Vengeance as Piety: The Heroic and Elegiac Devil of Genesis B

Date of Award

8-2024

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Medieval Studies

First Advisor

Jana K. Schulman, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Ilse A. Schweitzer, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Kevin J. Wanner, Ph.D.

Keywords

Devil, elegiac, heroic, Medieval literature, Old English, poetry

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Abstract Only

Restricted to Campus until

8-1-2026

Abstract

In Christian theology, the fall of Lucifer and his fellow rebel angels details the origins of angelic sin and prefigures the fall of humanity. The narrative had a strong literary tradition in early medieval England, appearing frequently in both poetry and prose. The Junius manuscript, one of four codices preserving the majority of Old English poetry, contains three accounts of the fall of the angels, with the most extensive versions being found in the poems known by scholars as Genesis B and Christ and Satan. Much of the scholarly attention Genesis B receives pertains to its interpolation into the longer Genesis poem known as Genesis A, the characterization of the devil as a heroic lord, and a stark contrast with the despairing devil who laments in Christ and Satan. The comparison of these two poems and their differing tones often results in the framing of Old English heroic and elegiac conventions as both inverse and disparate, an additional consequence of which is the neglect of Genesis B’s and Christ and Satan’s elegiac and heroic qualities.

Rather than dismiss either poem’s traditional readings, this thesis interprets both through a dual-genre lens that, I argue, shows how elegiac expression motivates heroic action in Genesis B in order to contextualize suprahuman events within familiar cultural institutions—such as feud, kinship, and vengeance—and to appeal to the poem’s contemporary audience by framing Christian piety as heroic vengeance against the devil in the larger feud between heaven and hell.

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