Metaphors of Turning: The Mind, Agency, and Free Will in Anglo-Saxon Literature

by

David R. Wilton

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English University of Toronto

© by David R. Wilton, 2016

ii

Metaphors of Turning: The Mind, Agency, and Free Will in Anglo-Saxon Literature

David R. Wilton Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto

2016

Abstract

This dissertation employs Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory to

explicate Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the mind, agency, and free will. Conceptual

metaphor theory considers metaphor to be not only a literary device, but one of the

cognitive processes by which humans construct reality and that a systematic examination

of metaphors can reveal biases and assumptions that underlie thought. An examination of

metaphors in Old English texts can tease out subtleties in Anglo-Saxon concepts of the

mind, agency, and will, especially in translations where the vernacular metaphors create

and reflect different understandings than are found in the original Latin. Specifically, this

dissertation looks at use of three metaphors of turning across the Old English corpus:

revolutionary turning; turning through two-dimensional space; and turning as

transformation and translation. These metaphors are not only used in didactic and

philosophical works, but are also taken up in poetry, indicating that Anglo-Saxon readers

understood cognitive processes within a framework of such vernacular metaphors.

Through a detailed examination of these metaphors I conclude that Malcolm

Godden’s division between the classical and unified / vernacular and split traditions of

the Anglo-Saxon mind-soul is not so much the result of distinct philosophical traditions

as it is of tension between Augustinian/Alcuinian doctrine and the vernacular metaphors

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used to describe the mind and soul; that to the Anglo-Saxons, exercise of free will is

dependent on the rational faculty of the mind controlling emotions and desires; and that

Anglo-Saxon writers maintained an implicit distinction between will and agency. We also

see these metaphors at play in the Anglo-Saxon understanding of translation, which is not

simply a transfer of meaning, but a transformation, one in which the text and its meaning

are likened to the body and soul. The TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION metaphor

analogizes translation to the struggle between body and soul, in which if not done

correctly, the body, or form of the text, can pervert or corrupt the soul, or gastlic andgyt

(spiritual understanding), that is enclosed within it.

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Acknowledgments

There are many scholars to whom I owe a debt of gratitude and without whom

this dissertation would not have been completed. Obviously, my advisor Andy Orchard

tops the list, as do the other members of my dissertation committee, Toni Healey and

Will Robins. Andy has been a constant source of advice not only in writing this

dissertation, but more generally in writing for academic publication and how to succeed

in the academy (but not without really trying). Toni’s painstaking and detailed comments

on each of the chapters was invaluable in whipping them into shape, and Will’s

orthogonal approaches to the topic inspired my own mental processes. I must also

mention Leslie Lockett, my external examiner for this dissertation. Even though she came

in at the end of the process, her detailed comments and challenging questions have honed

my thinking on Anglo-Saxon ideas of free will and agency.

There are many others—faculty, staff, and students—in the English Department

and the Centre for Medieval Studies here in Toronto who have been my companions in

this effort. There isn’t space to properly thank them all, but I’d like to especially call out

Deidre Lynch, who was the Director of Graduate Studies when I first arrived in Toronto

and who was an unflagging source of support in my transition back into the life of a full-

time scholar, as well as Tanuja Persaud and Marguerite Perry, who made wending my

way through the bureaucratic maze that is the University of Toronto effortless.

But my entry into the study of medieval literature began at UC Berkeley, and I

would like to thank Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, in whose graduate seminar the seed of

this dissertation was planted. Also, I owe a special debt to Jennifer Miller, whose classes

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not only inspired me to take up the study of Old English literature full time, but who held

my hand throughout the long process of preparing for and applying to doctoral programs.

I am grateful to my cousin Judith Bennett, who has been a continuing source of

advice on the process of becoming a medieval scholar, on getting published, and in

entering the academic job market. I recall in the distant past, way back when I was still in

high school, sitting down with her and listening to her advice as to where I should go for

my undergraduate education, and she was there again for me many years later.

My brothers Carlos and Jim have pillars of support, both familial and financial.

And of course there is Lila, who has been a constant and utterly non-judgmental four-

footed companion throughout these last two years.

To these and the many others, thank you.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii 

Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv 

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi 

List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ vii 

Chapter 1—Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 

Chapter 2—Revolutionary Turning: Mind On A Pivot .................................................... 30 

Chapter 3—Turning Through Space: LIFE AS JOURNEY .................................................. 97 

Chapter 4—TURNING-AS-TRANSFORMATION/TRANSLATION .......................................... 144 

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 212 

Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 220 

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List of Abbreviations

AS Anglo-Saxon(s) ASPR Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record, Krapp and Dobbie, eds. BT Bosworth-Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary CH Catholic Homilies, Ælfric; Clemoes and Godden, eds. DOE Dictionary of Old English, A to G Online EH Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede LS Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary MED Middle English Dictionary OE Old English OED Oxford English Dictionary Online PDE Present-day English PL Patrologia Latina, Migne, ed.

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Chapter 1—Introduction

To everything, turn, turn, turn.

There is a season, turn, turn, turn.

And a time to every purpose under heaven.1

—Pete Seeger

This dissertation draws upon Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory to

explicate Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the mind, agency, and free will. Lakoff and

Johnson consider metaphor to be not merely a literary device, but one of the cognitive

processes by which humans construct reality and that a systematic examination of

metaphors can reveal biases and assumptions that underlie thought.2 Therefore, an

examination of metaphors in Old English texts can tease out subtleties in Anglo-Saxon

concepts of the mind, agency, and will, especially in translations where the vernacular

metaphors create and reflect subtly different understandings than are found in the original

Latin. These subtleties are not only expressed in didactic and philosophical works, but

they are also taken up in poems, indicating Anglo-Saxon readers understood the mind,

agency, and will through such vernacular metaphors. Specifically, this dissertation looks

at use of three metaphors of turning across the Old English corpus: revolutionary turning,

as if around an axis; turning through two-dimensional space, as if changing course on a

journey; and turning as transformation and translation. And it examines how these

1 Pete Seeger, "Turn, Turn, Turn," The Bitter and The Sweet (Columbia, 1962). 2 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 3.

2

metaphors influence the Anglo-Saxon understanding of the mind and soul, the role of

reason in the exercise of free will, the distinction between will and agency, and Anglo-

Saxon concepts of translation.

The Old English roots hwearf- (including the root hwyrf-, derived from the weak

verb hwyrfan), cyrr-, and wend-3 all depict three different modes of turning: axial turning,

directional turning, and transformation. Axial turning is revolution around an axis, as in a

wheel or the motions of the planets and stars. Directional turning is a vector change in

two-dimensional space, as in a change of course or a return home. And transformation is

an alteration in the substance or nature of an object, a turning into something else. Each

of these modes of turning can be literal and physical, or they can be metaphorical. Axial

turning, for example, can be the literal turning of a wheel, or it can be used to refer to

turning one's attention to a new subject or to a turning toward or away from God and

righteousness. Hwearf-, cyrr-, wend- are each used for all three modes of turning,

although words based on hwearf- and cyrr- are rarely used for transformation, a mode of

turning that is more commonly represented by a wend- word.

In most cases the classification of any instance of turning into one of these three

modes is relatively straightforward, but in some metaphorical cases the mode of turning

the root represents is difficult to identify with confidence. The use of hwearf- in the sense

of religious conversion, for example, could be any of the three, a turning to face God, a

change in the course of one's life, or a transformation. Furthermore, given that these

3 The Old English root tyrn-, the source of the PDE turn, is primarily used for axial turning and is not used metaphorically in the extant Old English corpus. As a result, I do not address it in this dissertation.

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metaphors are often operating in the background of the writer's mind, the writer may not

have been conscious himself exactly which mode of turning is represented.4

Metaphor Theory

Traditionally, metaphor and other figurative language have been viewed as

distortive of true knowledge—one of the reasons that Plato banishes poetry from his

Republic.5 Metaphor has traditionally been regarded as a poetic and rhetorical technique,

an embellishment or ornament, but prior to the twentieth century there have been

occasional instances where writers and philosophers have recognized its cognitive

potential, specifically regarding the function of discerning similarities and differences. In

his Poetics, Aristotle defines metaphor as “the application of a word that belongs to

another thing: either from genus to species, species to genus, species to species, or by

analogy,”6 and he connects it to cognition when he writes that of all the poetic

techniques,7 “the greatest asset is the capacity for metaphor. This alone cannot be

acquired from another, and is a sign of natural gifts: because to use metaphor well is to

4 When referring to generic or anonymous Anglo-Saxon writers, translators, and scribes, I use masculine pronouns because they were, to the best of our knowledge, usually male. And in my translations I preserve the gender of the original, which is usually masculine. 5 Raymond W. Gibbs, The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1, 4; Charles L. Griswold, “Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University, January 30, 2012), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/; Plato, Republic, ed. Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 276 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 10:607b–e, 2:436–41. 6 Aristotle, Poetics, in Aristotle: Poetics; Longinus: On the Sublime; Demetrius: On Style, trans. Stephen Halliwell, Loeb Classical Library 199 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), book 21, 104. 7 Eva Feder Kittay, Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 2. The introduction to Kittay’s monograph provides a useful potted history of the scholarly discourse on metaphor up until the late 1980s.

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discern similarities.”8 The Romantic poets also recognized the cognitive nature of

metaphor, as in Percy Shelley’s comment about poets:

Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before

unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension,

until the words which represent them, become, through time, signs for

portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts; and

then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which

have been thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler

purposes of human intercourse.9

Yet Shelley still closely associates metaphor with poetry and opines that metaphorical

expressions only move into common discourse when they become lexicalized and the

metaphor becomes denotation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge also recognizes the cognitive

function of metaphor, writing that it is “the power by which one image or feeling is made

to modify many others, and by a sort of fusion to force many into one.”10 Yet again,

Coleridge is speaking of metaphor in a literary context, specifically Shakespeare’s plays.

Recognition that metaphor is not simply a rhetorical technique, but an

“omnipresent principle” of language would have to wait until the twentieth century and

the work of I. A. Richards.11 The definition of metaphor proffered by Richards

recognizes its cognitive nature: “Fundamentally it is a borrowing between and intercourse

8 Aristotle, Poetics, book 23, 115. 9 Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry (1819),” in English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay, by Charles W. Eliot, The Harvard Classics 27 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909), http://www.bartleby.com/br/02701.html. 10 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Shakspeare, a Poet Generally,” in Lectures on Shakspeare, Etc. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1907), 39. 11 I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 90. Richards also introduces the concepts of vehicle and tenor, 96.

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of thoughts, a transaction between contexts. Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by

comparison, and the metaphors of language derive therefrom.”12 Richards goes on to

state:

The processes of metaphor in language, the exchanges between the

meanings of words which we study in explicit verbal metaphors, are

super-imposed upon a perceived world which is itself a product of earlier

or unwitting metaphor, and we shall not deal with them justly if we forget

that this is so.13

Here Richards posits that metaphor not simply a literary device, but is fundamental to

how we perceive the world around us—our conception of reality is constructed out of

metaphors. And out of Richards’s work flows what is the most common, critical

definition of metaphor, a mapping of characteristics from a source domain (i.e., vehicle)

to a target domain (i.e., tenor).

Richards also calls into question the idea of a dead metaphor, saying, “however

stone dead such metaphors seem, we can easily wake them up.”14 What seems to be a

“dead” metaphor is usually just a sub rosa, unconscious one. And the fact that it is

unconscious does not negate its power, for even if we do not consciously recognize that

the metaphor is operating, it can still reinforce and sustain a cognitive construct.15 For

example, Merriam-Webster gives time is running out as an example of a dead metaphor,

but the phrase still obviously maps the characteristics of a limited quantity onto time (as

opposed to, say, considering time as a river or continuous flow, or as a fourth dimension

12 Ibid., 94. 13 Ibid., 108–09. 14 Ibid., 101. 15 Gibbs, Poetics, 10.

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in the time-space continuum).16 A lack of emotive force or literary originality does not

equate to death. For a metaphor to be truly dead, it must be incomprehensible and

incapable of being reanalyzed into a new metaphor, and examples of truly dead

metaphors are somewhat difficult to find. One may be the phrase to kick the bucket,

meaning ‘to die.’ The bucket here is in the sense of that word meaning a ‘beam,’ probably

from the Old French buquet, and the phrase is a metaphorical reference to the death

throes of an animal suspended upside-down in a slaughterhouse.17 The disappearance of

the ‘beam’ sense of bucket from our familiar vocabulary has caused the metaphor to die,

even while the phrase itself remains in common and even linguistically productive use,

continuing to spawn daughter terms like bucket list.18 Metaphor death can also occur

through lexical borrowing where the metaphor does not translate. An example can be

seen in the Latin decidere (to decide), literally meaning ‘to cut off,’ but the transfer to

English and the subsequent decline in the number of people who understand Latin has

killed the metaphor among English speakers. The metaphor behind the verb to

understand is similarly opaque and dead, or at least moribund, today, but the word’s

metaphoric origin in a series of spatial metaphors can be seen in the Old English. To

understand is literally to rely on a supporting foundation—something which stands

underneath—and can be compared to astandan (to rise, stand up), forstandan (to defend,

aid), and wiþstandan (to oppose, hinder). Lexicalization is not the death of metaphor, but

only the diminishment of its poetic and emotive power.

16 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2003), s. v. dead metaphor, n. 17 OED, s. v. bucket. 18 The opacity of the kick the bucket metaphor has caused some to reanalyze bucket list as a container of hopes and dreams. See: Tiffani Ohmer, “Large Container of Goals (Bucket List),” Pinterest.com, n. d.

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Such an understanding of how lexicalized metaphors retain cognitive, if not

emotive, force led to the development of conceptual metaphor theory, first espoused by

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their 1980 Metaphors We Live By and refined in

subsequent works by them and others. Extending Richards’ work, Lakoff and Johnson

posit that the human “ordinary conceptual system, and by extension how we think and

act, is fundamentally metaphoric in nature.”19 And it is the unconscious, automatic, and

effortless operation of this cognitive model that makes it effective.20 Fundamental to

Lakoff and Johnson’s theory is the understanding that metaphor is, at its heart, not just a

poetic device; it is an ordinary and ubiquitous mode of thought and language. For

example, in the preceding sentence, fundamental, understanding, heart, and even

metaphor itself are all metaphors. Once you start looking for it, you find metaphor

everywhere.

Despite the cognitive model being unconscious, analysis of our language can

expose the metaphoric concepts that structure our thoughts. It is important, however, to

distinguish between the underlying metaphor and the specific linguistic expressions that

realize it.21 Metaphors can exist cross-culturally and cross linguistically, as in the Old

English gecyrrednes and the Latin conversio, which are both based on a metaphor of

turning and transformation—the metaphor of TURNING AS TRANSFORMATION is realized

via different words in different languages.

The example with which Lakoff and Johnson open their book, and whose

inclusion seems to be de rigueur when describing their theory, is the metaphor of

19 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors, 3. 20 George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 65–66. 21 Ibid., 50.

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ARGUMENT-AS-WAR. Arguments are won or lost; they are shot down; positions can be

indefensible if they have weak points; when you wish your opponent to proceed, you say

“shoot”; one can ambush an unprepared opponent; one may concede a tactical point in

order to lure the other side into a logical trap; etc. The ARGUMENT-AS-WAR structure is so

deeply ingrained that we often fail to recognize that it is a metaphorical construct at all,

that there are other ways in which we could potentially conceive of argument. Such an

altered conception could radically change the nature of argument, or more accurately how

we perceive it, which is much the same thing. One such alternative proffered by Lakoff

and Johnson is the metaphor of ARGUMENT-AS-DANCE. Instead of adversaries, the

participants would be performers; rhythm and syncopation would be desired

characteristics; balance and aesthetics would be prized over scoring points; instead of

attacking, one performer might lead and lift another; and the performers would cooperate,

building off one another’s moves and steps to create a greater and aesthetically pleasing

whole.22 There is nothing inherently superior in the ARGUMENT-AS-WAR metaphor. We

recognize it as “correct” simply because it is ubiquitous in our culture—it is how we

routinely think of and describe argument—while ARGUMENT-AS-DANCE is not.

Surprisingly, little sustained criticism of Lakoff’s and Johnson’s theory has been

proffered, with most of the commentary focused on the scope and extent of metaphor’s

role in cognition rather than whether or not it plays a role.23 Antonina Harbus does,

22 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors, 4–5. 23 Gibbs, Poetics, 122. Verena Haser offers a general and sustained criticism, but she fails to present a structured and coherent argument, at times descending into criticism of Lakoff and Johnson’s writing style rather than their arguments and misconstruing fundamental points of their theory. And despite her opposition, she still acknowledges that the theory has “undeniable merits.” Verena Haser, Metaphor, Metonymy, and

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however, offer up some concerns regarding weaknesses in Lakoff and Johnson’s theory

that should be taken into account when applying it, especially in its application to Old

English literature. Lakoff and Johnson focus on present-day, spoken English. While this

focus is appropriate for their purpose of presenting a metaphoric model of human

cognition, Harbus notes that literary metaphor may operate differently, more

idiosyncratically. Not only might the metaphors in the extant Old English corpus not

necessarily represent common usage of the era, but readers engage with literary texts

differently than they do with spoken discourse. As Harbus puts it, “literary language

defamiliarises experience and draws attention to itself,” while metaphor in spoken

discourse tends to do the opposite.24 The metaphors we see in Old English literature,

especially in poetry, therefore, may not necessarily represent fundamental and

representative concepts, but rather novel and innovative ones. Furthermore, Lakoff and

Johnson do not address diachronic development of metaphorical concepts, failing to

address the “structure of knowledge at the cultural level” when the metaphors first

developed.25 Thus, to fully understand the MIND-AS-CONTAINER metaphor in English, to

give an example, one must examine Anglo-Saxon concepts of the mind, not just modern

ones, since that particular metaphor is over a thousand years old.

Experientialist Philosophy: Challenging Cognitive Semantics, Topics in English Linguistics 49 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005), 240. 24 Antonina Harbus, Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry, Anglo-Saxon Studies 18 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2012), 26. 25 Ibid.

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This latter criticism is not especially relevant to this dissertation, as I limit my

analysis to the Anglo-Saxon era.26 But the concern that metaphors in the extant Old

English corpus may not represent ordinary usage and their underlying modes of cognition

is a legitimate one. This concern, however, is lessened by the understanding that most

literary metaphors are not completely novel constructions, but rather extended and ornate

instantiations of familiar metaphoric mappings.27 Indeed, a truly novel metaphor would

not likely possess much emotive and poetic force; some degree of familiarity is necessary

for a literary metaphor to resonate—in other words, it can’t be too weird. Additionally,

the fact that the metaphors of turning that I analyze in this dissertation appear across

many different works and have been lexicalized into words like gecyrrednes provides

confidence that these metaphors are indeed fundamental concepts in Anglo-Saxon

thought. Thus, when we see Ælfric deploying an extended, literary metaphor of turning

through space in his Epiphany homily, the encoding of the relationship between turning

and thought in the denotation of his verbs shows that his literary metaphor is built on a

foundation of ordinary usage, in particular the ubiquitous LIFE–AS–JOURNEY metaphor.28

The application of cognitive theories to Old English literature is not new, forming

a distinct thread in the critical discourse over the last few decades. The seminal work in

this discourse has been Malcolm Godden’s 1985 article “Anglo-Saxons on the Mind,”

which postulates two distinct traditions for the Anglo-Saxon conception of the mind-

soul—a classical, Augustinian notion of a unified soul, and a vernacular, Germanic

26 Although it will be relevant to a planned follow-on project, which will go toward addressing development of English metaphors of the mind from Old English through to the early modern era. 27 Gibbs, Poetics, 259. 28 CH 1.7, 232–40. I examine Ælfric’s use of this metaphor in detail in chapter 3.

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tradition of a divided soul.29 More recently Leslie Lockett has proposed a compelling

alternative, a hydraulic metaphor for the Anglo-Saxon mind, that of MIND-AS-BOILER.30

Relatively little criticism, however, has focused on the application of conceptual

metaphor theory to Anglo-Saxon literature. Harbus has produced the most work in this

vein, including two monographs and several articles.31 Soon Ai Low’s unpublished, 1998

dissertation also remains a fundamental text in the field.32 To date, however, there have

been few sustained discussions of a single metaphor or group of related metaphors across

the Old English corpus.

The Problems of Free Will

Another aspect of this dissertation is the Anglo-Saxon conception of free will and

agency.33 One issue with any discussion of free will is definitional. In common use the

words agency and will are often conflated, but when analyzing the ability of humans to

choose and effect a course of action it is useful to carefully distinguish the concepts the

29 Malcolm Godden, “Anglo-Saxons on the Mind (1985),” in Old English Literature: Critical Essays, by R. M. Liuzza (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 284–314. 30 Leslie Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 31 Especially relevant to this dissertation is her monograph in which she discusses turning metaphors in several Old English poems: Antonina Harbus, The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry, Costerus New Series 143 (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2002). 32 Soon Ai Low, “The Anglo-Saxon Mind: Metaphor and Common Sense Psychology in Old English Literature” (Ph. D. diss., University of Toronto, 1998). 33 Aaron Kleist has produced an invaluable monograph that traces the development of the concept of free will in Anglo-Saxon England from the influence of Augustine through to the homilies of Ælfric at the end of the Anglo-Saxon era. Kleist, however, focuses on philosophical and didactic works, those that explicitly take up free will and agency as a topic, and does not address Old English poetry or prose that engages the subject more obliquely. Aaron J. Kleist, Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

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words can represent.34 Therefore, I define agency as the “ability or capacity to act or

exert power.”35 It is distinct from both agent action, the “action or intervention producing

a particular effect; means, instrumentality, mediation,”36 and the will or “inclination to do

something, as contrasted with power or opportunity.”37 An example of the distinction

between will and agency can be seen in Cassian’s Collatio 13.3 which describes a farmer

who wishes to produce a bountiful crop only to find his labour is insufficient and the

results are dependent on the weather.38 The farmer has the will, but only partial agency,

to grow the crop. One can have agency without will, a purely mechanistic or

deterministic model; will without agency, that is to be powerless to act effectively despite

one’s desire to do so; one can have both, a model where one can choose to act and then

effectively do so; or one can have neither the desire nor the ability to accomplish a task.

Free will is a harder definitional problem as various sources define it differently.

The OED defines it as “the power of an individual to make free choices, not determined

by divine predestination, the laws of physical causality, fate, etc.”39 While superficially a

reasonable definition, it does not address what is meant by “free choice.” Are motivations

and desires a force like divine predestination or fate, or do they, at least in part, constitute

the “power of the individual”? Harry Frankfurt puts forward a definition that resolves this

question when he defines will as a desire that, when coupled with agency, leads to

34 Frustratingly, while volumes have been written on the definition of free will, almost no philosophers or literary critics define what they mean when they use the term agency. Therefore, here I rely on the OED’s definition of the term. 35 OED, s. v. agency, n., sense II.4. 36 Ibid., s. v. agency, n., sense II.5.a. 37 Ibid., s. v. will, n.1, sense I.1.b. 38 PL 49:900–01. 39 OED, s. v. free will, n., sense 2.

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action,40 and then goes on to make a distinction between what he calls first-order and

second-order desires. A first-order desire is a desire “to do or not to do one thing or

another.” All animals have first-order desires. A second-order desire, however, is a desire

“to have (or not to have) certain desires and motives,” and are, as far as we know,

distinctly human and a product of rationality and self-reflection.41 An alcoholic wants a

drink, a first-order desire, yet may wish to be free of the compulsion to drink, a second-

order desire. Free will, for Frankfurt, is the ability to conform one’s actions to one’s

second-order desires, to be able to choose what one desires.42 Frankfurt also distinguishes

“freedom of will” from “freedom of action,” or agency—a prisoner, for example, may

have freedom of will but not freedom of action.

In their explicit statements, the notion of free will expressed by Anglo-Saxon

writers conforms to the OED definition. A person’s agency may be constrained by divine

foreþanc (providence) or by wyrd (fate), but they have their agen cyre (own choice) when

it comes to acting on their desires. Yet as we shall see, the Old English metaphors used to

map the characteristics of will and choice conform more to Frankfurt’s articulation of

free will as the rational expression of second-order desires. In Old English writing, raw

and unfettered desires and lusts—first-order desires—are just as limiting to the rational

will as are external forces, and the distinction between first-order and second-order

desires, and the mental faculties that express them, is implicit in the Old English

metaphors.

40 Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” The Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 1 (January 14, 1971): 8. 41 Ibid., 6–7. 42 Ibid., 14–15.

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The Lexicon of the Mind and Soul

Understanding the Old English terms that relate to the soul and the mind and its

faculties is essential in analyzing how these metaphors of turning relate to free will and

agency. Malcolm Godden provides the generally accepted, but non-specific, explanation

when he declares the various words for the mind "seem to be used more or less

interchangeably and are generally rendered in present-day English as 'heart,' 'mind,'

'spirit' or 'soul', according to context and the translator's sense of the poet's meaning,"43

For Godden the most important distinction is whether the writer or poet follows the

“classical” concept of a unified soul or the “vernacular” one of a mind-soul split. Low’s

1998 dissertation extends the ideas that Godden roughly outlines in his article, but she

departs somewhat from Godden by offering a different explanation for the split, one

between “common sense psychology” and “scientific psychology.”44 I follow this

distinction of Low’s, but put it in terms that steer it back toward Godden somewhat.

Rather than placing the distinction in terms of modern psychological discourse, I define

the split as being between a psychology unconsciously evinced by vernacular metaphor

and one that consciously expresses a Christian, and usually Augustinian, doctrine.

Because one is unconscious and unintended and the other conscious and deliberate, both

psychologies may coexist in the same work, or even in the same passage.

Various semantic field analyses have been conducted in an attempt to discover

subtleties regarding the Anglo-Saxon conception of the mind, soul, and self that may be

expressed through diction. Yet despite considerable work in this particular field, as

Godden has observed, Old English words for the mind and soul remain maddeningly

43 Godden, “AS on the Mind,” 301. 44 Low, “Anglo-Saxon Mind,” 35–36.

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imprecise and slippery, defying attempts to pin down meaning in the texts they appear.45

Furthermore, these studies are not without methodological problems. Soon Ai Low points

out that while the various Old English words for the mind may have had "peculiar

resonances in the Anglo-Saxon ear," recovering such subtle shades of meaning may be

impossible after a thousand years, and the poetic requirements of meter and alliteration

might take precedence over such subtle shadings in meaning. While a semantic

distinction might exist between these words, it may not be observed in every case,

obscuring what that distinction is to the modern reader.46

Low also notes that a semantic distinction between lexemes does not necessarily

refer to a distinction in the referent.47 In other words, sefa and hyge, for example, may

have slightly different connotations, but the distinction may only be emphasizing

different aspects of the same mental faculty or entity. Nor do the distinctions necessarily

apply to every instance of a word's use, although it is likely that the word would be

received in a manner that conformed to its typical use even if the writer did not intend the

45 Hilary Fox’s 2011 dissertation makes an attempt to pin these terms down, but it is limited in the texts it covers. Similarly, Margrit Soland's 1979 dissertation is limited to Beowulf and selected poems from the Exeter and Vercelli Books and does not address the corpus as a whole. Michael Phillips's 1985 dissertation covers the entire corpus, but limits itself by examining only nine words. Earl Anderson’s 2003 work also has a chapter on mind words. Diachronic analyses of mind/soul words have been even fewer, with the most notable study being Christian Kay’s. Hilary E. Fox, “Mind, Body, Soul, and Self in the Alfredian Translations” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2011); Margrit Soland, “Altenglische Ausdrücke für ‘Leib’ und ‘Seele’: ein Semantische Analyse” (Universität Zürich, 1979); Michael Joseph Phillips, “Heart, Mind, and Soul in Old English: A Semantic Study” (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985); Earl R. Anderson, Folk-Taxonomies in Early English (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 2003); Christian Kay, “Metaphors We Lived By: Pathways Between Old and Modern English,” in Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Dr. Lynne Grundy, by Jane Roberts and Janet Nelson (London: King’s College London, Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 2000), 235–85. 46 Soon Ai Low, “Mental Cultivation in Guthlac B,” Neophilologus 81 (1997): 628. 47 Low, “Anglo-Saxon Mind,” 169.

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distinction. Low's criticisms, particularly this last, are valuable, but do not invalidate the

utility of these semantic field analyses. While distinctions between the terms may be

vague and imprecise, they do exist, and when used with care in a close reading, the

conclusions drawn by these studies can sometimes help us tease out potential subtleties

that are obscured when we simply translate them as ‘mind.’

The most significant of these distinctions, and one that virtually all scholars agree

upon, is Godden's observation that there are two major sets of these words, those that

refer to the transcendent soul, that which survives death, represented by words like sawol

or gast, and those that refer to the non-transcendent mind, which possesses intellectual

faculties and dies with the body, represented by words such as mod or hyge.48

The split between the non-transcendent mind and the transcendent soul is hardly

unique to Anglo-Saxon culture. A number of cultural traditions share the split, with a

trend over time for multiple non-material essences to narrow and unify into a single soul

or consciousness.49 We find this trend at work in Anglo-Saxon literature, with multiple

non-material essences narrowing to a single, unitary, Augustinian notion of the soul. This

split, and the narrowing and unification, can be seen in the words used to refer to various

aspects of the mind and soul.

Proto-Indo-European does not appear to have any root that distinctly means

‘spirit, soul.’ Recorded reflexes tend to be based on roots meaning ‘breath’ or ‘heart’ or

48 Godden, “AS on the Mind,” 302. 49 And now, with the discipline of neuroscience, the trend is even bridging the mind-body gap with abandonment of dualism and the recognition that consciousness does not have an existence separate from the material brain.

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from terms denoting states of mental agitation.50 Vedic culture originally expressed the

soul as a duality, one being a life force and the other personality, thought, and emotions,

before combining the elements into the atman.51 Ancient Greece originally had multiple

immaterial entities that by Homer's day were combining into a duality, and by the fifth

century BCE had merged into a unitary soul. There was the psyche, which is not the same

entity denoted by the present-day English word, located in the head which could leave the

body during periods of sleep and unconsciousness and which survived the body after

death. The aion, or life force, was associated with youth and diminished as a person aged.

The thymos, located in the chest, was the seat of emotions and provided the impetus to

undertake actions. The noos, also located in the chest, was the seat of intellectual activity.

There was also the menos, which was not a physical essence, but fury or rage that drove

the entire body to act, often associated with warriors in battle.52 The thymos, noos, and

menos were associated with the body and did not survive death.

The Romans also distinguished several types of spirit, anima, animus, and

spiritus, as well as the mens, in contrast to the corpus or body. The anima, the breath of

life, is common to both humans and animals and survived death, forming the manes or

shades of the dead.53 The animus is the rational mind, including emotions and volition,

and is possessed only by humans.54 Some Roman writers, including Cicero, conflated the

50 Carl Darling Buck, A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 1087. 51 Jan Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 9. 52 Ibid., 13–16, 51–59. 53 LS, s. v. anima, 120–21. 54 LS, s. v. animus, 123–24.

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anima and the animus, considering the rational animus to be a subset of the other.55

Spiritus refers to the air, breath, and life force. In poetic and later Roman prose use

spiritus is a synonym for anima and animus and a metonym for emotions such as pride

and courage.56 The mens is rationality, intention, design, a faculty of the animus.57 So we

also see the same movement toward a unitary soul in Roman thought.

Of those who wrote about the soul in late antiquity, Augustine was the leading

influence on Anglo-Saxon thought on the subject, either directly or indirectly through

secondary sources. While Augustine maintains a distinction in his use of the Latin words

for the soul, he posits a unitary soul that encompasses three components, a reflection of

the divine Trinity. In De Trinitate 9.4 Augustine declares the mind, its love, and its

knowledge to be one.58 A bit later in 10.11 he specifies the three aspects of the mens as

memoria, intelligentia, and uoluntas (memory, intelligence, and will).59 For Augustine

the mind and soul are one, a unitary mind-soul.

Old English gives us a rather bewildering array of words related to the mind and

soul, used with varying degrees of precision by various writers: gast, mod, sawol, hyge,

ferð, and sefa. The meaning of gast, for example, parallels the Latin spiritus. It can be the

air; breath; breath of life; disposition, temper, or courage; the soul, especially in contexts

relating to death. But it can also be a ghost; a living person; an angel; a demon or evil

being, such as Grendel; and the Holy Spirit.60

55 LS, s. v. anima, 121. 56 LS, s. v. spiritus, 1743. 57 LS, s. v. mens, 1132–33. 58 PL 42:963. 59 PL 42:983. 60 DOE, s. v. gast, gæst.

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Mod is the primary term for the non-transcendent consciousness or mind,

appearing in almost any syntactic construction or semantic context in which other terms

in the non-transcendent group appear, and it has no significant restrictions on its use.61 In

other words, mod apparently can be substituted for any of the other non-transcendent

terms without fundamentally altering the meaning of the passage. The mod is læne

(transitory), while the sawol is ece (eternal). Along with the sawol, the mod exercises

dominion over the body, but it also controls thoughts, while the sawol usually does not.

When it is acting properly, the mod is wacor (vigilant) and active, not sæne (slow) and

passive.62 While mind is the modern word most often used to translate it, the mod does

not appear to possess all the faculties attendant with the modern word—Michael Phillips

notes, for example, that mod is not used to refer to “control of consciousness or reason;

sound mind, sanity,” as one of the definitions of mind in the MED would have it.63 In

addition to referring to the seat of the intellect, mod, the root of the modern mood, can be

used for particular dispositions, and emotional states, but uncompounded it is not used for

particular rational thoughts. So mod is either a mood or emotion or the rational mind as

an entity.64

Another mind term is ferhþ, which Phillips points out syntactically belongs with

the other non-transcendent terms, but which exists in a more limited number and range of

constructions than other terms in that group.65 The noun ferhþ does not seem to serve a

61 Phillips, “Heart,” 173–74. 62 Ibid., 178–84. 63 Ibid., 217–18; MED, s. v. mind(e (n.(1)), sense 8.(a). 64 Jane Roberts, Christian Kay, and Lynne Grundy, A Thesaurus of Old English (London: King’s College London, Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1995), 1:356–426. 65 Phillips, “Heart,” 64.

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cognitive function, and rationality is not one of its attributes. While it can be stabilized

and fixed, and therefore presumably moved, it cannot be changed. It is never the subject

or object of verbs of turning like wenden, hweorfan, or oncyrran. and neither God nor

demons seem to influence it, although other people can afrefran (console) it, and the

ferhþ can suffer and feel pain.66 It is etymologically related to feorh (life-spirit), and is

sometimes conflated with it. Phillips places it in a medial position between "life-spirit"

and "seat of spiritual activities."67

Sefa is the part of the mind in which wisdom and understanding operate, and it is

closely associated with the senses and perception and with interpretation and verbal

abilities. The word is also used to refer to understanding itself, not just the faculty that

generates it.68 The poem Elene associates it with wisdom and prophecy in lines 1188–90:

Be ðam se witga sang,

snottor searuþancum, (sefa deop gewod,

wisdomes gewitt), he þæt word gecwæð69

(The prophet, wise in artful thoughts, sang about that, (the sefa, the

understanding of his wisdom, went deep), he spoke these words...)70

Earlier in lines 372–76, the same poem uses the word to refer to an understanding of

scripture:

66 Ibid., 65–67. 67 Ibid., 73. 68 Phillips attempts to distinguish the use of sefa in poetry as the faculty of understanding and andgit as the understanding itself, but this distinction does not appear to obtain. The two would seem to be synonymous in prose as well. Sefa also appears in ten glosses in Toronto’s OE Corpus, glossing sensus (sense, feeling) each time. Ibid., 56–57. 69 ASPR, 2:99. 70 Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Old English, Latin, and German are my own.

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Nu ge raþe gangaþ

ond findaþ gen þa þe fyrngewritu

þurh snyttro cræft selest cunnen,

æriht eower, þæt me ondsware

þurh sidne sefan secgan cunnen.71

(Now go quickly and find again those who best know through wise skill

the ancient writings and your law so that they can tell me the answer

through their broad sefan.)

And the Old English poem Daniel uses the word to mark the place where God sends the

ability to interpret dreams: “forþam almihtig eacenne gast / in sefan sende, snyttro

cræftas”72 (because the almighty sent a great spirit, wise skills, into his sefa).73

The sefa is also associated with moral decision making, but not strongly so, and it

is not a moral agent itself. Sefa is primarily a poetic word, with 84% of its appearances in

poems, 7% in prose works, and 9% in glosses, where it always glosses sensus.74 It can be

moved and sent, but sefa is never the object of hweorfan, oncyrran, or other verbs that

indicate change or transformation.75 The adjectives used to describe it are primarily

emotional ones, but on occasion moral adjectives, like halig (holy) and fah (hostile,

damned) are used as well, indicating a role, albeit a non-central one, in moral decision

71 ASPR, 2:76. 72 ASPR, 1:124, lines 484–85. 73 This association of the mind and rationality with interpretation and exegesis will be seen again in Chapter 4 on translation. 74 “Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus,” 2009, http://www.doe.utoronto.ca. Phillips, writing before the advent of the digital corpus has slightly different numbers, Phillips, “Heart,” 43. 75 Phillips, “Heart,” 44.

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making and in interpretation and exegesis.76 When a term for the mind is used to denote

inexpressibility or the failure of words, it is always sefa that is chosen.77 Sefa and andgit

are closely associated, and both words are used to gloss the Latin sensus with no apparent

distinction in context or meaning.

The Nature of the Anglo-Saxon Soul

Exactly what the nature of the soul is and its relationship to the cognitive faculties

of the mind is the subject for a quite different study, and I'll only touch upon it briefly.

Different Anglo-Saxon writers express different views on the nature of the soul, and

while it is possible to pin down the opinions of individuals like Alcuin or Ælfric, there

does not seem to be consensus across the critical literature on what the general Anglo-

Saxon concept of the soul is. Lockett, in the opening chapter of her Anglo-Saxon

Psychologies, outlines a four-fold taxonomy of the soul-body relationship, that of body,

mind, life-force, and soul.78 Lockett's interpretation of the sawol or gast distinguishes it

from the intellectual and emotional faculties of the mind and denies it autonomy and free

will; the soul is a prisoner of the decisions, virtues, and lusts of the body. But while one

can find examples in the Old English Corpus that support this taxonomy, it is equally

easy to find ones that challenge it. Malcolm Godden has pointed out there is a divergence

between ecclesiastical writers like Alcuin and Ælfric, who postulate a unitary soul that

comprises both the spiritual and intellectual faculties that distinguish the individual,

emotional personality from the eternal soul that departs the body after death.79

76 Ibid., 44, 46–50. 77 Ibid., 52. 78 Lockett, AS Psychologies, 17–18. 79 Godden, “AS on the Mind,” 308. 

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Ælfric's sermon on the nativity, the first item in his collection of saint's lives,

reflects this assemblage of theological and folk traditions. In places Ælfric translates

almost verbatim from Alcuin's De animae ratione, depicting the soul as having free will

and the power to resist sin, imprisoning it in the body without the ability to leave short of

death, while paradoxically giving the soul the ability to range outside the body in dreams

and contemplation. And across this mixed backdrop of the Anglo-Saxon conception of

the soul fly the poems of the Exeter Book, at times reflecting the influence of particular

thinkers, such as The Seafarer which at times echoes Alcuin and at other times reflects a

less coherent view.80 Some of the power of the metaphor of the wandering, avian-like

soul in this poem comes from its ambiguity, its quality of being interpreted in various

ways by different poets and readers.81

Anglo-Saxon homiletic and didactic works tend to profess the concept of

Augustinian unified soul—Godden’s classical tradition. In his sermon De fide catholica

(1.20), Ælfric puts forward the doctrine of a unitary sawol, but a unity that bears the

likeness of the divine trinity in that it is divided into three parts, gemynd (memory),

andgit (understanding), and willa (will). Yet the similarity to the trinity of God is in

likeness only. Ælfric explains that the human soul is not three-in-one, but simply one

80 Peter Clemoes, “Mens Absentia Cogitans in the Seafarer and the Wanderer,” in Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonsway, ed. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: University of London Athlone Press, 1969), 64. 81 Jennifer Neville, “Fostering the Cuckoo: Exeter Book Riddle 9,” Review of English Studies, New Series, 58, no. 236 (2007): 441–42; Soon Ai Low, “Approaches to the Old English Vocabulary for ‘Mind,’” Studia Neophilologica 73, no. 1 (2001): 19.

24

with three faculties.82 The ultimate source for this doctrine of the unitary soul is

Augustine's De Trinitate 10.11.18:

Haec igitur tria, memoria, intelligentia, voluntas, quoniam non sunt tres

vitae, sed una vita; nec tres mentes, sed una mens: consequenter utique nec

tres substantiae sunt, sed una substantia.83

(Therefore, since these three, memory, intelligence, and will, are not three

lives, but one life; not three minds, but one mind: consequently it follows

that they are not three substances, but one substance.)

Godden, however, questions whether Ælfric knew Augustine's text directly and

postulates that his view is mediated through Alcuin's De Animae Ratione:84

Habet igitur anima in sua natura, ut diximus, imaginem sanctae Trinitatis

in eo quod intelligentiam, voluntatem, et memoriam habet. Una est enim

anima quae mens dicitur una uita et una substantia, quae haec tria habet in

se: sed haec tria non sunt tres vitae, sed una vitae; nec tres mentes, sed una

mens; nec tres substantiae sunt, sed una substantia.85

(Therefore, so we say, the soul has in its nature the image of the holy

trinity, in that it has intelligence, will, and memory. Indeed the soul is one

in which the mind is said to be one life and one substance, which has these

three in itself: but these three are not three lives, but one life; not three

minds, but one mind; not three substances, but one substance.)

82 CH 1.20, 335–44. Ælfric repeats this explanation in his sermon on the nativity. Ælfric, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, vol. 1 (London: The Ælfric Society, 1844), 1:16–19, lines 112–22. 83 PL 42:983. 84 CH Introduction, 164–65. 85 PL 101:641C–D.

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In De Fide Catholica Ælfric also gives the unitary soul free will: "þurh ðone

willan heo wile swa hwæt swa hire licað"86 (through the will it wills whatsoever it

pleases). And in his Christmas homily he also gives the soul the capacity to reason, with

the mod (mind) as one of its components:

Hwilon heo þæncð þa ðing þe heo ær cuðe; hwilon heo wyle wytan þa

ðing þe heo ær ne cuðe. Sume þing heo wyle, sume ðing heo nele; and

ealle lichamlicra þinga hiw heo mæg on hyre sylfre gehiwian, and swa

gehiwode on hyre mode gehealden. Ðære sawle wlyte is þæt heo wisdom

lufie.87

(Sometimes it thinks of things that it knew before; sometimes it desires to

know those things that it did not know before. Some things it wills, some

things it does not will; and it can fashion every form of corporeal things

within itself, and so fashioned retain them in its mind. The soul's beauty is

that it should love wisdom.)

But not all depictions of the soul in Old English literature are unitary, rational, and

possessing of will. By looking at moments when thought, desires, and will change, this

dissertation will show the different faculties of the mind and soul at work when these

moments are depicted as metaphorical turns.

86 CH 1.20, 342, lines 205–06. 87 Ælfric, “Natiuitas Domini Nostri Iesu Christi,” in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Saint’s Days Formerly Observed by the English Church, ed. Walter W. Skeat, vol. 1, Early English Text Society (London: N. Trübner & Co., 1881), 1:22–26, lines 220–25.

