The Columbia History of British Poetry Read Online Free
Author: Carl Woodring, James Shapiro
Tags: test
monks: Genesis, Exodus, and "many other stories of the Holy Scripture."
Cædmon is also an end: we shall never know what songs the feasters sang the night he left the banquet early. Perhaps the mythological poetry we have was composed to satisfy a felt need, an Anglo-Saxon audience's craving for what it once had. The Beowulf poet imagines what a pagan Danish minstrel around A.D. 500, singing of the origin of the world, would have sounded like: "He said that the almighty made the earth, the beauty-bright land, with water surrounding; he set, the glorious one, the sun and moon, lamps as light for land-dwellers, and he adorned the surfaces of the earth with branches and leaves; life too he created for each of the kinds that five and roam." Cædmon's nine-line Hymn , drawing on the opening of Genesis and envisaging God making heaven as a roof for mankind, then "middle-earth," shows a family resemblance.
Page 11
More than a third of extant Old English poetry is based on the Bible, and more than three-quarters of this group narrate or meditate upon Old Testament books. The first of the four "poetic codices" to be publishedMS Junius XI, named after the Dutch scholar who printed its contents in 1654is sometimes referred to as the Cædmon manuscript, a title based on the now discredited belief that its verse was the work of Cædmon. The first poem in the codex, Genesis (2936 lines), is made up of at least two works, Genesis A and, incorporated into it at lines 235851, Genesis B , an Old English rendition of an Old Saxon poem. The poems Exodus (590 lines), based on chapters 1319 of the biblical book, and Daniel (764 lines), paraphrasing chapters 14 of its scriptural source, follow. Other Old Testament poems are, in the Exeter Book, Azarias (191 lines), an expanded and more explicitly Christian version of the songs of Azariah and the three children in Daniel ; in the Beowulf manuscript, Judith , a 349-line fragment based on the Vulgate text of the Book of Judith (the equally apocryphal legends judged uncanonical by the Church are treated under "heroic poetry"); in the Vercelli Book, Homiletic Fragment I (47 lines), an expansion of part of Psalm 27; and in the Paris Psalter, poetic versions of Psalms 51151 (5039 lines). Smaller Old Testament pieces include the riddling Pharaoh and Lot's Daughters in the Exeter Book; a versification of Psalm 50 in Cotton MS Vespasian D.vi (157 lines); and poetical fragments of psalms in MS Junius 121 and in Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter. In addition, allusions to Old Testament story occur in nonscriptural verse such as Beowulf and the so-called Menologium .
Old English poems on New Testament themes do not paraphrase the Gospels or recount stories such as the coming of the Magi or the marriage at Cana; they meditate instead on the five big "leaps": the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Harrowing of Hell, Ascension, and Last Judgment. This body of verse includes, in MS Junius XI, Christ and Satan (729 lines); in the Exeter Book, the three Christ poems (1664 lines), covering, respectively, the coming of Christ, his ascension, and judgment; and in the Vercelli Book, The Dream of the Rood (156 lines). A number of smaller pieces (e.g., Lord's Prayer, Creed, Gloria ) also treat New Testament material.
The degree of dependence upon the scriptural text varies greatly, even within a single poem. Genesis A , regarded as a fairly faithful rendering, follows the sequence of the biblical book down to Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac (the proper place to end, as the story was
Page 12
seen to foreshadow God's sacrifice of his only son in the New Testament). Episode by episode, sometimes in poetry of notable grandeur and luminosity, the audience is shown faith rewarded and disobedience punished, the world made and unmade again. Wordplay and other rhetorical devices highlight events of figural importance, especially those involving Noah and Abraham, the two pre-Mosaic beneficiaries of God's covenant with man. The
Cædmon is also an end: we shall never know what songs the feasters sang the night he left the banquet early. Perhaps the mythological poetry we have was composed to satisfy a felt need, an Anglo-Saxon audience's craving for what it once had. The Beowulf poet imagines what a pagan Danish minstrel around A.D. 500, singing of the origin of the world, would have sounded like: "He said that the almighty made the earth, the beauty-bright land, with water surrounding; he set, the glorious one, the sun and moon, lamps as light for land-dwellers, and he adorned the surfaces of the earth with branches and leaves; life too he created for each of the kinds that five and roam." Cædmon's nine-line Hymn , drawing on the opening of Genesis and envisaging God making heaven as a roof for mankind, then "middle-earth," shows a family resemblance.
Page 11
More than a third of extant Old English poetry is based on the Bible, and more than three-quarters of this group narrate or meditate upon Old Testament books. The first of the four "poetic codices" to be publishedMS Junius XI, named after the Dutch scholar who printed its contents in 1654is sometimes referred to as the Cædmon manuscript, a title based on the now discredited belief that its verse was the work of Cædmon. The first poem in the codex, Genesis (2936 lines), is made up of at least two works, Genesis A and, incorporated into it at lines 235851, Genesis B , an Old English rendition of an Old Saxon poem. The poems Exodus (590 lines), based on chapters 1319 of the biblical book, and Daniel (764 lines), paraphrasing chapters 14 of its scriptural source, follow. Other Old Testament poems are, in the Exeter Book, Azarias (191 lines), an expanded and more explicitly Christian version of the songs of Azariah and the three children in Daniel ; in the Beowulf manuscript, Judith , a 349-line fragment based on the Vulgate text of the Book of Judith (the equally apocryphal legends judged uncanonical by the Church are treated under "heroic poetry"); in the Vercelli Book, Homiletic Fragment I (47 lines), an expansion of part of Psalm 27; and in the Paris Psalter, poetic versions of Psalms 51151 (5039 lines). Smaller Old Testament pieces include the riddling Pharaoh and Lot's Daughters in the Exeter Book; a versification of Psalm 50 in Cotton MS Vespasian D.vi (157 lines); and poetical fragments of psalms in MS Junius 121 and in Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter. In addition, allusions to Old Testament story occur in nonscriptural verse such as Beowulf and the so-called Menologium .
Old English poems on New Testament themes do not paraphrase the Gospels or recount stories such as the coming of the Magi or the marriage at Cana; they meditate instead on the five big "leaps": the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Harrowing of Hell, Ascension, and Last Judgment. This body of verse includes, in MS Junius XI, Christ and Satan (729 lines); in the Exeter Book, the three Christ poems (1664 lines), covering, respectively, the coming of Christ, his ascension, and judgment; and in the Vercelli Book, The Dream of the Rood (156 lines). A number of smaller pieces (e.g., Lord's Prayer, Creed, Gloria ) also treat New Testament material.
The degree of dependence upon the scriptural text varies greatly, even within a single poem. Genesis A , regarded as a fairly faithful rendering, follows the sequence of the biblical book down to Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac (the proper place to end, as the story was
Page 12
seen to foreshadow God's sacrifice of his only son in the New Testament). Episode by episode, sometimes in poetry of notable grandeur and luminosity, the audience is shown faith rewarded and disobedience punished, the world made and unmade again. Wordplay and other rhetorical devices highlight events of figural importance, especially those involving Noah and Abraham, the two pre-Mosaic beneficiaries of God's covenant with man. The
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