Theological Aesthetics in Old English Religious Verse
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Ben Reinhard
Organizer Affiliation
Christendom College
Presider Name
Ben Reinhard
Paper Title 1
Is Old English Wisdom Poetry Beautiful? A Crisis of Aesthetics in the Historicist Canon
Presenter 1 Name
Karl Arthur Erik Persson
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Signum Univ.
Paper Title 2
Form's Freedom: Old English Liturgical Verse, Poetic Transformation, and the Kentish Hymn
Presenter 2 Name
Jacob Riyeff
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Marquette Univ.
Paper Title 3
Respondent
Presenter 3 Name
Daniel Anlezark
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Sydney Univ.
Start Date
12-5-2016 1:30 PM
Session Location
Valley III Stinson 303
Description
Two major problems face the study of Old English religious poetry. The first is simple, if puzzling, neglect. As Sarah Keefer notes, Anglo-Saxon aesthetics and thought were largely governed by "the language, rhythms, imagery, and culture of the church year." As such, it is not surprising that religious verse makes up by far the larger part of the Old English poetic corpus and a substantial part of the Old English corpus as a whole. Despite the primacy of religious thought and practice in Anglo-Saxon England, however, Old English religious verse receives (and always has received) comparatively little attention next to Beowulf and the other "heroic" works. This imbalance skews the conversation on Old English literature as a whole and gives an inaccurate picture of how the Anglo-Saxons knew themselves and the world around them.
The second problem, flowing from the first, is a failure in empathetic reading. Put simply, it is the refusal to understand, as closely as we can, how Anglo-Saxon poets would have understood their own verbal art. If Bede's account of the poet Cædmon tells us anything, it is that ideas of form and content were intimately linked in the Anglo-Saxon mind. It is nevertheless common to find studies that analyze Old English religious verse for its didactic content alone, as though the poetic form had no bearing on meaning; or, on the other hand, those that focus on linguistic or literary questions to the exclusion of the theological. While such studies are largely useful, both ignore the substantial unity of poetic form and religious content, and so fail to appreciate the poets' deliberate appropriation of and response to Christian liturgy, devotion, and doctrine.
This panel attempts to address both problems by exploring the nexus of religious belief and poetic art in Old English literature.
Ben Reinhard
Theological Aesthetics in Old English Religious Verse
Valley III Stinson 303
Two major problems face the study of Old English religious poetry. The first is simple, if puzzling, neglect. As Sarah Keefer notes, Anglo-Saxon aesthetics and thought were largely governed by "the language, rhythms, imagery, and culture of the church year." As such, it is not surprising that religious verse makes up by far the larger part of the Old English poetic corpus and a substantial part of the Old English corpus as a whole. Despite the primacy of religious thought and practice in Anglo-Saxon England, however, Old English religious verse receives (and always has received) comparatively little attention next to Beowulf and the other "heroic" works. This imbalance skews the conversation on Old English literature as a whole and gives an inaccurate picture of how the Anglo-Saxons knew themselves and the world around them.
The second problem, flowing from the first, is a failure in empathetic reading. Put simply, it is the refusal to understand, as closely as we can, how Anglo-Saxon poets would have understood their own verbal art. If Bede's account of the poet Cædmon tells us anything, it is that ideas of form and content were intimately linked in the Anglo-Saxon mind. It is nevertheless common to find studies that analyze Old English religious verse for its didactic content alone, as though the poetic form had no bearing on meaning; or, on the other hand, those that focus on linguistic or literary questions to the exclusion of the theological. While such studies are largely useful, both ignore the substantial unity of poetic form and religious content, and so fail to appreciate the poets' deliberate appropriation of and response to Christian liturgy, devotion, and doctrine.
This panel attempts to address both problems by exploring the nexus of religious belief and poetic art in Old English literature.
Ben Reinhard