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Dissertation Goals and Structure

The use of metaphors of turning to represent agent action is hardly unique to Old

English. They are used in this way in many languages. For example, the present-day

English word conversion, used to represent the acceptance of a new spiritual faith, is

from the Latin conversio, which in turn is from versio, or ‘turning.’ The Old English

word most often used to translate conversio is gecyrrednes, literally ‘turned-ness, the

state of having been turned.’ This metaphor is pervasive across many languages and there

is nothing unique about its use in Old English that, in and of itself, makes it a particularly

productive tool for examining Anglo-Saxon concepts of agency. What makes the

metaphor useful is that it identifies moments when agent action may be occurring, and

then by examining the particular contexts, vocabularies, and grammatical structures of

these passages we can elicit how Anglo-Saxons conceived of agency.

It is not one of my goals in this dissertation to trace the origin of Old English

metaphors of turning, that is whether they derive from Latin or other sources or if they

are unique to Anglo-Saxon society, to seek what Low calls "native purity"88—in any

case, the ubiquity of these metaphors across most Indo-European cultures would render

any such attempt at tracing an exercise in frustration. I will, however, highlight where

translators of Latin source material add, delete, or expand such metaphors, as such

departures from the original material demonstrate moments when an Anglo-Saxon writer

is actively engaging in discourse on the subject of the mind and agency, instead of simply

parroting a writer from classical antiquity.

88 Low, “Anglo-Saxon Mind,” 83.

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It is also tempting to follow Godden's example in "Anglo Saxons on the Mind"

and distinguish between classical and vernacular traditions in Anglo-Saxon discourse

about the mind. But this distinction rests primarily on three writers, Alcuin, Alfred, and

Ælfric, who have written the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon prose material on the subject, and

it is not clear whether the distinction represents two distinct traditions of discourse, or

just the idiosyncratic variation one finds in any small group of writers. Such differences

are just as likely to be the result of different modes of expression in homiletics and

philosophy versus poetry, than a representation of distinct concepts about what the mind

is and how it works.

Another temptation is to attempt to trace the diachronic development of how

Anglo-Saxons conceived of the mind and agency. While such a tracing might be

successful when restricted to prose works, which generally have named authors and

identifiable dates and historical contexts in which they were written, it is impossible with

Old English poetry, which by and large cannot be dated with anything that can be

reasonably called precision. Even when we have an identifiable poet, like Cynewulf, we

have no clear idea of when he actually lived or wrote. This chronologically amorphous

poetic corpus complicates the examination of prose works as well, since we cannot be

sure in which genre an idea that is expressed in both poetry and prose first arose. As a

result, I am treating the entire Anglo-Saxon era synchronically. This is unsatisfying in

that there is no doubt that Anglo-Saxon concepts of the mind and agency developed and

were refined across the centuries, but greater chronological precision is simply not

possible, and any such diachronic analysis would therefore be of limited utility and

reliability.

28

In Chapter 2, I examine the metaphor of turning about an axis, which includes the

construct of mind-on-a-pivot or turning-mental-gaze, a shift in the mental orientation of

the subject. Such turning often represents a turning toward or away from the divine, with

a premium placed on a constant and fixed gaze on God and an inconstant or continually

turning gaze viewed as undesirable and even sinful. While the chapter examines the use

of the metaphor in a number of texts, the focus is on the Alfredian translation of

Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, but the metaphor also appears in other works,

including the Alfredian translation of Augustine’s Soliloquies, the translations of Bede’s

Ecclesiastical History and the Benedictine Rule, and Cynewulf’s poem Christ II.

In Chapter 3, I examine a second metaphor that uses turning through a two-

dimensional space as a representation of life, that is a metaphor of LIFE-AS-JOURNEY. The

metaphor appears in a number of works, including various homilies, the Alfredian

translation of Gregory’s Regula pastoralis, and poems such as The Wanderer and The

Seafarer. This journey is purposeful, with a focus on steering a straight course to the

destination, which is usually Christian salvation. The deployment of the metaphor is

remarkably consistent throughout these works in that it is the rational mind that steers the

course, that exercises the will to turn or change. The chief difference from work to work

is in who possesses agency in regard to making the turn toward salvation, the individual

human or God.

The final chapter addresses the turning metaphor underlying Anglo-Saxon

attitudes toward translation and, in particular, the use of the Old English verb awendan,

which can mean to turn or move through space, to transform, and to translate. As such it

differs from the Latin transferre/translatus which rests on a metaphor of displacing

29

meaning from one text and language to another. While awendan can encode this transfer,

it additionally encodes a metaphor of transformation and change, a change not only in the

language and text, but also of the position and authority of the translator and even the

identity of the target culture.

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Chapter 2—Revolutionary Turning: Mind On A Pivot

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well you know

You better free your mind instead

—“Revolution,” Lennon and McCartney89

In his essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” philosopher Louis

Althusser famously conducts a thought experiment in which a policeman hails a person

on the street. In response to the hail, the person turns toward the policeman and “by this

mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject.”90 By

turning to accept the identity foisted upon him by the policeman, the passerby subjects

himself to the authority of the state. Althusser’s argument and the metaphor of turning

that he uses would have been a familiar one to Anglo-Saxons. Gregory the Great’s

Regula pastoralis contains the following passage which is remarkably similar to

Althusser’s thought experiment, except instead of a policeman the hailer is God. The

passage reads in its Old English translation:

89 John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Revolution,” The Beatles (Apple Records, 1968). 90 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 174.

31

Ðonne we gehirað under bæc ðæs maniendes stemne, ðonne we to him

gecierrað, ðonne ðonne he us ciegeð huru æfter urum scyldum, ðonne he

us æfter cliopað, ðeah we ær nolden æfter his lare.91

(When we hear from behind the voice of the admonisher, then we turn to

him; when after our sins he calls to us still, then he shouts after us, even

though we would not follow his instruction before.)

This metaphor of turning around a central hub, as if around an axis or in an orbit,

representing change in the mental orientation of the subject is a common one in Old

English literature. The mental construct represented by this turning is usually the mind-

on-a-pivot or turning-mental-gaze. At its fullest, under this construct mental

concentration or focus is represented as vision, with a fixed gaze representing constancy,

order, and divine grace and a shifting gaze representing inconstancy, disorder, and

surrender to worldly temptations. However, both vision and turning are not always

present; sometimes mental processes are represented as a fixed gaze, with the possibility

of turning merely implied by the presence of the steadfast gaze, and the metaphor of

mental gaze is likewise not always present. When it is present, this mental gaze is often

represented as turning toward or away from the divine, an external object that is or that

represents God, or alternatively the gaze turns inward, toward or away from the divine

element that is inherent in the subject’s mind or soul. Furthermore, this turning is

accomplished through the faculty of reason, with the ability of reason to overcome

emotion and desire being the essential element of agency.

91 Henry Sweet, ed., King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Early English Text Society, o. s. 45 and 50 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1871), 2:407.

32

Perhaps the clearest example of the mind-on-a-pivot metaphor is found in the Old

English translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica. Bede recounts an incident where a

young Herebald, who would go on to become the abbot of Tynemouth, falls from his

horse while traveling with his master, Bishop John of Beverly, and the bishop’s retinue.

In the Old English version, the travelers come upon a flat field and the men wish to race

their horses. John reluctantly allows them to engage in such frivolous activity, providing

that Herebald not take part. But the desire to race overwhelms the young man, who says:

Mid ðy ic ða gelomlice hider ך ðyder mec hwerfde ך se bisscop mec a

beheold, þa geærndon hio sume ðrage, ך eft hwurfon. ך ic wæs mid

gæglisce mode oferswiðed, þæt ic me ne meahte bewergan, þeah ðe mec

se biscop bewerede, ac ic me to ðam plegan gemængde, ך ongon somod

ærnan mid him.92

(While I often turned hither and thither and the bishop continuously

watched me, then they galloped for some time and turned again. And I

was overcome with a playful mind/spirit so that I could not restrain

myself, even though the bishop forbade me, but I mixed myself in that

play and began to gallop together with them.)

Upon disobeying John and joining in the race, Herebald falls from his horse, is gravely

injured, and is subsequently miraculously healed by the bishop. The passage depicts two

different types of turning: the wheeling of the horses racing around the field and

Herebald's pivoting or turning gaze, which is contrasted with the steady and fixed gaze of

92 Thomas Miller, ed., The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Early English Text Society, o. s. 95, 96, 110, 111 (London: Oxford University Press, 1890), 1.2:400.

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John. Herebald's inconstant gaze and his joining in worldly pleasure, the wheeling of the

horses around the field, subjects him to the vicissitudes of the world and results in

disaster, while John's steadfast gaze provides a counter-example of constancy, devotion

to God, and exemption from the randomness of fate.

The turning in the Old English translation, however, is subtly different from

Bede’s Latin, which reads:

At cum saepius huc atque illuc, spectante me et episcopo, concitatis in

cursum equis reuerterentur, et ipse lasciuo superatus animo non me potui

cohibere sed, prohibente licet illo, ludentibus me miscui et simul cursu

equi contendere coepi.

(While the bishop and I were watching, and the horses were galloping

back and forth along the course, I was so overcome by a spirit of

wantonness that I could hold back no longer; so in spite of his command, I

mingled among the contestants and began to race with them.)93

In both the Old English translation and the Latin original Herebald denies that he has

agency over his actions, saying, “ic me ne meahte bewergan” / “non me potui cohibere”

(I was unable to restrain myself), but the versions differ in how the gazes of the two men

are presented.94 Colgrave and Mynors, whose translation I give here, punctuate and

translate the Latin so that the "huc atque illuc" (hither and thither/back and forth) applies

to the horses, not to Herebald's gaze, and the wheeling of the horses is simply prosaic

93 EH, 466–67. The translation here is Colgrave and Mynor’s. 94 It is possible to translate both bewerian and cohibere as ‘defend, protect’ rather than ‘restrain,’ which would have implications for the source of the temptation, locating it external to the self, but the passage would still deny agency to Herebald. DOE, s.v. bewerian; LS, s. v. cohibeo, 363.

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description carrying no metaphorical weight. But with different punctuation one could

apply the huc atque illuc to the gaze instead, which is presumably how the Old English

translator read it. But even with this editorial change the Latin passage would have both

men turning their heads as they watch the race and would still lack the distinction

between Herebald’s wandering and John’s fixed gaze and the metaphorical implications

that distinction carries. With both men’s gazes turning, the lesson of the Latin text is one

of mere obedience: Herebald disobeys his bishop and is punished for it. But by

distinguishing between Herebald’s wandering gaze (hider ך ðyder mec hwerfde) and

John’s fixed concentration (a beheold) and by placing an emphasis on the value of fixity

and steadfastness over wavering and inconstancy that is not present in Bede’s original,

the Old English version transcends the message of obedience and additionally conveys

the dangers of an inconstant mind.

While the Herebald incident in Bede provides a clear illustrative example, the use

of the mind-on-a-pivot metaphor is seen most obviously and frequently in the translations

of Augustine’s Liber soliloquiorum and Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae.95 In this

chapter I will concentrate on these two works, along with a few others where the

metaphor also appears. The use of the metaphor in these translations is striking, and

comparison of the relevant passages with Augustine’s and Boethius’s original Latin is

productive.

While commonly ascribed to Alfred, authorship of the translations of Boethius,

especially the authorship of the prosimetric version, is not certain, with doubts dating

back to Thomas Wright in the nineteenth century and recently voiced by Malcolm

95 I follow the convention of using the English title to refer to the translation, e.g., Consolation, and the Latin to refer to the original, e.g., Consolatio.

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Godden.96 Some scholars, such as Janet Bately, vigorously assert Alfred’s authorship,

while others, including Godden and Susan Irvine in their recent edition of the

Consolation, are more circumspect. My own conclusion is that one translator is

responsible for the prose Boethius and Augustine’s Soliloquies; not only are the

similarities in the diction and deployment of metaphors too striking for it to be otherwise.

Additionally, there is no good reason to doubt the ascription to Alfred found in the

prefaces to the translations of the Consolatio. Ascription of the prosimetric version of the

Consolation to Alfred, however, is more questionable. But since the identity of the

translator is not especially relevant to my argument, for ease of reference I will refer to

the translator of both the prose and prosimetric versions as “Alfred.” Regarding the

identity of the translator of the Soliloquia, Leslie Lockett discusses at length possible

alternatives to Alfred’s authorship, and again, since the translation arises from the same

intellectual tradition as the other Alfredian works, the identity of the individual translator

is not especially relevant to my argument here.97

Whitney Bolton observes that Alfred’s translation strategies vary from work to

work, being most faithful to the original in Pastoral Rule, somewhat free in his

96 Thomas Wright, Biographia Britannica Literaria: The Anglo-Saxon Period (London: John W. Parker, 1842), 54–57, 400–403; Malcolm Godden, “Editing Old English Prose and the Challenge of Revision Or, Why It Is Not so Easy to Edit Old English Prose,” in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 98–101. Others weighing in on the authorship question include: ASPR 5:xlv–xlvii; Kenneth Sisam, “The Authorship of the Verse Translation of Boethius’s Metra,” in Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 293–97; Janet M. Bately, “The Literary Prose of King Alfred’s Reign: Translation or Transformation” (Inaugural Lecture in the Chair of English Language and Medieval Literature, University of London King’s College, March 4, 1980), 3; Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine, eds., The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1:140–51. 97 Lockett, AS Psychologies, 360–73.

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translation of Boethius, and most free in the Soliloquies.98 The preface to the prose

Consolation famously describes Alfred’s translation strategy for that work:

Ælfred kuning wæs wealhstod ðisse bec and hie of boclædene on englisc

wende, swa hio nu is gedon. Hwilum he sette word be worde, hwilum

andgit of andgite, swa swa he hit þa sweotolost and andgitfullicast

gereccan mihte [...] forþam þe ælc mon sceal be his andgites mæðe and be

his æmettan sprecan þæt he sprecð and don þæt þæt he deþ.99

(King Alfred was the translator of this book and turned it from Latin into

English, as it is now translated. At times he set it down word for word, at

other times sense for sense, as he could most plainly and intelligibly

explain it [...] because every man must speak what he speaks and do what

he does according to power of his understanding and his opportunity.)

While, as evidenced by the use of the third person, these are not Alfred’s own words and

so cannot be a direct expression of his own intent, the preface reflects the understanding

that both Alfred and the reader alter and interpret the text not only to clearly explain it,

but to make it conform to their own understanding.100 This description of Alfred’s

methodology seems rather straightforward, but in practice his methodology is anything

but. As Paul Szarmach opines, the more one studies Alfred’s influences and sources the

98 Whitney R. Bolton, “How Boethian Is Alfred’s Boethius,” in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 155. 99 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:239. 100 I discuss translation and the word-for-word vs. sense-for-sense distinction more fully in chapter 4.

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more his “independence and elusiveness” comes to the fore.101 Examining how Alfred

makes his translations, the diction he chooses and the changes he makes to the text, such

as selecting a different metaphor in a particular passage, can highlight moments of

interpretation when Anglo-Saxon thought and psychology are at work. Throughout this

chapter we shall see examples of Alfred changing or adding metaphors of revolutionary

turning both to explicate the original Latin works and to bring them into conformance

with his own understanding of Christian doctrine. Alfred’s translations, while conforming

to a general, late ninth-century understanding of the philosophy and doctrine expressed in

the original texts, are distinctly Anglo-Saxon and his own.

The philosophical and literary center of Boethius’s Latin Consolatio is book three,

meter nine (3m9), which provides an epitome of Plato’s Timaeus and alludes to Plato’s

cosmology.102 The Latin meter is a twenty-eight-line prayer that starts with a depiction of

the threefold Platonic world-soul (anima) moving and revolving, and in so doing, making

the heavens turn. The poem then refers to the creation of lesser, human souls (also

anima), which by divine power and in likeness to the world-soul, turn and return to the

divine. Finally, it concludes with a request that the speaker’s mind (mens) be allowed to

ascend and see the divine. The Old English translations of the meter are found in chapter

33 of the prose Consolation and in Meter 20 of the prosimetric version and are

considerably longer than the Latin—Meter 20 is 281 lines, ten times longer than the Latin

101 Paul E. Szarmach, “Alfred, Alcuin, and the Soul,” in Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon: Essays on Literary and Cultural Transmission in Honor of Whitney F. Bolton, ed. Robert Boenig and Kathleen Davis (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2000), 139. 102 John Magee, “The Good and Morality: Consolatio 2–4,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, ed. John Marenbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 181–82, 191. This passage contains the only reference to Plato’s cosmology in the work, but 4p6 provides a description of Aristotelian cosmology.

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3m9. The prose version of the meter omits the discussion of the world-soul altogether,

addressing only the human soul. It opens with an extended paean to creation which is not

in the original Latin. It then discusses the threefold soul, and channels Alcuin by giving it

three faculties: irsung (anger), wilnung (desire), and gesceadwisnes (reason). It then

discusses how the soul can turn in on itself and through God’s power can be raised to

heaven, and like the Latin it ends with a prayer to let the mind (mod) see the divine.

Meter 20 is a versification of the Old English prose, not a direct translation of the Latin

meter. But unlike the prose version, in its opening lines it makes an oblique reference to

the Platonic world-soul and how it turns like the heavens—not that it makes the heavens

turn, as the Latin would have it.

The changes made in the translations seem to be the result of two factors, namely

Alfred’s unfamiliarity with Neoplatonic ideas and a deliberate attempt by Alfred to use

the text to explicate Augustinian and Gregorian doctrine.103 While the Old English

Consolation makes several references to Plato, including one in chapter 33, it is unlikely

that Alfred had read any of Plato’s works, and any knowledge he may have had of the

philosopher’s works was mediated by writers such as Boethius. Timaeus, alone of Plato’s

works, was known in the early medieval west, but only in an incomplete translation and

103 Leslie Lockett argues that, taken together, the translations of the Consolatio and the Soliloquia represent a coherent attempt to transmit the doctrine of a unified soul to an Anglo-Saxon audience steeped in a tradition of a mind-soul split. Lockett, AS Psychologies, 325. While Lockett connects the translations of the Consolation and the Soliloquies in this regard, she is not the first to note this motivation in regard to the Consolation alone. See: F. Anne Payne, King Alfred and Boethius: An Analysis of the Old English Version of the Consolation of Philosophy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968); Bately, “Literary Prose,” 20; Bolton, “How Boethian,” 155–59.

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not in any manuscript known to have been in Anglo-Saxon England.104 Boethius’s

description of the tripartite soul in 3m9,

Tu triplicis mediam naturae cuncta moventem

conectens animam per consona membra resolvis105

(You [God], uniting the soul of three-fold nature that moves all things in

its midst, apportion it into harmonious parts),

is difficult to comprehend even by someone who is familiar with Timaeus, and the lines

are utterly opaque to one who is not. And there are other changes and omissions in the

translations of the Latin meter. For example, Alfred omits Boethius’s reference to the

“levibus [...] curribus” (light chariots) that carry human souls to the heavens, de-

emphasizing the metaphor of ascension to the divine,106 and he adds a description of the

soul being suffused throughout the body: “þæt ðære sawle þy læsse ne bið on ðam læstan

fingre ðe on eallum þam lichoman”107 (that there will be no less of the soul in the

smallest finger than in all the body).The shift away from Neoplatonism in the Old

English translation is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to Alfred’s unfamiliarity with

104 John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480–1150), 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1988), 3; Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 105 Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae / Opvscvla Theologica, ed. Claudio Moreschini (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2005), 3m9:13–14, 80. 106 Ibid., 3m9.19, 80. We see a similar de-emphasis on ascension in the metaphor of the wheel of fate in Chapter 39. 107 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:317.215–17. Besides being absent from the Latin Consolation, this suffusion of the soul runs counter to Timaeus which locates elements of the soul in specific parts of the body, the immortal portion of the soul in the head, the emotional portion in the chest, and the appetitive portion in the gut. Plato, Timaeus and Critias, trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 1977), 41e, 69c–70e.

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Plato and to a failure to understand Boethius’s allusion.108 We will see another such

change in Chapter 39, when Alfred alters the metaphor of the wheel of fate, in part due to

lack of familiarity with Aristotelian cosmology, a premise that is compatible with the idea

that he may have had another motivation for making interventions in the text, namely

reinterpreting it to conform to Augustinian and Gregorian doctrine. With his

interventions, Alfred changes the subject presented in 3m9 from a meditation on

metaphysics and cosmology to one on human agency and salvation. In particular Alfred

transforms the Platonic world-soul consisting of Sameness, Difference, and Being into a

human soul created in the image of the Trinity, and his deployment of the metaphor of

turning mental gaze also alters the implications of the argument presented.

The lines 16–17 of the Latin 3m9 express metaphors of circular motion, “in semet

reditura meat mentemque profundam / circuit et simili convertit imagine caelum” (In

returning to itself, [the three-fold soul] moves, and encircles the deep mind and turns

heaven in likeness to its image), and line 24 expresses a fixed mental gaze on God, “in te

conspicuos animi defigere visus”109 (To fix the clear sight of my mind on you). The

corresponding passages in the Old English prose version deploy these same metaphors:

108 There are other instances where Alfred alters the text because he did not, or perhaps because he thought his readers would not, understand it. For example, Bolton observes that Alfred changes a reference to the Roman consul Gaius Fabricius Luscinus in 2m7.15 to the legendary smith Weland in chapter 19 and Meter 10 because he evidently mistook the name Fabricii to refer to faber (skillful)—although of course it could be an opaque allusion rather than a misunderstanding. Paul Szarmach recognizes the standard caution against such reasoning, saying “such explanations [of failure] can become an easy way out of any and all difficulties,” but acknowledges that in the case of the opacity of the Neoplatonic reference to the three-fold soul such an “explanation of failure” is justified, at least as a partial explanation. Bolton, “How Boethian,” 153–54; Szarmach, “Alfred,” 131. 109 The entire meter reads: O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas,

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terrarum caelique sator, qui tempus ab aevo ire iubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moueri quem non externae pepulerunt fingere causae materiae fluitantis opus, uerum insita summi forma boni livore carens; tu cuncta superno ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse mundum mente gerens similique in imagine formans perfectasque iubens perfectum absolvere partes. Tu numeris elementa ligas, ut frigora flammis, arida conveniant liquidis, ne purior ignis evolet aut mersas deducant pondera terras. Tu triplicis mediam naturae cuncta moventem Conectens animam per consona membra resolvis; quae cum secta duos motum glomeravit in orbes, in semet reditura meat mentemque profundam circuit et simili convertit imagine caelum. Tu causis animas paribus vitasque minores provehis et levibus sublimes curribus aptans in caelum terramque seris, quas lege benigna ad te conversas reduci facis igne reverti. Da, pater, augustam menti conscendere sedem, da fontem lustrare boni, da luce reperta in te conspicuos animi defigere visus. Dissice terrenae nebulas et pondera molis atque tuo splendore mica; Tu namque serenum, tu requies tranquilla piis, te cernere finis, principium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem. Boethius, De Consolatione, 3m9, 79–80. (Oh, you who governs the world with perpetual reason, stable and enduring progenitor of earth and heaven, who bids time ever to march, you grant all be moved, who no external causes drove to form your work of flowing matter, you, the innate form of the highest good without envy, command all things by heavenly example, yourself the most beautiful, bearing in your mind a beautiful world and forming it in the same image, commanding it be completed in perfect parts. You bind the elements with rhythms, so that the cold harmonizes with flames, the dry with liquids, lest the purer fire flies off or its weight pulls down the overwhelmed earth. You, uniting the soul of three-fold nature that moves all things in its midst, release it into harmonious parts. Which, when divided, collects its motion in two circles, in returning to itself it moves, and encircles the deep mind and turns heaven in likeness to its image. You bring forth lesser lives and souls from the same sources, and you raise them to a fitting heaven in light chariots, you scatter them in heaven and earth, and by your benign law you make them turned to you, returned with fire. Father, grant to my mind to ascend to your majestic seat, grant it to see the source of good, grant the light to be discovered, to fix the clear sight of my mind on you. Dismiss the mists and weighty masses of earth and flash in splendor. For you are serene,

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swa ðu gesceope þa saule þæt hio sceolde ealne weg hwearfian on hire

selfre, swa swa eall þes rodor hwerfð, oððe swa swa hweol onhwerfð110

(You created the soul so that it should in every way turn on itself, as all

the heavens turn, or as a wheel turns),

and,

Forgif us þonne hale eagan ures modes þæt we hi þonne moton afæstnian

on þe111

(Grant us then sound eyes of our mind so that we might fix them on you).

Meter 20 of the prosimetric version uses similar language.112 While the metaphors are

similar, the translation makes some significant alterations to the Latin. The most

significant change in the deployment of the metaphors is the addition in the Old English

of the simile of the wheel, which links the passage to the imagery of the wheel of fate

later in the work. Additionally, the anima and mens in Boethius’s Latin is the divine spirit

and mind that moves the universe, but Alfred translates it into the human saule. And as a

result, where Boethius’s Latin has the mind of God (mentem profundam) metaphorically,

or perhaps literally, turning the heavens, Alfred uses simile, merely likening the turning

of the human soul to the turning of the heavens instead of giving it agency over that

turning.

Lockett outlines a three-fold translation strategy for how Alfred deals with these

Latin words throughout the Consolation and Soliloquies. According to her, where

you are rest in blessed tranquility, to discern you is the goal, you alone, the beginning, the driver, the leader, the path, the end.) 110 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:317.225–27. 111 Ibid., 1:318.244–45. 112 Ibid., 1:468–69.204–10 and 1:470.261–63.

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Boethius uses anima to refer to the unitary soul in the afterlife or uses animus/mens to

depict the unitary soul reasoning during life, Alfred uses sawol and mod to translate these

Latin words. Second, when Boethius uses animus or mens to refer to the transcendent

mind-soul, Alfred translates both these words as sawol. In the third prong, he uses sawol

to refer to the unitary, rational soul regardless of whether the Latin text uses anima,

animus, or mens. Lockett’s threefold translation strategy aligns with her contention that

Alfred’s purpose in translating the Consolatio is to explicate the doctrine of the unitary

soul, and she holds that it is this last strategy that is represented here in his translation of

3m9, where the human soul resident in the body during life is rationally contemplating

creation.113

Lockett, however, focuses her analysis on the first portion of the meter, where the

Latin text discusses the world soul. Here Alfred exclusively uses sawol, and in the one

instance where the Latin uses mens, the mentemque profundam (deep mind) in line 16,

Alfred ignores the reference and does not translate it. In the latter half, where Boethius

uses both mens (line 22) and animus (line 24) to refer to the mind ascending to heaven

and focusing its gaze upon God, Alfred uses mod, not sawol, to translate the Latin mens

and animus. So Alfred’s strategy, if there is indeed a strategy and not just haphazard

translation, would seem to be Lockett’s first prong, drawing a lexical, if perhaps not

theological, distinction between the transcendent soul and the non-transcendent, rational

mind.

113 Lockett, AS Psychologies, 317–23.

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Regarding the sawol, Alfred’s translation says,

Swa ðu gesceope þa saule þæt hio sceolde ealne weg hwearfian on hire

selfre, swa swa eall þes rodor hwerfð, oððe swa swa hweol onhwerfð,

smeagende ymb hire sceoppend, oððe ymbe hi selfe, oððe ymbe þas

eorðlican gesceafta. Þonne hio þonne ymbe hire scippend smeað, þonne

bið hio ofer hire selfre. Ac þonne hio ymbe hi selfe smeað, þonne bið hio

on hire selfre. And under hire selfre hio bið þonne ðonne hio lufað þas

eorðlican þing and þara wundrað.114

114 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:317.225–32. The language in Meter 20 is similar: Hwæt, þu ða saule, sigora waldend, þeoda þrymcyning, þus gesceope, þæt hio hwearfode on hire selfre hire utan ymb, swa swa eal deð rineswifte rodor, recene ymbscriðeð dogora gehwilce drihtnes meahtum þisne middangeard. Swa deð monnes saul, hweole gelicost, hwærfeð ymbe hy selfe, oft smeagende ymb ðas eorðlican drihtnes gesceafta dagum and nihtum. Hwilum ymb hi selfe secende smeað, hwilum eft smeað ymb þone ecan God, sceppend hire. Scriðende færð, hweole gelicost, hwærfð ymb hi selfe. Þonne hio ymb hire scyppend mid gescead smeað, hio bið up ahæfen ofer hi selfe, ac hio bið eallunga an hire selfre, þonne hio ymb hi selfe secende smeað; hio bið swiðe fior hire selfre beneoðan, þonne hio þæs lænan lufað and wundrað eorðlicu þing ofer ecne ræd. Ibid., 1:468–69.204–24. (Ruler of victories, mighty king of nations, how you have created the soul that it turned on itself, round about itself, just as the sky, swift in its course, quickly revolves around this earth each day by the Lord’s powers. So does a man’s soul, very like a wheel, turn about itself, often pondering upon those earthly creatures of the Lord by day and by night. Sometimes, in its seeking, it ponders about itself, other times it ponders about the eternal God, its creator. Moving, it travels very like a wheel, turning about itself. When it ponders with discrimination about its creator, it is raised up above itself, but it is entirely

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(You created the soul so that it should in every way turn on itself, as all

the heavens turn, or as a wheel turns, contemplating about its creator, or

about itself, or about these earthly creations. When it contemplates its

creator, then it is above itself. But when it contemplates itself, then it is in

itself. And it is beneath itself when it loves these earthly things and

marvels at them.)

The Latin counterpart to these lines is an allusion to Plato’s description of the world-soul

as akin to something like an armillary sphere, two strips bent into a circle that mirror the

paths of celestial objects:115

quae cum secta duos motum glomeravit in orbes,

in semet reditura meat mentemque profundam

circuit et simili convertit imagine caelum.116

(Which, when divided, collects its motion in two circles, in returning to

itself it moves, and the deep mind encircles and turns heaven in likeness to

its image.)

Alfred strips out the arcane geometry of the Latin, but retains the simile of the soul

turning, like the heavens or a wheel, a description he will return to in chapter 39 with the

wheel of fate. But instead of returning to its point of origin, the path of Alfred’s

revolution is less certain. Depending where it is in its orbit, the soul fixates on different

aspects of existence: the divine, itself, or worldly pleasures. Nor is it clear whether this

orbital course is fixed and constantly rotating, continually cycling through high, middle,

within itself when, in its seeking, it ponders about itself; it is very far beneath itself when it loves and marvels at these transitory, earthly things over eternal counsel.) 115 Plato, Timaeus, 36b–d. 116 Boethius, De Consolatione, 3m9:15–17, 80.

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and low, or if it stops at particular points for each individual, and if so, who controls the

turning. And when Alfred says, “þu eac þa ðriefealdan sawla on geðwærum limum

styrest,” (You also steer the threefold soul in compliant limbs), he indicates that God

exerts agency over this turning of the soul.117

But in addition to describing the revolving soul, in its conclusion, the passage

prays:

Forgif nu drihten urum modum þæt hi moton to þe astigan þurh þas

earfoðu þisse worulde and of þissum bisegum to þe cuman, and openum

eagum ures modes we moten geseon þone æþelan æwelm ealra goda, þæt

eart ðu. Forgif us þonne hale eagan ures modes þæt we hi þonne moton

afæstnian on þe, and todrif ðone mist þe nu hangað beforan ures modes

eagum and onliht þa eagan mid ðinum leohte.118

(Lord, grant now to our minds that they may ascend to you through the

tribulations of this world, and from those cares come to you, and that with

the open eyes of our mind we may see that you are the noble wellspring of

all good. Grant us then sound eyes of our mind so that we may fix them on

you, and drive away the mist that now hangs before the eyes of our mind

and illuminate those eyes with your light.)

117 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:317.215. And the meter: “Hwæt, þu, ðioda god, ðriefalde on us sawle gesettest, and hi siððan eac styrest and stihtest þurh ða strongan meaht,” (How, you, God of nations, established a threefold soul in us and afterward also steer and arrange through your strong power), Ibid., 1:468.176–78. The verb steoran (to steer) will play a role in a metaphor discussed in the next chapter, that of the SHIP OF THE MIND. 118 Ibid., 1:318.241–46.

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Unlike the earlier portion of the meter, the prayer is not for the transcendent soul to unite

with the divine, but rather for the rational faculty to be able to contemplate God. Where

Boethius uses both animus and mens, Alfred uses mod. As with the earlier turning of the

sawol, the mod lacks agency, the ability to execute the task, as God must enable the

vision by providing illumination and dispelling the mists of the mind and the heaviness of

the body. And as in the original Latin, a turning gaze is not explicitly mentioned by

Alfred, but the notion of stability and steadfastness, turning’s opposite, is. Meter 20 also

describes the repose or resting place that is God as fæst (firm, fixed) in line 271. So, as in

the Herebald story, unwavering vision, fixed on the divine, is the goal.

While presentation of the doctrine of a unitary, human soul may be one of

Alfred’s goals in translating the Consolatio, this particular passage is not a clear instance

of this goal at work. Instead, Alfred’s presentation of an unitary soul is hampered by his

language. His use of sawol for anima and mod for animus and mens, reinforces the

Germanic notion of a mind/soul split. Additionally, his use of a commonplace metaphor

of eyes of the mind to express rationality, placing reason in the mind rather than in the

soul, further confuses the matter.119

Yet elsewhere in his translation of the meter, Alfred does communicate the

doctrine of a unitary soul, indicating that the issue is not his motivation, but rather his

execution. His diction and metaphors interfere with his intent, showcasing that the graft

of the notion of a unitary soul onto Anglo-Saxon thought is not complete. Alfred’s soul is

tripartite, paralleling the divine Trinity, and possessing the ability to reason, which in the

traditional Germanic division of the mind and soul would reside with the mind. And not

119 I address the EYES-OF-THE-MIND metaphor more fully later in this chapter.

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only does the soul possess reason, but that factor is what distinguishes humanity from

other animals: “ac se mon ana hæfð gesceadwisnesse, nalles nan oðru gesceaft”120 (but

man alone has reason, not at all any other creatures). Meter 20 goes further by expressing

the Augustinian notion that reason is the preeminent faculty of the soul when it says:

Hio is þæt mæste mægen monnes saule

and se selesta sundorcræfta,121

(It is the greatest strength and best of the special faculties of a man’s soul).

This parallel with the Trinity and the assignment of reason to the soul is hardly new.

Augustine outlines a similar tripartite division in his De Trinitate, although there the three

elements are, depending on which passage you read, memoria, intellectus, and voluntas

(memory, intelligence, will) or sapientia/mens, noticia, and dilectio (wisdom/mind,

knowledge, love) rather than Alfred’s irsung, wilnung, and gesceadwisnes (anger, desire,

reason).122 Alfred’s translation is a closer parallel to Alcuin’s De animae ratione with its

division of the soul into concupiscibilis, rationalis, and irascibilis (appetitive, rational,

and spirited/prone to anger) parts.123 Augustine outlines the three components of the

mind-soul, where Alcuin uses adjectives and describes characteristics. While Augustine

considers the mind and reason to be the preeminent faculty of the soul, which has lesser

parts, Alcuin equates the mind and soul directly, considering them to be a single entity.124

120 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:317.221–22. 121 Ibid., 1:468, lines 202–03. Compare it to Augustine’s De Trinitate, 15.7.11: “Non igitur anima, sed quod excellit in anima mens vocatur.” PL 42:1065. (Therefore, it is not the soul, but that which is preeminent in the soul that is called the mind.) 122 PL 42:910 (4.21); PL 42:1065 (15.6). 123 PL 101:639D. 124 Godden, “AS on the Mind,” 285–87. Szarmach, however, notes the lack of a manuscript witness to De animae ratione in early Anglo-Saxon England might indicate that its influence on Alfred may have been indirect via the commentaries on the

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Not only does Alcuin differ from Augustine in the components of the tripartite soul, but

also in how it equates to the mind. Alfred interprets the tripartite soul as a human one,

following Alcuin’s lead and altering the Augustinian conception of such a soul by

replacing two elements that could possibly assist in accomplishing this turn toward God,

memoria and voluntas, with two elements that impede it, irsung and wilnung. While

Alfred’s soul has the capability to reason, it is not agentive and contains irrational

elements that can prevent that turn.

Alcuin, however, presents a second model for the division of the tripartite soul.

Slightly later in De animae ratione he echoes Augustine and depicts the soul as

consisting of memoria, intellectus, and voluntas.125 Alfred’s selection of Alcuin’s first

concupiscibilis-rationalis-irascibilis model has implications for how he considers, or

rather does not consider, free will. The rationalis is analogous to intellectus, and as I will

examine later in this chapter, Alfred does address the importance of memoria as the place

where the divine nature of the soul resides, but the neglect of voluntas results in Alfred

not considering the question of free will, as opposed to agency. This omission stands in

contrast to Ælfric who writes in his Catholic Homily 1.20, De fide catholica:

Þæs mannes sawul hæfð on hire gecynde þære halgan þrynnysse

anlicnysse. for þan ðe heo hæfð on hire ðreo ðing. þæt is gemynd. 7

andgit. 7 willa; þurh ðam gemynde. se man geþencð þa ðing ðe he

gehyrde. oððe geseah. oððe geleornode. þurh ðæt andgit he understent

Consolation. But whether his source is direct or indirect, Alfred expresses an Alcuinian composition of the tripartite soul. Szarmach, “Alfred,” 133–35. 125 PL 101:641C.

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ealle þa ðing þe he gehyrð oððe gesihð; Of þam willan cumað geþohtas.

and word 7 weorc. ægðer ge yfele. ge gode.126

(The soul of a man has in its nature a likeness to the Holy Trinity; because

it has in it three things, these are memory, and understanding, and will.

Through the memory the man thinks on things he has heard, or seen, or

learned. Through the understanding he comprehends all the things which

he hears or sees. From the will come thoughts, and words, and deeds, both

evil and good.)

The choice of which elements make up the triune soul has implications for how a writer

considers questions of will and agency. Here Ælfric assumes the model of memoria,

intelligentia, and voluntas, translating the elements as gemynd, andgit, and willa, and, as I

will examine in the next chapter, Ælfric’s inclusion of willa leads to, or is a result of, his

predominant concern with the question of will, the decision to make the turn to God.

Alfred on the other hand, with his focus on the instrumental elements of irsung, wilnung,

and gesceadwisnes, restricts his consideration to agency, whether or not one can make

that turn.

For Alfred, agency, at least in regard to salvation, rests in the ability of reason to

overcome the animalistic aspects of the soul. In both chapter 33 and Meter 20, the

rational aspect of the soul, gesceadwisnes, is set over and in opposition to anger/emotions

(irsung) and desire (wilnung). Furthermore, the prose version refuses to give the soul a

specific location in the body, diffusing it throughout the body: “þæt ðære sawle þy læsse

126 CH 1.20, 342, lines 195–200.

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ne bið on ðam læstan fingre ðe on eallum þam lichoman”127 (that there will be no less of

the soul in the smallest finger than in all the body). It would appear that Alfred also takes

this notion of a diffuse soul from De animae ratione, which says that the anima is, “in

singulis suae carnis membris totus”128 (whole in every part of its flesh), with Alfred

taking membrum to mean limb rather than part. In doing so, Alfred is relying on

contemporary commentaries on Boethius, notably on the Remigian commentary in

Cambridge, University Library, Kk.3.21 which glosses this passage as, “quia nec minus

in digito quam in toto corpore”129 (because [it is] not smaller in a finger than in all the

body). The soul here is depicted as essential to the human being itself, not an object

spatially contained within it.130

In his translation of 3m9 Alfred attempts to present an Alcuinian notion of a

unitary soul consisting of three faculties: irsung, wilnung, and gesceadwisnes, but is only

partially successful. His motivation is thwarted by his choices in translating anima,

animus, and mens, reinforcing the notion of a mind/soul split rather than a unified entity.

His choice of repeating and emphasizing the metaphor of eyes of the mind, which only

127 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:317.215–17. 128 PL 101:644A. 129 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 2:384; Szarmach, “Alfred,” 138–40. Szarmach, however, is circumspect about the sourcing, stressing Alfred’s “independence and elusiveness,” and that his seeming reliance on the commentary here does not necessarily indicate that CUL Kk.3.21 was a primary source for his OE translation or even a major inspiration for his interpretaton. Leslie Lockett suggests the source for this gloss in CUL Kk.3.21 may be Augustine’s Contra epistolam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti via Claudianus Mamertus’s De statu animae. Lockett, AS Psychologies, 322n. 130 This depiction contrasts with the MIND-AS-CONTAINER metaphor suggested in other Old English works by words such as sawelhord (life, literally soul-hoard) or sawelhus (body, literally soul-house).

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appears in the Latin once, further reinforces this split.131 The assignment of agency is

similarly confused. He implies that the soul has the ability to contemplate God, but

elsewhere indicates that God steers the soul and states that only God can give the mind

the power to contemplate the divine, contradictory notions if the soul is unified and

rational. And like the Herebald story in the translation of Bede, a fixed gaze on the divine

is presented as an ideal.

In selecting the particular Alcuinian concupiscibilis-rationalis-irascibilis model

of the tripartite soul, Alfred does not address memoria (memory), but he does not entirely

abandon consideration of memory as an element in agency. In chapter 35 of the prose and

in Meter 22 Alfred represents the soul’s turning back to its nature as a redirection of

thought to memory:132

Swa hwa swa wille dioplice spirigan mid inneweardan mode æfter ryhte,

and nylle þæt hine ænig mon oððe ænig þing mage amerran, onginne

þonne secan oninnan him selfum þæt he ær ymbuton hine sohte, and

forlæte unnytte ymbhogan swa he swiðost mæge, and gegæderige to þam

anum, and gesecge þonne his agnum mode þæt hit mæg findan oninnan

him selfum ealle þa god þe hit ute secð. [...] Forþam hit is swiðe ryht spell

þæt Plato se uðwita sæde. He cwæð swa hwa swa ungemyndig sie

rihtwisnesse, gecerre hine to his gemynde. Þonne fint he þær þa

131 Alfred’s use of this metaphor may reflect an Augustinian influence. While Augustine does not use oculis mentis specifically, in De Trinitate, he makes frequent use of oculis carnis, and in one instance in 15.27.50, oculis interioribus. PL 42.1097. 132 Meter 22 uses similar language to the prose translation. I do not reproduce it here.

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ryhtwisnesse gehydde mid þæs lichoman hefignesse and mid his modes

gedrefednesse and bisgunga.133

(Whoever would deeply inquire with the inner mind after the right, and

does not want anyone or anything to hinder him, let him begin to seek

within himself that which he previously sought outside himself, and

forsake useless cares as much as he can, and unite with that one thing, and

then say to his own mind that it can find within itself all the good that it

seeks without. [...] Therefore it is a very correct argument that Plato, the

philosopher, said. He said whoever is forgetful of what is right, let him

turn to his memory. Then there he will find what is right hidden by the

body's heaviness and by his mind's agitation and concerns.)

The reference to Plato, which is also in the Latin, would again seem to be to Timaeus and

the revolutionary turning of 3m9/Meter 20, but here the turning is specifically to

memory. Alfred’s use of the phrase “gecerre hine to his gemynde” is quite specific.

While many of the Old English “mind” words are semantically fungible, interchangeable

and not associated with any specific faculty of the mind, gemynd is strongly, if not

exclusively, associated with memory.134 Additionally, Godden and Irvine, as well as

Bosworth-Toller, suggest that here rihtwisness, which is usually translated as

righteousness, means correct knowledge as determined by reason, rather than a moral

133 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:330–31, lines 35:2–8 and 35:24–28. Godden and Irvine emend anum mode to agnum mode. The emendation makes for a clearer reading of the passage and seems justified. However, while I do not pursue this analytical thread here, the emendation forecloses a possible reading of the passage as his one mind, as opposed to his own mind, an alternative reading that strongly suggests a unitary mind. 134 The modern word mind, derived from gemynd, did not acquire the more general sense of overall mental faculty until the fourteenth century. Roberts, Kay, and Grundy, OE Thesaurus, 06.01.03.03, 1.360; OED, s. v. “i–mind, n.,” “mind, n.1.”

