On the four original poetic codices in Old English

November 13, 2018 1:44 PM

What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us? "On the ineffable magic of four little manuscripts of Old English poetry."

The Dream of the Rood (Translated from the Old English)

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War (Open until Tue 19 Feb 2019)

posted by homunculus (18 comments total)

Hwaet!
posted by Hypatia at 2:33 PM on November 13, 2018 [12 favorites]

...þæt wæs gód posting.

Man, if a flight to London was in the budget...that British Library exhibit looks amazing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:36 PM on November 13, 2018 [8 favorites]

Learned this term from the footnotes of the Dream of the Rood translation: hapax legomenon: a word that occurs only once within a context.
posted by larrybob at 2:40 PM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

If you look back in time so far that only 4 books from then have survived, it seems likely that there could have be hundreds or thousands that didn't. What are the odds that any of the surviving ones are the good ones, the real literary masterpieces that defined a people? How much of the love for Beowulf is unconsciously based on this kind of awe of really old things, an imagined aura? How would the people who first recited it feel about us holding it in such reverence today? Was it, I would like to know, approximately to them as the third Spider-Man movie is to us?
posted by sfenders at 2:43 PM on November 13, 2018 [8 favorites]

Hwæt!

Listen! Beowulf opening line misinterpreted for 200 years: The opening line 'Listen!' is not a proclamation and should not have an exclamation mark, according to new research

Previously.
posted by homunculus at 3:22 PM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

I commented here on the low survival rate of Middle English literature and the amazing good fortune that we have any of these manuscripts at all.
posted by verstegan at 3:28 PM on November 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

Oh my god homunculus, the dumb high school english essays I had to write about that one stinking word and now you're telling me that it was mistranslated the entire time
posted by Mizu at 4:43 PM on November 13, 2018

To be fair, it's just another theory. It has not driven all other theories before it.
posted by praemunire at 5:00 PM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have to admit, I like the earlier interpretation better just because it implies that anglo-saxons would turn down for hwæt.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:17 PM on November 13, 2018 [10 favorites]

I have to admit, I like the earlier interpretation better just because it implies that anglo-saxons would turn down for hwæt.

*climbs atop mead-bench, madly applauding*
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:28 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ahhhhhh! I fucking love Dream Of The Rood and The Wanderer, and you should too.
posted by aramaic at 6:22 PM on November 13, 2018

My favorite telling of Beowulf (and I've read a bunch since I've loved dragons and the slaying thereof since I was little) is Tolkien's incomplete Sellic Spell. (It pulls together a lot of the strands of background lore without distracting from the main story, which is told in exciting fashion.) It's published alongside a full translation of Beowulf by the same author which I found much less interesting.

I was not familiar with the other texts, though... thanks for posting!
posted by ragtag at 6:53 PM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Beowulf really is that great. I don't know what else was lost of course, but there is a reason it was saved.

Despite it being completely unrelated to my major, I took Old English for two semesters in college. The second semester was entirely spent learning/translating Beowulf (partially), and it is a masterpiece. Kennings are just one of the reasons.

Switching gears a bit, the Exeter Book has a number of riddles in Old English. Here is a favorite.
posted by gudrun at 7:14 PM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]

legomenon

Doot DOO doo doo doo.

Previously.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:37 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

The Tolkien translation is not very long. But the footnotes. Every single line, sometimes single words, are explained in great gory detail. It’s astounding to think of how much of his life he spent considering this story. It absolutely colored everything he wrote and it was fascinating to read through his thoughts on this oldest of English stories.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:03 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Personally, I wish every story was merely a couple pages long, but with an entire codex full of deeply nested footnotes.
posted by ragtag at 6:08 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

My fave riddle is Riddle 17/15 (depending on the numbering)
Ic eom mundbora minre heorde,
eodorwirum fæst, innan gefylled
dryhtgestreona. Dægtidum oft
spæte sperebrogan; sped biþ þy mare
fylle minre. Frea þæt bihealdeð,
hu me of hrife fleogað hyldepilas.
Hwilum ic sweartum swelgan onginne
brunum beadowæpnum, bitrum ordum,
eglum attorsperum. Is min innað til,
wombhord wlitig, wloncum deore;
men gemunan þæt me þurh muþ fareð.
posted by likethemagician at 4:06 AM on November 15, 2018

likethemagician, have you seen this solution to that riddle?
posted by gudrun at 5:42 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]