed to be essential for christian salvation

Ezra Pound - The Seafarer

claims to have discovered in this work ‘the english national chemical’