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quality, using as a basis for this sense not only the Latin source but also various glosses

on the passage as evidence.135 By using the ambiguous word, Alfred introduces a moral

element to the equation that is largely absent in the Latin of Boethius’s 3m11, which is

also more heavily invested in metaphors of turning than the prose translation.136 Not only

does memory play a role in intellect and reason, but it is essential to moral judgment and

salvation. In this passage, as in 3m9, we have the Platonic turning to an individual’s

nature, or specifically a turning to the faculty of memory in which this nature resides, an

example of another metaphor, the MIND-AS-CONTAINER, that is emphasized in Meter 22

135 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 2:402–03; BT, s. v. “rihtwisness,” 1:799. I have translated rihtwisnesse here as what is right to preserve the dual senses. 136 Quisquis profunda mente vestigat verum cupitque nullis ille deviis falli in se revolvat intimi lucem visus longosque in orbem cogat inflectens motus animumque doceat quicquid extra molitur suis retrusum possidere thesauris; dudum quod atra texit erroris nubes lucebit ipso perspicacius Phoebo. Non omne namque mente depulit lumen obliviosam corpus invehens molem; haeret profecto semen introrsum veri quod excitatur ventilante doctrina. Nam cur rogati sponte recta censetis, ni mersus alto viveret fomes corde? quodsi Platonis Musa personat uerum, quod quisque discit immemor recordatur. Boethius, De Consolatione, 3m11, 91. (Whoever seeks out the truth with profound reason and does not want to be deceived by deviations, he must in himself turn back to the light of his innermost vision, he should gather into a circle, bending his boundless emotions/agitations and he must teach his intellect that whatever it strives to seize from outside itself was concealed within its own treasury. What the black cloud of error formerly covered will shine more keenly than Phoebus himself. For not all light is dislodged from the mind; the body introduces a burden that causes forgetfulness. Surely a seed of truth adheres within, that is stirred by the breeze of learning. For why, having been asked, do you rightly judge for yourself, unless the kindling lived deep down in your heart? If Plato's muse rings true, what each one learns, forgetful he remembers.)

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by its use of runcofa (secret chamber).137 So while memory holds part of the divine

element necessary for salvation, other portions of the self, specifically the body and the

agitation and inconstancy of the rest of the mind—the irsung and wilnung—can block

memory and thwart agency. Alfred also uses this metaphoric turning to memory in his

translation of Regula pastoralis. It also appears in The Wanderer, but there it is a turning

to maga gemynd (memory of kinsmen) in line 51 that causes agitation and disturbance

rather than relieving them. The distinction would seem to be whether this turning to

memory is an anamnesis executed by the faculty of reason, gesceadwisnes, which leads

to a calming influence, or a turn to worldly concerns driven by anger (irsung) or desire

for earthly relationships and pleasures (wilnung), which result in disturbances and

turmoil. I will examine in more detail how the idea of agitation and disturbance, raised at

the end of the quoted passage, is used in the Anglo-Saxon concept of the mind in the next

chapter.

Additionally, Alfred uses the word ferhþ, another synonym for mod, to refer to

memory, but in a formulaic construction. The half-line findan on ferhðe, which appears

twice in Meter 22, appears twice more in the corpus, in Andreas and in Soul and Body I,

and would seem to be a poetic formula signifying the recollection of memories and

knowledge from the recesses of the mind, again implying the MIND-AS-CONTAINER

metaphor. The use of the formulaic line undermines the psychology of a unified soul by

clashing with the Alcuinian concupiscibilis-rationalis-irascibilis construction, which

137 For more on the MIND-AS-CONTAINER metaphor, see Britt Mize, “The Representation of the Mind as an Enclosure in Old English Poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (December 2006): 62.

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does not include memory as part of the unified soul; the soul is turning to something

outside itself instead of something at its core.

The half-line is found in line 1485 of Andreas:

Þæt scell æglæwra

mann on moldan þonne ic me talige

findan on ferhðe, þæt fram fruman cunne

eall þa earfeðo þe he mid elne adreah,

grimra guða.138

(It requires a man on earth, more learned in scripture than I reckon myself,

to find in his mind that he knew from the beginning all the tribulations of

grim strife which he endured with bravery.)

Here the Andreas-poet is using ferhðe to refer to knowledge stored in memory,

specifically knowledge of scripture and hagiography, but the use of he is somewhat

ambiguous as it lacks a clear antecedent. On one level the he is Andrew; the speaker is

professing modesty by saying that it takes a biblical scholar to recall all the tribulation

that Andrew had foreseen for himself. But the lines can also be read as a gnomic

statement about the “mann on moldan” (man on earth), that it takes great study to foresee

the tribulations that any person must inevitably face in their life.139

The half-line is also found in Soul and Body I, lines 124–31, where a happier

message than the warning provided by a decaying corpse can be found in one’s memory:

138 ASPR 2:44. 139 It is tempting to read the half-line “fram fruman cunne” (knew from the beginning) as a reference to the revolutionary turning to the Platonic source that is expressed by Boethius, but this is probably reading too much into the line.

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Bið þonne wyrma gifel,

æt on eorþan. Þæt mæg æghwylcum

men to gemynde, modsnotra gehwam!

Ðonne bið hyhtlicre þæt sio halige sawl

færeð to ðam flæsce, frofre bewunden.

Bið þæt ærende eadiglicre

funden on ferhðe.140

(Then it will be food for worms, nourishment in the earth. That will be a

reminder to every man, to every wise person. It will be more joyful when

the holy soul, wrapped in solace, journeys to the flesh. A more blessed

message will be found in the mind.)

Here, though, the psychology presented by funden on ferhðe is less clear. The body,

mind, and soul are all in play, yet their exact relationships are uncertain. It is the

reunification of the soul to the body that allows the person to find the more blessed

message in the mind. It is possible to read the poem using the concept of the Augustinian

unitary soul, with the soul/mind bringing the happy memory back to the body, but the use

of diverse terms, sawol, flæsc, gemynd, and ferhþ, militates against a reading of

unification.

Alfred’s description of a revolutionary soul in 3m9 and its variances from the

Latin original would seem to be also inspired, at least in part, by the closing lines of

Boethius’s 3m2. Those lines envision a revolutionary, orbital journey for every creature,

returning to where it began, to its inherent nature. Boethius gives as examples a tame lion

140 ASPR 2:58.

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turning on its trainer, a caged bird yearning for the forest, a bent sapling springing back to

its full height—three examples of creatures whose nature is diverted by acts of humans—

and finally the course of the sun in the sky, an example of a course that does not divert. In

this circular journey, fate or providence determines the beginning/end point, but the exact

course one takes in that turning and the intermediate events along the way are not

destined. The passage also alludes to stability at the beginning/end points:

Repetunt proprios quaeque recursus

redituque suo singula gaudent

nec manet ulli traditus ordo,

nisi quod fini iunxerit ortum

stabilemque sui fecerit orbem.141

(All things seek again their own return journey, and each rejoices in its

own return, nor does a consigned course persist for any, except that it must

join the end with the beginning and make its cycle permanent.)

This meter is translated in chapter 25 of the Old English prose text and in Meter

13 of the prosimetric. Alfred’s translation here is rather faithful; he uses the same

examples of the lion, bird, tree, and sun, but he adds a preface to these examples stating

that men and angels have the ability to defy their nature:

Hi hæfð geheaðorade and gehæfte mid his unanbindendlicum racentum,

þæt ælc gesceaft bið heald onloten142 wið hire gecynde, þære gecynde þe

141 Boethius, De Consolatione, 3m2:34–38, 63–64. 142 The manuscript reads heald on locen, which Sedgefield reproduces as healdon locen. Godden and Irvine emend it to heald onloten and suggest the original may have read heald and onloten, which is how I have translated it. Godden and Irvine’s emendation fits better with the metaphor of revolutionary turning, although held locked, given by the

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heo to gesceapen wes, buton monnum and sumum englum þa weorðað

hwilum of hiora gecynde.143

(He has constrained and bound [all creatures] with his indissoluble fetters,

so that each creature will be held and bent/inclined toward its nature, the

nature for which it was created, except for men and those angels who

sometimes turn from their nature.)144

The corresponding lines of Meter 13 read:

Swa nu þinga gehwilc ðiderweard fundað

sidra gesceafta buton sumum englum

and moncynne, þara micles to feola

woroldwuniendra winð wið gecynde.145

(So now each thing in wide creation hastens thither, except some angels

and mankind, of which far too many of world-dwellers fight against their

nature.)

A creature’s bending toward its nature matches the metaphor of revolutionary turning that

appears at the end of the meter. Alfred exempts humans and the fallen angels from

blindly following their nature, allowing them agency to deviate from the path that has

been set out for them, an idea that he undoubtedly drew from various glosses that make

Sedgefield reading, while expressing a different metaphor, also fits the context. Walter John Sedgefield, ed., King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899), 57.6; Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 2:210–1. 143 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:291.5–8. 144 My translation of weorþan as to turn is to make an idiomatic and comprehensible PDE translation. In the Old English this use of the verb is not a metaphor of turning. 145 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:439.14–17.

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this point.146 And not only do humans have the ability to block their own turn to their

inherent nature, but they can also block the revolutionary turning of other creatures

through such actions as taming lions, caging birds, and bending saplings. Given that

reason (gesceadwisnes) is the distinguishing characteristic of human and angelic souls, it

would seem that reason, or rather reason’s inability to function, is what interferes with

agency and the ability to turn toward one’s nature and the divine.

Alfred also makes explicit the Christianity that underlies Boethius’s Neoplatonic

message by replacing the generic nature with an explicit reference to God. The closing

lines of chapter 25 read:

Swa deð ælc gesceaft, wrigað wið his gecyndes and gefagen bið gif hit

æfre to cuman mæg. Nis nan gesceaft gesceapen ðara þe ne wilnige þæt hit

þider cuman mæge þonan þe hit ær com, þæt is to ræste and to

orsorgnesse. Seo ræst is mid Gode, and þæt is God. Ac ælc gesceaft

hwearfað on hire selfre swa swa hweol and to þam heo swa hwearfað þæt

heo eft cume þær heo ær wæs and beo þæt ilce þæt heo ær wæs, ðonecan

ðe heo utan behwerfed sie þær þær hio ær wæs, and do þæt þæt heo ær

dyde.147

(So does every creature, it turns toward to its nature and is glad if it can

ever come to it. There is no created creature that does not desire that it can

come to where it came before, that is to a repose and tranquility. The

repose is with God, and it is God. But every creature turns on itself, just

like a wheel, and so turns that it comes again to where it was and is the

146 Ibid., 2:342. 147 Ibid., 1:294, lines 25:27–34.

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same as it was before, as soon as it is turned around to where it was before

and does what it did before.)

This interpretation of Boethius is not original to Alfred, being noted in various glosses of

the Consolatio.148 Also of note is the addition of the simile of the wheel, which Alfred

will more fully explicate in chapter 39. The revolutionary metaphor in the original Latin

maps the soul to the domain of a celestial orbit, but unlike an orbit, the soul’s course is

not fixed, although the beginning and end points are certain. For Boethius, there is no

doubt as to where the soul will finish its journey, and any agency the individual has is

limited and unable to affect the destination. For Alfred, however, the destination with

God is not so certain, writing that the soul is “gefagen bið gif hit æfre to cuman mæg”

(glad if it can ever come to it). Where Boethius states that no matter how much it is

changed, a creature’s inherent nature will inevitably reassert itself, Alfred discusses the

prospects for salvation, saying that while all creatures have the capacity to attain the

divine, not all creatures will do so.

Interestingly, the closing lines of the corresponding Meter 13 are closer to

Boethius’s Latin than to the Old English prose of which they are a versification:

Nis nu ofer eorðan ænegu gesceaft

þe ne hwearfige swa swa hweol deð

on hire selfre, forðon hio swa hwearfað

þæt hio eft cume þær hio æror wæs,

þonne hio ærest sie utan behwerfed.

Þonne hio ealles wyrð utan becerred,

148 Ibid., 2:343.

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hio sceal eft don þæt hio ær dyde

and eac wesan þæt hio æror wæs.149

(There is not now any creature on earth that does not turn on itself just as a

wheel does, because, when it is first turned around, it turns so that it again

comes to where it was before. When it is turned wholly around, it must

again do what it did before and also be what it was before.)

The verse omits the explicit reference to God as the place of repose and stability,

although Godden and Irvine suggest that this omission is the result of scribal eye skip.150

The meter, like the prose, contains a simile of a wheel, but the uncertainty about reaching

the destination is absent. The use of the verb sceal (shall, must, is fitting) denotes

certainty and lack of agency on the part of the individual, albeit somewhat more weakly

than in the Latin.

All three versions of this passage, the Latin and the two Old English translations,

exhibit no division between body, mind, and soul. The text addresses only the entire

gesceaft (creature). Unlike the translations of 3m9, which envision different modes of

turning for the sawol and the mod, there is only one mode of turning in 3m2 and its

translations. It is not simply the soul that revolves back to its origin, but the entire

creature.

So far we have seen Alfred interpret metaphors of turning that are present in the

original Latin and in some cases have roots in the Platonic ideas that Boethius is

expressing. But in chapter 39 of the Old English prose Consolation, in what is perhaps

the most oft-cited passage in that work, Alfred inserts a much expanded metaphor of

149 Ibid., 1:441.73–80. 150 Ibid., 2:508.

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revolutionary turning, the so-called wheel of fate, an explicit, extended metaphor of

turning and its relation to providence.151 Instead of revolving back toward a creature’s

nature, the turning here is both a facing toward and a revolving around God. At the

center, or hub, of the wheel “eall ðios unstille gesceaft and þeos hwearfiende hwearfoð on

þam stillan Gode and on þam gestæððegan on on þam anfealdan”152 (all this unstable and

turning creation turns around the stable and steadfast and single God). Alfred says the

process is “swa swa on wænes eaxe hwearfað þa hweol and sio eax stent stille and byrð

þeah ealne þone wæn and welt ealles þæs færeldes”153 (just as the wheel turns on the

cart's axle and the axle stands still and yet bears all the cart and governs all the

movement). Humanity is arrayed on the spokes of the wheel, with the “selestan men faran

nehst Gode”154 (best men traveling nearest God) and the worst farthest away, and just as

the rim of a cart’s wheel has the roughest ride, those farthest from God suffer the

vicissitudes of fate more than those who are near the stability of the hub. For those on the

wheel, this revolution around the axle is passive and non-agentive, but they can

ameliorate the effects of fate’s actions upon them by their own act of establishing a better

relationship with God, by redirecting their gaze toward God and away from earthly

desires.155 Unlike the revolution around the axle, this second turning toward the axle is

active and agentive:

151 Ibid., 1:363–64, lines 39:153–93. The final lines of 2p1 do make a reference to a revolving wheel (volventis rotae) that is fortune (fors), De Consolatione, 2p1.57–59, 30. 152 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:363, lines 39:155–56. 153 Ibid., 1:363, lines 39:158–59. 154 Ibid., 1:363, lines 39:162–63. 155 While it is unlikely that Alfred knew Timaeus, Plato uses a similar metaphor: “Whenever, then, the craftsman of anything keeps his eye on the eternally unchanging and uses some such thing as his pattern for the form and function of his product the result

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Swa bið þam midlestan monnum; oðre hwile he smeað on his mode ymb

þis eorðlice lif,156 oðre hwile ymb þæt godcundlice, swelce he locie mid

oðre eagan to heofonum, mid oðre to eorþan, swa swa þæs spacan sticað

oðer ende on þære felge oðer on þære nafe [...] Þeah þa mætestan ealle

hiora lufe wenden to ðisse worulde, hi ne magon þæron wunigan ne to

nauhte ne weorðað, gif hi be nanum dæle ne bioð gefæstnode to Gode, þon

ma þe þæs hweoles felga magon bion on ðam færelde gif hi ne bioð fæste

on þæm spacum and þa spacan on þære eaxe.157

(So it is with the middlemost men, sometimes he ponders in his mind

about this earthly life, at other times about the divine, as if he looks with

one eye toward heaven, with the other toward earth, just as one end of the

spoke sticks to the rim, the other to the hub. [...] Although the basest

[men] turn all their love to this world, they cannot remain within it, nor

come to anything, if they are not in some portion fastened to God, no more

than the wheel's rims can be in motion if they are not fixed to the spokes

and the spokes to the axle.)

Here the basest people are entirely turned toward worldly concerns, while the middling

sort divide their gaze, and further on in the passage it states the “selestan men [...] hiora

must be good; whenever he looks to something that has come to be and uses a model that has been generated, the result is not good.” Plato, Timaeus, 28a–b. 156 The wording of smeað on his mode (ponders in his mind) suggests that mod, at least as it is considered here, is where the self thinks, a location not an agent. Some sort of rational faculty dwells or works within the mod, but that faculty is not the mod itself. This distinction, however, may place too much interpretative weight on the preposition on (in). 157 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:363–64, lines 39:165–81.

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lufe near Gode lætað and swiðor þas eorðlican þing forsioð”158 (the best men [...] place

their love nearer to God and scorn more those earthly things). The metaphor of the

turning gaze is not fully explicated here, with only the fixed gaze mentioned. The basest

people wenden (turn) their love entirely to the world, while the middlemost people

divide, rather than turn, their gaze, one eye fixed on God and the other on the world, and

the best people are entirely fixed on God. Both turning and vision are present, but do not

blend to form the metaphor of the turning gaze.

Neither the metaphor of the gaze on God nor of the wagon wheel are found in

Boethius’s original. The metaphor of a fixed gaze on God is, however, something of a

commonplace.159 But the metaphorical construct of a wagon wheel is entirely original to

the Old English translation. Where Alfred deploys the construct of the wagon wheel, the

original Latin Consolation uses an abstract metaphor of concentric circles orbiting the

divinity of God.160 While Boethius's metaphor does depict the turning of concentric

158 Ibid., 1:364, lines 39:183–84. 159 The transformative nature of gazing at the divine is, for example, treated at length in Augustine’s De Trinitate 15.14, PL 42:1067–68. And it perhaps most famously appears in his Confessiones, where he says, “Et pervenit ad id quod est, in ictu trepidantis aspectus. Tunc vero invisibilia tua, ‘per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta’ conspexi; sed aciem figere non evalui: et repercussa infirmitate redditus solitis.” (And, in the beat of a trembling glance, it came to that which is. At that moment I saw your invisible nature, I discerned ‘through the things that are made’ [Romans 1:20]; but I did not have the strength to fix my gaze. And my infirmity having rebounded, I returned to my accustomed habit.) PL 32:745. This latter work, however, while known in Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh and eighth centuries, appears to have disappeared from the island, not being re-introduced until the latter half of the eleventh century. See Teresa Webber, “The Diffusion of Augustine’s Confessions in England During the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 29–45. 160 Nam ut orbium circa eundem cardinem sese vertentium qui est intimus ad simplicitatem medietatis accedit ceterorumque extra locatorum ueluti cardo quidam circa quem versentur, exsistit, extimus vero maiore ambitu rotatus, quanto a puncti media

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spheres as representing degrees of the vicissitudes of fate, with proximity to the center

resulting in a lessening of fate’s impact, the Latin passage lacks the turning of eyes,

minds, and spirits toward or from providence that is found in the Old English translation.

Instead, it represents agency by movement toward or away from providence. The change

in the nature of movement, from ascension to turning toward, mirrors the change in the

translations of 3m9, where the Latin ascension to the divine is de-emphasized in the Old

English prose and is absent in the Old English Meter 20.

The circular turning in 3m2, especially the example of the sun, may have

suggested to Alfred the metaphor of a wagon wheel when he came to translating chapter

39. And the reference to fortune’s wheel in 2p1 certainly is a foreshadowing:

Fortunae te regendum dedisti: dominae moribus oportet obtemperes. Tu

vero volventis rotae impetum retinere conaris? at, omnium mortalium

stolidissime, si manere incipit, fors esse desistit.161

(You have given yourself over to the rule of fortune; it is proper that you

obey the customs of your mistress. Will you attempt to restrain the force

individuitate discedit tanto amplioribus spatiis explicatur, si quid vero illi se medio conectat et societ in simplicitatem cogitur diffundique ac diffluere cessat: simili ratione quod longius a prima mente discedit maioribus fati nexibus implicatur ac tanto aliquid fato liberum est quanto illum rerum cardinem vicinius petit. Quodsi supernae mentis haeserit firmitati, motu carens fati quoque supergreditur necessitatem. Boethius, De Consolatione, 4p6.62–74, 123–24. (For just as, of spheres turning about the same point, the innermost one approaches the simplicity of the middle, and for all the others that are placed externally it becomes like an axis about which they turn. But the outermost one is rotated with a greater circuit; the further it is separated from the indivisibility of the central point, it is extended over wider spaces, and if it is joined or associated with that center, it would be gathered into its simplicity and would cease to be spread and diffused. Likewise, that which separates farther from the principal intellect is implicated in the greater entanglements of fate, and a thing is the more free from fate the closer it approaches the center of things. So that if it should cling to the firmness of the celestial mind, then being without motion it also transcends the necessity of fate.) 161 Ibid., 2p1.55–59, 30.

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of the revolving wheel? But, stupidest of all humans, if it begins to stop, it

ceases to be fortune.)

Alfred translates this passage in chapter seven as:

Swa geac gif þu þe selfne to anwealde þæm woruldsælþum gesealdest, hit

is riht þæt ðu eac heora þeawum fulgange. Wenst þu þæt ðu þæt

hwerfende hweol þonne hit on ryne wyrð mæge oncyrran? Ne miht þu þon

ma ðara woruldsælða hwearfunga onwendan.162

(So also, if you give yourself to the power of worldly fortunes, it is right

that you also obey their customs. Do you think that you can turn/divert the

turning wheel when it is on its course? No more than you can turn/change

the turnings of worldly fortune.)

But it is likely that the replacement of the Latin imagery of the concentric spheres with

that of the wagon wheel is also due in part to the unfamiliarity of the imagery of

concentric spheres to an Anglo-Saxon audience. The metaphor most clearly evoked by

the concentric circles of the Latin text is that of planetary motion, of the Aristotelian

crystalline spheres, a cosmology which was unknown in Anglo-Saxon England.163 The

switch to an image of a wagon's wheel is likely the translator’s attempt to render the

analogy comprehensible to his audience, but the switch in metaphor may not be original

to Alfred. One of the extant manuscripts of the Latin Boethius known to have been in

Anglo-Saxon England has a marginal illustration that closely resembles a cart wheel,

162 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:253.59–63. 163 Aristotle's Metaphysics and Ptolemy's Almagest were not translated into Latin until the twelfth century. David C. Lindberg, “The Transmission of Greek and Arabic Learning to the West,” in Science in the Middle Ages, by David C. Lindberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 71–73; Stephen C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures of Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 188–190.

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complete with hub and spokes, and Alfred may have been influenced by such an

illustration in one of his source documents.164

As in 3m9, Boethius presents a metaphorical construct with which Alfred is

unfamiliar, so Alfred deliberately intervenes in his translation, modifying the metaphor so

it is comprehensible to both himself and to his readers, drawing upon metaphorical

constructs already existing in Anglo-Saxon literature. One such construct is the

aforementioned eye of the mind, and another mirrors the turnings of Alfred’s wheel of

fate. A similar concatenation of turnings is suggested in Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, in

which the elements of the fight described in lines 745b–821a correspond to the turnings

of the wheel. At the center of the combat is Beowulf, firmly fixed on Grendel’s arm; as

the two combatants crash through the hall they are oblivious to the scattering of the mead

benches and the destruction they are causing, much as a person at the hub of the Boethian

wheel is unperturbed by the vicissitudes of fate. When Grendel first grabs him in line

745, Beowulf is on ræste, much like God in Chapter 25 of the Consolation. When locked

in combat in 761 the monster wæs utweard (was outside), while Beowulf furþur stop

(stepped further, presumably inward), and when Grendel attempts to escape the hero’s

164 The manuscript is Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 3363, which was copied in the Loire valley in the mid-ninth century. It crossed the channel shortly after being copied, where glossed commentary was added to it, including, in the right margin of fol. 46r, a one-inch square image of the Boethian sphere that resembles the wheel of cart. The image has no accompanying caption or explanatory markings. Pierre Courcelle and others have suggested that the commentary was added by Asser to help Alfred in his translation, but this argument has little firm evidence behind it. The most that can be confidently stated is that the manuscript was in Britain at the time and it is possible that Alfred used it. Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 2:466; Jerold C. Frakes, The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages: The Boethian Tradition, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 23 (Leiden: E . J. Brill, 1988), 164, an image of the marginal sketch is on page x. A second manuscript with a similar illustration, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 17814, was produced in England but in the tenth century, so it could not have been one of Alfred’s sources, Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1.xlvi.

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grasp in 763 he tries to widre gewindan (turn more widely). Likewise, Beowulf’s thanes

who suffer on the rim of the fight in 800 and attempt “on healfa gehwone heawan” (to

hew on each of the sides) are unable to influence the outcome of the battle. It is only

Beowulf’s central position, single-minded fixation, and unrelenting grasp on Grendel’s

arm that wins the day. Similar imagery can also be seen in the closing lines of Beowulf

where the twelve warriors circle around the highly visible and central point of the hero’s

barrow, which can be “wegliðendum wide gesyne” (widely seen by mariners).165

As with the translation of the Herebald incident in the translation of Bede, this

interpretation of these passages from Beowulf raises the question of whether there is a

Boethian influence on these two works, or if the metaphor of spiritual, wheel-like turning

is an Anglo-Saxon commonplace that predates them. The date of the composition of

Beowulf is, of course, unknown, so no firm conclusion can be drawn as to the direction of

the influence, although Beowulf is not generally considered to be Boethian in its

sensibility.166 As for Bede, it is highly unlikely that Bede himself had any knowledge of

the Consolatio, which was unknown in northern Europe until Alcuin rediscovered it at

the end of the eighth century.167 The translation of Bede is contemporaneous with that of

Alfred’s Consolation, so a Boethian influence on the Old English translation of Bede is

165 R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds., Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), line 3158. The idea that the metaphor may be operating in this closing passage was suggested in a discussion of this project by Fabienne Michelet at the University of Toronto Department of English Research Roundtable, 8 November 2013. 166 Lapidge notes that reversal, edwenden and edhwyrht, is a structural element in the Beowulf narrative, but such structural turning of the narrative is not especially Boethian. Michael Lapidge, “Beowulf and Perception,” Proceedings of the British Academy 111 (2001): 63–64. 167Malcolm Godden, “King Alfred and the Boethius Industry,” in Making Sense: Constructing Meaning in Early English, by Antonette diPaolo Healey and Kevin Kiernan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007), 118.

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chronologically feasible. But it is more likely that Alfred and the Bede translator, along

with the Beowulf-poet, were deploying the commonplace metaphor of the turning/fixed

gaze as inconstancy and subjection to fate. It would seem that any correspondence

between Beowulf’s fight with Grendel and Alfred’s wheel of fate is coincidental,

resulting from drawing upon common metaphors, rather than deliberate borrowing of one

text from the other.

The turning gaze is illustrated in another tale in Boethius’s Consolation, that of

Orpheus and Eurydice. Boethius briefly alludes to the tale in 3m12, but the metaphor of

the turning gaze is clearly evident:

“sed lex dona coerceat,

ne dum Tartara liquerit

fas sit lumina flectere.”

Quis legem det amantibus?

maior lex amor est sibi.

Heu, noctis prope terminos

Orpheus Eurydicen suam

vidit, perdidit, occidit.

Vos haec fabula respicit

quicumque in superum diem

mentem ducere quaeritis;

nam qui Tartareum in specus

victus lumina flexerit,

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quicquid praecipuum trahit

perdit dum videt inferos.168

(“But let the law limit the gifts, so that while he leaves Tartarus, by divine

law he shall not turn his eyes.” Who can give law to lovers? Love is a

greater law unto itself. Oh, near the boundaries of night Orpheus saw, lost,

and killed his Eurydice. This tale looks back at/refers to you, who seek to

lead the mind into the upper day. For if he who has conquered should turn

back his eyes into the Tartarean cave, whatever excellence he carries, he

loses when he looks at those below.)

Boethius makes no explicit connection between the Orpheus story in the meter and the

preceding prose, which, along with its position in the middle of the text, leads Godden

and Irvine to suggest that the recounting of Orpheus’s story serves as the point where the

narrator’s attention turns away from temporal to divine considerations.169 Boethius even

includes a metaphoric double entendre as the tale turns to look back at/refer to (respicit)

the reader, strengthening this conclusion.

While Boethius only alludes to what the Alfred calls ealdum leasum spellum (old,

false stories), the translation recounts the entire story at length, undoubtedly because

while copies of Virgil’s Georgics 4, and possibly Ovid’s Metamorphoses 10, which tell

the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, were available in Anglo-Saxon England, Alfred could

168 Boethius, De Consolatione, 3m12.44–58, 97–98. 169 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 2:415.

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not assume his readers would be familiar with the tale.170 The prose translation, in part,

reads:

Ongon þa singan & cwæð. Gesælig bið se mon þe mæg geseon þone

hluttran æwellm þæs hehstan godes, and of him selfum aweorpan mæg þa

þiostro his modes. We sculon get of ealdum leasum spellum ðe sum

bispell reccan. [...] Bebead him þa þæt he geara wiste þæt he hine næfre

underbæc ne besawe, siððan he ðononweard wære,171 and sæde gif he hine

underbæc besawe þæt he sceolde forlætan ðæt wif. Ac þa lufe mon mæg

swiðe uneaþe forbeodan; wilawei, hwæt Orfeus þa lædde his wif mid him

oð he com on þæt gemære leohtes and ðeostro. Þa eode þæt wif æfter him.

Þa he forð on ðæt leoht com, ða beseah he hine underbæc wið ðæs wifes.

Þa losade hio him sona. Ðas leasan spell lærað gehwilcne mon þara ðe

wilnað helle þeostro to flionne and to ðæs soðan godes liohte to cumanne,

þæt he hine ne besio to his ealdum yfelum, swa ðæt he hi eft swa fullice

fullfremme swa he hi ær dyde. Forðæm swa hwa swa mid fullon willan his

mod went to ðæm yflum þe he ær forlet, and hi þonne fullfremeð, and hi

170 The expansion of the tale could have been accomplished with only indirect knowledge of the myth via commentaries, but Joseph Wittig argues that Virgil’s account, and possibly Ovid’s, were available to the translators, Joseph S. Wittig, “King Alfred’s Boethius and Its Latin Sources: A Reconsideration,” Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1982): 175–77, 185. Lapidge notes that surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts contain only fragments of Ovid’s works, indicating that Ovid was less well known to Anglo-Saxon audiences than Virgil. Lapidge, AS Library, 66. 171 Godden and Irvine note a difference in the translation here, using siððan for the Latin dum. Medieval commentaries generally interpret the Latin to mean that Orpheus could not look back until he had left the underworld. The difference does not impact my analysis here. Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 2:422.

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him þonne fullice liciað, and he hi næfre forlætan ne þencð, þonne forlyst

he eall his ærran god buton he hit eft gebete.172

(Then he began to sing and said, “Happy is the man who can see the clear

source of the highest good, and can cast from himself the darkness of his

mind. We must again recount an example from the old, false stories. [...]

Then [Pluto] ordered him that he should take care that he never look

behind him once he departed from there, and said that if he should look

behind him he would lose his wife. But one cannot forbid love very easily.

Alas, Orpheus then took his wife with him until he came to the boundary

of light and darkness. At which point, the wife went after him. When he

came forth into the light, then he looked behind him toward his wife. Then

she was lost to him at once. These false stories teach everyone of those

who wish to flee the darkness of hell and to come into the true light of

God that he should not look [behind] him to his old evils, so that he fully

commits them again as he did before. Because whosoever with full desire

turns his mind to the evils that he forsook earlier, and then commits them,

and then they fully please him, and he never thinks to forsake them, then

he loses all his former good, unless he again repents.)

The Latin “Quis legem det amantibus?” (Who can give law to lovers?) implies agency on

the part of the lovers, as Orpheus is free to disregard Pluto’s command, albeit also being

subject to consequences for doing so. Yet in the Old English it states that, “Ac þa lufe

mon mæg swiðe uneaþe forbeodan” (But one cannot forbid love so easily). Here it is

172 Ibid., Chap. 35, lines 195–254; 1:336–38.

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love, one of "modes gedrefednesse and bisgunga" (the mind’s agitation and concerns)

that flouts the law and must be governed. The translation shifts the emphasis from a

holistic self, the lover (amans), to particular thoughts and desires (lufu), part of the

wilnung that clouds rational mental vision. Similarly the Old English passage makes an

explicit comparison of the physical turning of Orpheus’s gaze (beseah he hine underbæc)

to a mental turning (mod went) toward sin, while the comparison remains implicit in the

Latin.

Old English Meter 23, which corresponds to the section of the prose chapter 35

which includes the Orpheus story, only puts the opening lines of the prose into verse,

does not mention the story, and omits the metaphor of the turning gaze:

Sie ðæt la on eorðan ælces ðinges

gesælig mon, gif he gesion mæge

þone hlutrestan heofontorhtan stream,

æðelne æwelm ælces goodes,

and of him selfum ðone sweartan mist,

modes þiostro, mæg aweorpan.

We sculon ðeah gita mid godes fylste

ealdum and leasum ðinne ingeðonc

betan bispellum, þæt ðu ðe bet mæge

aredian to rodorum rihte stige

on ðone ecan eard ussa saula.173

173 Ibid., 1:489.

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(Oh, a man would be happy in all things on earth if he could see the purest

heavenly-bright stream, the noble source of every good, and could cast

from himself the black mist, the darkness of the mind. Though yet with

God’s help we can repair your thought/mind by means of old and false

stories, so that you can better find the right path to heaven, the eternal

dwelling-place of our souls.)

The verse not only provides an explicit moral for the tale,174 but it differs from the Latin

in how it addresses the mind. And while vision is referenced in the first line, there is no

turning gaze in the Old English meter, although there is a redirection of travel toward the

divine. In Boethius’s Latin meter it is reason, the rational faculty (mentem), that is being

led into the light, and the “you” that is being addressed is a distinct entity, but in the Old

English meter it is incorrect ingeðonc that creates the modes þiostro (the darkness of the

mind). Ingeðonc can be read in two ways, as ‘thought’ or as ‘the mind, the seat of

thought.’175 It could be incorrect thought that infects the mind, creating ðone sweartan

mist, or it could be the mind itself that is incorrect. If ingeðonc is read as ‘thought,’ then

the mind has an agentive role in the correction; if the word is read as ‘mind,’ then the

mind is acted upon by external forces, namely God and, ironically, the ealdum and

leasum bispellum. Both readings are valid, a frustrating instance of Old English words

relating to mental function resisting sharp categorization.

Those on the wheel of fate may turn their gaze toward the divine hub or away

from it, and this turning is accomplished through the process of conversion. The work

that most famously addresses conversion is, of course, Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica

174 Ibid., 2:513. 175 BT, s.v. in–geþanc, 1:593, 2:592–93.

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which uses conversio, which of course gives us the modern word conversion, and its Old

English translation uses words with the roots cyrr- and hweorf- to refer to conversion to

Christianity. Note, however, the type of turning underlying the metaphor behind

conversio and gehwyrfednes is often not clear. I classify it here as a pivot toward, or away

from, God, but it may represent another type of turning, that of transformation, or even a

change of direction. Both the Latin and Old English terms are clearly metaphors of

turning, but the nature of that turning is more often than not ambiguous.

An illustrative example of how Bede’s translator uses turning to denote

conversion is found in the account of the conversion of Æthelberht, king of Kent, by

Augustine of Canterbury in 597:

Þara geleafan ך gehwyrfednesse is sægd þæt se cyning swa wære

efnblissende, þæt he nænne hwæðre nydde to Cristes geleafan, ac ða ðe to

geleafan ך to fulwihte cerdon, þæt he þa inwordlicor lufode, swa swa hy

wæron him efnceasterwaran þæs heofonlican rices.176

(Of their faith and conversion it is said that the king so shared in their

rejoicing, that he still did not compel anyone to Christ’s faith, but those

who turned to faith and baptism, he loved them more deeply, as they were

with him fellow-citizens of the heavenly kingdom.)

The passage is, for the most part, a fairly straightforward translation from the Latin, using

gehwyrfednes in place of conversio. But the Old English translator strengthens and

repeats the turning metaphor when he restructures the sentence to use “ða ðe [...] cerdon”

176 Miller, OE EH, 1.1:62. Several manuscripts read to cristenum þeawe (to Christian customs/practices) instead of to Cristes geleafan (to Christ’s faith), Ibid., 2.1:35.

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(those who [...] turned), where Bede’s Latin uses a noun, credentes [believers].177 The

Latin text assigns faith as an inherent quality of the people, a state of mind. In contrast,

the Old English translation emphasizes the moment of conversion and the agent action

the faithful have performed. The faithful here have agency, but the text says nothing

about whether or not they have free will.178

Bede’s specification that conversion was not compulsory is noteworthy. Few

rulers in Western Europe compelled their people’s conversion when they themselves

converted. Instead, newly Christianized kings typically provided passive assistance to

missionaries in the form of land grants, gifts, protection and safe conduct, and letters of

introduction and commendation.179 So the denial seems unnecessary, unless it is to imply

some measure of free will in the people’s conversion. But Bede may also have included it

because it was not until Eadbald’s death and the accession of Eorcenberht in 640 that

177 “Quorum fidei et conuersioni ita congratulatus esse rex perhibetur, ut nullum tamen cogeret ad Christianismum; sed tantummodo credentes artiori dilectione, quasi conciues sibi regni caelestis, amplecteretur.” Bede, EH, 76–79. (It is maintained that the king rejoiced at their faith and conversion, yet he compelled no one to Christianity; but merely embraced believers with a firmer love, as though they were his fellow citizens in the kingdom of heaven.) 178 Miller translates cerdon as passive (“were converted”), which would indicate a lack of agency, but lack of a form of beon makes the verb active. The active verb provides agency, but says nothing about will. Miller, OE EH, 1.1:63. 179 Richard E. Sullivan, “Early Medieval Missionary Activity: A Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Methods,” Church History 23, no. 1 (March 1954): 21. This passage is also noteworthy as it one of the few references in Historia Ecclesiastica to the conversion of the people, as opposed to that of kings and rulers. Nicholas Brooks makes the point that Bede either assumes the people will follow the lead of their rulers in becoming Christians or that they are not an essential component to the gens Anglorum. Of course, we don’t know exactly who Bede is referring to here. The “believers” in the passage could be courtiers, rather than the peasantry. Nicholas Brooks, “From British to English Christianity: Deconstructing Bede’s Interpretation of the Conversion,” in Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England, by Catherine E. Karkov and Nicholas Howe, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 318 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), 8.

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paganism was specifically outlawed in Kent, or in fact anywhere in Britain,180 and also

because pagan practices continued in Britain throughout Bede’s own lifetime, until at

least the end of the ninth century.181 So any implication of free will in this passage is not

a clear one.

The turning or conversion of a person or a people to Christianity is a singular

event for both Bede (conversio) and for his translator (gehwearfness). Unlike in Ælfric’s

later comparison of the conversion of Paul to that of Stephen, discussed in the next

chapter, conversion in the Historia ecclesiastica, at least as it is represented lexically, is a

singular moment, and not an extended and lifelong process of following of a way of life.

But the historical reality is not as neat as Bede presents it. When Augustine arrived in

Kent, Christianity was far from unknown in Britain, being common in areas of the island

still under British control and practiced by Britons in areas ruled by Anglo-Saxons. And

Frankish Christianity across the channel was also quite familiar. In fact, Bertha,

Æthelberht’s wife of fifteen years, was Frankish and a practicing Christian. Peter Brown

makes the case that early Anglo-Saxons considered Christianity to be an “exotic good”

that brought prestige to those who could control and dispense it; kings and chieftains

wished to control this good to prevent independent power bases from arising in their own

180 Bede, EH, 236–37. 181 William A. Chaney, “Paganism to Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England,” The Harvard Theological Review 53, no. 3 (July 1960): 198–99; Bede, EH, 431n. For a discussion of paganism as a continuing political force in Kent see Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991) 64–8. For discussion of specific pagan practices that continued into the Christian era see, John D. Niles, “Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief,” in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 126–41, and Bernadette Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions, and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005).

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or neighboring kingdoms. No prestige would be conveyed by accepting Christianity from

the subaltern Britons, and accepting it from the Franks would lend power to a continental

neighbor. Christianity from distant Rome, however, brought exoticism and prestige

without any such threat to local political authority. And in fact, in the first few years after

his arrival, Augustine was kept in a monastic community in Canterbury, under

Æthelberht’s control. It was not until 601 C. E., after Æthelberht had secured control of

London and the Thames estuary that Augustine was allowed to travel and preach

freely.182 Furthermore, not only were pagan practices common in areas for decades after

their supposed conversion, the missionaries deliberately co-opted pagan rites and shrines

for Christian practices. Syncretism was such a common tactic that it can sometimes be

difficult to distinguish pagan practices from Christian ones.183

So Bede radically simplifies the process of conversion, reducing it to discrete

points centered on the conversion of specific kings and chieftains and ignoring the messy

details of syncretism and persistent paganism. Thus in the Historia ecclesiastica

conversion is less an internal, spiritual transformation of reform and repentance and more

a matter of turning one’s identity and allegiance to the Roman church.184 For Bede,

conversion is the moment when local, secular, political authority is subjected to Roman

religious structures and institutions and the national identity of the gens Anglorum is

established.185 In short, conversion is the moment when the English people turn to answer

182 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A. D. 200–1000, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 344–45. 183 Ibid., 345. 184 Nicholas Brooks articulates a two-fold agenda of Bede: the use of Rome as a source of legitimacy and authority for the Anglo-Saxon political and ecclesiastical infrastructure and the denigration of the British as sinful and heretical. Brooks, “British To English,” 6. 185 Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, 351–52.

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the call from, and become subjected to, Rome in a rather Althusserian fashion. While

Althusser is primarily concerned with subjection to the state, he acknowledges that,

in the pre-capitalist historical period [...] it is absolutely clear that there

was one dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Church, which

concentrated within it not only religious functions, but also educational

ones, and a large proportion of the functions of communications and

“culture.”186

The final example of subjection in Althusser’s essay is that of an individual turning to

subject himself to Christian religious authority, and Althusser’s description of “a

subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all

freedom except that of freely accepting his submission” is a classic description of the

Christian doctrine of free will in accepting God’s dominion.187 But Althusser’s

description is not entirely appropriate in relation to conversion of the Anglo-Saxons as it

reflects the institution of the Church from later centuries, one far more dominant and all-

encompassing than it was in late sixth and seventh century England. Bede is writing

about the moment when the Roman Church first achieves dominance in England.

Furthermore, the submission in Bede is not that of an individual, but of an entire people.

But as we shall see in the discussion of the Life of St. Gregory in Chapter 4, it is salient in

that it addresses the notion of identity.

Conversion is not limited to the move from paganism to Christianity, but can also

denote taking up a religious vocation. One of two specific metaphors, depending on the

passage in question, underlies this sense. The conversion to a religious vocation could be

186 Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 151. Emphasis original. 187 Ibid., 177–80, 182.

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a transformative moment, signaling a change in the nature of the individual, or it could be

pivot, a turning toward the divine. With both metaphors available to Anglo-Saxon

writers, which of these two operates in a particular passage can be ambiguous. In the case

of Æthelwold’s translation of the Benedictine Rule, sometimes both metaphors operate in

the same passage, with one turning being transformative and the other a pivot. The mind-

on-a-pivot metaphor is apparent in the fact that while a conversion to a vocation was

ideally permanent, as a practical matter it was recognized that this was not always so. The

Rule contains provisions for monks abandoning and even returning to the monastery.188

Both Benedict’s original Latin and Æthelwold’s translation use the metaphors of turning,

with Æthelwold usually, but not always, adhering to the Latin use of the two metaphors.

One example of Æthelwold adding a metaphor of turning that is not present in the

Latin original is in chapter 60, regarding the ranking of monks within the monastery.

Æthelwold’s translation states that a monk’s rank is determined by “þonne his

gecyrrednes wæs” (when his conversion was), while Benedict’s Latin states that it is

“quando ingressus est in monasterio” (when he entered into the monastery).189 The nature

of the change is different in the two versions. In the Old English translation, a monk

transforms, turns into something new, while the Latin expresses it as a change in physical

location, crossing a threshold.190And like an individual’s conversion to Christianity, a

188 An early instance of the dictum, “relapse is part of recovery.” 189 Arnold Schröer, ed., “Die Angelsächsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benedictinerregel,” in Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Prosa, vol. 2 (Kassel: Georg H. Wigand, 1888), chap. 60, 2:107; Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. Bruce L. Venarde, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 6 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), chap. 60, 194. 190 Liminal moments such as this may carry the implication of transformation, but there is nothing metaphoric in this Latin passage; it is literally a physical entrance.

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monk’s gecyrrednes to cenobitic life is not necessarily permanent; backsliding is

possible.

Æthelwold uses gecyrran to denote the return to monasticism by a wayward monk

in his translation of Chapter 29 of the Benedictine rule:

Se broðor, þe for his agenum lehtre oðþe unðeawe of mynstre færð oðþe

adræfed bið, gif he eft gecyrran wile, behate ærest bote and geswicenesse

ealra þæra unþeawa, þe he fore adræfed wæs, and he sy onfangen on

uteweardre endebyrdnesse, þæt he þurh þæt sy afandod, hwæþer he mid

eadmodnesse gecyrre. Gif he þænne eft for his unðeawum ut færð, oþþe

adræfed bið, he þeah sy onfangen oð þan þriddan siðe; wite he þonne, ofer

ðæt þæt him ælces infæres forwyrned bið and he næfre eft to þam mynstre

gecyrran ne þearf.191

(The brother, who for his own sins or vices leaves or is driven from the

monastery, if he wills to return, let him first vow remedy and repentance

for all those vices for which he was earlier driven out, and he should be

received in the last place in the order, so that he is tested through this

whether he turns/repents with humility. If he then again leaves because of

his vices, or is driven out, nevertheless he should be received up to a third

time; then he knows after this any entrance will be denied him and he

never again need return to the monastery.)

191 Schröer, “Angelsächsischen,” chap. 29, 2:53.

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There are two turnings in the passage. The first, “gif he eft gecyrran wile” (if he wills to

return) is a straightforward translation of “si reverti voluerit.”192 The turning here is not

even necessarily metaphorical, denoting a physical return to the monastery. And in both

the original and the translation, the decision to return is explicitly a willing one, using

voluerit and wile. The second turning metaphor, however, is not present in the Latin,

which assigns the lowest rank “ut ex hoc eius humilitas conprobetur” (so that [the

returning monk’s] humility is confirmed by this). But Æthelwold renders this as “hwæþer

he mid eadmodnesse gecyrre” (whether he turns/repents with humility), placing greater

emphasis on the return/repentance.

Ælfric in his Catholic Homily 1.35, “Dominica 21 post Pentecosten,” relates one

specific case of a wayward monk repenting, although here the waywardness is spiritual

and the monk does not physically leave the monastery. It is the story of Theodorus who

has a deathbed conversion, and the tale is originally told by Gregory the Great—a story

that Gregory was evidently fond of, as he relates it on three different occasions.193 In his

telling, Ælfric uses gecyrrednes in much the same fashion as Æthelwold. The dying

192 The Latin passage in full is: “Frater qui proprio vitio egreditur de monasterio, si reverti voluerit, spondeat prius omnem emendationem pro quo egressus est, et sic in ultimo gradu recipiatur, ut ex hoc eius humilitas conprobetur. Quod si denuo exierit, usque tertio ita recipiatur, iam postea sciens omnem sibi reversionis aditum denegari.”

Benedict, Rule, chap. 29, 112. (If the brother who through his own fault leaves the monastery, wishes to return, let him first promise full amendment for that which he departed, and so be recieved back in the lowest rank, so that by this his humility is confirmed. If he leaves again, let him be received thus up to a third time, knowing then that afterward any opportunity of return is denied to him.) 193 The version of Gregory’s I refer to here is the one in Homily 38, the homily that is Ælfric’s primary source for his own sermon, PL 76:1292–93.The other two versions are an earlier one in his Homily 19, written while Theodorus was still alive, and a later one in his Dialogues 4:38. PL 76:1158–59, PL 76:389–92.

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Theodorus, unnamed in Ælfric’s version, has a vision of a dragon come to kill him, but

the prayers of his fellow monks drive the vision away and temporarily heal him:

Ða gebroðra him cwædon to. hwi sprecst þu mid swa micelre orwennysse.

mearca þe sylfne mid tacne þære halgan rode; He andwyrde be his mihte;

Ic wolde lustbære mid tacne þære halgan rode me bletsian ac ic næbbe þa

mihte. for þan ðe se draca me þearle ofþrihð; Hwæt þa munecas þa hi

astrehton mid wope to eorþan. ך ongunnon geornlicor for his hreddinge

þone wealdendan god biddan; Efne þa færlice awyrpte se adlia cniht. ך

mid blissiendre stemne cwæð; Ic þancie gode efne nu se draca þe me

forswelgan wolde is afliged þurh eowerum benum he is fram me ascofen

standan ne mihte ongean eowerum þingungum; beoð nu mine þingeras ך

biddende for minum synnum for þan ðe ic eom gearo to gecyrrenne to

munuclicere drohtnunge. ך woruldlice þeawas ealle forlætan; His cealdan

leomu þa geedcucedon ך he mid ealre heortan to gode gecyrde ך mid

langsumum broce on his gecyrrednysse wearð gerihtlæced ך æt nextan on

þære ylcan untrumnysse gewat; Ac he ne geseah þone dracan on his

forðsiþe for þan ðe he hine oferswyðde mid gecyrrednysse his heortan.194

(The brothers said to him, “Why do you speak with such great despair?

Mark yourself with the sign of the holy cross.” He answered as he could,

“I would gladly bless myself with the sign of the holy cross, but I do not

have the ability because the dragon severely oppresses me.” Then the

monks prostrated themselves on the ground, weeping, and more earnestly

194 CH 1.35, 484, lines 242–58.

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began to ask powerful God for his salvation. Then the ill young man

suddenly recovered and with a rejoicing voice said, “I thank God. Even

now the dragon that would swallow me is put to flight by your prayers. He

is driven from me and could not stand against your intercessions. Be now

my intercessors praying for my sins, because I am ready to turn to a

monastic way of life and forsake all worldly customs.” His cold limbs then

revived and he with all his heart turned to God, and through the long-

lasting disease became corrected in his conversion and finally died of that

same illness. But he did not see the dragon at his passing, because he had

overcome him with the conversion in his heart.)

Ælfric translates the tale from Gregory’s Homily 38, and does so rather faithfully,

but he does make some subtle changes.195 In both versions the dying monk is unable to

195 While it is clear that Gregory’s Homily 38 is Ælfric’s direct source, in his telling Ælfric refers to the monk as a cniht (boy), a description that is not found in Gregory’s homily. But the version found in Gregory’s Dialogues does use puer (boy), indicating that Ælfric was familiar with and recalled that version as he was translating. CH Introduction, 297. Gregory’s Latin version of the quoted passage from Homily 38 reads: Tunc fratres coeperunt ei dicere: Quid est quod loqueris, frater? Signum tibi sanctae crucis imprime. Respondebat ille ut poterat, dicens: Volo me signare, sed non possum, quia a dracone premor. Cumque hoc fratres audirent, prostrati in terra cum lacrymis coeperunt pro ereptione illius vehementius orare. Et ecce subito coepit melioratus aeger quibus valebat vocibus exsultare, dicens: Gratias Deo, ecce draco qui me ad devorandum acceperat fugit, orationibus vestris expulsus stare non potuit. Pro peccatis meis modo intercedite, quia converti paratus sum, et saecularem vitam funditus relinquere. Homo ergo, qui, sicut jam dictum est, ab extrema corporis fuerat parte praemortuus, reservatus ad vitam, toto ad Deum corde conversus est. Longis et continuis in conversatione eadem flagellis eruditus, atque ante paucos dies excrescente corporis molestia defunctus est. Qui jam moriens draconem non vidit, quia illum per cordis immutationem vicit. PL 76:1292–1293. (Then the brothers began to speak to him: “What is that you say, brother? Mark yourself with the sign of the holy cross.” He replied to them as he was able, saying: “I want to sign myself, but I cannot, because I am oppressed by the dragon.” When the brothers heard this, they began to vehemently beg of [the Lord], prostrated on the earth with weeping as if in a seizure. And behold suddenly the ill man began to improve, he

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bless and rid himself of the terrible vision and the intercession of his fellow monks is

required for him to receive God’s grace. The monk has the will, but not the agency to

repent. The metaphors of turning are also similar in the two versions by Gregory. In the

quoted portion above, Ælfric uses gecyrran (to turn) and gecyrrednes (turning,

conversion) twice each, where Gregory uses the verb convertere twice and conversatio

and immutatio once each. But note that immutatio denotes not only change, but can also

be used to refer to an exchange or substitution, so in the Latin the transformative nature

of the conversion is explicit, where the Old English can be read as a pivot, a redirection

back toward God.196 Earlier in the tale, Gregory uses conversatio five other times, each

time using the word to mean the monastic way of life, what one converts to. Ælfric

translates these instances of conversatio as god drohtung (virtuous/monastic way of life).

Gregory uses conversatio to denote a way of life, a lifelong process of turning toward

God, rather than envisioning conversion as a singular moment, as Bede does. In his

translation, Ælfric conforms to Bede’s use of the metaphor and omits the turning in these

instances, using drohtnung to translate Gregory’s conversatio. Furthermore, in the

passage quoted above Ælfric uses “ic eom gearo to gecyrrenne to munuclicere

drohtnunge” (I am ready to turn to a monastic way of life) to translate the Latin “quia

converti paratus sum” (I am prepared to be converted). Here Ælfric uses a verb of turning

could exult with voices, saying, “Thanks be to God, behold the dragon which would have taken me in order to devour me has fled; driven out by your prayers, he could not stay. Now intercede for my sins, because I am prepared to be converted and to utterly relinquish worldly life.” It is said, then the man, who by the outermost parts of his body had been ready to die, held on to life, converted to God in all his heart. The man was taught in conduct by long and constant whips, but before a few days had passed he died by the growing of the same disease, who when dying did not see the dragon, because he had conquered it through the change of his heart.) 196 LS, s.v. immutatio, 896.

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in association with drohtnung, but again the verb acts in a singular moment, on a cusp

upon which the monk is about to turn to drohtnung, while Gregory’s Latin leaves the way

of life implicit in the verb.

The Old English translations treat religious conversion as a singular moment, a

type of Althusserian turning that results in submission and subjection to the abbot, to

Rome, or to God, as the case may be, rather than a lengthy process that may last a

lifetime. In the case of monastic conversion, the will to turn is emphasized, even in cases

where the agency to do so is absent—the emphasis on will is no surprise given it is Ælfric

writing. And while at times the type of turning the metaphor represents may be

ambiguous, either a pivot or a transformation, there are instances in translations where

the Latin describes a transformative process, where the Old English is ambiguous.

In a passage in his translation of Augustine’s Soliloquies, Alfred also uses a

similar metaphorical structure of turning vs. fixed gaze and makes the connection

between a stable and rational fixed gaze and an unstable and emotional one. But in the

Soliloquies, he adds an additional metaphor, that of the MIND-AS-SHIP, attendant with

turns and changes of course as it passes through life and suffers external and internal

storms. The passage, which is about how one learns, specifically how one learns

geometry, opens with a translation of Augustine’s Latin:

Þa cwæð ic: mid ægðrum ic hyt geleornode: ærest myd ðam eagum and

syðþan myd þam ingeþance. Ða eagan me gebrodton on þam angytte. Ac

siðþan ic hyt þa ongyten hæfde, þa forlæt ic þa sceawunga mid þam

eagum and þohte; forði me þuhte þæt ic his mæate micle mare geðencan

ðonne ic his mahte geseon, siððan þa eagan hyt ætfæstnodon minum

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ingeþance. Swa swa scyp brincð man ofer sæ: syððan he þonne to lande

cymð, þonne forlæt he þæt scyp standan, forþam him þincð syððan þæt he

mæge æð butan faran þonne mid. Eaðre me þincð þeah myd scipe on

drigum lande to farande þonne me þynce mid ðam eagum buta þara

gesceadwisnesse ænigne creft to geleornianne, þeah eagam þær-to hwilum

fultmian scylen.197

(Then I said: I learned it with both, first with the eyes and then with the

intellect. The eyes brought me to the understanding. But once I had

perceived it, then I forsook the examination with the eyes, and I thought;

for it seemed to me that I could contemplate much more of his might than

I could see, after the eyes had fixed it in my intellect. Just as a ship brings

a man over the sea, when he comes ashore, then he lets the ship stand,

because it seems to him that he can travel more easily without it than with

it. But it seems easier to me to travel by ship on dry land than seems the

learning of any knowledge with the eyes but without reason, although at

times the eyes must assist.)

197 Thomas A. Carnicelli, King Alfred’s Version of St. Augustine’s Soliloquies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 61. Augustine’s Latin reads: “Imo sensus in hoc negotio quasi navim sum expertus. Nam cum ipsi me ad locum quo tendebam pervexerint, ubi eos dimisi, et jam velut in solo positus coepi cogitatione ista volvere, diu mihi vestigia titubarunt. Quare citius mihi videtur in terra posse navigari, quam geometricam sensibus percipi, quamvis primo discentes aliquantum adjuvare videantur.” PL 32:874. (No, in this matter I have experienced the senses as if they were a ship. For when they had carried me to the place I intended, where I dismissed them, and now I began to turn that over in thought, and just as if I had been left on the ground the steps faltered for a while. Hence it seemed to me faster to be able to sail on land, than to perceive geometry with the senses, although they seem to help initial learning to some extent.)

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The passage divides human faculties into a binary pair, the physical and the mental.

Alfred’s translation here is somewhat close, but he does make some alterations and

additions to the Latin. He foregrounds the progression of understanding from the physical

to the mental, which Augustine places at the end, and where Augustine speaks generally

of the senses (sensus), Alfred focuses the metaphor on vision and the eyes (eagum). In

both the Latin and Old English, the character Augustine introduces the simile of a ship as

a physical faculty that must be abandoned if one is to progress, but in the succeeding

paragraphs which are not found in the original Latin, the character Gesceadwisnes greatly

expands upon the metaphor by introducing the simile of an anchor cable and the notion of

stability and a fixed gaze:

Ða cwæð heo: for ðam þingum is ðearf þæt þu rihte hawie mid

modes æagum to gode, swa rihte swa swa scipes ancerstreng byð aþenæd

on gerihte fram þam scype to þam ancræ; and gefastna þa eagan þines

modes on gode swa se ancer byd gefastnoð on ðære eorðan. Þeah þæt scyp

si ute on ðære sæ on þam ydum, hyt byð gesund and untoslegen, gyf se

streng aþolað; forðam hys byd se oðer ende fast on þære eorðan and se

oðer on ðam scype.

Ða cwæð ic: hwæt is þæt ðæt þu hest modes eagan?

Ða cwæð heo: gescæadwisnesse to-æacan oðrum creftum.

Ða cwæð ic: hwæt sint þa oðre creftas?

Þa cwæð heo: Wysdom, and eadmeto, and wærscype, and

gemetgung, rihtwisnes and mildheortnes, gesceadwisnes, gestadþines and

welwilnes, clennes, and forheafdnes. Myd þisum ancrum þu scealt

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gefastnian ðone streng on gode, þæt ðæt scyp healdan sceal þines

modes.198

(Then she said: Therefore it is needful that you look rightly with

the mind’s eye to God, as rightly as a ship’s anchor cable is stretched

directly from the ship to the anchor, and fasten the eyes of your mind onto

God, as the anchor is fastened to the earth. Though the ship is out on the

sea, on the waves, it is safe and unbroken if the cable holds, because its

one end is fast on the earth and the other on the ship.

Then I said: What is it that you call the mind’s eye?

Then she said: Reason, in addition to other disciplines.

Then I said: What are these other disciplines?

Then she said: Wisdom, and humility, and honor, and moderation,

and righteousness, and mercy, and reason, constancy and kindness, purity,

and self-restraint. With these anchors you can fasten onto God the cable

that can hold the ship of your mind.)

The similarities to the Boethian wheel in this passage are striking and original to the

translation. Here the modes eagan (mind’s eye) should remain fixed on God, although

instead of the spokes of a wheel, it is an anchor cable that attaches the person, or more

specifically the scyp þines modes (ship of your mind), to the divine. Instead of the

revolving rim of the wheel providing a rough passage, it is the tossing of the waves that

does so. These metaphors also appear in Christ II, which I discuss below.

198 Carnicelli, Soliloquies, 61–62.

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The character Gesceadwisnes goes on to say:

Ða cwæð heo: genoh wel þu fehst on þa spece, and genoh rihte þu hyt

understentst. Ac ic þe meg secgan þæt ic eom seo gesceadwisnes ðines

modes, þe ðe wið sprecð, and ic eom seo racu ðe me onhagað ðe to

gerihtreccenne, þæt þu gesyhst myd þines modes eagan god swa sweotole

swa þu nu gesyhst myd ðæs licuman æagan ða sunnan.199

(Then she said: you grasp it well enough in speech, and you understand it

correctly enough. But I can say to you that I am the reason of your mind,

which argues with you, and it is within my power to show you the

explanation, so that you see God with the eyes of your mind as clearly as

you now see the sun with the eyes of your body.)

Here reason is both part of the mind and distinct from the self. It also possesses the

ability, the agency, to comprehend (onhagian) God. And, a few lines later,

Gesceadwisnes designates the mind as part of the soul: “wite þæt erest gewiss þæt ðæt

mod byð þære sawle æge”200 (first, know that the mind is the eye of the soul), and “þare

saule hawung is gescadwisnes and smeaung”201 (reason and deliberation is the vision of

the soul). Gesceadwisnes rather effortlessly connects reason and the mind with a unitary

soul.202

While the extended metaphors of the ship and mental vision in the Old English

translation of Boethius’s Consolation are not found in Augustine’s original, the

199 Ibid., 64. 200 Ibid., 65. 201 Ibid., 67. 202 Lockett also discusses this transition, presenting it as the central reason for Alfred’s translation. Lockett, AS Psychologies, 343–47.

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metaphors of oculi mentis and navis mentis are common in patristic and Anglo-Latin

literature, in particular in the writings of Gregory the Great. So Alfred would appear to be

drawing upon several sources to formulate his addition. And, in a passage I will address

in the next chapter, Alfred again uses the MIND-AS-SHIP metaphor in his translation of

Gregory’s Regula pastoralis. While other Anglo-Saxon writers draw upon these

metaphors, Alfred is the only one to literally translate oculi mentis and navis mentis into

the vernacular.203 Alfred also places reason and other virtues as being resident in the

modes scip, identifying the metaphorical ship with the rational faculty of the mind. This

identification to the specific faculty is less relevant here in the Soliloquies, where the

source of the waves and storms is not specified and could be either internal or external to

the mind, but it is more important in the examination of Meter 22, where it is the

“gedræfnesse dogora gehwilce modes sines” (daily agitation of his mind) that is the

source. Internal storms of the mind also come into play in Alfred’s translation of Regula

pastoralis, examined in the next chapter.

While negative examples are always problematic, the widespread use of the

metaphor of oculi mentis and its absence from the Herebald story—with its distinction

between Herebald’s gaze turning hither and thither and John of Beverly’s fixed gaze—

can shed light on this passage from Bede we examined earlier. Bede uses oculi mentis

some twenty-four times in his writing, but not in the Herebald passage.204 Its absence in

the account of Herebald indicates that Bede was not focused on vision when writing this

203 For a fuller discussion of these two metaphors, their use in formulating a classical theory of psychology, and their appropriation and modification by Alfred, see Miranda Wilcox, “Alfred’s Epistemological Metaphors: eagan modes and scip modes,” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (December 2006): 181–85. 204 Ibid., 182n17.

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passage, making the Old English translator’s addition of the visual element to the

Herebald story more significant. Yet Bede’s translator still does not make an explicit leap

and use vision as a metaphor for rationality; Herebald’s turning vision is physical and

literal, and any metaphorical connection is implicit and perhaps not even consciously

intended. Alfred’s similes in the Soliloquies are more deliberate and obvious.

We see the same metaphor of mooring a ship to the divine stability in the closing

lines of Cynewulf’s Christ II:

Þa us help bicwom

þæt us to hælo hyþe gelædde,

godes gæstsunu, ond us giefe sealde

þæt we oncnawan magun ofer ceoles bord

hwær we sælan sceolon sundhengestas,

ealde yðmearas, ancrum fæste.

Utan us to þære hyðe hyht staþelian,

ða us gerymde rodera waldend,

halge on heahþu, þa he [to] heofonum astag.205

(Then help, God's spiritual son, came to us, that led us to salvation in the

harbor and gave us the gift that we might know where over the ship's side

we should moor the sea-steeds, the old wave-horses, fast with anchors. Let

us fasten our hope to that harbor, holy in the heights, which the Ruler of

the heavens enlarged for us when he ascended to heaven.)

205 Bernard Muir, ed., The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000), 1:78.

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There are some differences between Cynewulf’s and Alfred’s deployment of the

metaphor. Here the understanding is a gift (giefe) given by God, and not a power of

human reason. Furthermore, the Augustinian binary of the senses vs. reason is only

obliquely implied, “þæt we oncnawan magun” (so that we might know), but we do have

explicit statements of the Boethian notion of fastening on to divine stability and the

Alfredian metaphor of a ship fast at anchor.

Clearly, there is a line of influence at work here, but the direction of the

transmission is ambiguous. If Cynewulf is relying on the Alfredian translations of

Boethius and the Soliloquies, that would provide a date for Christ II in the early tenth

century. But it is just as likely that the Alfredian translations were inspired by Cynewulf.

As with the turnings in Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, Cynewulf is probably drawing on

an existing metaphorical construct, the same one that the Alfredian translator of Boethius

draws upon. Thomas Hill identifies Cynewulf's source for this passage as Gregory's

Homilia xl in evangelia, Homilia 29 for Ascension Sunday, although that sermon lacks

any nautical imagery save for a mention of an anchor.206 Hill attributes the imagery of the

sea voyage entirely to Cynewulf, although it seems likely that if Cynewulf had Gregory

on his mind he may also have been inspired by the nautical passages in the Regula

pastoralis. Moreover, Andy Orchard has identified the motif of life as a dangerous sea

voyage with salvation in a safe harbor as a commonplace in Anglo-Latin literature, so

206 Thomas D. Hill, “The Anchor of Hope and the Sea of This World: Christ II, 850–66,” English Studies 75, no. 4 (August 13, 2008): 289–90. Gregory's homily can be found at PL 76:1213–19.

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Cynewulf probably drew his inspiration from a number of sources, perhaps even from a

commonplace metaphor rather than any specific sources.207

Neither Alfred nor Cynewulf break new philosophical ground in their deployment

of the MIND-AS-SHIP metaphor. The ideas underlying the metaphor are not much different

from the turnings in the Consolation. Rationality and intellect are the key human

faculties, fixed on a stable point that is God, and safety and salvation are to be found in

the origin or harbor. The one significant addition is the idea that the storm that buffets the

ship is often one of the mind. It is not simply the vicissitudes of life that turn one away

from the divine, but one’s own emotions and desires, the irsung and wilnung, can be at

fault as well. Alfred’s use of the metaphor has a semi-Pelagian bent, wheras Cynewulf’s

reflects the Augustinian notion of grace as God’s gift alone.

In his translations of Boethius’s Consolation and Augustine’s Soliloquies, Alfred

uses two metaphors of revolutionary turning, an orbital turning back to one’s nature, to

the divine element resident in the soul, and a pivot that redirects the mind and soul

toward the divine. While these metaphors are present in the original Latin texts, Alfred

expands and alters them to incorporate a contemporary, ninth-century interpretation of

the texts. Yet the metaphors of revolutionary turning he uses are not unique to his

translations. They are found in a variety of other prose and poetic texts, and in using these

vernacular metaphors, Alfred at times undermines the Augustinian doctrine that he is

intending to convey.

207 Andy Orchard, “The Word Made Flesh: Christianity and Oral Culture in Anglo-Saxon Verse,” Oral Tradition 24, no. 2 (October 2009): 304. Also see Orchard for more examples of similar passages and a discussion of sources, 298–306.

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Perhaps the most significant of these changes is his reinterpretation of the

Neoplatonic tripartite world-soul to conform to the Alcuinian notion of a human soul

created in the image of the Trinity, consisting of reason, emotion, and desire. By

choosing this particular Alcuinian model Alfred does not address the will, the voluntas of

Augustine’s tripartite soul. As a result, unlike other Anglo-Saxon commentators, such as

Ælfric, he does not address the role of the will or how a person decides to execute the

turn. Instead, the Alfredian discussion in the translations is limited to agency. And in the

translations agency is largely, if not entirely, in the hands of God. Whereas Boethius’s

Neoplatonism stressed the inexorable turn back to one’s divine nature and invests the

individual with partial agency to make this turn, in the translations this turning is far from

certain; not every creature will complete the turn back to its original nature, and Alfred

places the agency for the turn squarely in the hands of God.

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Chapter 3—Turning Through Space: LIFE AS JOURNEY

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run

There's still time to change the road you're on.

And it makes me wonder.

—“Stairway to Heaven, ” Jimmy Page and Robert Plant208

Another form by which metaphors of turning can express moments of agency and

free will exists within the larger metaphorical construct of LIFE AS JOURNEY. Under this

construct, life is movement through two-dimensional space and changes or turns in one's

path mark choices which can reflect agency. This metaphorical construct is deployed to

significant effect as an extended metaphor by Ælfric in his Epiphany homily, Alfred in

his translation of Gregory's Regula pastoralis, and the poets of The Wanderer and The

Seafarer. How these Anglo-Saxon writers and translators use the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY

construct, with its attendant turnings, to depict notions of agency and free will is fairly

consistent, deploying the metaphor with only minor differences in a context of a path

toward, or away from, salvation, the heavenly reward at the end of life's journey. Unlike

modern writers, who when they take up this metaphorical construction often do so to

express the cliché that "it is all about the journey," Anglo-Saxon writers view the

destination as paramount. They prize purposeful journeying, not aimless wandering.

Therefore, as it was in pivoting to face another direction examined in the last chapter,

208 Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin IV (Atlantic Records, 1971).

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stability and steering a straight course is a desirable attribute. The journey itself is only

important as an instrumental goal, in plotting a course to reach the destination without

deviation.

The entity steering this course is the rational faculty of the mind, sometimes

labeled gesceadwisnes. Close readings of the passages where the metaphorical construct

appears makes it evident that the steersman is the rational faculty of the mind, and in

particular it is the capacity for foreþanc, forethought or deliberation, that the rational

mind uses to plot the course. The word foreþanc is also used to denote God’s providence,

so its use in this construct indicates that rationality and deliberation might be construed as

the human equivalent of divine providence. Through rationality humans can foresee the

future, albeit imperfectly, as God does through providence. The rational faculty can also

exercise control over the rest of the mind, but for various reasons it does not or cannot

always do so. It can be overwhelmed by memory, emotion, and desire and turned onto a

different path. This distinction between the rational faculty and the rest of the mod is

particularly evident in Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula pastoralis, which offers a

pat solution to a question that vexes philosophers to this day: is it meaningful to speak of

free will if we cannot control our desires, the things that motivate us to make choices?

While the deployment of the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor is generally consistent

throughout the corpus, there are some distinctions that can be seen between writers and

between particular works. Some writers, at least at certain points, state the rational faculty

is powerless against irrational thoughts and desires, that it may wish to steer a course

toward salvation, but is unable to do so. In other words, the person may have free will,

but lack agency. Ælfric in particular expresses the Augustinian doctrine that the agency

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for one's salvation lies with God, that a human, even if he wills it, cannot attain salvation

without divine assistance. But other writers sometimes employ the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY

construct in a manner that hints that humans do indeed have the necessary agency for

steering a straight course to salvation, skirting the edges of Pelagianism and semi-

Pelagianism.209 And occasionally, a single work will reflect both these notions, indicating

that while the Augustinian idea of salvation by grace alone was common in Anglo Saxon

England, it was not fully assimilated.210 This ambivalence may be due to lingering

Pelagian ideas, incomplete separation of the concepts of free will and agency, or simply a

notion that placing moral responsibility on a person who is not capable of exercising full

control over his or her actions is not quite fair.

Another distinction that can be seen is what Godden in his “Anglo-Saxons on the

Mind” identifies as the split between the emerging notion of the unitary soul, the classical

209 Pelagius, a contemporary of Augustine, denied original sin and held that divine grace was not essential for salvation, that humans could attain salvation via their own efforts. John Cassian, also a contemporary, occupied the middle ground known as semi-Pelagianism, acknowledging original sin and holding that while grace was necessary for salvation, humans could of their own accord do works that justified grace. Despite being considered heresies, both Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism remained influential in Anglo-Saxon England, particularly within monastic communities. Kleist points out that works by Pelagius were circulating in England during the period, and that Lantfred, Wulfstan, and even Ælfric used them as source material, often not knowing the authorship and avoiding outright heresy in their own work. Lantfred's Carmen de libero arbitrio is rife with semi-Pelagianist themes, and De adiutorio Dei, a sermon attributed to Wulfstan, draws heavily from Cassian's Collatio 13. Godden notes, "Though in its pure form the work of Pelagius has survived in very few cases, and may already have been rare in Ælfric's time, it seems to have had a wide circulation in adapted forms and to have been used by Haymo and Smaragdus, so it is not unlikely that Ælfric could have known of it in some form." Kleist, Striving, 6–7, 137–44, 147–52, 194–98; Rebecca Harden Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy, Patristic Monograph Series 15 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), 40; CH Introduction, 330. 210 Kleist notes that while Augustine's major works on free will were not available in Anglo-Saxon England, the major tenets of his philosophy, especially his later views, were known to writers from Bede onward through secondary sources. Kleist, Striving, 26.

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tradition, and a vernacular tradition where a division between mind and soul exists, with

rationality a faculty of the non-transcendent mind. But what is apparent from examining

how the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor is used is that the classical tradition, while explicitly

expressed by writers such as Alfred and Ælfric, is not fully embedded in their writing.

Their deployment of the metaphorical construct exhibits a tension between the classical

religious doctrine they are professing and the vernacular language tradition they use to

express it.

Perhaps the clearest example of Anglo-Saxon use of an extended literary

metaphor of turning through space as an example of volition and agency is in Ælfric's

Catholic Homily 1.7 for Epiphany Sunday. For Ælfric the holiday celebrates a three-fold

manifestation of Christ's divinity, three events which medieval tradition held had

occurred on the same day of the year: Christ’s baptism; his first miracle of changing the

water into wine at the wedding at Cana; and his manifestation to the Jews and the

Gentiles, represented by the shepherds and Magi respectively.211 The baptism, which

Ælfric only alludes to, doesn't concern us here, and in the next chapter I will address the

TURNING-AS-TRANSFORMATION metaphor inherent in the Cana miracle: "þæt he is se soða

scyppend þe ða gesceafta awendan mihte" (that he is the true creator who could

turn/transform creation).212 The topic here is Ælfric's description of the third

manifestation, a description that uses the metaphor of changing course on a journey to

mark moments when agency is operating.

Ælfric makes this metaphorical construct explicit as a simile and as allegory in

this passage:

211 CH Introduction, 55. 212 CH 1.7, 233, lines 45–46.

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ða þa ða tungelwitegan þone cyning gecyrdon. þa wearð se steorra him

ungesewen; ך eft þa ða hi to þam cilde gecyrdon þa gesawon hi eft þone

steorran; ך he þa hi gelædde to þam huse þær he inne wunode; Ne glad he

ealne weig him ætforan; ac syþðan hi comon to iudeiscum earde; syððan

he wæs heora latteow; oð ðæt he bufon cristes gesthuse ætstod; Herodes

hæfde deofles getacnunge; ך se ðe fram gode bihð to deofle; he forlyst

godes gife; þæt is his modes onlihtinge; swa swa þa tungelwitegan þone

steorran forluron þa ða hi ðone reðan cyning gecyrdon; Gif he þonne eft

þone deofol anrædlice forlæt þonne gemet he eft þæs halgan gastes gife þe

his heortan onliht; ך to criste gelæt;213

(When the astrologers turned to the king, the star became invisible to them

and again when they turned to the child, they again saw the star, and it

then led them to the house where he dwelled within. It did not glide all the

way before them, but after they came to the Jewish land, then it was their

guide until it stood above Christ's lodging. Herod had betokened the devil,

and he who bends from God to the devil, he loses God's grace, that is the

illumination of his mind, just as the astrologers lost the star when they

turned to the cruel king. Then if he later resolutely forsakes the devil, then

he again discovers the grace of the Holy Ghost which illuminates his heart

and leads to Christ.)

213 CH 1.7, 235, lines 105–15. Ælfric's choice of cristes gesthuse may contain a bit of punning. It can be interpreted both as ‘Christ's lodging’ (gysthus or guesthouse) and ‘Christ's spiritual house’ (*gasthus) Ælfric's source for this section, Haymo's Homily 15, is less specific, merely calling it ubi erat puer (where the boy was). CH Introduction, 57; PL 118:113.

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Ælfric uses turning (gecyrran) to denote the points where the Magi change course,

making the choice to follow either God or earthly powers and desires. He also uses bugan

to symbolize Herod's, or any sinner's, turning away or bending from God: "se ðe fram

gode bihð to deofle." Bugan is frequently used to denote a vertical bowing down, as in a

gesture of submission, but when used with the prepositions fram and to, as Ælfric does

here, it can signal a horizontal turning through space to represent a change in allegiance

or devotion.214 Not only is Ælfric using the verb bugan to signal a moment where volition

is expressed, but because the verb is also used in contexts of submission, it connotes a

turn to subjection as well. Later in this sermon Ælfric turns this metaphor into an

exhortation when he says, "ac geearnige swiþor godes mildheortnysse; swa þæt he wende

his agenne cyre to his scyppendes gehyrsumnysse ך bebodum"215 (but rather let him merit

God's mercy, so that he turn his own choice to the obedience and commandments of his

creator). Ælfric’s description of God’s grace as the modes onlihtinge (illumination of the

mind) recalls the Boethian sentiments examined in the last chapter and positions grace as

a necessary condition for agency.

Ælfric is not the only writer to use these words and metaphors in this fashion; a

similar passage appears toward the beginning of the Old English Apollonius of Tyre, in

paragraph two:

Seo fostormodor soðlice þa ða heo gehyrde þæt þæt mæden hire deaðes

girnde, ða cliopode heo hi hire to mid liðere spræce and bæd þæt heo fram

214 DOE, s. v. bugan. 215 CH 1.7, 238, lines 194–96.

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þare gewilnunge hyre mod gewænde and to hire fæder willan gebuge,

þeah ðe heo to geneadod wære.216

(The foster-mother, truly, when she heard that the girl desired her own

death, then she called to her with gentle speech and asked that she turn her

mind from that desire and bow to her father's will, as she was required to

do.)

The Latin source does not use the turning or bending metaphors:

Nutrix ut audivit puellam mortis sibi remedium quaerere, blando sermone

eam revocat ut a proposito suo recederet et invitam patris voluntatem ut

modeste ferat exhortatur.217

(The nurse, when she heard the girl ask for the remedy of death for herself,

persuaded her with gentle speech so that she might retreat from her

intention and encouraged the unwilling girl to modestly carry out the will

of her father.)

Through the use of gyrnan (to desire) as opposed to quaerere (to ask, seek), the Old

English translation emphasizes the conflict of will between the girl and her father. Like

Ælfric in his homily, the translator refers to the turning (gewænde) of the subject’s mind

and a bowing (gebuge) to patriarchal authority, where the Latin has recederet (retreated,

withdrew) and a carrying out (ferat) of the father’s will. And the translator has added a

final statement of filial obligation, emphasizing the importance of the patriarchal

authority.

216 Peter Goolden, ed., The Old English Apollonius of Tyre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 4, lines 7–11. 217 Ibid., 5.

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Following his explanation of the allegorical significance of the Epiphany story,

Ælfric launches into an extended discussion of free will and predestination,

demonstrating that his use of the extended metaphor is quite deliberate. He rejects the

idea that the stars, including the Star of Bethlehem that guides the Magi, determine the

fates of men or angels, saying the Star of Bethlehem is a manifestation of Christ's

divinity, not its source. Likewise, the fates of humans are determined by their own

choices, not by God's commandment:

His deope rihtwisnys nolde hi neadian to naþrum; ac forgeaf him agenne

cyre; for þan ðe þæt is rihtwisnyss þæt gehwylcum sy his agen geþafod;

þonne wære seo rihtwisnys awæged gif he hi neadunge to his þeowte

gebigde. oððe gif he hi to yfelnysse bescufe; ða miswendon sume þa

englas. heora agenne cyre. ך þurh modignysse hi sylfe to awyrigedum

deoflum geworhton;218

(His deep righteousness should not compel them to either, but he gave

them their own choice, because it is righteousness that each be allowed his

own; then his righteousness would be nullified if he bent them to his

service through compulsion or if he thrust them into evil. Then some of

the angels perverted their own choice, and through pride they made

themselves into cursed devils.)

Similarly, Adam and Eve "forscyldgode þurh agenum cyre"219 (became guilty through

their own choice). Ælfric uses a verb of turning, miswendon, to turn aside or pervert, to

denote what the rebellious angels did with the volition, agenne cyre, that God gave

218 CH 1.7, 238, lines 143–49. 219 CH 1.7, 237, line 155.

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them.220 Kleist argues that in this passage Ælfric emphasizes the Gregorian notion that

God does not interfere with human volition, that people have the choice to obey God or

not. Grace is available to all, as it was to Adam and Eve, and only withdrawn if the

individual freely chooses not to obey God’s commandments, placing the moral

responsibility for the choice squarely on the individual rather than sharing it with God.

This view of agency contrasts with Augustine, who sees divine grace as influencing and

reshaping human will.221

Ælfric goes on to reject double predestination and hold that predestination to evil

is a result of God's foreknowledge, not his commandment:

he ne forestihte nænne to yfelnysse; for þan ðe he is soð lif; He forestihte

þa gecorenan to þam ecan life; for þan þe wiste hi swilce towearde þurh

his gife ך and agenre gehyrsumnysse; He nolde forestihtan þa arleasan to

his rice for þan ðe he wiste hi swilce towearde þurh heora agenre

forgægednysse ך þwyrnysse.222

(He did not predestine anyone to evil, because he is the true life. He

predestined the chosen to eternal life because he knew they would become

such through his grace and their own obedience. He would not predestine

the wicked to his kingdom because he knew they would become such

through their own transgression and crookedness.)

220 Like miswendan, the Latinate pervert is, of course, also based on a metaphor of turning. 221 Kleist, Striving, 183–84; Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 19. 222 CH 1.7, 237, lines 166–71.

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Yet here humans do not fully possess both the volition and the agency to execute the

decision. With "þurh his gife ך and agenre gehyrsumnysse" (through his grace and their

own obedience), Ælfric states that the choice to subject oneself to God is the human's, but

the power to do so comes through God's grace. A few lines later he says, "nis seo

gecyrrednys to gode of us sylfum. ac of godes gife;"223 (The turning to good is not from

ourselves, but is from God's grace.) The agen cyre is literally one's own choice, an

expression of volition rather than agency, which belongs to God. Ælfric’s choice of

words in different contexts, agen cyre versus gecyrrednys, reinforces this distinction

between volition and agency. His choice of language also allows for a semi-Pelagian

interpretation of the homily, as agen cyre grants humans volition as opposed to the

Augustinian construct of God’s grace being necessary for humans to even desire

salvation.

The phonological similarity of cyre to words like cyrran and gecyrrednes,

however, blurs the lines between volition and agency. While we, and probably Ælfric too,

know that cyre and cyrran are from different etymological roots, given the phonological

similarities between them, it is plausible that his audience would have perceived the

words to be related, and the agen cyre might also have been reanalyzed and understood as

one's own turning, blurring the distinction between volition and agency.224 It seems that a

223 CH 1.7, 237, lines 179–80; CH Introduction, 58–59. 224 For the etymologies of these words, see F. Holthausen, ed., Altenglisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (1933), 3rd ed. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1974), s. v. “cyre,” 68; “cierran,” 48. For a time, Ælfric was inordinately fond of the phrases agen cyre and agen willa. Ælfric’s use of these terms is mainly in the first series of CH, an early work of his written c. 989. While Ælfric continued to write about merit and grace throughout his career, his later use of agen cyre is sporadic and scattered. One is tempted to think that the hortatory nature of the homilies might be a reason for his use of the phrases in them, to keep the parishioners on the righteous path, but his later

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careful writer like Ælfric, who used agen cyre with disproportionate frequency, would be

aware of the potential for word play inherent in the language—the metaphor of turning,

even in its lexicalized form, is far from "dead" in this passage. Even as conventional

metaphors, Old English words of turning carry a conscious connotation of choice and

will.

This turning to God exists within the larger metaphor structure of LIFE AS

JOURNEY. In this homily Ælfric translates Jeremiah 17:10, "Ic afandie manna heortan; ך

heora lendena. ך ælcum sylle æfter his færelde. ך æfter his agenre afundennysse;"225 (I

examine the hearts of men and their loins, and give to each according to his journey and

according to his own experience). Ælfric's færelde translates the Vulgate's viam,

providing a scriptural kernel for the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor which he expands in his

telling of the Epiphany story. Like the turnings of the Magi first toward Herod and then

back to Christ, Ælfric represents conversions to God as changes of direction on the

journey of life. While the individual turnings are important, what really matters to Ælfric

is the overall course of one's life. Turnings are only milestones, moments when the path

is chosen, not the destination. In his sermon for St. Stephen's Day, Ælfric praises Stephen

as a model over Paul because the moment of conversion is not as important as the steady

course throughout life:

homilies rarely use the phrases either. Kleist suggests that Ælfric may have simply grown tired of the subject and moved on. Kleist, Striving, 205–09. For the dating of Ælfric’s works, I rely upon Peter Clemoes, “The Chronology of Ælfric’s Works,” in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of Their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickens (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1959), 244. Clemoes is an older source but remains the standard source for Ælfric’s chronology. See Ælfric, Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. John C. Pope, o. s. 259 and 260, Early English Text Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 1:136–45; CH Introduction, xxi. 225 CH 1.7, 238, lines 184–86; CH Introduction, 58–59.

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Se ðe yfel sy geefenlæce he paules gecyrrednesse; se ðe god sy

þurhwunige on godnysse mid stepane; for ðan þe ne bið nan angin

heriendlic. buton godre geendunge.226

(Let him who is evil emulate Paul's conversion; let him who is good

persist in goodness with Stephen, because no beginning is praiseworthy,

without a good conclusion.)

Unsurprisingly given that Ælfric was a Benedictine monk, we see similar emphasis on

continuing in proper living over the moment of conversion in the Benedictine Rule,

which when discussing the fourth step of humility quotes Matthew 10:22: "Qui

perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salbus erit"; or "Se ðe þurhwunað oþ ende, he bið

gehealden"227 (he who perseveres to the end, he is saved).

The Magi are not the only travelers in Ælfric's story. The monk refers to the Star

of Bethlehem as an "angenga betwux heofenan ך eorðan," (solitary-walker between

heaven and earth) that oferglad (glided over, traversed) the land.228 The star is separated

from others of its kind, gliding along a middle path that is a kind of exile from both the

divine and the mundane. Ælfric's choice of angenga evokes another, distinctly Anglo-

Saxon, aspect of the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor by introducing the motif of the solitary

226 CH 1.3, 205, lines 191–94. 227 Benedict, Rule, 48–49; Schröer, “Angelsächsischen,” 27. This transcription of the Benedictine Rule, which is from St. Gall 914, includes the word usque (to the end) which is present in only a few manuscripts of the Vulgate, placing an emphasis on the journey to the end and leading a righteous life that is not present in most versions. Robert Weber and Roger Gryson, eds., Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatem Versionem, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007), 1540. “St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 914,” 42, accessed August 30, 2013, http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/description/csg/0914. 228 CH 1.7, 234, lines 72–73, 75.

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wanderer. The word angenga only appears four other times in the corpus and by only one

other writer.

The Beowulf-poet uses the word twice to refer to Grendel, who, while far from

divine, is another exile who dwells in a liminal region, in this case one between humanity

and hell.229 One of those uses of angenga is preceded two lines earlier by the phrase

hwyrftum scriþað (pass in [their] turnings/ramblings), lines 162–66:

men ne cunnon

hwyder helrunan hwyrftum scriþað.

Swa fela fyrena feond mancynnes,

atol angengea oft gefremede,

heardra hynða;230

(men do not know where demons pass in their turnings. Thus the enemy of

mankind, the terrible solitary-walker, often committed many crimes, hard

humiliations.)

As Thomas Hill points out, hwyrftum scriþað is also used in Christ and Satan, line 629,

to describe the wanderings of the damned, and that there is a tradition in patristic

commentary of circular motion being characteristic, or even definitional, of their

condition. The phrase may be inspired by Psalm 11:9, "in circuitu impii ambulabunt" (the

229 Beowulf, lines 165 and 449. The hapax legomenon sceadugenga (shadow-walker) is also used of Grendel in line 703. While angenga or other an- words are not used in the OE corpus to describe Cain, the poet’s use of the word evokes the monster’s notorious ancestor. Oliver Emerson has enumerated the appearances of the Cain legend in medieval English literature, and describes Cain's wanderings at “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English,” PMLA 21, no. 4 (1906): 868. For a more recent overview, see Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 58–85. 230 Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, Klaeber’s Beowulf, 8.

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wicked will walk in a circle).231 These passages reinforce the motif of aimless

wanderings, without clear destination, as being associated with sin, and of a righteous

path as one without deviation. And in a context of predestination, such circular

wanderings mirror the Boethian turn to the divine element of soul outlined in the previous

chapter, only in these cases it is a turn to the non-divine nature of these particular souls.

The other two uses of angenga are also by Ælfric, in the opening of his sermon

for the dedication of the church of Archangel Michael. In that sermon Ælfric twice uses

the word to refer to a bull that wanders off from the herd ("singularem incedere solitum"

and "solivagus incederet" in an anonymous Latin homily on the subject), and when the

drovers search for him, the solitary bull makes manifest a place that is holy to Michael.232

The version of the sermon found in The Blickling Homilies 17 uses sundorgenga (one

who walks apart), a hapax legomenon, instead of angenga.233 Like the star, the bull

wanders alone, away from the company of his own kind, and manifests holiness, the

opposite of Grendel's solitary wanderings which manifest his monstrosity and abjection.

The notion that the journey to God is a form of exile from the world of men recurs

231 Stanley Greenfield argues to the contrary, contending the phrase in Christ and Satan is best translated as "speed on their way [to hell]," and the line in Beowulf refers to Grendel hovering about Heorot in the night. But not only has Greenfield's argument been rebutted by Hill, it does not take into account the metaphor and cognitive implications underlying hwyrft. While the word can mean passage or way, the underlying implication is of roundabout movement, not a direct line. See Thomas D. Hill, “‘Hwyrftum Scriþað’: Beowulf, Line 163,” Mediaeval Studies 33 (1971): 379–81; Stanley B. Greenfield, “Old English Words and Patristic Exegesis—hwyrftum scriþað: A Caveat,” Modern Philology 75, no. 1 (August 1977): 44–48; Thomas D. Hill, “The Return of the Broken Butterfly: Beowulf, Line 163, Again,” Mediaevalia 5 (1979): 271–81. 232 CH 1.34, 465, lines 8–18; CH Introduction, 282–83; PL 95:1522C–D. 233 R. Morris, ed., The Blickling Homilies, Early English Text Society, o. s. 58, 63, and 73 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 199.

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throughout Old English literature, notably in The Wanderer and The Seafarer, where we

shall see different an- words deployed.

While angenga is rare, -genga is a productive root in Old English, with some

nineteen other compound formed with it. In addition to the aforementioned sundorgenga

and sceadugenga, common ones include sægenga (mariner, ship), biggenga (inhabitant),

and the pair foregenga (predecessor, ancestor) and æftergenga (successor, descendant).

Rarer compounds include ingenga (invader), nihtgenga (evil spirit), nidgenga (one who

walks in misery, a hapax legomenon used to describe Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel line

632), and the pair hindergenga (apostate) and huselgenga (communicant). In some of

these compounds the word denotes a literal passage through a region, as in ingenga, but

in others the passage is metaphorical, a mental or life journey, as in hindergenga.

Other an- words crop up throughout the Old English corpus. Anhaga/anhoga

(solitary one) makes twelve appearances in the corpus, eleven times in poetry.234 The

word's use in Elene is perhaps the closest to the angenga of the Star of Bethlehem when

Cynewulf uses anhagan to refer to Judas, the man who manifests the way to the True

234 Holthausen derives anhaga from haga, meaning "Hecke, Einfriedigung" (hedge, enclosure). Hence an anhaga is a "self-enclosed one," Holthausen, Altenglisches, s. v. “haga,” 147. The anhogan spelling, however, is difficult to account for etymologically, leading I. L. Gordon to conclude that they are separate coinages, with the latter from the verb hogian and originally meaning "one who thinks alone," and with both words eventually becoming synonymous, "one who dwells alone, hermit." I. L. Gordon, “Traditional Themes in The Wanderer and The Seafarer,” The Review of English Studies 5, no. 17 (January 1954): 3. Patrick Cook suggests that the anhogan spelling tends to be used where thought and mental activity are at the forefront, but adduces little evidence for this conclusion. Patrick Cook, “Woriað þa Winsalo: The Bonds of Exile in ‘The Wanderer,’” Neophilologus 80 (1996): 127–28. See also: Anne L. Klinck, Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 106.

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Cross, in line 604, a man who occupies an intermediary position between Jews and

Gentiles.

In other works, the word is used to refer to a solitary, holy figure—a hermit—as

when a demon describes Andrew as an anhagan in line 1351 of Andreas, or in The

Phoenix, lines 87 and 346. The DOE glosses the uses of the word in The Phoenix as

"perhaps referring to its uniqueness," basing this sub-sense on the references to the

phoenix in Isidore's Libri Etymologiarum Sive Originum, which describes the bird as

singularis et unica, and on the corresponding passages in the Lactantius poem on which

the Old English one is based.235 As indicated by the dictionary’s use of “perhaps,” these

sources only support the unique sense in the first of the two uses of the word in the Old

English Phoenix. The first use of anhaga in line 87 of the Old English poem is paralleled

by unica in Lactantius, line 31. But the second use of the word in The Phoenix has no

corresponding reference to its unique nature in Lactantius. The Old English, lines 346b–

49, reads:

Oþþæt se anhoga

oðfleogeð, feþrum snel, þæt him gefylgan ne mæg

drymendra gedryht, þonne duguða wyn

of þisse eorþan tyrf eþel seceð.236

(Until the solitary one flies off, fast on feathers, so that the retinue of

rejoicers cannot follow him; then the joy of hosts seeks his homeland

away from the turf of this earth.)

235 Isidore, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Sive Originum, ed. W. M. Lindsay, vol. 1 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1911), 1:12.7.22; DOE, s. v. an–haga, an–hoga. 236 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:176.

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The corresponding lines, 158–60, in Lactantius read:

Turbaque prosequitur munere laeta pio.

Sed postquam puri peruenit ad aetheris auras,

mox redit; illa suis conditur inde locis.237

(And the crowd pursues in blessed, joyful service. But after she comes to

the breezes of the pure upper air, soon she returns; then she is hidden in

her own region.)

Not only does this second passage from Lactantius lack the description of the bird as

unique, the verb condo, which is generally defined as ‘conceal, hide,’ can carry a more

specific poetic sense of ‘to hide by sailing away, to lose sight of,’ so this second Latin

passage can carry a sense of separation and even exile as well.238

Such separation and exile is the connotation that anhaga/anhoga most often

carries. The subject of The Wanderer is twice called an anhaga, including an earmne

anhogan (wretched solitary-one) in line 39. Beowulf is also an earm anhaga in line 2367,

following the death of Hygelac and his solitary swim back to shore. And the same phrase

is used in Maxims II line 19 to describe a wolf in its lair.239 In Resignation line 89,

anhoga denotes an exile who longs for the ocean voyage that will carry him back to his

people. And the panther of the eponymous Exeter Book poem is an anstapa (lone-

237 Lactantius, “The Phoenix,” in The Oxford Book of Latin Verse, ed. William Garrod Heathcote (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), www.bartleby.com. 238 LS, s. v., condo, 409. 239 Stanley Greenfield notes that earm anhaga is a formulaic phrase denoting exile, and that sometimes the adjective may be substituted by another, appear on another the line, or even be omitted altogether—all of which makes one question the utility of considering it to be a formula. In any case, anhoga/anhaga is associated with exile. Stanley B. Greenfield, “The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of ‘Exile’ in Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” in Hero and Exile: The Art of Old English Poetry, ed. George H. Brown (London: Hambledon Press, 1989), 126–27.

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stepper) and symbolic of Christ, who is both man and God, indicating Christ’s solitude

and separation from the rest of humanity, and possibly his unique nature as well.

The one seeming exception is the personification of death in Cynewulf's Guthlac

B who is called an anhoga in line 997, where it appears that the connotation of abjection

is being used to characterize a figure which is utterly evil. Yet even here the description

of death in lines 991–999 seems familiar:

ac him duru sylfa

on þa sliðnan tid sona ontyneð,

ingong geopenað. Ne mæg ænig þam

flæsce bifongen feore wiðstondan,

ricra ne heanra, ac hine ræseð on

gifrum grapum. Swa wæs Guðlace

enge anhoga ætryhte þa

æfter nihtscuan neah geþyded,

wiga wælgifre.240

(but in that cruel hour he opens the door for himself, the entrance is

revealed. Nor can anyone encased in flesh, high or low, withstand it with

life, but it rushes at him with greedy grasps. So through the darkness, the

cruel solitary one, the bloodthirsty warrior, pressed near, right up to

Guthlac.)

Stanley Greenfield and Daniel Calder observe that in these lines death, the anhoga,

sounds all the world like Grendel, the angenga—he comes in the night, bursting through

240 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:143.991–99.

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the door, greedy and grasping, intent upon killing, and James Rosier has identified other

descriptions of death in Guthlac B that resonate with descriptions of Grendel.241 It would

appear that Cynewulf’s personification of death evokes Grendel, and the poet's choice of

anhoga with its association with abjection and solitude arises from this imagery.

The hapax legomenon anfloga (solitary-flier) famously appears in The Seafarer,

lines 53–66a, where it turns and urges the speaker to travel:

Swylce geac monað geomran reorde,

singeð sumeres weard, sorge beodeð

bitter in breosthord. Þæt se beorn ne wat,

esteadig secg, hwæt þa sume dreogað

þe þa wræclastas widost lecgað.

Forþon nu min hyge hweorfeð ofer hreþerlocan,

min modsefa mid mereflode

ofer hwæles eþel hweorfeð wide,

eorþan sceatas, cymeð eft to me

gifre ond grædig, gielleð anfloga,

hweteð on wælweg hreþer unwearnum

241 Stanley B. Greenfield and Daniel G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1986), 178; James L. Rosier, “Death and Transformation: Guthlac B,” in Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature, ed. James L. Rosier (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), 87n. Furthermore, Andy Orchard has demonstrated the general influence of and borrowing from Beowulf on and by Cynewulf and Cynewulfian poets, especially in The Fates of the Apostles and Andreas. See Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 163–66; Andy Orchard, “Both Style and Substance: The Case for Cynewulf,” in Anglo-Saxon Styles (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 293–94; Andy Orchard, “The Originality of Andreas,” in Studies on Andreas, ed. Andrew Scheil, forthcoming.

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ofer holma gelagu. Forþon me hatran sind

dryhtnes dreamas þonne þis deade lif,

læne on londe.242

(Likewise the cuckoo instructs with its sad voice, the guardian of summer

sings, proclaims sorrow, bitter in the breast-hoard. This man, the grace-

blessed man, does not know what some endure, those who travel widest on

the paths of exile. Therefore now my heart turns/travels beyond the

enclosed breast, my mind turns/travels wide over the sea-flood, over the

whale's home, over the regions of the earth. It comes again to me,

ravenous and greedy, the solitary flier calls, irresistibly urging the breast

on the corpse-path, over the surface of the sea, therefore the joys of the

Lord are hotter to me than this dead life, transitory on earth.)

In the passage we have both the hyge and the modsefa using a verb with the base

meaning of to turn, hweorfan, to refer to what Peter Clemoes considers an Alcuinian

242 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:231. The wælweg in line 63 is usually emended to hwælweg; see the discussion on this point later in this chapter. The forþon in line 58 is a much debated crux. Klinck argues that the word, which appears multiple times in the poem, should be rendered "variously according to the context." In contrast, Robert Bjork consistently translates the forþons as “and so.” In my translation of this passage I have deviated from Muir's punctuation, which I have let stand in the Old English above, and translated forþon with its typical meaning of therefore, indicating that it is the cuckoo's call and the signs of spring given in the previous lines that are providing the impetus for the speaker's mind to turn to journeying. I have also started a new thought and sentence with cymeð eft to me. Translating the forþon in line 58 as the adversative yet, while providing a tempting contrast to the thoughts of the esteadig secg (grace-blessed man) in the immediately preceding line, ignores the cuckoo's call and the coming of spring and is out of step with the overall flow of the passage. For a summary of the debate over this crux see Ibid., 2:526–27; Klinck, OE Elegies, 130–31; I. L. Gordon, The Seafarer (London: Methuen, 1960), 41; Robert E. Bjork, Old English Shorter Poems: Wisdom and Lyric, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 32 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 32–33.

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journey outside the body.243 In his De animae ratione Alcuin writes of the capabilities of

the mind:

Sensus ille vivus atque coelestis, qui mens vel animus nuncupatur, tantae

mobilitatis est, ut ne tum quidem, cum sopitus est, conquiescat: tantae

celeritatis, ut uno temporis puncto coelum collustret, [et] si velit, maria

pervolet, terras et urbes peragret.244

(That living and divine sense, which is called the mind or intellect, is of

such swiftness, so that it does not rest even when it has been put to sleep.

It is of such speed that in one moment of time it traverses the heavens, and

if it wills, it flies over the seas, traverses lands and cities.)

F. N. M. Diekstra has pointed out that Alcuin here is apparently expanding on Lactantius

and Hilary of Poitiers, who express similar notions of the mind/soul traveling apart from

the body.245 Lactantius writes in De opificio Dei:

Et miratur aliquis, si divina mens Dei per universas mundi partes intenta

discurrit, et omnia regit, omnia moderatur, ubique praesens, ubique

diffusa; cum tanta sit vis ac potestas mentis humanae intra mortale corpus

inclusae ut ne septis quidem gravis hujus ac pigri corporis, cui alligata est,

243 Clemoes, “Mens Absentia,” 62–65. 244 PL 101:642–643. 245 F. N. M. Diekstra, “The Seafarer 58–66a: The Flight of the Exiled Soul to Its Fatherland,” Neophilologus 55, no. 1 (1971): 434–35. While there are no surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of Hilary of Poitiers or the prose works of Lactantius, Hilary's commentary on the Psalms is cited by Bede, and Lactantius's De opificio Dei is cited by Aldhelm and Lantfred. So these works seem to have been available in Anglo-Saxon England, if not directly, then through secondary sources. Lapidge, AS Library, 69, 212, 319.

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coerceri ullo pacto possit, quominus sibi liberam vagandi facultatem,

quietis impatiens, largiatur?246

(Can anyone wonder if the divine mind of God roams, stretched out

through all parts of the world, and [if] it rules all things, governs all things,

present everywhere, diffused everywhere, when the strength and power of

the human mind should be so great, even though it is enclosed in a mortal

body, such that it cannot be restrained or hindered by any means from

granting itself the unconstrained faculty of wandering in the insensibility

of sleep by the barriers of this heavy and slow body to which it has been

bound ?)

And in its description of the mobility of the soul, the imagery of Hilary of Poitiers seems

to be an even closer match to Alcuin:

Ergo ad imaginem Dei homo interior effectus est rationabilis, mobilis,

movens, citus, incorporeus, subtilis, aeternus. Quantum in se est, speciem

naturae principalis imitatur, dum transcurrit, dum circumvolat, et dicto

citius nunc ultra oceanum est, nunc in coelos evolat, nunc in abyssis est,

nunc orientem occidentemque perlustrat, dum numquam ut non sit

aboletur (natura quidem Dei in his omnibus est), neque ut alibi adsit,

decedit aliunde. Sed anima humana in hac sensus sui mobilitate ad

imaginem opificis sui facta est, dum naturam Dei mobilitas animae

246 PL 7:66.

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perennis imitatur, nihil in se habet corporale, nihil terrenum, nihil grave,

nihil caducum.247

(Therefore, in the likeness of God, the inner man was created rational,

changeable, moving, quick, incorporeal, delicate, eternal. Much in him is

copied from the quality of the principal nature, yet it traverses, yet it flies,

and faster than I say it, now it is beyond the ocean, now it flies in the

heavens, now it is in the deeps, now it wanders through east and west, yet

it can never be destroyed (indeed the nature of God is in all these things)

nor in order to appear elsewhere, does it withdraw from another place. But

the human soul, in the sense of its mobility, was made in the image of the

creator, while the mobility of the soul imitates the nature of eternal God, it

has in itself nothing material, nothing earthly, nothing burdensome,

nothing perishable.)

In Alcuin and Lactantius it is the mind, mens or animus that roams. Lactantius

compares the mens humana with the mens Dei and Alcuin calls the mind coelestis

(divine), making it part of the unitary, transcendent soul. In Hilary it is the soul, or anima,

that roams, yet he explicitly paints the anima as a rational entity. But we do not see the

same conflation of the mental faculties with a unitary soul in The Seafarer, indicating that

perhaps these Latin texts were either not a direct influence on the poet or that the notion

of the unitary soul, while known as a philosophical and theological concept in Anglo-

Saxon England, had not been internalized as a general construct of the mind/soul.248

247 PL 9:721. 248 Richard North makes the same observation regarding hyge and modsefa in this passage representing the mind and not the soul, but he identifies possible sources for the

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The Seafarer passage uses both hyge and modsefa to correspond to Alcuin's

animus and Hilary's rational anima. Both words are typically associated with the

cognitive faculties of the mind as opposed to the divine soul or life spirit, indicating that

the faculty calling the speaker to hweorfan (turn or travel) is the rational one, that of free

will.249 This turning in The Seafarer, however, appears to be the sense of hweorfan

meaning to roam, wander, and as such the verbs themselves do not denote specific

moments when agency is exercised.250 But the passage in its entirety does convey such a

moment, with the speaker's mind deciding whether or not to undertake a journey, either

literally or figuratively.

This passage corresponds to an earlier one in lines 33–38 where, instead of the

anfloga, it is the speaker's heortan geþohtas or modes lust that calls upon him to journey:

Forþon cnyssað nu

heortan geþohtas, þæt ic hean streamas,

sealtyþa gelac sylf cunnige;

monað modes lust mæla gehwylce

ferð to feran, þæt ic feor heonan

elþeodigra eard gesece.251

passage in Germanic tradition. North's observations on the usage of the words are useful, but his hypothesis on sources is strained. Richard North, Pagan Words and Christian Meanings, Costerus New Series 81 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), 99–121. 249 I have translated hyge and modsefa as ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ to preserve the poet’s use of distinct words. But given the Anglo-Saxon conflation of heart and mind, one cannot read this passage as making the modern distinction of emotion (heart) and rationality (mind). 250 DOE, s. v. hweorfan, def. A.2.e.i (forthcoming). 251 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 230. Here I also render forþon as therefore, understanding that it is the darkness of winter and implied coming of spring, described in the previous lines, that prompts the thoughts of travel.

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(Therefore now my heart thoughts urge, that I myself try the deep streams,

the tumult of the salt-waves; the desire of my mind prompts at all times

my spirit to journey, that I might seek the land of foreigners far from

here.)

Again, we have mod and geþohtas (thoughts), and the poet is expressing an intellectual

process. It is the mind, with its desires and thoughts, pressing the ferð, another noun for

the cognitive faculty, to travel the seas. The choice of the verb cnyssan in line 33 is

unusual and evocative. The DOE glosses this particular use in The Seafarer as meaning

to urge, the only example of this particular sense; the more usual sense is to beat or

batter.252 While the semantic intent of the verb here is undoubtedly in the sense of to

urge, the metaphor of tempestuous thoughts and emotions battering and driving the

rational faculty of the mind, as a storm batters and drives a ship at sea, is, as discussed

below, found elsewhere in Old English literature. In particular, it is used in Wærferth’s

translation of Gregory’s Dialogi with the metaphor of a ship of the mind, “ic eom

gecnyssed mid þam stormum þære strangan hreohnesse in þam scipe mines modes”253 (I

am battered with the storms of the strong tempests in the ship of my mind.) So the

Seafarer-poet’s use of cnyssan would appear to be part of a common metaphor of

tempestuous emotions battering reason.

252 DOE, s.v. cnyssan. For a discussion of the syntactic ambiguities and how they impact the meaning of these lines see, Michael Matto, “True Confessions: ‘The Seafarer’ and Technologies of the ‘Sylf,’” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103, no. 2 (April 2004): 168. 253 Hans Hecht, Bischof Waerferths von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen über das Leben und die Wundertaten Italienischer Väter und über die Unsterblichkeit der Seelen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965), 5.

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The question is what is the anfloga? Is it the same thing as the modes lust, the

heortan geþohtas? Peter Clemoes interprets it so, likening it to Alcuin's description of the

mind swiftly flying over imaginary seas and landscapes. But the phrase "cymeð eft to

me" raises a challenge to Clemoes's ascription of Alcuin as the inspiration for this

passage. The anfloga is depicted as being alien to the speaker, while Alcuin's unitary soul

encompasses the mind and the individual faculties, memories, and traits that make each

human a distinct me. If the anfloga were Alcuin's unitary soul, it would be the speaker

who is flying, instead of being an entity separate and distinct from the speaker. The

Seafarer's soul is more akin to Lockett's construction of the soul as an alienable

component of the human being, lacking agency and, at best, serving as goad toward good

behavior, rather than Alcuin's and Ælfric's conception of the rational and agentive sawol

guiding every action the body takes.254 It is as if the poet has overlaid Alcuin's and

Hilary's classical imagery on top of a vernacular conception of the mind and soul.

Ida Gordon interprets the anfloga as a literal bird, the cuckoo mentioned earlier in

the passage, going so far as to dismiss any metaphorical meaning as "almost absurd."255

Such a literal reading has some things to recommend it. The literal interpretation resolves

the discrepancy regarding the unitary soul, reinforces the ubi sunt motif of the journey

and separation, and evokes thoughts of the joys of spring.256 The cuckoo, and in

254 Lockett, AS Psychologies, 33. 255 Gordon, Seafarer, 41–42n. 256 Ifor Williams suggests the cuckoo's invocation of the ubi sunt motif may be due to the fact that its call "cw" in Old Welsh also means "where." Ifor Williams, Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry (1944) (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1970), 13. P. L. Henry describes the various folkloric and early Christian, especially Celtic, uses of the bird-as-soul metaphor, P. L. Henry, The Early English and Celtic Lyric (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 137–49. See also, Graham Chapman et al., “Migratory Patterns of

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particular its call, is simultaneously a standard poetic symbol of two concepts. For a

seafarer, the cuckoo heralds travel, with its accompanying sadness, separation, and loss.

And for the landsman, the esteadig secg, who does not understand the hardship and loss

associated with sea voyages, it heralds the arrival of spring. But while Gordon's

identification of the anfloga as the cuckoo is intriguing and operates on one level of

interpretation, her dismissal of the metaphorical interpretation is unsatisfying in that it

does not entertain the possibility that these lines can simultaneously have both literal and

metaphorical meaning. There is no need to choose between the two readings.

The imagery of the sea which the bird-soul journeys across also bears

significance, as the sea is a traditional symbol for human life in patristic writing, and as

we shall see in Old English works as well.257 The use of wælweg (corpse-path) in line 63

gives the poem a darker tone, indicating perhaps the speaker is near death, and his soul is

urging him to depart this life. Most editions emend the word to hwælweg (whale-path) to

make the noun, as opposed to the verb, alliterate and to make the word more readily

comprehensible, but G. V. Smithers suggests the word be left standing.258 While a case

can be made for emendation on metrical grounds, the case for letting the manuscript

stand is also strong. Hwælweg is more metrically regular, but, as Smithers points out,

there are many exceptions to the rule that verbs not alliterate in the first half-line, and

there is no sound explanation for any alleged scribal error. The metaphor of DEATH AS

JOURNEY that wælweg evokes contrasts with and reinforces the metaphor of LIFE AS

Unladen Mercian Swallows, Martins, and Plovers as Depicted in Arthurian Legend,” Media Aves 10, no. 1 (1975): 13–27. 257 G. V. Smithers, “The Meaning of the Seafarer and the Wanderer,” Medium Ævum 26, no. 3 (1957): 150. 258 Ibid., 137–38.

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JOURNEY in the poem and is repeated as the hapax legomenon neosiþ (corpse journey) in

the poem Vainglory, which immediately follows The Seafarer in the manuscript.

Furthermore, forþsiþ (literally ‘journey forth’) is a common Old English euphemism for

death, so the metaphorical concept of a corpse-path would have been familiar to both

poet and reader. Moreover, the wælweg need not be a literal death. Rather, death here

may represent a renunciation of material possessions and temporal joys in favor of divine

joys available in this present life, the dryhtnes dreamas of line 65.259 Finally, the root wæl

is far more productive in forming compounds than hwæl, although both wælweg and

hwælweg themselves are hapax legomena. While hwælweg is a logical and unsurprising

emendation in this particular context, wælweg also makes sense, and there does not seem

to be a reason to prefer one word over the other.260

In this interpretation of the passage, it is the mod, the intellectual faculty, that

possesses agency. All the words for mind and soul in the poem fall into Lockett's

category of the mind, the individual personality, and not the divine soul, and this

placement of agency with the mind aggravates the tension between Clemoes's Alcuinian

inspiration for the poem and Lockett's lexical categories. The imagery of the poem is

distinctly Alcuinian, but an Alcuinian unitary soul should not exhibit the split of mind

from soul that is indicated by the vocabulary of the poem, which follows Lockett's

taxonomy.

259 Of course, whether dryhten here refers to God or a temporal lord and whether land refers to the earthly plane of existence or simply to being ashore is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. See Stanley B. Greenfield, “Attitudes and Values in The Seafarer,” in Hero and Exile: The Art of Old English Poetry, ed. George H. Brown (London: Hambledon Press, 1989), 159–60. 260 For a summary of the debate over emendation, see Klinck, OE Elegies, 131–33, 134–35, 139.

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Gregory's Regula pastoralis also uses metaphorical turnings in a sea voyage to

reflect a separation of the various faculties of the mind/soul, but to a different effect. In

his translation, Alfred expresses it in a manner similar to that found in the

aforementioned passage from Wærferth’s translation of Gregory’s Dialogi.

Swiðe eaðe mæg on smyltre sæ ungelæred scipstiera genoh ryhte stieran,

ac se gelæreda him ne getruwað on ðære hreon sæ ך on ðæm miclan

stormum. Hwæt is ðonne ðæt rice ך se ealdordom butan ðæs modes storm,

se simle bið cnyssende ðæt scip ðære heortan mid ðara geðohta ystum, ך

bið drifen hider ך ðider on swiðe nearwe bygeas worda ך weorca, swelce

hit sie ongemong miclum ך monigum stancludum tobrocen?261

(An unskilled steersman can very easily steer straight on a calm sea, but a

skilled one does not trust him on the rough sea and in the great storms.

And what then is that dominion and authority except the storm of the

mind, which is ever buffeting the ship of the heart with waves of those

thoughts and will drive it hither and thither in the very narrow twists of

words and works, as if it were wrecked among great and many rocks?)

Alfred's treatment of this passage is as close to verbatim as an idiomatic translation is

likely to get. Alfred expresses the chaotic turning and movement of the ship with the

phrases "hider ך ðider" (hither and thither) and "on swiðe nearwe bygeas" (in very narrow

261 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 1:58. The Latin text reads: “Quia quieto mari recte nauem et imperitus dirigit, turbato autem tempestatis fluctibus, etiam peritus se nauta confundit. Quid namque est potestas culminis, nisi tempestas mentis? In qua semper cogitationum procellis nauis cordis quatitur, huc illucque incessanter impellitur, ut per repentinos excessus oris et operis quasi per obuiantia saxa frangatur.” Grégoire le Grand, Règle Pastorale, ed. Bruno Judic, Sources Chrétiennes 381–82 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1992), 1.9, pp. 1.158–60 .

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twists), which translates Gregory's "per repentinos excessus" (through unexpected

deviations).262 Such turning reflects the instability of constant turning discussed in the

previous chapter, and as Alfred expands on the metaphor of the mind as a ship present in

the original Latin, the desirability of stability becomes apparent here as well.263

Not only does the passage emphasize stability and the importance of steering a

straight course in life, but also relevant to the question of agency and free will is that the

metaphor invokes an internal force as the source of instability, rather than an external

one. It is, of course, a commonplace for Anglo-Saxon writers to hold that the devil, or

262 The DOE places this particular appearance of byge under the figurative sense of “twist, turning, digression” (def. 3.c.) and suggests, based on the context, that one possible translation of on swiðe nearwe bygeas is ‘in very narrow straits.’ While this suggestion has the virtue of making an idiomatic modern translation, it strays from the original Latin, loses the metaphorical force of the turnings present in Alfred's selection of bygeas, and alters the imagery he presents. The passage gives no hint of sailing narrow seas, and in fact the imagery of a ship on the open sea is more to the point. In a strait the options for movement are one dimensional, they cannot truly be hider ך ðider. But on the open sea a storm may result in much more chaotic movement, in any direction, which surely is the intent of the passage. "Very narrow twists" preserves the Latin meaning and imagery better. Bygeas is also cognate with byht (modern bight), which reinforces the sense of turning or curving, and while hinting at shallow seas, presents a waterway that would be less constrained than a strait. DOE, s. v. “byge”; Holthausen, Altenglisches, s. v. “byge, byht,” 39. 263 As seen in the previous chapter, Alfred also uses the metaphor of a storm-tossed ship in the translation of Augustine's Soliloquies, although there the ship is at anchor and the turning is a pivoting, rather than a change in direction of travel. Asser uses a similar metaphor to describe Alfred’s governance of his kingdom: “Sed tamen ille solus divino fultus adminiculo susceptum semel regni gubernaculum, veluti gubernator praecipuus, navem suam multis opibus refertam ad desideratum ac tutum patriae suae portum, quamvis cunctus propemodum lassis suis nautis, perducere contendit, haud aliter titubare ac vacillare, quamvis inter fluctivagos ac multimodos praesentis vitae turbines, non sinebat.” William Henry Stevenson, Asser’s Life of King Alfred (1904) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), para 91, 77. (But nevertheless once he had taken up the helm of the kingdom, he alone, supported by divine aid, just like an extraordinary helmsman, struggled to guide his ship laden with much wealth to the desired and safe haven of his homeland, even though just about all of his sailors were weary; he did not allow [the course] in any way to waver or vacillate, although [it lay] between wave-tossed and various whirlpools of this present life.)

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various of his minions, is the cause of such turmoil in the mind (e.g., Juliana, lines 364–

68). But in this passage it is the modes storm, the storm of the individual's mind, that

scuppers agency, presenting an Augustinian view that no matter how much the individual

wishes to maintain a straight course, the mind itself cannot be controlled without divine

intervention. These two sources of turmoil, external and internal, are not necessarily

contradictory; either or both can be operational in any given instance. Regardless of the

source of the instability, however, it is still the mind in which these storms reside, and as

a result an individual’s faculty of reason cannot fully control its own mind.

Also of significance is that this passage presents the mind and the heart as distinct

entities, a distinction which registers little dissonance to the reader who has a modern

understanding of physiology, but which is striking in the Anglo-Saxon context where the

two are usually identical, both conceptually and physiologically. The passage presents the

scip ðære heortan / nauis cordis (ship of the heart) as a container afloat in a larger

container of the entire mind, one that is buffeted by the unconscious modes storm (mind's

storm) / cogitationum procellis (waves of thoughts).264 The ship represents some subset

of the mental faculties, and given the imagery of the steersman discussed in the previous

chapter and the context with which Gregory and Alfred continue to extend the metaphor

in the passages discussed below, it would appear that the scip ðære heortan / nauis cordis

is the rational faculty, the conscious will, which is buffeted by the emotions and

memories of what we would today characterize as the unconscious mind.

A few lines earlier, Gregory presents a slightly different, but compatible,

metaphor for the physiology of the mind, which Alfred translates as:

264 Wilcox, “Alfred’s Epistemological,” 191.

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Ac ðonne he wilnað to underfonne ða are ך ðone ealdordom, he ðencð on

ðam oferbrædelse his modes ðæt he sciele monig (g)od weorc ðæron

wyrcan, ך he ðencð mid innewearde mode ðæt he gierneð for gilpe ך for

upahafenesse ðæs folgoðes, smeageað ðeah ך ðeahtigað on hiera modes

rinde monig god weorc to wyrcanne, ac on ðam piðan bið oðer gehyded.

Ac on uteweardum his mode he liehð him selfum ymbe hine selfne bie

ðæm godum weorcum.265

(But when he wishes to undertake that honor and rule, he thinks on the

surface of his mind that he must do many good works therein, and he

thinks with the inner mind that he desires it for pride and for the elevation

of the office; though he considers and takes counsel in the rind of the mind

to perform many good works, but in the pith something else is hidden. But

in the outward part of his mind he deceives himself about himself as to the

good works.)

Aside from translating Gregory's magisterium pastorale (pastoral office) as are ך ðone

ealdordom (honor and rule), a change consistent with his focus on kingship rather than

episcopal office, Alfred's translation here is again quite faithful to the original. Here the

consciousness is on the surface of the mind, not unlike a ship on the surface of the sea,

265 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 1:55. Latin text: “Sed plerumque hii qui subire magisterium pastorale cupiunt, nonnulla quoque bona opera animo proponunt; et quamuis hoc elationis intentione appetant, operaturos tamen se magna pertractant; fitque ut aliud in imis intentio supprimat, aliud tractantis animo superficies cogitationis ostendat. Nam saepe sibi de se mens ipsa mentitur.” Grégoire le Grand, Règle Pastorale, 1.9, pp. 156–58. (But for the most part, those who desire to undertake pastoral office also propose in their minds some good works. Although they seek this with a motive of vainglory, they still occupy themselves with performing great works; and it happens that the motive suppresses one thing in the innermost [thoughts], but upon the surface of thought presents another to the contemplator's mind. For the mind often lies to itself about itself.)

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while the tempests of lusts and emotions well up from the unconscious depths.266 This

idea that one's agency is beset and often controlled by one's unconscious desires remains

a thorny issue for modern philosophers, as in Schopenhauer's:

Ich kann thun was ich will: ich kann, wenn ich will, Alles was ich habe

den Armen geben und dadurch selbst einer werden,—wenn ich will!—

aber ich vermag nicht, es zu wollen; weil die entgegenstehenden Motive

viel zu viel Gewalt über mich haben, als dass ich es könnte. Hingegen

wenn ich einen anderen Charakter hätte, und zwar in dem Maaße, daß ich

ein Heiliger wäre, dann würde ich es wollen können; dann aber würde ich

auch nicht umhin können, es zu wollen, würde es also thun müssen.267

(I can do what I will: I can, if I will it so, give all I have to the poor and

thereby become one of them myself—if I will it so!—but I cannot will it

so, because the conflicting motives have too much power over me to be

able to. However, if I had another character, and to the extent that I were a

saint, then I would be able to will it so, but then I would not be able to

help but will it so, and so would have to do it.)

Gregory's presentation of free will as the steersman, a rational homunculus, resolves this

conundrum. By making the will rational, one faculty within the larger mind, it is distinct

from the unconscious desires that can buffet and swamp it. Much as Gregory presaged

266 This model of the mind’s storms is also consistent with Lockett's construct of a hydraulic mind. 267 Arthur Schopenhauer, “Über die Freiheit des Menschlichen Willens (1839),” in Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1881), 43–44. Schopenhauer's sentiment is often popularly epigramized as "Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will" (one can choose what to do, but not what to want), but alas nineteenth-century German philosophers are rarely so pithy.

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Althusser's turning, here he seems to be anticipating Frankfurt. The modes storm /

cogitationum procellis can also be interpreted as Frankfurt's "first-order desires," and the

scip ðære heortan / nauis cordis are the "second-order desires." The steersman who can

control the tiller and execute his second-order desires has free will.268

Gregory and Alfred return to the metaphor of the MIND AS STEERSMAN near the

end of Regula pastoralis, only this time giving the mind greater agency over unbidden

thoughts and desires that buffet it during dreams:

Hit wæs awriten ðæt hit wære swelce se stiora slepe on midre sæ, ך forlure

ðæt stiorroður. Ðæm stiorere bið gelicost se mon ðe ongemong ðisses

middangeardes costungum ך ongemong ðæm yðum unðeawa hine

agimeleasað. Se deð swa se stiora ðe ðæt stiorroðor forliesð, se ðe forlæt

ðone ymbhogan ך ða geornfulnesse ðe he mid stioran scolde ðære sawle ך

ðæm lichoman. Se bið swiðe onlic ðæm stioran ðe his stiorroðor forliest

on sæ, se ðe forlæt ðone foreðonc his gesceadwisnesse ongemong ðæm

bisegum ðisses middangeardes. Ac gif se stiora his stiorroðor gehilt, ðonne

cymð he orsorglice to lande, hwilum ðeah ongean wind ך ongean ða yða,

hwilum mid ægðrum. Swa deð ðæt mod, ðonne hit wacorlice stiereð ðære

sawle: sume unðeawas hit ofertrit, sume hit ær gesihð, ך utan becierð; ðæt

is ðæt hit ða gedonan unðeawas swincende gebete, ך ða ungedonan

foreðoncelice becierre, swa se stiora deð: sume ða yða he becerð mid ðy

scipe, sume hit oferstigð.269

268 Frankfurt, “Freedom,” 6–7, 15. 269 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 2:431–433. Gregory’s Latin reads: “Hinc superius scriptum est: Et eris quasi dormiens in medio mari, et quasi sopitus gubernator

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(It was written that it was as if the steersman slept in the middle of the sea

and lost the tiller. This steersman is most like the man who neglects

himself among the temptations of this earth and among the waves of vices.

He does as the steersman who loses the tiller, who loses the care and

devotion with which he should steer the soul and the body. He is very like

the steersman who loses the tiller at sea, he who loses the forethought of

his discretion among the troubles of this earth. But if the steersman holds

his tiller, then he comes safely to land, sometimes against the wind and

amisso clauo [Proverbs 23:34]. In medio enim mari dormit, qui in huius mundi tentationibus positus, prouidere motus irruentium uitiorum quasi imminentes undarum cumulos negligit. Et quasi gubernator clauum amittit, quando mens, ad regendam nauem corporis, studium sollicitudinis perdit. Clauum quippe in mari amittere, est intentionem prouidam inter procellas huius saeculi non tenere. Si enim gubernator clauum sollicite stringit, modo in fluctibus ex aduerso nauem dirigit, modo uentorum impetus per obliquum fundit. Ita cum mens uigilanter animam regit, modo alia superans calcat, modo alia prouidens declinat, ut et praesentia elaborando subiciat, et contra futura certamina prospiciendo convalescat.” Grégoire le Grand, Règle Pastorale, 3.32, p. 2.492. Migne has “findit” (splits) instead of “fundit” (streams), PL 77:114B. (Hence it is written above: And you will be as one sleeping in the middle of the sea, and as a steersman asleep when the tiller is lost. Indeed, he sleeps in the middle of the sea who, situated among the temptations of this world, neglects to foresee the tumults of vices rushing as if they were the threatening peaks of waves. And when the mind loses the devotion to duty for the ruling ship of the body, it is as if the steersman loses the tiller. Of course, to lose the tiller at sea is not to hold to one's provident intention among the storms of this earth. Indeed, if the steersman governs the tiller with care, sometimes he steers the ship directly into the waves, sometimes he streams through the assaults of the winds obliquely. Thus when the mind vigilantly guides the soul, sometimes it tramples upon one, overcoming it, sometimes it providently deflects another; so that it with effort subjugates present struggles and with foresight grows strong against future struggles.) Gregory’s metaphor here is also reminiscent of the end of Book 5 of The Aeneid, where Aeneas’s steersman, Palinurus falls asleep at the tiller and slips overboard to be drowned. Before he dies, Virgil says of Palinurus in 5.852–53, “clavumque adfixus et haerens / nusquam amittebat oculosque sub astra tenebat” (and he held the tiller fast, on no occasion did he let it loose, his eyes fixed upon the stars). Not only does the passage have a sleeping steersman, but his vision is fixed on the heavens, as in the metaphors of the turning gaze examined in the last chapter. The Aeneid was known in pre-Conquest England and the allusion would not have been lost on an Anglo-Saxon audience. Lapidge, AS Library, 335–36.

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against the waves, sometimes with both. So does the mind, when it

vigilantly steers the soul: some vices it tramples upon, some it sees

beforehand and avoids; that is so that it laboriously repairs the vices it has

committed, and those it has not done it providently avoids, as the

steersman does: some waves he avoids with the ship, some it rides over.)

Here we have the mind, likened to a steersman, steering the soul. Unlike the earlier

passage, Alfred adds material that is not present in Gregory's Latin. Specifically, he adds

the line, "Se deð swa se stiora ðe ðæt stiorroðor forliesð, se ðe forlæt ðone ymbhogan ך

ða geornfulnesse ðe he mid stioran scolde ðære sawle ך ðæm lichoman" (He does as the

steersman who loses the tiller, who loses the care and devotion with which he should

steer the soul and the body). By including this line Alfred reinforces the idea, present

toward the end of the Latin passage in Gregory's "ita cum mens vigilanter animam regit"

(thus the mind vigilantly guides the soul), that the mind and soul are separate and that the

mind has governance of both the soul and the body, which are not capable of exercising

free will or agency. Alfred also adds the clause regarding coming safely to land, "ðonne

cymð he orsorglice to lande," emphasizing the destination over the journey itself.

Unlike the others, this passage ascribes agency to the rational and conscious mind.

Both the Old English translation and the Latin original of the passage designate foreþanc

(forethought) and the ability to providere (to foresee) as the specific rational faculty most

responsible for salvation. Human providence is an image of divine providence, serving

the same purpose on a smaller scale. And unlike the earlier use of the steersman

metaphor, where the mind was incapable of executing agency without divine assistance,

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here the conscious mind is capable of steering the body and soul, and the loss of the tiller

and control in this passage is during sleep and unconsciousness.

Also of note is the idea that thought is at the root of foreþanc, while vision is at

the root of providere and providentia, reflecting a different metaphor at work and an

increased emphasis on the rational nature of the process in the Old English than in the

Latin. Foreseonnes and foresewennes exist in Old English, but their only appearances in

the corpus are by the translator of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, hinting that it was a

word in his idiolect or perhaps an element-by-element translation of the Latin provisio. In

contrast, foreþanc is Alfred's term throughout both Regula pastoralis and his translation

of Boethius, and is used by others, including the Beowulf-poet and Cynewulf. It is by far

the more common term. In contrast to the noun forms, the verb foreseon is rather widely

used to refer to having foreknowledge and is not restricted to the translator of Bede,

although about half of the verb’s appearances are in that work, and the verb foreþencan

does not carry the sense of foreknowledge, being used instead to mean to premeditate an

action.270 Metaphor theory may have explanatory power for usage, but it is not predictive

of it.

Alfred returns again to the steersman metaphor in his closing of the work:

To ðæm ic wæs gened mid ðinre tælnesse, ðæt ic nu hæbbe manege men

gelæd to ðæm stæðe fullfremednesse on ðæm scipe mines modes, ך nu giet

hwearfige me self on ðæm yðum minra scylda. Ac ic ðe bidde ðæt ðu me

on ðæm scipgebroce ðisses andweardan lifes sum bred geræce ðinra

gebeda, ðæt ic mæge on sittan oð ic to londe cume, ך arær me mid ðære

270 DOE, s. v. fore–þanc, fore–sewennes, fore–seonnes, fore–þencan, fore–seon.

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honda ðinra geearnunga, forðæmðe me hæfð gehefegad sio byrðen minra

agenra scylda.271

(I was compelled by your reproach to such an extent that now I have led

many men to that shore of perfection in the ship of my mind, and yet I

myself am still tossed about on the waves of my sins. But I beseech you

that you extend a plank of your prayers to me in the shipwreck of this

present life, so that I may sit upon it until I come to land, and raise me up

with the hand of your merits, because the burden of my own sins has

oppressed me.)

And again Alfred is generally faithful in his translation, although he omits the line, "dum

monstrare qualis esse debeat pastor inuigilo, pulchrum depinxi hominem pictor foedus"

(while I am intent to demonstrate what a pastor ought to be, I, a horrible painter, have

painted a handsome man). Here Gregory shifts agency away from the individual,

indicating that even he who can inspire and lead others to salvation may not be capable to

achieve it for himself without divine assistance.

Such nautical imagery is common in Old English poetry, but two passages stand

out for the similarity to these passages in Regula pastoralis. The first is Andreas, lines

369–381, where Christ pilots Andreas and his men through a storm at sea. Christ is

literally the steersman, even though "næs him cuð þa gyt hwa þam sæflotan sund wisode"

271 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 2:467. Latin text: “Ecce, bone uir, reprehensionis meae necessitate compulsus, dum monstrare qualis esse debeat pastor inuigilo, pulchrum depinxi hominem pictor foedus aliosque ad perfectionis littus dirigo, qui adhuc in delictorum fluctibus uersor. Sed in huius quaeso uitae naufragio orationis tuae me tabula sustine, ut quia pondus proprium deprimit, tui meriti manus me leuet.” Grégoire le Grand, Règle Pastorale, Book 4, 2:540.

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(it was not yet known to them who guided the sailing of the ship).272 In this passage

Andrew and his men have willingly placed their fates in the hands of the steersman.

Though they do not know his divine nature, they have surrendered their agency to him,

trusting that he will safely get them to their destination. While the passage lacks

metaphors of turning, the lack of agency and the inability of the human to steer the ship

through a storm-tossed sea is the same. In Alfred’s case the journey ends in shipwreck,

requiring divine rescue, and in Andreas the steersman is divine.

The second passage of note is Cynewulf's Christ II, lines 850–66:

Nu is þon gelicost swa we on laguflode

ofer cald wæter ceolum liðan

geond sidne sæ sundhengestum

flodwudu fergen. Is þæt frecne stream

yða ofermæta þe we her on lacað

geond þas wacan woruld, windge holmas

ofer deop gelad. Wæs se drohtað strong

ærþon we to londe geliden hæfdon

ofer hreone hrycg. Þa us help bicwom

þæt us to hælo hyþe gelædde,

godes gæstsunu, ond us giefe sealde

þæt we oncnawan magun ofer ceoles bord

hwær we sælan sceolon sundhengestas,

ealde yðmearas, ancrum fæste.

272 ASPR 2:13.

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Utan us to þære hyðe hyht staþelian,

ða us gerymde rodera waldend,

halge on heahþu, þa he [to] heofonum astag.273

(Now it is most like as if we sail on the sea-flood, over cold water,

throughout the broad sea, travel in ships, in sea-steeds, in sea-wood.

Throughout this mutable world, that stream is dangerous, the immense

waves that we toss on here, the windy seas, over the deep way. The way of

life was hard before we had sailed to land over the stormy ridge. Then

help, God's spiritual son, came to us, that led us to salvation in the harbor

and gave us the gift that we might know where over the ship's side we

should moor the sea-steeds, the old wave-horses, fast with anchors. Let us

fasten our hope to that harbor, holy in the heights, which the Ruler of the

heavens made room for us when he ascended to heaven.)

While Cynewulf does not distinguish between various faculties of the mind or

soul, or even allude to the mind at all, the imagery of the sea journey is similar, although

not quite the same. The ofermæta (immense) waves offer different imagery than Alfred's

nearwas bygeas (narrow twists), and here the emphasis is on knowing where it is safe to

drop anchor, rather than on steering a straight course—although the passage does use

gelædan (to lead) in reference to God guiding the ship into harbor. Here, as in the Latin

and Old English Regula pastoralis, the human is incapable of achieving the stability of

safe harbor without God's help. The agency for salvation lies with God, and the

destination of stability and salvation is prized over aimless wandering caused by the

273 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:78. See also the discussion of the sources of this passage in the previous chapter.

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vicissitudes of life, the fractious desires of the mind, or changes in course between God

and mammon or Christ's Bethlehem and Herod's Jerusalem.

The same sentiment can be found in The Seafarer, line 109: "Stieran mon sceal

strongum mode, ond þæt on staþelum healdan"274 (A man must steer a strong mind, and

hold it in a fixed position), and also in Maxims I, line 50a:

Styran sceal mon strongum mode. Storm oft holm gebringeþ

geofen in grimmum sælum; onginnað grome fundian

fealwe on feorran to londe, hwæþer he fæste stonde.275

(A man must steer a strong mind. A storm often brings the sea, the ocean,

to grim conditions; angry, brown [waves] begin to journey from afar to

land, whether it might stand fast.)

This last passage employs mixed metaphors, that of a person steering the mind and the

traveling waves challenging the stability of land. Yet throughout each of these passages

the importance of governing one's mind, one's lusts and desires, is emphasized.276 Sea

travel represents perils and instability, compared to the safety of solid ground and harbor.

The imagery of an unstable mind also appears in The Wanderer, lines 50b–62a,

when upon seeing a flock of seabirds, unbidden thoughts cross the mind of the wanderer

274 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:233. The manuscript reads mod rather than mon, but is almost universally emended. Phillips makes a case that mod should be retained, arguing that it is an instance of polyptoton that emphasizes the dual nature of the mod as something that controls and must be controlled. While Phillips provides a reading that would have implications for our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon concept of the mind, the appearance of the same line in Maxims I with an unambiguous mon is strong evidence that mod here is indeed scribal error and that the emendation is warranted. Phillips, “Heart,” 190–93. 275 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:250. 276 Antonina Harbus, “The Maritime Imagination and the Paradoxical Mind in Old English Poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 39 (December 2010): 38–39.

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and evoke an emotional reaction, or concern over the lack thereof:

Sorg bið geniwad,

þonne maga gemynd mod geondhweorfeð;

greteð gliwstafum, georne geondsceawað

secga geseldan; swimmað oft on weg—

fleotendra ferð no þær fela bringeð

cuðra cwidegiedda. Cearo bið geniwad

þam þe sendan sceal swiþe geneahhe

ofer waþema gebind werigne sefan.

Forþon ic geþencan ne mæg geond þas woruld

for hwan modsefa min ne gesweorce

þonne ic eorla lif eal geondþence,

hu hi færlice flet ofgeafon,

modge maguþegnas.277

(Sorrow is renewed when the mind turns throughout the memory of

kinsmen; the mind greets them joyfully, it eagerly examines the

companions of men; they often swim away—the minds of the floating

ones do not bring many intelligible utterances. Care is renewed to them

who would very often send a weary mind over the binding waves.

Therefore I cannot think why in all this world my mind should not grow

277 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:216–17.

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dark when I contemplate all the lives of men, how they suddenly gave up

the hall, the brave retainers.)278

Translating the opening lines of this passage is a challenge. Grammatically, both

mod (mind) and gemynd (memory) can serve as either the subject or object for

geondhweorfeð. Anne Klinck takes gemynd to be the subject saying, "the image of a

memory moving through a mind is more natural than the converse, and the subject of

greteð and geondsceawað can be taken to be an implied he."279 But if the metaphor is, as

in Gregory and Alfred, a ship of the rational mind afloat on a sea of memories, desires,

and emotions, then the mind can naturally turn or rove throughout memory. And indeed

we see the werigne sefan sent ofer waþema gebind in line 57, indicating that the ship of

the mind is the intended metaphor. Nor do we have to assume an implied subject for the

other two verbs; mod can serve for both. Taking the cognitive faculty as the subject,

rather than the entire person, including memories, soul, and body, implies that it is the

mind, not the physical person or individual, which greets and examines the companion

birds; cognition is at play here, not actions.

The interplay of words meaning mind is strong in this passage. The choice of ferð

to represent the minds of the birds not only alliterates with fleotendra, but the poet's use

of a word other than mod to signify the avian minds creates a distinction between the

mind of the wanderer and those of the birds, even though ferð and mod are synonyms

referring to the cognitive, rational faculty. This use of ferð in reference to birds is

surprising in that cognition would not normally be associated with them, which is why

278 There are many alternative translations for this passage. In the discussion here I only highlight the ones most relevant to my argument. For a fuller listing of the alternatives, see Klinck, OE Elegies, 115–19; Muir, Exeter Anthology, 2:509–10. 279 Klinck, OE Elegies, 115.

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they do not speak in cuðra cwidegiedda, making noise rather than speech.280 Klinck

argues that ferð should be read as fyrd (host, troop).281 These two interpretations are not

mutually exclusive, as the poet may be engaging in visual wordplay to present multiple

levels of meaning. On a literal level, it is indeed a troop or flock of seabirds that swims

away, yet in the imagination of the wanderer the birds represent the minds of lost

companions. The use of ferð to indicate the minds of birds creates a dissonance,

simultaneously emphasizing the birds’ likeness to human companions, while the surprise

inherent in the choice of a word associated with human cognition highlights that the birds

are not, in fact, human. The word is also visually similar to feorh (life-spirit), which

might be the more appropriate choice for avian companions, providing another level of

wordplay. Adding to the lexical diversity for words of the mind in the passage, it is a

weary sefa that is sent over the waves into exile, and the passage concludes with the

compound modsefa not growing dark with mourning as it should. All these words fall

within the category of cognitive faculties, and the lexical variation in the passage

emphasizes that the focus is limited to cognition—the mind exhibits the same powers and

limitations regardless of what it is called.

280 Graham Midgley, “The Wanderer, Lines 49–55,” The Review of English Studies 10, no. 37 (1959): 53–54. See also T. P. Dunning and A. J. Bliss, eds., The Wanderer (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), 44 for a fuller discussion on why cwiddegiedda should be translated as 'utterance.’ Regarding the lack of intelligence in birds, the modern epithet bird-brain springs to mind. However, recent experiments highlighting tool use among New Caledonian Crows and the linguistic capabilities of Grey Parrots indicates that this millennia-old prejudice may be unfounded. See, for example, Auguste M. P. von Bayern et al., “The Role of Experience in Problem Solving and Innovative Tool Use in Crows,” Current Biology 19, no. 22 (December 1, 2009): 1965–68; I. M. Pepperberg, “Communication in Grey Parrots,” in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (San Diego: Elsevier Science and Technology Books, 2006), 642–46. 281 Klinck, OE Elegies, 117.

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As in the ship passage from Alfred's Pastoral Care, in The Wanderer we see the

conscious and willful faculties reacting to emotions and desires that pass through the

mind, unbidden and uncontrolled; specifically the narrator cannot control the fact that he

does not mourn the deaths of others.282 The verb geþencan in line 58 (I cannot think why

in all this world) points to the limits of cognitive faculties in probing and explaining such

emotions and desires. And here again, the conscious cognitive faculties are distinct from

desires. Alternatively, line 51 (“þonne maga gemynd mod geondhweorfeð”) could be

read as the mind turning through thought, like a ship turning and tossing on the sea,

evoking the loss of control created by an unstable and unfixed mind as discussed in

chapter two. This alternative reading connects to the end of the poem where God is held

out as a stable foundation. Regardless of which type of metaphorical turning one uses to

interpret it, the passage signals a limitation on agency in that the cognitive faculties alone

cannot control emotions and desires.

We again see turning marking the journey of the mind a few lines later in lines

70–72:

Beorn sceal gebidan, þonne he beot spriceð,

oþþæt collenferð cunne gearwe

hwider hreþra gehygd hweorfan wille.283

(A warrior should wait when he speaks a vow, until, resolute, he knows

for certain to what place the thought of his breast will turn.)

Again we have thought (gehygd) turning (hweorfan) with an implication of directionality

(hwider), and again the thought is not consciously directed. It is only after the thought has

282 For a discussion regarding whether or not the mind grows dark, see Ibid., 118–19. 283 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:217.

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reached its destination that the warrior will know (cunne) where it is. In this way it

anticipates modern neuroscientific studies that indicate the brain makes decisions before

the conscious person is aware of them.284 The lines present a concept of the person as an

entity distinct from their mind and thoughts,285 and they also presents a tension between

the resolute (collenferð) warrior and his unstable thoughts.286 This gnomic line is

cautioning against prematurely uttering oaths because one's own mental instability may

prevent their fulfillment.

The LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor, with turns and deviations along the way, is not a

common one in Anglo-Saxon literature, but it is used as a deliberate and extended

metaphor in several major works, including Alfred's translation of Regula pastoralis,

Ælfric's Epiphany homily, The Seafarer, and The Wanderer. In each of these works

stability and the ability to maintain a steady and righteous course through life, i.e., toward

God, is prized, and what free will and agency is possessed by humans lies in the rational

faculty of the mind. But the degree of agency possessed by humans and the nature and

construct of the mind/soul varies from writer to writer, and sometimes even within a

single work.

In all of the turnings in the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor, the writers maintain an

implicit distinction between will and agency. Humans possess free will, Ælfric's agen

cyre, but their agency is often limited. The choice is always up to the person, but the

284 Perhaps the most famous of these studies is Benjamin Libet et al., “Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness-Potential): The Unconscious Initiation of a Freely Voluntary Act,” Brain: A Journal of Neurology 106, no. 3 (September 1983): 623–42. 285 Antonina Harbus, “The Medieval Concept of the Self in Anglo-Saxon England,” Self and Identity 1, no. 1 (2002): 87. 286 In her dissertation, Soon Ai Low very briefly examines this point. Low, “Anglo-Saxon Mind,” 103.

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ability to make the change is not always. Sometimes the steersman can maintain control

of the tiller, sometimes God's assistance is required. Also, the rational faculty of the

mind, which does not have a specific lexical label in Old English, is where choice and

agency, however limited, rests. Restricting the power of agency to the rational faculty

also serves to allow internal desires and conflicts to interfere with the journey toward

God and salvation. Not only does the rational faculty have to govern the body and soul, it

must also govern the irrational faculties of rest of the mind. Humans are not only beset by

devils and demons; their own lusts and frailties doom them as well.

All the works examined here consistently use words referring to the mind, rather

than the soul, when invoking free will and agency. Mod, sefa, modsefa, hyge, and ferhþ

are all used interchangeably in this context, sawol, feorh, and gast are not. This division

also sheds light on Godden's distinction between the classical construct of the unitary

soul and the vernacular one of a division. The classical construct is completely absent in

many works, and where it does appear, it does so imperfectly. Writers such as Alfred and

Ælfric explicitly espouse the Augustinian doctrine of a unified soul, yet their metaphors

expose the fact that this classical construct of the soul has not been internalized in their

thoughts and beliefs; it remains something of a foreign concept. When they think about

the soul, that thought is within the vernacular tradition, unless they consciously, and

presumably rationally, will to think otherwise.

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Chapter 4—TURNING-AS-TRANSFORMATION/TRANSLATION

You've got me turning up and turning down

And turning in and turning 'round

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

—“Turning Japanese,” The Vapors287

Metaphors of turning do not always encompass changes of direction. Turning can

also represent transformation, a change in the nature of the subject. This TURNING-AS-

TRANSFORMATION metaphor can be readily seen in the Old English verb awendan and

words based on the same root, which can refer to turning, changing, and even translation.

For example, there is this homiletic description of the unending torments of hell where

awendednes simply denotes change: “þær biþ fulnys butan awendednysse, and biternes

butan swetnesse”288 (there will be foulness without change, and bitterness without

sweetness). The passage is from “The Devil’s Account of the Next World,” found in

London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius A. iii, a mid eleventh-century homiletic

manuscript, in which a demon describes both heaven and hell to an anchorite.289 Vercelli

Homily 9, copied about seventy-five years earlier than Tiberius A. iii, relates the same

287 David Fenton, "Turning Japanese," New Clear Days (United Artists Records, 1980). 288 Fred C. Robinson, “The Devil’s Account of the Next World,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73 (1972): 366, line 21. 289 Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 285.

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narrative and uses the same word, but in this case the word refers to the unending joys of

heaven, “rice butan awendednesse”290 (kingdom without change).

Yet the sense of awendednes is not restricted to change, it can also, like words

based on the root hwearf-, refer to movement. Ælfric, writing in the last decade of the

eleventh century, uses awendednes to refer to the movement from life to death:

Hwæt is godra manna deað buton awendednys. and færr fram deaðe to

ðam ecan life? Se lichama awent to eorðan. and anbidað æristes. and on

ðam fyrste nan ðing ne gefret.291

(What is the death of a good man except an awendednys and a journey

from death to the eternal life? The body turns to earth and awaits the

resurrection, and in that period feels nothing.)

There are several ways to read awendednes in this passage. Ælfric may be using it in the

sense of movement, picking up and playing with the meaning of færr (journey). Another

way to interpret the word is the DOE’s categorization of the word’s use in this passage in

the basic sense of change or alteration, echoed in “se lichama awent to eorðan” (the body

turns to earth).292 Or awendednes can be read as ‘translation,’ which blends both

transformation and movement, especially movement of a corpse.293 Elsewhere

awendednes is used to refer to translation of a text from one language to another, as it is

in the colophon to the Old English translation of Apollonius of Tyre:

290 D. G. Scragg, The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, Early English Text Society o. s. 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), xxiii; 178, line 175. 291 CH 2.13, 132, lines 155–58. 292 DOE, s. v. ā–wendednes, sense 1.a; ā–wendan, sense II.B.2. 293 Ibid., s. v. ā–wendednes, sense 2.

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Gif hi hwa ræde, ic bidde þæt he þas awændednesse ne tæle, ac þæt he

hele swa hwæt swa þar on sy to tale.294

(If anyone reads this, I ask that he not blame this translation, but that he

heal whatever in it is to be reproached.)295

The Latin translatio is literally a movement, a carrying across, physically as in the

translation of a saint’s relics or figuratively as in the carrying across of meaning from one

language to another. But the root awend- does not just denote movement, change, or

transformation as the other roots of turning do, it can also denote and connote a specific

type of change, that of translation.

The TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION metaphor inherent in awendan and

associated words brings with it a number of implications and questions about what is

being transformed and who effects the transformation. In a translation the text is

obviously changed, but is there also a transfer of authority, not only from original to

translated text, but from original author to the translator? Are the author and translator

changed as well? And is there a consequent transformation or valorization of the target

294 Goolden, OE Apollonius, 42. Found in Cambridge, CCC MS 201 from the first quarter of the eleventh century. Gneuss and Lapidge, AS Manuscripts, 82. 295 Eichi Kobayashi reads hele as helan (to conceal, hide) and notes that in this context it probably means something closer to ‘deal leniently with’ than ‘to conceal.’ Goolden does not give a translation of the line, but his glossary includes helan and not hælan (to heal, correct). Also Goolden notes the sentiment in this colophon is akin to that of Alfred in the preface to his translation of Boethius, so Goolden seems to interpret the passage in the same way as Kobayashi, even though Alfred asks the reader to “him ne wite” (not blame him) for any errors, a different verb. I have taken hele to represent hælan, as the more usual practice in such colophons is to modestly beg for correction, but the line is ambiguous. Also, compare it to the difference in Ælfric’s sentiments in his Latin and Old English prefaces to his Catholic Homilies, discussed later in this chapter. Eichi Kobayashi, ed., The Story of Apollonius of Tyre in Old and Middle English (Tokyo: Sansyusya Publishing Co., 1991), 19, 66–67; Goolden, OE Apollonius, 62, 67–68; Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, 1:239.

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language and culture that accompanies the transfer of meaning and authority? Nor is

transformation limited to texts. Running throughout the Anglo-Saxon discussion and

practice of translation is the notion that meaning is enclosed within the text and that

translation has the power to transform not only the external form of the words, but also

this immanent essence of the text. This relationship between the form of a text and its

essence is akin to that between the body and soul. This notion of transformation also

associates the practice of translation with certain types of works whose Old English

manifestations are usually thought to be original compositions rather than translations in

the modern sense of the word, notably homilies, biblical poetry, and riddles. And while

the TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION metaphor does not inherently encode notions of

agency and free will, the discussion surrounding translation often does engage with those

concepts.

But before we launch into a discussion of the TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION

metaphor, we must recognize that, like awendan, the modern words we use to denote

both translation and metaphor are themselves metaphors, which in turn color our

perception of translation. Our present-day English verb to translate is from translatus, the

past participle of Latin verb transferre, literally meaning, as one might expect, to transfer,

to carry across. So a translation of a text is a figurative carrying across of meaning from

one language to another. These literal and figurative senses operate in both Latin and

present-day English, although the sense of translation as a physical movement is no

longer widely used in present-day English, being for the most part restricted to the

particular case of moving a saint’s relics from one location to another.296 Consequently,

296 OED, s. v. translate, v., sense I.1.a.

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in present-day English the words translate and translation would seem to have lost their

metaphoric force; they are dead metaphors, with only etymologists and Latinists

recognizing the literal meaning of the words and the connection between translate and

transfer—after all, to someone who does not know Latin, translatus and transferre do not

appear to be forms of the same verb.

The Greek μεταϕορά also literally means a transference, a carrying across, and in

modern Greek the noun is commonly used to mean ‘transportation,’ but as in English and

Latin it can also mean the use of a word in a new sense—a metaphor. The verb form,

μεταϕέρω, can also mean to translate a text into another language, to change or alter, to

change course, to pervert, to carry news or report, to employ a word in a new sense, and,

of course, to employ a metaphor or engage in the transfer of meaning from one word to

another.297 If we define metaphor as the application, carrying across, or translation of a

lexical set from one experiential domain onto another, the connection is obvious; the

word metaphor is itself a metaphor.

In contrast to the classical languages and to present-day English, Old English has

no term for metaphor itself, but forms of the Latin metafora, including adverbial and

adjectival forms, were used by Bede, Lanfranc, Aldhelm, and others, and the Latin word

appears three times in Anglo-Latin glossaries.298 While the use of metaphors can be

297 Henry George Liddell and Henry Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with revised supplement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), s. v., μεταϕέρω, μεταϕορά, 1118. 298 R. E. Latham and D. R. Howlett, eds., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), s. v., metaphora, metaphorice, metaphoricus, 6:1781. Two of the Anglo-Latin glossaries are cited by Toronto’s DOE Web Corpus: an eighth-century Latin glossary CorpGl 2 (Hessels),“metafora: translatio rerum” (metaphor: the transfer of things/properties), a gloss that indicates the term would be unfamiliar to readers, but is still entirely in Latin; and the Latin-OE glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A.III, ClGl 1 (Stryker), “inculcare: sepe repetere et aliquando inculcare

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found throughout the Old English corpus and the classification would have been familiar

to educated readers, it seems to have been a non-native category.

This metaphor of TRANSLATION–AS–TRANSFER operates in Greek, Latin, and to a

lesser extent present-day English.299 But Old English, which uses a different word for

translation, has another metaphor available, that of turning. The Old English verb

awendan can denote the action of translating a work from one language to another, but it

is not limited to this sense. It shares many of the senses of other verbs of turning,

including: to physically turn or move, to return, to die (i.e., move from life to death), to

overturn or overthrow, to redirect a mental or spiritual inclination, to religiously convert,

to avert or turn aside, and to alter or transform. And used in reference to legal documents,

such as charters and wills, the verb can connote an illicit alteration or perversion.300 As a

result, Anglo-Saxon translation, as Kathleen Davis notes, “implies that signification is not

est inbecweðan est enim metaforicos ab eo quod est calcaræ,” (inculcare: often to repeat and sometimes to emphasize, inbecweðan, it is indeed metaphorical from that which is stomped upon), an entry which assumes the adjectival form would be understood. The third glossary is The Leiden Glossary, which records a gloss found in Cassiodorus’s Psalterium expositio XXVIII.76: “Metafora: idest translatio cum mutatur nomen aut uerbum ex eo loco in quo proprium est” (Metaphor: that is translation when a name or word is moved from its characteristic place), John Henry Hessels, A Late Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of the Leiden University (The Leiden Glossary) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), 25. 299 The root -fer-, having a sense of bearing or carrying, is at the heart of the Greek μεταϕέρω, the Latin transferre, and the PDE transfer. The Indo-European root is *bher-, which also gives us the OE beran and the PDE to bear. Buck, Dictionary, 10.61, 707. 300 DOE, s. v. a–wendan, sense II.A.1.f.iii. Interestingly, in the Latin preface to his Lives of Saints Ælfric uses vertere to mean to translate, a verb not normally used in this sense: “diligenter curauimus uertere Simplici et aperta locutione quatinus proficiat Audientibus” (we diligently undertook to turn/translate with simple and open locution to the extent it would benefit the listeners). Perhaps Ælfric was thinking in English and inserted the literal vertere for awendan, rather than the more conventional transferre. Ælfric, “Praefatio (LS),” in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Saint’s Days Formerly Observed by the English Church, ed. Walter W. Skeat, vol. 1, Early English Text Society (London: N. Trübner & Co., 1881), 1:4, lines 22–25.

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something that can be picked up and moved, but that it must always be reformulated by

context and intellect.”301

The Old English word for interpreter, wealhstod, is based on yet another

metaphor. The word is a compound of wealh, foreigner, and stod, a pillar or post.302 A

wealhstod or interpreter is one who stands between two actors and mediates their words

and transactions. But this role is not necessarily limited to translating from one language

to another, but encompasses explication and exegesis. Isidore of Seville glosses the Latin

interpres thusly:

Ingeniosus, quod intus vim habeat gignendi quamlibet artem. Inventor

dictus eo quod in ea quae quaerit invenit. [...] Interpres, quod inter partes

medius sit duarum linguarum, dum transferet. Sed et qui Deum quem

interpretatur et hominum quibus divina indicat mysteria, interpres vocatur

quia inter eam quam transferet.303

(Talented, one who has the power within of producing any sort of art.

Discoverer, because he “comes upon” what he is searching for. [...]

Translator, because he is the medium “between the sides” of two

languages when he translates. But the person who interprets God is also

called an interpreter for the humans to whom he reveals divine

mysteries.)304

301 Kathleen Davis, “King Alfred’s ‘Pastoral Care:’ Translation and Production of the Lord’s Subject” (Ph. D. diss., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 1997), 90. 302 Holthausen, Altenglisches, s. v. stod, 323. The sense of this second element is not certain, but Holthausen’s explanation is probably correct. 303 Isidore, Etymologiarum, 1:10.122–23. Isidore’s mysteria echoes Jerome. 304 The translation here is Barney’s. Isidore, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 220.

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This idea of TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION is hardly unique to Old English.

Translation is generally recognized as being more than the simple transference of

meaning; it is inevitably an interpretive act. Roman Jakobson has defined it as “an

interpretation of verbal signs” by other means, by the same language in the case of

intralingual translation, by a different language in interlingual translation, or by

nonverbal signs in intersemiotic translation or “transmutation.”305 And while the extant

Anglo-Saxon discussion of translation does not explicitly include it, the implicit idea of

translation as an interpretive and transformative act can be found scattered throughout

that discussion.

Our understanding of Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward translation, and the extent to

which interpretation, exegesis, and adaptation is allowed before a text is no longer

considered a “translation,” is complicated by the fact that, unlike grammar and rhetoric,

there are no comprehensive Anglo-Saxon discourses on the theory and practice of

translation.306 What discussion exists consists of brief descriptions of translation practice

that are repeatedly alluded to and hence become commonplaces. These commonplaces

center around the distinction between word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation.307

What is not discussed in this limited commentary on translation, with one significant

exception, is the status of a translated text and what authority transfers to the translated

version. The exception, of course, is that of prose translations of the Bible, where there is

anxiety about accurately representing the spiritual message in the target language. The

305 Roman Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” in On Translation, ed. Reuben A. Brower (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 233. 306 T. R. Steiner, English Translation Theory, 1650–1800 (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975), 7. 307 Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1.

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lack of a discourse on translation leads to the mistaken impression that Anglo-Saxon

readers viewed translation as a mere transfer of meaning, merely a copy of the original

that has been rendered in another language. M. J. Toswell notes, “the disjunctive notion

of translation, the idea that a translation was not an extension or an explication of the

original but a new version, or an alternative version, does not seem to have appeared in

this period.”308 Yet, while Anglo-Saxon writers do not overtly express such a disjunctive

notion, that does not stop them from creating translations that change or go beyond the

scope of the original text. Examples of such disjunctive translations range from Alfred’s

changes to Gregory’s Regula pastoralis or Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae to the

verse translations of biblical books, like Genesis, Exodus, or Judith. In addition to the

word-for-word and sense-for-sense translations, Anglo-Saxon translators routinely

engaged in this disjunctive third mode of translation—that of artistic imitation or

adaptation. And in the case of Anglo-Saxon translators, one reason why such translations

are not openly discussed may be the metaphor of transformation underlying the verb

awendan; the implicit assumption would be that any translation, except perhaps a word-

for-word gloss, would entail some degree of such transformation. In other words, it went

without saying.

While poets and other writers have been engaged in this third mode of translation

since antiquity—Horace describes it in the first century B. C. E. and Quintillian discusses

308 M. J. Toswell, “‘Awended on Engliscum Gereorde’: Translation and the Old English Metrical Psalter,” Translation and Literature 5, no. 2 (1996): 176. In her later work, Toswell moderates this conclusion, acknowledging Bately’s argument regarding exposition and transformation, and concluding that Alfred’s prose Psalter will, at times, “explain or situate the material for the reader or listener, while the Old English metrical Psalter will “cut rather than explain” difficult passages. M. J. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter, Medieval Church Studies 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 320–21.

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imitation in book ten of his Institutio oratoria309—John Dryden may have been the first

to formally include this third category in discussion of translation theory.310 In 1680 he

labels the three categories as metaphrase (word-for-word), paraphrase (sense-for-sense),

and imitation, the latter being when the translator takes on the original author’s voice, but

alters the originally intended purpose or sense of the text. In Dryden’s words, the

translator “assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sence, but to forsake

them both as he sees occasion: and taking only some general hints from the Original, to

run division on the ground-work, as he pleases.”311 Although Anglo-Saxon writers do not

discuss this third mode of translation, there is no lack of Old English texts that engage in

it. One may, as Dryden does, question whether this third mode is actually translation,

holding that “running division” is a creative act that transcends ordinary translation. But

even if one does not extend the label of translation to include this third mode, the

309 Quintillian, however, appears to have been unknown in Anglo-Saxon England. Lapidge, AS Library, 68, 69, 128–29. 310 For a brief overview of Dryden’s influence on ideas of translation in subsequent generations, see William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 215–17. 311 “Run division” is a term from music meaning to compose a descant or florid variation on a simple melody. Dryden’s discussion of the topic reads in full: “All translation I suppose may be reduced to these three heads. First, that of Metaphrase, or turning an Author word by word, and Line by Line, from one Language into another. Thus or near this manner was Horace in his Art of Poetry translated by Ben. Johnson. The second way is that of Paraphrase, or Translation with Latitude, where the Author is kept in view by the Translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly follow’d as his sense, and that too is admitted to be amplyfied, but not alter’d. Such is Mr. Wallers Translation of Virgils Fourth Æneid. The Third way is that of Imitation, where the Translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sence, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion: and taking only some general hints from the Original, to run division on the ground-work, as he pleases. Such is Mr. Cowleys practice in turning two Odes of Pindar, and one of Horace into English.” Note Dryden’s use of turn to mean translate. John Dryden, “The Preface to Ovid’s Epistles,” in Ovid’s Epistles, Translated by Several Hands (London: Jacob Tonson, 1680), n. p.

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exegetical action undertaken by the adapter still exists on the same interpretive

continuum of metaphrase–paraphrase–imitation.312

Anglo-Saxon discussion of translation theory flows out of Roman theory and

practice, and specifically from Cicero’s and Horace’s discussions of the topic. In her

discussion of Roman translation practices, Rita Copeland distinguishes primary

translation, which uses exegetical tools and remains “in service” to the source text, from

secondary translations like those described by Horace, which seek to achieve goals

different from or beyond those of the source text.313 Copeland notes how Roman

translation centers on two modes of translation, the grammatical and the rhetorical.314 But

a third, less explicit, mode emerges from Horace’s discussion of translation that will be

carried forward through the medieval period and into the modern. The three modes are:

literal, word-for-word translation, the province of grammatician; idiomatic, sense-for-

sense translation, the province of the rhetorician; and Dryden’s imitation or adaptation—

or, to put it in current Hollywood parlance, rebooting—which is the province of the

artist.315 Imitation, which is not restricted to adapting works from one language to another

but can include adaptations within the same linguistic tradition, nevertheless shares a

salient feature with translation from one language to another in that it seeks “to penetrate

312 Furthermore, while the modern sense of translation does not typically extend to imitation or adaptation, our modern sense of the word obviously has no bearing on medieval categorization. 313 Copeland, Rhetoric, 6–7. 314 Ibid., 9. 315 OED, s. v. reboot, v., sense 2. See also Linda Hutcheon’s monograph on adaptation which focuses on such twentieth-century practices, particularly in film, but also makes passing reference to classical imitatio. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), 20.

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below the superficial, verbal features of [its] exemplar to its spirit and significance.”316

Imitation changes the form of the text, while seeking to preserve what Jerome, Ælfric,

and Walter Benjamin would call the mysterium (mystery), gastlic andgyt (spiritual

understanding), and wesenhafte Kern (essential kernel) of a work. These three modes of

translation exist on a continuum without clear lines of demarcation. Literal translation

blends into the rhetorical, which blends into the artistic imitation.

Cicero expresses the distinction between word-for-word and sense-for sense

translation in book five of De optimo genere oratorum, when he discusses how he

translated Greek orations:

Nec converti ut interpres, sed ut orator, sententiis isdem et earum formis

tamquam figuris, verbis ad nostram consuetudinem aptis. In quibus non

verbum pro verbo necesse habui reddere, sed genus omne verborum

vimque servavi.317

(Nor did I convert [the text] as an interpreter, but as an orator, with their

same senses and forms, or so to speak, figures of speech, but with suitable

words according to our usage. In this I did not hold it necessary to render

word for word, but to preserve the whole style and power of the words.)

Cicero here is distinguishing between the two different practices of grammatica and

rhetorica. The Roman discipline of grammatica, which has a broader scope than our

modern study of grammar, is concerned with exegesis of and remains in service to the

316 D. A. Russell, “De Imitatione,” in Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, ed. David West and Tony Woodman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 5. 317 Cicero, “De Optimo Genere Oratorum,” in De Inventione / De Optimo Genere Oratorum / Topica, trans. H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 364.

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source text.318 Word-for-word translation, with its fidelity to the source, is therefore the

appropriate tactic in this discipline. Rhetorica, with its focus on persuading the reader or

audience and on the target language, properly takes a sense-for-sense approach, and

Cicero argues that when translating, an orator or rhetorician should recast the argument in

forms and idioms that are suitable for the target language. Note also Cicero’s use of

convertere, like awendan another verb of turning, instead of transferre or reddere (to

translate, render) in the first line, encompassing broader changes to the text—more than a

mere transfer of meaning. Bede makes a similar observation regarding his Latin rendition

of Cædmon’s Hymn when he says:

Hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse uerborum, quae dormiens ille canebat;

neque enim possunt carmina, quamuis optime conposita, ex alia in aliam

linguam ad uerbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri.319

(This is the sense, but not the order of the words which he sang while

sleeping; for songs, however well composed, cannot be translated literally

from one tongue into another without loss of beauty and excellence.)

In his Ars Poetica, lines 131–35, Horace applies Cicero’s reasoning to poetry and

drama:

publica materies priuati iuris erit, si

non circa uilem patulumque moraberis circuit,

nec verbo verbum curabis reddere fidus

318 Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “Grammatica” and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1–3. 319 Bede, EH, 4.24, 416. Unsurprisingly, these lines have been omitted from the OE translation of Bede which records the poem in the original language, if perhaps not in the original words. Miller, OE EH, 2.4.24, 344.

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interpres, nec desilies imitator in artum,

unde pedem proferre pudor vetet aut operis lex.320

(Public domain material will become your own property, if you do not

continue around the wide open, common track; neither should you be a

faithful interpreter and take the trouble to render word for word; nor

should you imitate and jump headlong into a strait, from which either

timidity or the law of the genre might forbid you to retreat.)

Here imitatio is not mindless copying, but adaptation, the creation of a new literary work

based on the source material, and he is referring not just to interlingual translation but to

the work of any poet.321 Horace argues that when adapting and making his own a well-

known story, a poet should neither slavishly adhere to either the words or plan of the

original work, nor be so free as to introduce elements that are discordant with the original

or the expectations of the reader or audience.322

Roman translators did not merely translate or transform individual texts from

Greek into Latin, but Copeland opines they were engaged in a larger project of

appropriating and recontextualizing the Greek literary tradition into a Roman one.323 The

patristic writers of late antiquity, as well as Anglo-Saxon and later medieval writers,

would do something similar with Latin literary culture, through translation appropriating

and incorporating classical texts into their own cultural context. Augustine, for example,

320 Horace, Epistles: Book 2 and Epistle to the Pisones (“Ars Poetica”), ed. Niall Rudd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Epistvla ad Pisones, lines 131–35, 62–63. 321 Frederick M. Rener, Interpretatio: Language and Translation from Cicero to Tytler (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), 306; Russell, “De Imitatione,” 1. 322 Horace, Epistles 2, 172–73; C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 208–12. 323 Copeland, Rhetoric, 11.

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historicized and recontextualized classical literature so that it could be used to support

and explicate Christian doctrine.324 Through translation, cultures appropriate the artifacts

of other cultures, making those other cultures subject to their own. Translation, therefore,

becomes a tool of conquest. The Romans appropriated from the previously dominant, but

now subaltern, Hellenistic culture as a means to valorize their own, while Christian

patristic writers would do the same to the Roman culture that had been “conquered” by

Christianity and Anglo-Saxon writers would do so to patristic works, adapting them to

reflect Germanic cultural values and to create and define their own communal identity.

Davis argues that “by translating or carrying over essential texts from Latin into English,

Alfred marks the boundaries between the Latinate and the English, and thus establishes

the identity of English culture through differentiation, just as the Greeks and the Romans

had previously established their cultures.”325 While Davis restricts her argument to

Alfred’s translation program, and in particular the translation of Regula pastoralis, the

argument can be extended to other Old English translations and exegeses of Latin texts,

including biblical poetry and homilies.

Jerome, who would provide the essence of the stated medieval theory of

translation, echoes Cicero and Horace in his Epistola 57, Ad Pammachium when he very

quotably states:

Ego enim non solum fateor, sed libera voce profiteor, me in interpretatione

Graecorum, absque Scripturis sanctis, ubi et verborum ordo mysterium est,

non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu.326

324 Irvine, Making, 179. 325 Davis, “King Alfred’s Pastoral Care,” 9. 326 PL 22:571, para 5.

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(Therefore I myself not only admit, but with a free voice proclaim, that in

translation of the Greeks, except for the holy scriptures where even the

order of the words is a mystery, I express the sense according to the sense,

not word for word.)

In the letter, Jerome goes on to cite Cicero and other Roman translators as justification

and authority for his practice, even quoting from Horace’s Ars Poetica, “nec verbum

verbo curabis reddere fidus interpres.” But in so doing, Jerome does not carry forward the

Roman distinction between grammatica and rhetorica. Instead of reserving word-for-

word translation for the particular disciplines of linguistics and literary exegesis, he

reserves it for a particular class of literature—holy scripture. For Jerome, scripture, unlike

other works of literature, contains a divine message that is immanent in the source text,

encoded in the syntax and metaphors, and this immanent meaning cannot be properly

translated without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. While he does not specifically cite

him, Jerome is echoing his contemporary Augustine, who in De civitate Dei notes of the

translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek of the Septuagint, “nihil aliud intueamur

in scripturis illis, nisi quid per homines dixerit Dei Spiritus”327 (we consider nothing else

in these scriptures, except what the spirit of God spoke through men). Only the kind of

exacting, word-for-word translation that was allegedly executed by the translators of the

Septuagint is sufficient to translate (i.e., transfer) the divine message in the text.

But a few lines later Jerome, quoting from a preface to a translation of the life of

Saint Anthony, states that for other classes of literature a word-for-word translation

“sensum operit” (conceals the meaning) and is undesirable. He puts forward Hilary of

327 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, ed. Bernardus Dombart and Alfonsus Kalb, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1993), 2:323.

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Poitiers as an example of a translator who engages in sense-for-sense translation, saying

of his translations of scriptural commentary:

Nec assedit litterae dormitanti, et putida rusticorum interpretatione se

torsit: sed quasi captivos sensus in suam linguam, victoris jure

transposuit.328

(Nor did he perch upon the drowsiness of the letter or twist himself

according to the boorish interpretation of rustics: but it is as if he carried

away the captive senses into his own language according to the right of the

conqueror.)

The conception of a text here is portable, akin to the spoils of war. The translator acts

victoris jure, as in the case of Hilary translating scripture from the subaltern Greek into

Latin. But translation is also an interpretive act, since the translator should not be

obligated to rely upon past interpretations. The “conquest” allows not only the acquisition

of the meaning of the original text and its transfer into the conquering language, but the

authority to change it. The conquest metaphor also applies to the translation and

reinterpretation of pagan texts into a vernacular and Christian context, as well as, as we

shall see, the positioning of the Anglo-Saxons as the chosen people, the heirs to Israel.

Nor is Jerome alone in this opinion. On at least three different occasions, Gregory

the Great expresses the sentiment that word-for-word translations confound the meaning

of the text.329 So in moving from the classical to the patristic tradition of late antiquity,

the categories of translation are maintained, but the targets of those categories change.

328 PL 22:572, para. 6. 329 The three instances are: Epistola 1: 29, PL 77:482–83; Epistola 7:30, PL 77:887; and Epistola 11:39, PL 77:1099.

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Instead of choosing a method of translation appropriate for a particular purpose

(grammatica, rhetorica, or ars), the method becomes dependent on the nature of the

source text. And in so doing, the patristic, and the later medieval translators, invariably

eschew word-for-word translations as inadequate and improper, except for holy

scripture.330

Copeland notes another distinction between Roman and patristic translation

practices. In translating Greek works, the Romans sought to erase cultural differences,

but the patristic tradition sought to preserve the communal source text in its original form

with its immanent meaning.331 Jerome and other translators of the Bible into Latin, and

also later translators of scripture into the vernacular, follow the tradition of grammatica

and its focus on the source text, while poetic and other types of translation follow the

tradition of rhetorica. Both the Roman and the Christian translation practices sought to

valorize ancient texts, but the Roman tradition not only valorized Roman culture through

Greek texts, through rhetorical translation it modified those texts by inserting Latin

linguistic and cultural memes. In contrast, later Christian practice, at least in the case of

prose translation of scripture with its emphasis on maintaining a word-for-word mode as

much as was practicable, was a one-way transfer. Ideas and memes flowed from scripture

into medieval culture, yet the source texts remained intact and pure, able to be remediated

and reinterpreted with each successive generation. Scripture itself, while influencing

medieval culture, was not influenced or changed by it.

The homiletic tradition engages in a similar kind of translation, even though a

homily is not strictly a “translation” as a homilist explicates the source text and does not

330 And in practice, only glosses are truly word-for-word translations, even of scripture. 331 Copeland, Rhetoric, 43–44.

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produce a version of it.332 But the homiletic tradition uses the same exegetical tools as

translation and seeks to present the immanent meaning of scripture in a form

understandable to an audience that cannot properly read the source for themselves.

Despite the differences in the nature of their output, the homilist mediates and interprets

the source text in the same manner as a translator.333 And indeed, in discussing his

homilies in his Latin prefaces, Ælfric uses both the verb transferre and the noun

interpretatio. For example, Ælfric says in the Latin preface to his first series of Catholic

Homilies:

Nec ubique transtulimus uerbum ex uerbo, sed sensum ex sensu. cauendo

tamen diligentissime deceptiuos errores. ne inueniremur aliqua heresi

seducti seu fallacia fuscati.334

(Nor have we translated everywhere word for word, but sense for sense

nevertheless guarding most diligently against deceptive errors, lest we

were found somehow to have been led astray by heresy or blackened by

fallacy.)

And he says a bit later in the preface:

Ergo si alicui displicit, siue in interpretatione. quod non semper uerbum ex

uerbo, aut quod breuiorem explicationem quam tractatus auctorum habent.

332 Jonathan Wilcox notes of Ælfric’s homilies: “Practically all of Ælfric's English works except the prefaces are acts of translation in a broad sense, since Ælfric transfers subject matter from Latin into English. The modern term 'translation,' however, is inadequate for conveying the range of medieval practice, since it suggests rendering content as closely as possible from one language into another. Ælfric's practice is often closer to the modern sense of 'adaptation' or 'interpretation,' entailing the transmission of Latin learning into English.” Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Ælfric’s Prefaces, Durham Medieval Texts 9 (Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994), 63. 333 Copeland, Rhetoric, 61. 334 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 173, lines 11–14.

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siue quod non per ordinem ecclesiastici ritus. omnia euangelia tractando

percurrimus. condat sibi altiore interpretatione librum. quomodo

intellectui eius placet. tantum obsecro ne peruertat nostram

interpretationem.335

(Therefore if it displeases anyone, either in interpretation—because it is

not always word for word, or because it is a shorter explication than they

have in the tracts of the authorities—or because we do not pass through all

the gospels according to how the order of ecclesiastical rite treats them, let

him compose for himself a book with a deeper interpretation in whatever

way pleases his understanding. But I only beseech that he not pervert our

interpretation.)

Ælfric appears to be making a distinction in his deployment of the words, using the verb

transferre when he discusses translating from scripture or from patristic sources, and

interpretatio to refer to his analysis and explication and to the homilies as a whole. But in

doing so, he also closely associates the two actions—interpretation entails translation.

It is perhaps Walter Benjamin who, largely but perhaps not entirely

unintentionally, best summarizes the actual practice of medieval translation. In his 1923

335 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 174, lines 31–36. “Obsecro ne peruertat” not only reveals the motive for Ælfric’s anxiety over translating scripture, namely that he is concerned that others will conceive and promulgate a misinterpretation of scripture, not that he is doing so himself, but it also links the action of the homilist with that of the translator. Perversion and the Latin pervertere contain a metaphor of turning, where the Latin transferre/translatus does not. The OE awendan combines these two senses into a single metaphor of turning and transformation, leading to an association of any translation with some kind of transformation or perversion—the metaphor stresses that any translation carries with it the dangers of perverting the source. The effects of the metaphor might contribute to Ælfric’s uneasiness with translation, although the metaphorical implications are not necessary to explain his concerns. DOE, s. v., a–wendan, senses I.A.2.d and II.A.1.f.

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essay “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” (“The Task of the Translator”) Benjamin expounds

a theory of translation that is remarkably close to that of the Anglo-Saxons. In his

discussion of the concept of reine Sprache (pure language), Benjamin describes a

wesenhafte Kern (essential kernel) that is analogous, but not identical, to Jerome’s

mysterium, and as we shall see Ælfric’s gastlic andgyt (spiritual meaning).336 Benjamin’s

concept of pure language is based on a distinction between the denotation or “Intention

vom Gemeinten” of a word, what it literally signifies, and its relationship to the signified

object, which can be translated, and the mode or manner of “die Art des Meinens” of a

word, which is unique to the particular language and is untranslatable.337 Benjamin uses

the verb übersetzen (literally, to set over) to mean to translate, which in twentieth-century

use is the most common use of the German verb. Benjamin’s übersetzen parallels the

action of the medieval glossator, who sets the interlinear translation above the original

text, and in older usage übersetzen was commonly used literally to refer to setting an

object above another, as an interlinear translation is set above the original. While this

physical sense of the German verb is less used today, the sense remains patently obvious

and transparent. Übersetzen, like translate or awendan, includes senses meaning to

transfer or to transform.338 But while Benjamin applies the denotation of translating from

one language to another, he also connotes setting one thing above another. Not only does

he use the metaphor of the pure language existing on a higher plane, a “höheren und

336 Walter Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” in Tableaux Parisiens, by Charles Baudelaire, trans. Walter Benjamin (Heidelberg: Richard Weissbach, 1923), xi. There is no reason to think that Benjamin was familiar with Ælfric, but he certainly was familiar with and evokes Jerome’s differentiation of word-for-word versus sense-for-sense translation and the mysterium of the original text. 337 Ibid. 338 Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, “Übersetzen,” ed. Victor Dollmayr, Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: S. Herzel, 1956), 11.2:544–59.

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reineren Luftkries” (higher and purer altitude),339 a metaphor that would seem to be at

least partially inspired by the literal meaning of the roots of übersetzen, but, in a practice

that parallels the Old English words for translation, when he has need to denote the

transferability (übertragbar) of meaning, he uses a different root, trag-, literally meaning

‘carry.’ For Benjamin, übersetzen is more than the transference of meaning. For him, the

highest aspiration of a translation is not simply to render the original sense into the target

language, but to incorporate both the sense and manner of the original into the target. He

quotes Rudolf Pannwitz:

Der grundsätzliche irrtum des übertragenden ist, daß er den zufälligen

stand der eigenen sprache festhält, anstatt sie durch die fremde gewaltig

bewegen zu lassen.340

(The fundamental error of the translator is that he holds fast to the state in

which his own language happens to be, instead of allowing it to be greatly

changed by means of the foreign language.)

A good translator, therefore, not only transforms the text, but also transforms the

target language itself. Davis notes that, “Church Latin, for example, did not precede its

many translations from Hebrew and Greek, but was largely constituted by these

translations; it therefore did not appropriate these texts to itself, but rather it became itself

through the process of translation.”341 And Irvine notes that through translation Old

English “developed its own parallel textuality” with Latin, and that:

339 Benjamin, “Aufgabe,” xii. 340 Ibid., xvi. 341 Davis, “King Alfred’s Pastoral Care,” 122.

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Most Old English texts can be read as textual hybrids, formed from a

dialogic interplay or interweaving of these literary languages: indeed most

of the poems in the Old English corpus, as we have them in their written

form, presuppose a larger network of Latin texts and textuality for their

very articulation and intelligibility.342

Translation and the interplay with Latin defines Old English, and the appropriation of

words and concepts through interplay with other languages remains a driving force

behind the development of English today.

Benjamin places a premium on this metaphor of translation being set above when,

at the end of his essay he evokes Jerome’s doctrine for translating scripture and states that

an interlinear translation is the “Urbild oder Ideal” (prototype or ideal) because it presents

both the original and translated versions and any immanent meaning in the original is

preserved in both message and form.343 At the core of Benjamin’s argument are two

different transfers, one explicit and the other implicit. The explicit transfer is that of

semantic content; the implicit one is that of authority. In a word-for-word, interlinear, or

gloss translation the textual authority does not transfer. For Benjamin, the ideal is a

translation that is both literally and figuratively set above the original text. Only such a

faithful translation can express both the Intention of the original and the Harmonie

between the meaning and the medium of the original language.344 Roy Liuzza, in

discussing Anglo-Saxon translations of the gospels, describes the function of such an

interlinear translation of scripture as supplementing rather than supplanting the original.

342 Irvine, Making, 420–21. 343 Benjamin, “Aufgabe,” xvii. 344 Ibid., xi.

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An interlinear translation “serves as a point of entry into the Latin text but does not

arrogate textual authority to itself.”345 According to Benjamin, in a sense-for-sense

translation, the translator alters the pure language, which is analogous, but not identical,

to Ælfric’s gastlic andgyt, and in so doing takes on the mantle of authority.

Yet Benjamin does not dismiss non-literal translation:

Freiheit vielmehr bewährt sich um der reinen Sprache willen an der

eigenen. Jene reine Sprache, die in fremde gebannt ist, in der eigenen zu

erlösen, die im Werk gefangene in der Umdichtung zu befreien, ist die

Aufgabe des Übersetzers. Um ihretwillen bricht er morsche Schranken der

eigenen Sprache.346

(Rather, for the sake of pure language, a free translation proves itself in its

own language. The task of the translator is to redeem in his own language

that pure language which is bewitched by a foreign tongue, to liberate in

the paraphrase that which is trapped in the work. For its sake he breaks

through the rotten barrier of his own language.)

But such a free translation is not “das Urbild oder Ideal” (the prototype or ideal); it is the

creation of a new work in a new medium. According to Benjamin, and in contrast to

345 Roy Michael Liuzza, “Who Read the Gospels in Old English?,” in Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson, edited by Nicholas Howe, and Peter S. Baker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 10. The text reads “abrogate,” but that is certainly a typo. Liuzza also makes the point that translation is not necessary to change the function of a text, that editorial decisions, such as breaking out Old English translations of Scripture into the numbered verses used today can insert into the text an anachronistic “continuity, or at least a similarity of purpose, between the Old English version and a modern translation.” Ibid., 5. 346 Benjamin, “Aufgabe,” xvi.

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Jerome, only a free translation can liberate the pure language or mysterium that is locked

in the ordo verborum.

This dichotomy of word-for-word and sense-for-sense plays out throughout the

medieval era and continues into the modern, although in practice word-for-word

translation was restricted to glosses and to prose translations of scripture—if in actual

practice it even existed there. Outside of glosses, sense-for-sense translation and artistic

imitation, along with the related homiletic tradition, are the modes engaged in by Anglo-

Saxon writers. Yet, while the dichotomy does not correspond to actual practice, writers

would continue to echo Jerome when discussing translation. Alfred famously evokes it in

his letter to Bishop Wærferth, which appears as preface to his translation of Gregory’s

Regula pastoralis:

Ða ongan ic ongemang oðrum mislicum & manigfealdum bisgum ðisses

kynerices ða boc wendan on Englisc ðe is genemned on Læden Pastoralis,

& on Englisc Hierdeboc, hwilum word be worde, hwilum andgit of

andgiete, swæ swæ ic hie geliornode æt Plegmunde minum ærcebiscepe &

æt Assere minum biscepe & æt Grimbolde minum mæsseprioste & æt

Iohanne minum mæssepreoste. Siððan ic hie ða geliornod hæfde, swæ

swæ ic hie forstod, & swæ ic hie andgitfullicost areccean meahte, ic hie on

Englisc awende.347

(Then I began, among the other various and manifold cares of this

kingdom, to translate into English the book that is named in Latin

Pastoralis and in English Shepherd’s Book, at times word for word, at

347 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 1:6.

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times sense for sense, just as I had learned it from Plegmund my

archbishop and from Asser, my bishop, and from Grimbold, my priest, and

from John, my priest. Afterward, when I had learned it, I translated it into

English, just as I understood it and as I could explain it most

intelligibly.)348

Alfred takes care to note that the act of translation is not a straightforward, mechanical

transference of meaning; a deeper understanding of the text is required to perform the

task. He says he did not attempt the translation until he geliornod hæfde (had learned),

forstod (understood), and andgitfullicost areccean meahte (could explain most

intelligibly) it.349 And by crediting his teachers and by saying his interpretation is swæ

swæ ic hie geliornode (just as I had learned) it from them, Alfred disavows his own

interpretive authority. He claims to be mediating the explanation and interpretation of

others, and does not claim his own authority and authorship. But in actuality his

translation does alter Gregory’s source text in certain respects, adding context and

explanation to passages, softening or allowing for mitigation of Gregory’s

pronouncements, and refocusing the text on kingship and temporal rule rather than the

348 My translation here is similar to that of Kathleen Davis’s, but it differs from that of Sweet and of Keynes and Lapidge, whose translations qualify Alfred’s ability to understand Gregory’s Latin. Chapter two of Davis’s dissertation examines Alfred’s translation of Regula pastoralis in much more detail than I do here. Davis, “King Alfred’s Pastoral Care,” 71–73; Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (London: Penguin, 1983), 126. 349 Alfred’s requirements for a good translation evoke those set forth by Augustine, who says in De doctrina christiana 3.1.1 that translation of scripture requires piety, knowledge of the languages, knowledge of the subject matter so as not to be misled by metaphor and figurative language, and an accurate copy of the original text. PL 34:66.

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pastoral role of the priest or bishop.350 Yet, even where Alfred diverges from Gregory’s

text, the ideas he promulgates are not strikingly new or original, but are ones that have

been previously expressed by others.351

Alfred also introduces the idea of a transfer of authority inherent in translation

when he refers to the translation of scripture elsewhere in his letter to Bishop Wærferth:

Ða gemunde ic hu sio æ wæs ærest on Ebreisc geðiode funden, & eft, ða

hie Creacas geliornodon, ða wendon hie hie on hiora agen geðiode ealle,

& eac ealle oðre bec. & eft Lædenware swæ same, siððan hie hie

geliornodon, hie hie wendon ealla ðurh wise wealhstodas on hiora agen

geðiode. Ond eac ealla oðræ Cristnæ ðioda sumne dæl hiora on hiora agen

geðiode wendon. Forðy me ðyncð betre, gif iow swæ ðyncð, ðæt we eac

sumæ bec, ða ðe niedbeðearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne, ðæt

we ða on ðæt geðiode wenden ðe we ealle gecnawan mægen, & gedon

swæ we swiðe eaðe magon mid Godes fultume.352

(Then I remembered how the law was first found in the Hebrew language,

and then, when the Greeks had learned it, they translated it all, and also all

the other books, into their own language, and the same with the Romans

after they had learned it, they translated all of it through wise interpreters

into their own language. And also all other Christian nations translated

350 William H. Brown Jr., “Method and Style in the Old English Pastoral Care,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 68, no. 4 (October 1969): 666, 669; Janet Bately, “The Nature of Old English Prose,” in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 75. 351 Davis, “King Alfred’s Pastoral Care,” 132. 352 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 1:4–6.

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some portion into their own language. Therefore it seems better to me, if

you think so, that we also translate some books that are most needful for

all men to know into that language that we can all comprehend, and do so

as we very easily can with God’s assistance.)

In the Pastoral Care proper, in a passage I will examine later in this chapter, Alfred uses

wealhstod metaphorically, but here he uses it quite literally to simply mean interpreter or

translator. Yet the use here is not without significance. Alfred does not explicitly engage

in the language of authority here, but by using the examples of the Septuagint and the

Vulgate, considered to be divinely inspired and authoritative expressions of God’s will,

he implies that a vernacular translation, even that of holy scripture, can be authoritative

and even necessary and desirable. Furthermore, his examples of transfer from the Greeks

to the Romans to the Christian West evoke the theme of translatio imperii, associating

linguistic, theological, and philosophical authority with the political, and extending that

transfer of authority to Anglo-Saxon England. Finally, he invokes God’s assistance in

making his own translation of Gregory’s words correct and authoritative, indicating that

the agency to create the translation is not his alone.

In his discussion of the translation, Alfred positions himself as a mediator of

authority, one in a chain of writers who transfer the authority of the text to new versions.

In one place he names his teachers as the source and authority for his particular

interpretation of Gregory’s text, while in another he positions himself in a larger

framework of cultural transmission, from Hebrew through the Greek and Roman, to the

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Anglo-Saxon.353 For Alfred, translation is not only a transfer of meaning, but a transfer of

authority as well, and that authority extends beyond the specifics of the interpretation of

the text.

Writing a century later, Ælfric is similarly concerned with the transmission of

authority and disavowal of personal authority, writing in the Latin preface to the first

series of Catholic Homilies:

Hos namque auctores in hac explanatione sumus secuti. uidelicet

Augustinum. ypponiensem. Hieronimum. Bedam. Gregoriam.

Smaragdum. et aliquando Hægmonem; Horum denique auctoritas ab

omnibus catholicis. libentissime suscipitur.354

(For we have followed these authors in this exposition: namely, Augustine

of Hippo, Jerome, Bede, Gregory, Smaragdus, and sometimes Haymo.

Indeed, the authority of these is most willingly accepted by all the

orthodox.)

And he ends this preface, as well as the Latin preface to the second series, with a request

that Archbishop Sigeric, to whom the prefaces are addressed, correct any errors that

Ælfric may have made, and that:

adscribatur dehinc hic codicellus tuae auctoritati. non utilitati nostrae

despicabilis personae355

353 And in the preface to his law codes Alfred explicitly places himself in the authoritative chain of lawgivers that begins with Moses. Davis, “King Alfred’s Pastoral Care,” 83. 354 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 173, lines 14–17. 355 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 174, lines 41–42. The preface to the second series does not contain a similar statement that any corrections be ascribed to Sigeric, but it does submit the work for his correction. CH 2, “Praefatio,” 1, lines 19–27.

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(Henceforth let this little book be ascribed to your authority, not to the

advantage of our despicable person.)

Ælfric’s Latin prefaces are modeled on the one found in the homiliary of Paul the

Deacon, which is written in the voice of Charlemagne and which asks Paul to select the

best sermons from established authorities of the church. So Ælfric’s Latin prefaces

themselves are part of a chain of ecclesiastical and temporal authority.356

In contrast, Ælfric’s Old English prefaces to the Catholic Homilies position his

own authority quite differently than in the Latin prefaces. In the preface to the first series

he states that he decided that he awende (should translate) the homilies into English from

Latin and criticizes other English explications of scripture for containing mycel gedwyld

(much error) and being the product of ungelærede (unlearned) men, but he makes no

mention of specific authorities as he does in the Latin preface.357 And at the end, instead

of submitting the book to higher ecclesiastical authority for review and potential

correction, he calls upon scribes to take care and transcribe the homilies accurately so

they do not introduce error themselves. The Old English preface to the second series

makes these same points more concisely, although in that preface Ælfric does make a

general reference to his sources.358 Whereas in the Latin prefaces he is careful to note that

he is simply translating the doctrine found in scripture and expounded by his

predecessors, in the Old English he assumes the authority and role of correcting other

356 CH Introduction, 3. 357 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 174, lines 50–52. 358 “Ic hi genam of halgum godspellum. and æfter geðungenra lareowa trahtnungum hi asmeade. þæra lareowa naman ic awrat on ðære ærran bec. on ðære ledenan forespræce.” CH 2, “Praefatio,” 1–2, lines 31–33. (I have taken it from the holy gospels, and interpreted it according to the expositions of eminent teachers, the names of these teachers I recorded in the former book, in the Latin preface.)

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mistaken books himself. In the Latin, he subjects his own words to possible correction,

while in the English he demands that scribes not change or correct them. To the Latin-

speaking audience, Ælfric is but a translator, carrying what others have said from one

language into another, but to the Old English audience by transforming the text he,

himself, has been transformed into an authority.

In the Old English preface to the first series, Ælfric also brings will and agency

into the discussion. He says that the idea for creating the homiliary, “bearn me on mode

ic truwige ðurh godes gife”359 (occurred in my mind, I trust through God’s grace), and

later quotes Paul, “‘we sind godes gefylstan.’ ך swa ðeah ne do we nan ðing to gode.

buton godes fultume”360 (we are God’s assistants, and yet we do nothing for the good

without God’s help). So Ælfric is also denying both will and agency in the creation of the

Catholic Homilies. This sentiment is absent in the shorter preface to the second series.

More famously, Ælfric provides what is perhaps the most extensive Anglo-Saxon

discussion of the art of translation in his preface to his translation of Genesis, which was

probably written in the last decade of the tenth century.361 In it the monk expresses his

concern over the dangers of mistranslating scripture and how a translation can lead

readers into heresy. In the preface, Ælfric makes use of two of the senses of awendan, to

translate and to transform, starting off with one and then shifting to the other.

Ælfric begins this preface, which is in the form of a letter to Æðelweard, the

nobleman who commissioned the translation, “þu bæde me, leof, þæt ic sceolde ðe

359 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 174, lines 48–49. 360 CH 1, “Praefatio,” 177, lines 127–28. From 1 Cor. 3.9: “Dei enim sumus adiutores.” 361 Clemoes, “Chronology,” 244.

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awendan of Lydene on Englisc þa boc Genesis”362 (You asked me, dear sir, that I should

translate for you the book of Genesis from Latin into English). Here Ælfric’s use of

awendan is a straightforward use of the sense meaning to translate. He does not use the

verb again until the end of the preface:

Nu is seo foresæde boc on manegum stowum swyðe nearolice gesett, ך

ðeah swyðe deoplice on ðam gastlican andgyte; ך heo is swa geendebyrd,

swa swa God sylf hi gedihte ðam writere Moyse, ך we ne durron na mare

awritan on Englisc þonne ðæt Leden hæfð, ne ða endebyrdnysse awendan,

buton ðam anum, ðæt ðæt Leden ך ðæt Englisc nabbað na ane wisan on

ðære spræce fandunge: æfre se ðe awent oððe se ðe tæcð of Ledene on

Englisc, æfre he sceal gefadian hit swa ðæt ðæt Englisc hæbbe his agene

wisan, elles hit bið swyðe gedwolsum to rædenne ðam ðe ðæs Ledenes

wise ne can.363

(Now the aforesaid book is composed very narrowly in many places, and

yet very deeply in the spiritual sense, and it is arranged just as God

himself dictated it to the writer Moses, and we do not dare write more in

English than the Latin has, nor change the narrative, except only in that

Latin and English do not have one manner in the composition of language.

Always he who translates or teaches from Latin into English must ever

arrange it so that the English has its own way, otherwise it is very

misleading for those to read who do not know the ways of Latin.)

362 S. J. Crawford, ed., The Old English Version of the Heptateuch: Ælfric’s Treatise on the Old and New Testament and His Preface to Genesis, Early English Text Society, O. S. 160 (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), lines 1–6, 76. 363 Ibid., lines 93–101, 79–80.

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Ælfric’s sentiments evoke those expressed by Bede in his translation of Cædmon, that

literal translation is not possible without loss and that a good translator must conform to

the rules of the target language in order to convey the meaning accurately. In my

translation of this passage I follow Kathryn Lowe’s observation that geendebyrd and

endebyrdnysse are distinct from gefadian and fandunge. The two roots both refer to

order, but endebyrdnes has a wider range of meaning and here refers to the order of the

narrative, while fadung refers to a lower level of order, that of the language itself.364

Ælfric is saying that in his translation he is not altering the narrative of events, but he is

making the commonsense changes that the fadung or wisan of Old English demands.

Here Ælfric acknowledges that a word-for-word translation is not really possible, at least

not if one wants to communicate effectively to an audience that cannot read the original

text, and that any translation, if it is to be intelligible, necessarily entails some degree of

reordering or transformation. The Old English awendan, with senses of transformation

and perversion, metaphorically encodes this understanding of the nature and risks of

translation in a way that the modern to translate—or the Latin transferre and interpretare

or the German übersetzen—does not. When Ælfric says that “we ne durron na mare

awritan” (we dare not write any more) he is indicating that he is not adding to the text,

not venturing into the third mode of translation, that of adaptation; his translation is a

close one, as Jerome requires of biblical translations, albeit not strictly word for word.

But even though he is following Jerome’s example, Ælfric states that a translation

can still be gedwolsum unless one can read and understand the original Latin text. The

364 Kathryn Lowe, “The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England by Robert Stanton” (review article), Translation and Literature 13, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 99; DOE, s. v., ende–byrdnes, geende–byrdan, fadung, gefadian.

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noun is a hapax legomenon whose root, gedwol, means heretical, but which is generally

translated in this passage as misleading because Ælfric presumes his own translation will

be doctrinally correct but might lead those ignorant of Latin into heresy.365 Others have

noted of this passage that Ælfric is not objecting to vernacular translation of scripture per

se, but rather is distressed by its lack of commentary.366 Unlike the homiletic tradition,

which engages the same exegetical tools, a translation of scripture leaves the spiritual

interpretation to the reader, who may not be capable of understanding the text properly.

Ælfric’s fear is that his readers will misinterpret the vernacular scripture, not that he

himself is misinterpreting and mistranslating the Latin. For Ælfric the danger of a close

translation is akin to the struggle between body and soul. If not interpreted correctly, the

body, or form of the text, has the potential to pervert or corrupt the soul, or gastlic

andgyt, that is enclosed within it. A close translation presented without commentary

places the onus of interpretative authority on the reader.

Ælfric’s use of gastlic angyt (spiritual understanding) in the above passage

harkens back to an earlier instance of that phrase’s use in the preface:

We secgað eac foran to þæt seo boc is swiþe deop gastlice to

understandenne, ך we ne writaþ na mare buton þa nacedan gerecednisse.

Þonne þincþ þam ungelæredum þæt eall þæt andgit beo belocen on þære

anfealdan gerecednisse, ac hit ys swiþe feor þam.367

(We also say in advance that the book is very deep to understand

spiritually, and we do not write more than the bare narrative. It seems then

365 DOE, s. v. gedwolsum; gedwol. 366 Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “Ælfric’s Prefaces: Rhetoric and Genre,” English Studies 49 (1968): 221. Wilcox, Ælfric’s Prefaces, 37–38. 367 Crawford, OE Heptateuch, lines 41–45, 77.

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to the unlearned that all the sense is enclosed in the simple narrative, but it

is very far from that.)

Ælfric designates two levels of understanding scripture, the nacedan gerecednisse (bare

narrative) and the gastlic andgyt, and says that the translator must preserve both in his

work, that the transformation of scripture in translation should be one of form, not one of

substance.368 Ælfric’s nacedan gerecednisse and gastlic andgyt are also analogous to the

body and soul, an analogy reinforced by his use of the adjective nacod. Just as the body

encloses the soul, the narrative encloses the spiritual meaning of a text, and anything

done to the body or to the text should not be something that alters or perverts the soul or

the gastlic andgyt.

Ælfric goes on to use awendan again, this time in an even broader sense of

transformation:

We sceolon awendan urne willan to his gesetnyssum, & we ne magon

gebigean his gesetnyssa on urum lustum. Ic cweðe nu ðæt ic ne dearr ne ic

nelle nane boc æfter ðisre of Ledene on Englisc awendan; ך ic bidde ðe,

leof ealdormann, ðæt ðu me ðæs na leng ne bidde, ði læs ðe ic beo ðe

ungehyrsum, oððe leas gyf ic do.369

(We should transform our will to his laws, and we should not bend his law

according to our desires. I say now that after this I do not dare nor do I

wish to transform/translate any book from Latin into English, and I ask

368 Ælfric’s distinction follows Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians 3:6 which is frequently cited by patristic commentators: “qui et idoneos nos fecit ministros novi testamenti non litterae sed Spiritus littera enim occidit Spiritus autem vivificat” (And who has made us fitting ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the spirit, indeed the letter kills but the spirit brings to life). 369 Crawford, OE Heptateuch, lines 110–16, 80.

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you, my dear nobleman, that you no longer ask me this, lest I be

disobedient to you or false if I do.)

Not only does Ælfric use awendan here outside of the context of translating a written

work from one language to another, but he uses it in contrast to another verb of turning,

gebigan (to turn, bend). He says good Christians must turn or transform their will to

conform to God’s law rather than turn or bend the law to conform to their human desires.

Awendan here could be taken to mean to redirect, a different metaphorical sense of

turning, but by having already established that the verb entails some degree of

transformation in his discussion of ordering and composition, and by placing it in

opposition to gebigan, Ælfric suggests that some transformation—or at least reordering—

of the will, in parallel to the reordering of the text, is required. He then provides a

concrete example of such a reordering of the will by asking Æðelweard not to give him a

command that might conflict with God’s law, a command that he would wish to obey.

And given that this example of a reordering of the will is an external one (i.e., the

removal of temptation rather than an internal altering of desire), Ælfric denies his own

agency in creating the translation. By using the verb awenden twice in close proximity,

but in slightly different senses, Ælfric reinforces the connection between transformation

of the will and translation of the text.

As in his vernacular prefaces to the Catholic Homilies, and unlike the Latin ones,

here in the vernacular Preface to Genesis Ælfric does not position himself in a chain of

authority. He presumes his translation is authoritative, and the transfer of authority of

interpretation in the translation is to the reader, with the inherent dangers that transfer

creates. But like the Latin preface to the first series of Catholic Homilies, in which he

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assumes that the inspiration, or will, to create the homilies is God’s, the will to translate

Genesis is also external to him, i.e., that of Æthelweard.

So far I have examined Old English translations in the modes of word-for-word

and sense-for-sense, but there is a third category, that of adaptation or Dryden’s imitation.

While this category does not appear in medieval discussions of the philosophy and art of

translation, it does appear in practice. It is what Janet Bately describes as using the

original text as a “jumping-off ground” for the translator’s own ideas and contributions,

or what Willis Barnstone calls “license.”370 Bately uses Alfred’s reinterpretation of

Boethius’s Neoplatonism as an example of imitation. Examples of even freer license can

be found in the Old English biblical poems, such as Exodus and Daniel.

The Old English biblical poems do not appear ex nihilo. A long tradition of Latin

biblical poetry exists, dating at least to Juvencus’s Evangelia in the fourth century, and

the Old English poems of the Junius Manuscript and Judith follow in this Latin

tradition.371 These Latin verse translations were quite well-known and are extensively

cited by Anglo-Saxon writers.372 In addition to Juvencus, Caelius Sedulius’s Carmen

paschale and Arator’s Historica apostolica were standard school texts in Anglo-Saxon

370 Bately, “Literary Prose,” 20; Willis Barnstone, The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 26–27. 371 For a description of Juvencus’s exegetical tendencies, see: R. P. H. Green, “The Evangeliorum Libri of Juvencus: Exegesis by Stealth?,” in Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter Between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation, ed. Willemien Otten and Karla Pollman, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 65–80. 372 Martha Malamud addresses at length the adaptation and transformation of classical myth by Prudentius, another late-antique Christian poet who was well known in Anglo-Saxon England, albeit one who did not versify the Bible. Martha A. Malamud, A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

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England, with copies appearing in most libraries.373 This is not to say that these and other

Latin biblical poems were specific sources for the Old English counterparts, only that

Anglo-Saxon poets were well aware of the long-established tradition of translating

portions of the Bible into Latin verse.374 So unlike the fraught nature of Ælfric’s creation

of a vernacular prose version of Genesis, the notion of creating verse versions of biblical

books would not have been considered problematic to the Anglo-Saxons.375 The issue of

transfer of authority in translation of Latin prose scripture does not seem to arise when

transforming prose scripture into Latin verse, much less when it is turned into Old

English verse. And instead of the patristic and scriptural translation practice of preserving

a communal and authoritative Latin source text, these vernacular biblical poems

transform the text itself to reflect Anglo-Saxon cultural norms and concepts.

373 Lapidge, AS Library, 127–28. 374 Avitus's De spiritalis historiae gestis, and in particular its fifth book, De transitu Maris Rubri was thought in the nineteenth century to be a direct source for the OE Exodus, but that thesis was refuted in 1911 by Samuel Moore. Yet, Lapidge, as late as 2006 has contended that Avitus's poem was "closely studied" by the Exodus poet, so the issue of sourcing is not entirely closed. Similar difficulties exist in pinpointing Avitus or other texts as sources for the OE Genesis, yet it is undeniable that the Genesis poet knew the Latin poetic tradition. Samuel Moore, “On the Sources of the Old-English Exodus,” Modern Philology 9, no. 1 (July 1911): 83–108; Edward Burroughs Irving, The Old English Exodus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 13; Peter J. Lucas, ed., Exodus (London: Methuen, 1977), 53; Lapidge, AS Library, 70, 124, 127–28; B. J. Timmer, The Later Genesis (Oxford: Scrivener Press, 1948), 45–48; A. N. Doane, Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2013), 61–63. 375 This is not to say that it may have been problematic in an earlier era. For the fraught nature of Augustine’s and Jerome’s reaction to poetic exegesis of Christian doctrine see: H. J. Westra, “Augustine and Poetic Exegesis,” in Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter Between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation, ed. Willemien Otten and Karla Pollman, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 22–28; M. Vessey, “Quid Facit Cum Horatio Hieronymus? Christian Latin Poetry and Scriptural Poetics,” in Otten and Pollman, 38–39.

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The Junius Manuscript poems Exodus and Daniel offer insight into how Anglo-

Saxons viewed this third mode of translation. The poems are not faithful translations of

the entire Old Testament books, but rather versifications of certain portions, namely the

crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 13–14 and Daniel 1–5, which ends with the feast of

Belshazzar and the vision of the writing on the wall—a portion of the Daniel narrative

that is literally about translation. The poems are not word-for-word or sense-for-sense

translations of the Vulgate books, but rather interpretations of what Ælfric would later

dub the gastlic andgyt (spiritual meaning), placing the stories in contexts that have

overtones distinct to an Anglo-Saxon audience. Nicholas Howe says of the Exodus poem,

“far from being a translation or paraphrase, the OE Exodus represents the rarer

achievement by which a foreign story is absorbed into the native imagination and idiom,”

and that readers should not view the poem as “a mechanical act of translation but rather

to recognize the poet's assertion of the native culture as contained in language.”376 In the

same manner that Copeland argues that Roman translation was an appropriation of Greek

culture and Irvine argues that patristic translation was an appropriation of Roman

traditions, Howe interprets Exodus as “a model for reconciling the remembered pagan

past of the Anglo-Saxons with their enduring Christian present.” The poems valorize

Germanic culture by “affiliating,” to use Seth Lerer’s term, that pagan past with Christian

biblical authority.377 For Howe, the Exodus poem is one large metaphor—after all, the

Greek μεταϕέρω is, like the Latin translatio, a carrying across—using pagan references to

map a Christian domain. The poems do not do not follow Benjamin’s model of “das

376 Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 73–74. 377 Seth Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 152.

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Urbild oder Ideal” (prototype or ideal) of translation and map Latin both Intention

(meaning) and Art (manner, idiom) onto English; instead they introduce English elements

into the narrative, and in creating this free translation the poet assumes the mantle of

authority.

Samantha Zacher builds on Howe’s argument, making the bolder claim that the

poems, in particular Daniel, execute what she dubs translatio electionis, a transfer of the

mantle of God’s chosen people. Zacher argues that with its focus on the sins of the

Israelites, the poem “simultaneously rewrites and displaces” the traditional interpretation

of the poem as a justification for a temporal translatio imperii and instead offers a vision

of God’s people being the Gentiles and specifically the Anglo-Saxons.378 Daniel, and the

other Old English biblical poems, are not only linguistic translations from one language

into another, but they are also translations of prose into verse and translations of political

and cultural authority.

While Zacher makes this point regarding the Old English Daniel, she is not the

first to note a general parallel in depictions of the Israelites and the Anglo-Saxons in

other works. Nor are the biblical poems the only genre that positions the Anglo-Saxons as

the heirs to Israel. Andrew Scheil extensively outlines what he calls the populus Israhel

tradition in late antiquity, the early medieval period, and Anglo-Saxon England in

particular, noting that it has become a “commonplace” in Anglo-Saxon studies to hold

that Anglo-Saxon writers present the Old Testament in “a distinctly Germanic light.”379

378 Samantha Zacher, Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse: Becoming the Chosen People (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 91. 379 Andrew Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 151. Nor is the understanding limited to presentation of biblical material. Sarah Foot argues that Alfred’s law codes were

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Scheil describes how such writers repurpose the biblical stories of the Israelites to fit the

Germanic context:

Guided by the hermeneutics of figural discourse, the Hebrew Scriptures

(and by extension the Jews), are emptied of any independent cultural

identity of their own and thus resemble a mathematical variable able to be

placed into many equations, not valuable in and of itself, but necessary for

the final 'answer.'380

The Anglo-Saxons are not the only ones to engage in this practice. Gildas, for example,

in the opening of his De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, reads, or interprets, the Old

Testament as analogous to the history of the Romano-Britons:

Ista ego multa alia veluti speculum quoddam vitae nostrae

in scripturis veteribus intuens, convertebar etiam ad novas,

et ibi legebam clarius quae mihi forsitan antea obscura

fuerant.381

(I am looking at these and many other things in the Old Testament as if in

a certain mirror of our life, then I turned to the New Testament, and I read

there more clearly what perhaps had before been dark to me.)

compiled on the model of Old Testament law-giving and invites his people “to remodel themselves as a new Chosen People.” Sarah Foot, “The Making of the Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6, 6 (1996): 32. 380 Scheil, Footsteps, 14. 381 Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. Michael Winterbottom (London: Phillimore, 1978), 1.7, 88.

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Gildas positions the Christian Britons as a chosen people among heathens and their woes

as divine, retributive justice.382 But Gildas stops short of literally proclaiming that the

Britons are the heirs to Israel, staying firmly in the realm of analogy. He not only uses

veluti (as if), but in likening the Britons to the Israelites Gildas uses the imagery of a

mirror—his people are only a reflection of, something less than the children of God, and

therefore their fate will be so much the worse than that of the true chosen people.383

Bede carries Gildas’s comparison forward, supplanting the Britons by the Anglo-

Saxons, and specifically the Anglo-Saxon church, as the heirs to the ancient Israelites.384

In his Historia ecclesiastica (1.34), Bede directly compares the Northumbrian King

Æthelfrith and the biblical King Saul.385 Abandoning the pretense of simile, Bede

explicitly grants the Anglo-Saxons the birthright of the Israelites in his homily 1.17.386

382 A. C. Sutherland, “The Imagery of Gildas’s De Excidio Britanniae,” in Gildas: New Approaches, ed. Michael Lapidge and David Dumville (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1984), 159. 383 Si, inquam, peculiari ex omnibus nationibus populo, semini regali gentique sanctae, ad quam dixerat: “primogenitus meus Israel,” eiusque sacerdotibus, prophetis, regibus, per tot saecula apostolo ministro membrisque illius primitivae ecclesiae dominus non pepercit, cum a recto tramite deviarint, quid tali huius atramento aetatis facturus est? Gildas, Ruin, 1.13, 88. (If, say, out of all nations, the Lord did not spare his own people, a royal seed, and a holy people, to whom he said: “Israel is my first-born” [Exodus 4:22] and to its priests, prophets, kings, through many generations to the apostle, minister, and members of that early church, when they deviated from the right path, what must he do with the great blot on this generation?) 384 Alan Thacker, “Bede and History,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 174; Scott DeGregorio, “Bede and the Old Testament,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bede, 135. 385 Bede, EH, 116. 386 “O quam magna nobis quoque qui de gentibus ad fidem uenimus in hac sententia nostri redemptoris spes aperitur salutis! Si enim uere Israhelita est qui doli nescius incedit, iam perdidere Iudaei nomen Israhelitarum quamuis carnaliter de Israhel quotquot doloso corde a simplicitate patriarchae sui degenerauerunt, et adsciti sumus ipsi in semen Israhelitarum qui quamlibet aliis de nationibus genus carnis habentes fide tamen ueritatis et mundita corporis ac mentis uestigia sequimer Israhel.” Bede, “Homilia 1.17,” in Homeliarum Evangelii Libri 2, ed. David Hurst, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 122

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And Alcuin, in his Versus de patribus regibus et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiae, takes

Bede’s analogy further, casting the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the Britons as parallel to the

victory of the Israelites over the Canaanites.387

The Old English Daniel not only assumes for the Anglo-Saxons the authority of

the mantle of Israel, the poem’s narrator also takes on the role and authority of a first-

person witness. When making her argument for translatio electionis, Zacher also notes

that the poet’s use of geseah ic (I saw) in line 22 establishes himself as a direct authority

rather than a medium for another, original authority388:

(Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), lines 172–80. (Oh what a great hope of salvation is opened by this statement of our redeemer to those of us who have come to the faith from the gentiles! If indeed he who walks as one ignorant of deceit is truly an Israelite, the Jews have already lost the name of Israelites, however much they are carnally descended from Israel, since many have through their deceitful hearts fallen short of the simplicity of their patriarch. And we ourselves have been adopted into the seed of the Israelites, who although we have our carnal origin in other nations, nevertheless by the faith of truth and by purity of the body and mind, we follow in the footsteps of Israel.) 387 “Hoc pietate Dei visum, quod gens scelerata ob sua de terris patrum peccata periret intraretque suas populus felicor urbes, qui servaturus Domini praecepta fuisset. Quod fuit affatim factum, donante Tonante iam nova dum crebris viguerunt sceptra triumphis et reges ex se iam coepit habere potentes gens ventura Dei.” Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, ed. Peter Godman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 10, lines 71–78. (It has been seen through the piety of God, that the wicked nation should vanish from the land of its fathers because of its sins, and a happier people, who had been following the commands of the Lord, should enter into its cities. That was sufficiently accomplished, with God now giving numerous new victory-scepters they grew strong and God’s destined nation now began to have powerful kings come out of it.) Tonans, literally ‘the thundering one,’ a classical epithet for Jupiter, is commonly used in Latin biblical poetry as a name for the Christian God, an example of Christian syncretism and an example of the ties between patristic and Anglo-Saxon biblical poetry. Irvine, Making, 369; Malamud, Poetics, 25. 388 Zacher, Rewriting, 104–08.

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Þa geseah ic þa gedriht in gedwolan hweorfan,

Israhela cyn unriht don,

wommas wyrcean.389

(Then I saw that nation turn to error, the race of Israel do wrong,

performed sins.)

Compared to the ninety uses of variations on ic hyrde (I have heard) spread over some

thirty Old English poems, variations on geseah ic are largely confined to riddles,

appearing in only a handful of non-riddle poems.390 The relative rarity of the formula

emphasizes the personal authority of the narrator where it does appear, and in a poem like

Daniel, its use makes the narrator/poet into something more than a mere translator. The

Dream of the Rood, for example, uses geseah ic four times and ic gesawe once in the

poem’s first fifty-one lines to indicate direct and personal authority—three times in the

voice of the dreamer describing seeing the cross in the dream and twice in the quoted

voice of the cross upon seeing Christ.391 While the narrator is simply repeating the

witness of the cross in these latter two instances, the identical wording equates the

narrator’s authority with that of the cross. At the end of the poem in line 137, the dreamer

returns to the formulation, recalling his earlier vision of the cross with “þe ic her on

eorðan ær sceawode” (that I here on earth once gazed upon), recalling and reinforcing his

narrative authority.392 The phrase also appears twice in the metrical translation of Psalm

118:157–58. The first of these uses is an addition to the text, with no corresponding

389 ASPR 1:111, lines 22–24. 390 Ward Parks, “The Traditional Narrator and the ‘I Heard’ Formulas in Old English Poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 16 (December 1987): 59. 391 ASPR 2:61–62, lines 4, 14, 21, 33, and 51. 392 ASPR 2:65, line 137.

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phrase in the original Latin.393 Although in this case, the addition of the first ic manige

geseah may simply have been intended to create anaphora rather than a deliberate attempt

to emphasize the personal nature of the testimony.

In contrast to the rarity of the formula in other poetic genres, the Exeter Book

riddles make frequent use of variations on “I saw” in their opening lines, twenty-two

times to be exact if one includes the uidetur mihi (appeared to me) of the Latin Riddle 90,

plus an additional three riddles use ic wat (I know) to convey the sense of personal

narrative authority. In comparison, variations on ic [...] gefrægn (I heard), which inserts a

mediator into the chain of authority, appear only four times.394 In three of these ic

gefrægn instances the formula distances the narrator from the authority. In the fourth,

Riddle 48, the formula denotes a personal witness in the opening lines:

393 Ic manige geseah, þe min ehton; nolde ic cwic æfre swa þeah hwæðere þine gewitnesse wræste forlætan. Ic manige geseah men þa þe noldan heora friðowære fæste healdan, and ic þand wið þan þe hi teala noldan þinre spræce sped gehealdan. ASPR 5:116, Psalm 118:157–58. (I saw many who persecuted me; yet nevertheless, I did not wish while alive ever to abandon to you your elegant testimony. I saw many men who would not hold fast to their covenant, and I became angered because they did not wish to correctly hold to the power of your word.) The Vulgate reads: “multi qui persequuntur me et adfligunt me a testimoniis tuis non declinavi vidi praevaricatores tuos et maerebam qui verbum tuum non custodierunt” (Many are those who persecute me and afflict me; I have not strayed from your testimonies. I saw your transgressors, and I mourned those who did not heed your word.) 394 Using the numbering in the ASPR edition, the ic geseah riddles are 13, 19, 29, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 42, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 64, 68, 75, 76, 87, and 90, and the three that use ic wat are 43, 49, and 58. Those riddles that use ic gefrægn: 45, 47, 48, and 67. See also, Andy Orchard, “Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition,” in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 1:289.

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Ic gefrægn for hæleþum hring gyddian,

torhtne butan tungan, tila þeah he hlude

stefne ne cirmde, strongum wordum.

Sinc for secgum swigende cwæð:

“Gehæle mec, helpend gæsta.” 5

Ryne ongietan readan goldes

guman galdorcwide, gleawe beþencan

hyra hælo to gode, swa se hring gecwæð.395

(I heard a ring sing well for men, bright without tongue, but it did not

speak with a loud voice or strong words. The treasure spoke silently for

men: “heal me, helper of spirits.” Let men understand the riddle and spell

of the red gold, let the wise entrust their salvation to God, just as the ring

said.)

In his study of the “I heard” formula in Old English poetry, Ward Parks omits this riddle

from his list of the formula’s ninety appearances, classifying it as a first-person instance

of hearing and not an instance of mediation, but the voice is being translated and

mediated by the narrator. The object, a golden chalice or other ecclesiastical or

Eucharistic vessel, is not literally speaking, but conveying a symbolic message, a ringing

that must be translated and interpreted by the narrator-witness. The quoted words are

those of the narrator-witness, not of the chalice. So in this riddle the ic gefrægn formula

remains a mediating one and is not simply an example of repeating the words of another.

395 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:320. I adopt Muir’s emendation in line 1 of the manuscript’s nonsensical endean to gyddian; the emendation does not impact my analysis.

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Instead, it is an instance of translation. The gastlic andgyt of the ringing chalice is

something that must be translated by humans.

Within the riddle tradition, this practice of using I saw to establish personal

narrative authority is largely confined to the Old English riddles, with only a handful of

Latin verse enigmata using the formula. Symphosius, Aldhelm, Tatwine, Eusebius

(Hwætberht), and the author(s) of the Bern collection do not use it. The formula appears

only in one of Boniface’s and in two of the Lorsch Enigmata. The vidi (I saw) formula is

a bit more common in Latin prose enigmata, but even here it is found primarily in either

Anglo-Latin enigmata or those with other insular connections. Orchard posits a reason for

this absence in the Latin tradition: Aldhelm identifies the enigma genre with

prosopopoeia, or personification, and has the subjects of his riddles speak for themselves,

so those riddles that follow Aldhelm’s example tend not to use the vidi formula. One of

Alcuin’s enigmata in Disputatio 98 is a prose translation of a Symphosius riddle in which

Alcuin inserts the vidi formula, indicating that Aldhelm’s prescription of prosopopoeia

weakened as time went on.396 Aldhelm’s prescription is not followed in the Old English,

and with a quarter of the Exeter Book riddles using a personal witness through the use of

ic geseah or ic wat, the Old English riddle tradition assumes a greater role for narrative

authority than the Latin tradition.

The riddles of the Exeter Book themselves can also be seen to be translations of a

sort. Not only are some of the riddles translations, in the strict definition of that word, of

Latin enigmata, but the very genre itself is a form of translation where the reader must

interpret the text and transform (awendan) the object that is literally presented into the

396 Orchard, “Enigma Variations,” 1:291–93.

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true object that is the riddle’s answer. Of particular note is the series of Riddles 42, 43,

and 44, which connect the duality of body and soul with translation.

Riddle 42 expresses this theme of translation directly, in terms that resonate with

Ælfric’s description of translation:

Ic seah wyhte wrætlice twa

undearnunga ute plegan

hæmedlaces; hwitloc anfeng

wlanc under wædum, gif þæs weorces speow,

fæmne fyllo. Ic on flette mæg 5

þurh runstafas rincum secgan,

þam þe bec witan, bega ætsomne

naman þara wihta. Þær sceal Nyd wesan

twega oþer ond se torhta Æsc

an an linan, Acas twegen 10

Hægelas swa some. Swa ic þæs hordgates

cægan cræfte þa clamme onleac

þe þa rædellan wið rynemenn

hygefæste heold heortan bewrigene

orþoncbendum. Nu is undyrne 15

werum æt wine hu þa wihte mid us,

heanmode twa, hatne sindon.397

397 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:317–18. Muir emends the manuscript’s hwylc in line 11 to swa ic, changing an impersonal interrogative into a first-person statement. The

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(I saw two wondrous creatures play at sex-sport outside, without

concealment; the fair-haired one, proud under her clothing, would receive

a woman’s swelling if the deed succeeded. Through runic letters I can say

to men in the hall, those who know books, the names of both of the

creatures together. Nyd must be there two times and the bright Æsc once in

the line, two Acs, and Hægel the same. So with the power of the key I

have unlocked the bond of the hoard-gate that held the mind-fast riddle

against the mystery-solvers, its heart concealed in skillful bonds. Now it is

revealed to men at wine how these two abject creatures are called by us.)

The solution, which is spelled out by the names of the runes, is hana and hæn, a cock and

hen mating in a barnyard.398 Yet, while the solution is contained within a runic anagram,

the runes must be reordered to be read, just as a translator reorders the syntax of the

original text. And like Ælfric’s scripture, the riddle has both a nacod gerecedness, a lewd

description of people copulating, and a hidden andgyt (one strains to call it gastlic) of a

description of barnyard animals that is obscured by runic names and double entendres,

e.g., speow (succeeded) which evokes spaw (spit, ejaculated). The riddle uses imagery of

bonds and unlocking, especially cægan cræfte (with the power of the key), indicating that

the hidden meaning is enclosed within the words on the page. The runic names in Riddle

42—not actual runes themselves—also require a type of translation or decoding, and the

comparison of men who bec witan (know the book) in line 7 with wihta (creatures) in line

emendation fits the context better, which uses ic in line 5 to claim personal ability to solve the riddle. 398 Ibid., 2:661.

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8 hints at a transformation of rational humans into animals that we will see later in this

chapter with Nebuchanezzar in Daniel.399

The hen and cock riddle is immediately followed, without break or rubrication, by

Riddle 43, whose solution is soul and body. The last word of Riddle 42, sindon, is

immediately followed on the same line by the start of Riddle 43, Ic wat..., strongly

hinting that the two should be read together and that the mating of barnyard animals is an

allegory for the union of body and soul.400 Furthermore, Mercedes Salvador notes that

hens are a medieval allegorical commonplace for spiritual life, while their male

counterparts symbolize lechery.401 So both riddles express the theme of body and soul,

Riddle 42 allegorically and Riddle 43 explicitly. And Riddle 44 is yet another bawdy one,

whose solution is the double entendre of a key or a penis. Not only does its solution of a

key hint at translation, Riddles 42 and 44 enclose the soul and body of Riddle 43, a riddle

that is quite tame and spiritual, just as the soul is enclosed by the lusts of the flesh or the

gastlice andgyt (spiritual understanding) of a text is enclosed within its nacod

gerecedness (naked narrative). While none of these riddles contain within them

metaphors of turning, the idea of transforming (awendan) one object into another is

399 Mercedes Salvador interprets the conjunction of witan and wihta as emphasizing the difference between rational humans and beasts, but it can also be read as emphasizing that the line between them is thin. Mercedes Salvador, “The Key to the Body: Unlocking Riddles 42–46,” in Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003), 66. 400 Muir, Exeter Anthology, 2:661; James E. Anderson, Two Literary Riddles in the Exeter Book: Riddle 1 and the Easter Riddle (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), 23, 49. 401 Salvador, “Key,” 68–69.

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inherent in the riddle tradition itself, and the imagery of unlocking a mystery is the same

used by Ælfric and others when discussing translation.402

While the Old English biblical poems express larger, national frameworks of

translatio, like the riddles or Ælfric’s scripture, they can also place express interpretive

authority upon the reader. We can see this metaphor of scriptural translation at work

toward the close of Exodus, where the word wealhstod (translator) makes an appearance

in lines 516–34:

Þanon Israhelum ece rædas

on merehwearfe Moyses sægde,

heahþungen wer, halige spræce,

deop ærende. Dægword403 nemnað

swa gyt werðeode, on gewritum findað 520

402 Riddle 43, with a solution of soul and body, does however use hweorfan to refer to redirection in line 12, “þonne hy from bearme begen hweorfað anre magan” (when they both turn away from the bosom of their one kinswoman), Muir, Exeter Anthology, 1:318. 403 Krapp follows Gollancz and emends the manuscript’s dæg weorc (day work) to dægword (day word), taking it to be a reference to Deuteronomy. Gollancz’s argument is that not only is this contextually consistent—that biblical book opens with Moses speaking to the Israelites on the shores of the Red Sea and also contains the Ten Commandments, which are referred to by doma gehwilcne (each of the judgments) in line 521, but the Latinized Hebrew names given in the Vulgate are similar, Dabarim for Deuteronomy and Dabreiamin for Chronicles. Gollancz argues that the scribe confused the two and wrote dægword, a translation for the Latin name for Chronicles, Dierum Verba. In his 1953 edition, Irving makes the same emendation, but in 1972 retracts the emendation for lack of evidence, although still maintaining that it is a reference to Deuteronomy. In their editions, Tolkien and Lucas let the manuscript stand. I follow Krapp mainly out of a desire to use the ASPR editions for consistency and ease of reference, but a reference to Deuteronomy does reinforce my argument somewhat by strengthening the connection to interpretation of scripture in this passage. Israel Gollancz, ed., Cædmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry Junius XI in the Bodleian Library (London: British Academy, 1927), lxxvii–lxxviii; Irving, The Old English Exodus, 65, 97–98; Edward Burroughs Irving, “New Notes on the Old English Exodus,” Anglia 90 (1972): 320–21; J. R. R. Tolkien, The Old English Exodus, ed. Joan Turville-Petre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 16, 75; Lucas, Exodus, 142.

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doma gehwilcne, þara ðe him drihten bebead

on þam siðfate soðum wordum,

gif onlucan wile lifes wealhstod,

beorht in breostum, banhuses weard,

ginfæsten god gastes cægon. 525

Run bið gerecenod, ræd forð gæð,

hafað wislicu word on fæðme,

wile meagollice modum tæcan

þæt we gesne ne syn godes þeodscipes,

metodes miltsa. He us ma onlyhð, 530

nu us boceras beteran secgað

lengran lyfwynna.404 Þis is læne dream,

wommum awyrged, wreccum alyfed,

earma anbid.405

(Then Moses, the noble man, spoke with holy speech, eternal counsels, a

deep message, to the Israelites upon the seashore. The nations still cite

Deuteronomy, and find in the scriptures each of the judgments, which the

Lord with true words commanded them on that journey. If life’s translator,

the guardian of the bone-house, bright in the breast, wishes to unlock the

404 Another crux. Krapp and most other editors emend the manuscript’s lyft wynna (joys of heaven) to lifwynna (life-joys), since lyft is elsewhere not used to refer to the eternal paradise, but rather to the atmosphere or air—the only other appearance of lyftwynn in the corpus is in Beowulf 3043 where it refers to the joy the dragon takes in flight. Yet the passage specifically contrasts the lyft wynna with the læne dream (transitory joy) of life on earth, so a reference to heaven is not out of place. See Lucas, Exodus, 143; Fred C. Robinson, “Notes on the Old English Exodus,” Anglia 80 (1962): 370–72. 405 ASPR 1:105–06, lines 516–34.

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ample goodness with the keys of the spirit, the secret/rune will be

explained; counsel will come forth; it will have wise words in its bosom; it

will earnestly teach the minds that are not destitute of God’s

teaching/fellowship, of the Dispenser’s mercy. It will enlighten us more,

but for now the scholars tell us of the better, more lasting joys of heaven.

This [current life] is a transitory joy, cursed with evils, granted to exiles, a

waiting period for the wretched.)

Audrey Walton notes that while the poem does not have the status of holy scripture, this

passage “explicitly invites the reader to unlock the mysteries of its subject matter by

using a metaphor quite evidently drawn from biblical exegesis.”406 In this passage lifes

wealhstod (translator of life) is generally taken to refer to the soul, in particular its

intellectual faculties, and both Bosworth-Toller and the DOE gloss its appositive

banhuses weard (guardian of the bone-house) as the mind.407 While the kenning

406 Audrey Walton, “‘Gehyre Se Ðe Wille’: The Old English Exodus and the Reader as Exegete,” English Studies 94, no. 1 (2013): 3–5. 407 BT, s. v. ban–hus, 1:68; DOE, s. v. ban–hus; Tolkien, OE Exodus, 75–76; Lucas, Exodus, 142–43. Dorothy Haines, however, dissents from the near unanimity on this point, holding that lifes wealhstod instead refers to Christ. Haines bases her argument on the observation that, “there appears to be no tradition, patristic or Anglo-Saxon, which would support this notion [of the mind or soul interpreting scripture].” While this statement may be true in the narrowest of senses for patristic writing, it ignores the major theme running through Augustine’s writings of the soul being the divine essence created in the likeness of God and imbued with rationality that enables a return to the divinity of God. Augustine and others, including Boethius, may not have applied this rationality to the specific task of interpreting scripture, but there can be no doubt that they consider the soul to be capable of analogous tasks. And of course, I am arguing that, at least in these poems and the Anglo-Saxon views on translation, there is just such an implicit tradition in Anglo-Saxon poetry. Haines also argues that the hapax legmenon banhuses weard is a translation of corporis caput, a phrase used in patristic writing to refer to Christ as the head of the church, but that metaphor does not fit the context, and nowhere else in the corpus is banhus used to refer to anything other than the physical body of a human.

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banhuses weard is a hapax legomenon, the metaphor that the body is subservient to the

soul and its protector, is a staple of medieval literature.408 Salvador notes that the gastes

cægon (keys of the spirit) in line 525 is akin to the cægon cræfte in Riddle 42, and the

boceras (scholars) in line 531 compares to þam þe bec witan (those who know books) in

the riddle.409 The rational soul contains the faculty that has the power to interpret

scripture and unlock its gastlic andgyt or spiritual meaning. The poet emphasizes the

translation metaphor both with his use of run, which means mystery but also refers to

runic characters written on the page that encode hidden meaning, and with the reference

to the wislicu word (wise words). And significantly, the use of wile in line 523 indicates

free will; the soul can unlock the mysteries of scripture if it chooses to do so. The soul

depicted here is unified and has both free will and agency.

This Exodus passage also uses mod (mind) in line 528, but whether or not the mod

is distinct from the lifes wealhstod is unclear. The subject of the sentence, the one doing

the teaching, is ambiguous. Zacher suggests that the teacher is the soul, which unlocks

the message and uses it to instruct the lesser intellectual faculty of the mind.410 Here we

may have an analogy to the rational steersman discussed in earlier chapters, only this

passage uses a metaphor of translation rather than seafaring. Or perhaps the soul unlocks

the message, and it is the message which then instructs a unified soul/mind. Mod does

alliterate here, so its selection is as likely for metrical reasons as it is for semantic ones,

so there is no obvious reason why the poet chose this word over another.

Dorothy Haines, “Unlocking ‘Exodus’ Ll. 516–532,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 98, no. 4 (October 1999): 484, 497. 408 Salvador, “Key,” 74–75. 409 Ibid., 68. 410 Zacher, Rewriting, 75.

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Wealhstod appears eighteen times in the OE corpus, most often as a literal

interpreter or translator from one language to another, often glossing the Latin

interpres.411 But one other metaphorical instance, in Alfred’s translation of Gregory’s

Regula pastoralis, reads:

Forðæm se wealhstod [self] Godes & monna, ðæt is Crist, fleah eorðrice to

underfonne, se se þe ealne ðone wisdom ðæra uferrena gasta oferstigð &

ær worlde ricsode on hefonum.412

(Therefore the wealhstod himself between God and man, that is Christ,

shunned undertaking earthly rule, he who surpasses all wisdom of the

higher spirits and ruled in heaven before the world existed.)

Alfred uses wealhstod to translate the Latin mediator.413 So while Alfred undoubtedly is

using wealhstod in its literal sense of intermediary or go-between, the Old English word

brings with it the connotation of translation/transformation, which is absent in Gregory’s

Latin. In the Old English version, Christ is not just a mediator or intercessor, but also a

translator and transformer of divinity into flesh, and as Davis notes, “the Logos himself,

is the perfect unity of signifier and signified.”414

411 Of the eighteen appearances of wealhstod in the Toronto corpus, fourteen are used in the sense of a translator or interpreter from one language to another, two are proper names, and two, those in Exodus and in Alfred’s translation of Regula pastoralis, can be read as ‘mediator.’ 412 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 1.3.11–12, 33. 413 Gregory’s Latin reads in full: “Hinc ipse Dei hominumque mediator regnum percipere uitauit in terris, qui supernorum quoque spirituum scientam sensumque transcendans, ante saecula regnat in caelis.”Grégoire le Grand, Règle Pastorale, 1.3, 1:136–38. (Hence the mediator between God and man himself shunned the securing of a kingdom on earth, he who transcending the knowledge and understanding of heavenly spirits, reigns in heaven from before this age.) 414 Davis, “King Alfred’s Pastoral Care,” 78.

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Exodus is not the only Old English biblical poem to use the metaphor of

TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION; appropriately given its narrative subject matter

Daniel also makes use of metaphors of translation. That poem uses verbs of turning to

refer to conversion, transformation, and translation no less than seven times. Three of

these metaphorical turnings are in the sense of turning to sin and paganism and away

from God, in lines 22, 203, and 221. But the same metaphor of translation that appears in

Exodus also appears toward the close of Daniel, when the prophet says to King

Belshazzar in lines 743–46:

No ic wið feohsceattum ofer folc bere

drihtnes domas, ne ðe dugeðe can,

ac þe unceapunga orlæg secge,

worda gerynu, þa þu wendan ne miht.415

(I do not bear the Lord's judgments to the nation for money, nor can I do it

to you for benefit, but without recompense I will tell you your fate, the

mystery of words that you cannot translate.)

Again we have the interpretation of divine intent and a gerynu, or runic mystery using the

verb wendan, meaning literally to turn, but in this context to translate. While the poem

does not label Daniel as a wealhstod, he certainly performs that function, both as a

translator of the written word and as the interpreter of divine intent and spiritual meaning.

In two instances, the Daniel poet connects turning to memory in what seems to be

a Boethian manner.416 In the first, Daniel is again acting as an interpreter, in this case of

dreams, when he warns Nebuchadnezzar in lines 567–70:

415 ASPR 1:132.

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Se ðec aceorfeð of cyningdome,

and ðec wineleasne on wræc sendeð,

and þonne onhweorfeð heortan þine,

þæt þu ne gemyndgast æfter mandreame.417

(He will cut you off from your kingdom, and send you friendless into

exile, and then he will turn your heart, so that you do not remember human

joy.)

The turning is either a Neoplatonist anamnesis or a Germanic elegiac turn away from the

joys of life rather than turning as translation, despite being set in an overall context of

interpreting a dream.418 While these lines correspond to Daniel 4:29, neither the turning

metaphor nor the reference to memory is present in the Vulgate, which uses donec scias

(until you should understand).419

The king ignores the prophet’s warning, the predicted fate falls upon him, and he

is reduced to a bestial state. Daniel says that Nebuchadnezzar “forfangen wearð” (became

seized; by what is unstated but presumably it is by madness or perhaps some kind of

epileptic fit), that he “susl þrowode, wilddeora westen” (suffered torment, the wilderness

416 See 3m9 in Boethius’s Latin, Chapter 33/Meter 20 in the Old English translation, and the discussion of turning back to memory in Chapter 2. 417 ASPR 1:127. 418 The poem Daniel may have been composed too early for a Neoplatonist influence to be reasonable. 419 Daniel 4:29 reads in full: “Et ab hominibus te eicient et cum bestiis feris erit habitatio tua faenum quasi bos comedes et septem tempora mutabuntur super te donec scias quod dominetur excelsus in regno hominum et cuicumque voluerit det illud” (And they will cast you out from humanity and your dwelling will be with wild beasts; you will eat hay like an ox, and seven seasons will pass over you until you know that the exalted one rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he wishes.)

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of wild beasts), and says he has “wilddeora gewita” (the wits of a wild beast).420 The

phrasing here is quite similar to that of verse 4:30 in the Vulgate, except the biblical

version includes a description of Nebuchadnezzar physically becoming like a beast, in

particular a bird. But the Vulgate does not depict a metaphoric transformation, but rather

uses simile:

Eadem hora sermo conpletus est super Nabuchodonosor ex hominibus

abiectus est et faenum ut bos comedit et rore caeli corpus eius infectum est

donec capilli eius in similitudinem aquilarum crescerent et ungues eius

quasi avium.”

(That same hour the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was

exiled from men, and he ate hay like an ox, and his body was tinged with

the dew of heaven: till his hairs grew like the feathers of eagles, and his

nails like birds' claws.)

So, not only is the Daniel poet adding a Neoplatonic interpretation to the biblical book,

but by changing the simile in the Vulgate to a metaphor he strengthens the motif of

transformation, making it a true alteration rather than a similarity or likeness.

In his translation of Gregory’s Regula pastoralis, Alfred makes reference to this

incident, but in his account Nebuchadnezzar is only mentally transformed into a beast. He

does not come to physically resemble a beast, but rather he loses the capacity for rational

thought and, since that is what distinguishes humans from animals, actually becomes a

beast:

420 ASPR 1:128, lines 613–623.

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Ða upahafenesse he arasode & hie getælde, ða he hine ascead of ðam

woroldrice, & hine gehwyrfde to ungesceadwisum neatum, & sua awende

mode he hine geðiedde to feldgogendum deorum.421

(Then [God] rebuked his pride and blamed it, when he cut him off from

his worldly kingdom and turned him into an irrational beast and so

transformed his mind [that] he joined him to the beasts of the field.)

Alfred’s translation is rather close to Gregory’s original Latin, which uses the verb

vertere (to turn) to denote the transformation.422 Alfred uses both gehwyrfan and

awendan in the passage, and he uses the active voice in contrast to the passive of the

Vulgate, emphasizing God as the agent of the transformation.

The Daniel poet uses the strong preterite form hwearf twice in the passage that

describes Nebuchadnezzar’s return to sanity in lines 626–30:

Þa he eft onhwearf

wodan gewittes, þær þe he ær wide bær

herewosan hige, heortan getenge.

Þa his gast ahwearf in godes gemynd,

421 Sweet, King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, 1:39. 422 Gregory’s Latin reads: “Quae uidelicet vox illius irae uindictam aperte pertulit, quam occulta elatio accendit. Nam destrictus iudex prius inuisibiliter uidit quod postea publice feriendo reprehendit. Vnde et in irrationale animal hunc uertit, ab humana societate separavit, agri bestiis mutata mente coniunxit, ut destricto uidelicet iustoque iudicio homo quoque esse perderet, qui magnum se ultra homines aestimasset.” Grégoire le Grand, Règle Pastorale, 1.4, 1:142–44. (Clearly, that utterance of his manifestly bore the vengeance of the wrath which his hidden elation had kindled. For the severe judge first sees invisibly that which he later publicly reproves by striking. And hence he turned him into an irrational animal, separated from human society, joined with the beasts of the field with an altered mind, so that, one may see, in strict and just judgment he, who had esteemed himself great beyond men, should lose being a man.)

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mod to mannum, siððan he metod onget.423

(Then after that he returned from his mad wits, where before he widely

bore a belligerent mind close to his heart. Then his spirit turned to the

memory of God, his mind to men, once he understood the Dispenser.)

The first verb of turning, onhwearf, is used to denote a figurative return, a return to

sanity. Not only is this a Boethian turning of the mind back to its origin, but it is a change

of state, from irrational beast to rational human. The second, ahwearf, is more strictly

Boethian, a return to memory which contains the divine essence. What prompts this latter

turn is a kind of translation, an understanding of God’s will, albeit not a translation of

literal words. Again, the Vulgate does not contain the turning metaphor, instead having

Nebuchadnezzar say in the first person, “sensus meus redditus est mihi” (my sense was

restored to me) in 4:31.424

The Old English biblical poem, Genesis, uses the TURNING-AS-TRANSLATION/

TRANSFORMATION metaphor only a few times. Turning metaphors are common in the

poem, especially that of the mind turning or changing, as in Genesis B lines 715–17,

where Eve’s words successfully tempt Adam:

oðþæt Adame innan breostum

his hyge hwyrfde and his heorte ongann

423 ASPR 1:128. 424 Daniel 4:31 in full: “Igitur post finem dierum ego Nabuchodonosor oculos meos ad caelum levavi et sensus meus redditus est mihi et altissimo benedixi et viventem in sempiternum laudavi et glorificavi quia potestas eius potestas sempiterna et regnum eius in generationem et generationem.” (Now at the end of days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my sense was restored to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised him who lives forever, because his power is an eternal power and his kingdom is for generation after generation.)

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wendan to hire willan.425

(until within Adam’s breast his mind turned and his heart began to turn to

her will.)

Earlier in the poem there are two instances were verbs of turning are used to

denote transformation or translation. While both of these are in contexts of abandoning

God, they are not phrased as a turning away, but rather as a change of state or being. The

first of these is in Genesis B, lines 427–29, where the transformation is not of the

individual, but rather of the circumstances. Upon the creation of humanity, Satan speaks

to the other demons:

Gif hit eower ænig mæge

gewendan mid wihte þæt hie word godes

lare forlæten, sona hie him þe laðran beoð.426

(If any of you can turn it in any way so that they abandon the word and

teaching of God, at once they will be more hateful to him.)

While the passage does refer to God’s word, the context is not specifically in reference to

scripture. Yet the stratagem devised to tempt humanity is something of a translation or

reinterpretation of God’s commandment. The second instance occurs earlier, in lines

256–60, this time in reference to Satan’s fall:

Lof sceolde he drihtnes wyrcean,

dyran sceolde he his dreamas on heofonum, and sceolde his drihtne þancian

þæs leanes þe he him on þam leohte gescerede— þonne læte he his hine lange wealdan.

Ac he awende hit him to wyrsan þinge, ongan him winn up ahebban

425 ASPR 1:25. 426 ASPR 1:16.

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wið þone hehstan heofnes waldend, þe siteð on þam halgan stole.427

(He should have wrought the Lord’s praise, should have held dear his joys in the

heavens, and should have thanked his Lord for the reward that he had bestowed

upon him in that light—then he would have allowed him to rule for a long time.

But he changed it into a worse state for himself, he began to raise strife against

the highest ruler of heaven, who sits on the holy throne.)

Again, the use of awendan here is not translation of words, but rather a change of state;

by rebelling against God, Satan transforms his exalted state into a low one.

While the Old English biblical poems are not fraught with anxiety over their

status as authoritative interpretations of divine scripture, they are reinterpretations. And

not only do they reinterpret the biblical books on which they are based, they make use of

a number of metaphors of transformation. Like the Roman and patristic traditions of

translation, these poems reinterpret the role of the Anglo-Saxons, valorizing their culture

and transforming them into the successors of the Israelites, God’s chosen people. The

poems translate, transfer, and transform a different kind of authority. Daniel establishes

the narrator as an authoritative first-person witness, as do many of the riddles, which are

themselves metaphors that need to be interpreted or translated, unlocking a mystery or

gastlic andgyt that is at their heart. And along the way, they pose the question of whether

a person has the agency for unlocking those mysteries.

Metaphors of translation as a transformation of national and religious identity are

not restricted to poetry. One famous use in prose is the incident with the slaves in the

Roman market found in the life of St. Gregory. The tale exists in four early versions, two

427 ASPR 1:10.

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Latin and two Old English, and while the different accounts contain significant variation,

the core elements of translation remain unchanged. The four versions are a Latin one

written by an anonymous early eighth-century cleric at Whitby, the version in Bede’s

Historia ecclesiastica written a few decades later, the version in the late ninth-century

Old English translation of Bede, and the fourth in Ælfric’s homily on Gregory written in

the closing years of the tenth century. In the tale Gregory meets some Englishmen in the

market in Rome (whether they are boys or men and slaves or free varies with the version)

and the soon-to-be pope makes three puns relating to their identity. As told in the Whitby

version, when Gregory seeks to identify what people (gens) the men belong to:

Cumque responderent, "Anguli dicuntur, illi de quibus sumus," ille dixit,

"Angeli Dei." Deinde dixit, "Rex gentis illius, quomodo nominatur?" Et

dixerunt, "Aelli." Et ille ait, "Alleluia. Laus enim Dei esse debet illic."

Tribus quoque illius nomen de qua erant proprie requisivit. Et dixerunt,

"Deire." Et ille dixit, "De ira Dei confugientes ad fidem."428

(And then they responded, "we are they who are called Angles." [Gregory]

said, "angels of God." Then he said, "what is the name of the king of that

people?" And they said ''Ælli." And he said, "Alleluia, indeed God's praise

must be in that place." He asked the name of their particular tribe. And

they said, "Deire." And he said, "fleeing from the wrath of God to the

faith.")

The order of the puns and the exact wording of the conversation varies in the different

versions, as does whether the men speak for themselves or whether Gregory is speaking

428 Bertram Colgrave, ed., The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great by an Anonymous Monk of Whitby (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1968), 90–91.

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to a third party about them, but all four contain the same three puns: Anguli/angelus,

Ælla/alleluia, and Deira/de ira.429 Not only does Gregory’s revelation regarding the

spirituality of the English nation appears in all three sacred languages or revelation that

correspond to the triune godhead—Greek (angelus), Hebrew (alleluia), and Latin (de

ira)—the wordplay places English on a par with them as a legitimate medium for divine

revelation in that the spiritual meaning is contained within the English words as well.430

Gregory not only engages in wordplay, but he is also conducting an exegesis of

the terms, unlocking a spiritual meaning hidden within them. The story positions Gregory

as believing that not only are the Anglo-Saxons valorized as one of God’s people, but

their language is suitable for conveying a spiritual message and a translation of the gastlic

andgyt from Latin into English is possible. Furthermore, the two earlier and Latin

versions, Whitby and Bede, were written with audiences beyond England in mind. The

surviving copy of the Whitby version is found in the monastery at St. Gall in Switzerland,

while copies of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica are found throughout Europe, and Bede’s

consistent practice of providing Latin glosses to explain the significance of English

toponyms indicates that he was not writing for an English audience.431 The two Old

English versions, which were clearly intended for a domestic audience, strip out the Latin

for the two puns that work in English (Angle/engel and Ælla/alleluia). The translation of

Bede’s account retains and translates the Latin de ira pun:

429 The other versions are at Bede, EH, 132–34; Miller, OE EH, 1:96; and CH 2.9, 74. 430 I am indebted to Andy Orchard for this observation. See: David Howlett, “‘Tres Linguae Sacrae’ and Threefold Play in Insular Latin,” Peritia 16 (2002): 94–115. 431 Colgrave, Earliest Life, 66; Uppinder Mehan and David Townsend, “‘Nation’ and the Gaze of the Other in Eighth-Century Northumbria,” Comparative Literature 53, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 12–13.

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Wel þæt is cweden Dere, de ira eruti; heo sculon of Godes yrre beon

abrogdene, ך to Cristes mildheortnesse gecegde.432

(Indeed, it is called Deira, de ira eruti, they must be snatched from God’s

wrath and summoned to Christ’s mercy.)

Ælfric, who uses the translation of Bede as his source for this passage in the homily, has

nearly identical language, only he does not explicitly provide the Latin:

“Wel hi sind dere gehatene. for ðan ðe hi sind fram graman generode. and

to cristes mildheortnysse gecygede”433

(Indeed, they are called Deira because they are delivered from anger and

summoned to Christ’s mercy.)

The Latin versions of the story valorize English, equating the English words with the

Latin ones, while the English versions efface the Latin to the point that it appears that

Gregory is speaking English, completing the transformation from Latin into English.434

And of course, this meeting in the marketplace is said to be Gregory’s inspiration for

another type of turning transformation, his dispatch of Augustine of Canterbury’s mission

to convert the Anglo-Saxons.

While the Anglo-Saxons had the TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFER metaphor available

to them through the Latin transferre and its past participle translatus, they also had

available the metaphor TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION through awendan and

associated words. Like their Roman and patristic predecessors, the Anglo-Saxons could

432 Miller, OE EH, 1:96. 433 CH 2.9, 74; CH Introduction, 403. 434 For an extended discussion of Gregory’s wordplay, see Emily Thornberry, “‘Ða Gregorius Gamenode Mid His Wordum’: Old English Versions of Gregory’s Bilingual Puns,” Leeds Studies in English 38 (2007): 17–30.

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envision translation as a carrying across of both meaning and of authority—a transfer of

authority from the original writer to the translator as well as an authority in the translated

text itself that could elevate and valorize their own culture. What Anglo-Saxon

commentary on translation that does exist focuses on the transfer of meaning in word-for-

word and sense-for-sense modes, but Anglo-Saxon writers also engaged in imitative or

transformative modes of translation, such as the versification of biblical stories.

Awendan encodes the TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFORMATION metaphor in the same

way the Latin transferre encodes TRANSLATION-AS-TRANSFER and recognizes that almost

any translation necessarily entails transformation to some degree, and not just a transfer

of meaning. In a simple gloss, the epitome of a word-for-word translation, there may be

little transformation, but even a simple gloss may introduce change as the target word

may have different connotations than the original one. And in any more complex

translation there is inevitably some reordering of the text, if only to conform to the rules

of the target language. This reordering in a sense-for-sense translation, with its potential

for losing, altering, or obscuring any immanent meaning in the original text, presents a

problem for the translator. Unlocking and making available the immanent meaning in a

text is one of the goals of Old English translation, whether it be Ælfric’s gastlic andgyt of

holy scripture or the solution to a lewd riddle. And the third mode of translation, that of

adaptation or imitation, by freeing the translator from the constraints of the original text,

opens up even more avenues for transformation. In word-for-word or sense-for-sense

translation the source is, at least in theory, preserved, and successive generations of

readers interpret the same text. But as one moves along the continuum from sense-for-

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sense to adaptation, the translator increasingly takes on the role of reinterpreting the text,

creating both new meaning and a new text in the process.

Transformation is not limited to the text itself; the translator and the translator’s

language and culture can be changed as well. A translation shifts authority from the

original author to the translator, and the transfer of authority elevates the translator from a

scribe who mechanically recodes the words into another language into an authority on a

par with the original author. This authority can be the narrative authority of a witness, or

it can be the exegetical authority that arises out of encoding the mysterium or gastlice

andgyt in a new language. Such a transfer of authority is clearly seen in Ælfric’s prefaces

to his Catholic Homilies, where in the Latin he is careful to cite the patristic authorities

and to acknowledge the possibility that he may have erred in his interpretation, but in the

Old English makes little or no reference to the authorities he draws from and warns

copyists not to change his words lest they misinterpret his own authority. In the Old

English, Ælfric becomes the authority. Some translations, such as the Old English Daniel,

transform narrative authority, positioning the narrator as a first-person witness. And

translation can transform the target language and even the audience and target culture.

Even word-for-word glossing can transfer connotations from the original to the target

language, and adaptations can valorize the target culture, as when the Old English Daniel

uses pagan references to map a Christian domain, and positioning the Anglo-Saxons as

the new chosen people in the process.

Awendan and other Old English words that relate to TRANSLATION-AS-

TRANSFORMATION do not themselves encode ideas of agency and will, but Anglo-Saxon

writers do discuss such questions in peripheral comments, such as mentioning what

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prompted them to undertake the task of translation—their own or other human will, or

divine will—and whether or not they require divine assistance in accomplishing the task.

But there are other forms of transformation that do impact upon will and agency, as in

Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar transforms into an animal, losing his rationality, and

consequently his will and agency, or in the Genesis poem where Satan transforms human

will.

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Conclusion

Cognitive approaches to the study of literature, such as conceptual metaphor

theory, work under the assumption that the creation and reading of literature are cognitive

acts, and more specifically that “every literary encounter is determined by common

human mental capacities enacted by an individual mind in specific sociological contexts,

and so relies on the interaction of literature, culture and cognition.”435 Cognitive

approaches can elicit meaning from those places in a text where the words, influences,

and thoughts intersect. And since cognition is involved in both the creation and reading

of texts, cognitive approaches are useful not only in authorial-based analyses, but also in

understanding what the reception of literary works might have been.

Conceptual metaphors have particular utility in the study of Old English literature

because they can tease out the myriad ways that Christian theological doctrine interacts

with the Anglo-Saxon society with its roots in paganism. Somewhat surprisingly, it is not

that different metaphors operate in Latin and in Old English that is most revealing, but

rather it is that both languages embrace many of the same metaphors that makes this

approach particularly fruitful. When a metaphor in an original text is not available in the

target language, a translator faces a stark decision between choosing a different one or of

communicating an opaque message, but the available choices are wider and more subtle

when the metaphors are available in both Old English and Latin, as we have seen with

words relating to turning like gehwearfness and conversio. So when a translator opts to

add or subtract such a metaphor, the choice is not driven by necessity, by an inability to

convey or comprehend the subtlety of the original text, as it might be if the metaphor

435 Harbus, Cognitive Approaches, 1.

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were inoperative and opaque in the target language. Instead, the choice to add or alter a

metaphor, which is not necessarily a conscious and deliberate one, reflects a different

understanding of the source text and produces a different interpretation, both literally and

exegetically. And even when the writer chooses the same metaphor, the expression of

that metaphor can have different connotations in the target language, as in the difference

between transferre and awendan, with the Old English word encoding concepts of

transformation that are absent in the Latin.

The detailed examination of metaphors of turning in the Dictionary Old English

Web Corpus and how they are used to illustrate and express concepts of free will, agency,

and the nature of the soul in this dissertation produces three major observations. The first

is that Malcolm Godden’s split between the classical/unified and vernacular/split

traditions of the Anglo-Saxon mind-soul is not so much the result of distinct

philosophical traditions as it is of tension between Augustinian/Alcuinian doctrine and

the vernacular metaphors used to describe the mind and soul. The second observation is

that Anglo-Saxons considered the exercise of free will to be dependent on the rational

faculty of the mind controlling emotions and desires, a concept that differs from present-

day models of free will. And the last is a distinction between will and agency. We also

see these metaphors of turning at play in the Anglo-Saxon understanding of translation.

Translation in Old English literature is not simply a transfer of meaning, but a

transformation, and the text and its meaning are likened to the body and soul.

While we do in fact see two distinct views of the mind-soul in Anglo-Saxon

literature, the division does not run along the lines of the two distinct traditions that

Godden envisages. It is not that certain works promote the classical view and others the

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vernacular conception of the soul. The idea of the unitary soul is explicitly described in

virtually all Anglo-Saxon theological and philosophical tracts on the subject and is

expressed in certain poetic works as well. Where the split is evidenced is in the

vernacular language—in particular the metaphors—used to describe the soul, indicating

that while Anglo-Saxons accepted and promulgated the idea of a unified soul, this notion

is incompletely grafted onto their texts. The vernacular metaphors, presumably

expressing older, Germanic ideas of the mind and soul, couch the discussion in terms of a

mind-soul split, and contradict and undermine the intent of the texts to express a doctrine

of a unified soul. An example of the modes of expression inherent in vernacular metaphor

undermining classical doctrine is that of the anfloga (solitary flyer) in The Seafarer. It

has long been recognized that in depicting a wandering mind-soul the poet is relying on

imagery from Alcuin, and indirectly from Lactantius and Hilary of Poitiers. The poem’s

diction associates the anfloga with rationality, which places it squarely in the Alcuinian

tradition, which has the mens or animus (mind, intellect) roaming. Yet the anfloga is

depicted as alien to the self, and in its action is more like that of an independent, non-

agentive soul, a goad that urges action but cannot compel it. So while the poem uses

imagery that associates itself with the doctrine of a unified soul, the metaphors it uses

depict the mind and soul as separate.

The tension between vernacular metaphor and classical doctrine also impacts the

Anglo-Saxon conception of the soul as a rational entity. For example, in the translation of

one of Boethius’s meters, 3m9, we see different elements of the self, the rational mod and

the non-rational sawol, independently contemplating the divine. In contrast, the

translation of 3m2 addresses the entire self, the gesceaft (creature), rather than evincing a

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mind/soul/body split. The role of reason is also at the heart of Alfred’s use of the MIND-

AS-SHIP metaphor in his translation of Augustine’s Soliloquies. Here, and where it

appears elsewhere in the corpus, the MIND-AS-SHIP metaphor emphasizes the importance

of reason, the rational faculty of the mind that steers the ship, as the essential element of

will and agency. The translation of Regula pastoralis uses this metaphor to stress the

importance of steering a straight course through storms and sources of instability that are

produced by the mind itself, by desires and emotions. In places the rational faculty of the

mind has agency over desires, a Frankfurtian free will of control over second-order

desires, but in others the rational mind does not have the agency necessary to achieve

salvation, which belongs to God.

The metaphor presents a form of compatibilist free will, but one that differs from

most current compatibilist models. Present-day discussions of free will center on a

rejection of dualism and an understanding that the mind and consciousness are emergent

properties of the brain—the body. Current debate focuses on whether or not this

understanding demands a determinist conclusion—the brain is governed by the laws of

physics and chemistry, therefore there is no free will. The Anglo-Saxon understanding is

rather different. Not only is the term dualism somewhat inapt—are two entities operating

(mind-soul and body) or three (mind, soul, and body)?—but the mind or mind-soul is not

entirely rational. Emotions and desires operate within the mind, alongside rationality, and

to achieve freedom the rational faculty must not only overcome external and bodily

temptations and forces, but it must govern and control the rest of the mind/mind-soul as

well.

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A distinction between agency, the ability and power to act, and will, the ability

and power to choose, also arises out of an examination of the metaphors, although since

this distinction is chiefly observed in two writers, Alfred, who focuses on the role of

agency, and Ælfric, who focuses on will and choice, it is not entirely clear as to whether

this is a general distinction in Anglo-Saxon thought or the result of differing emphases by

the two men.

Alfred’s focus on agency can be seen in his expansion and alteration of

Boethius’s metaphor of the revolutions of the wheel of fate—the orbital turning back to

one’s nature, to the divine element resident in the soul, and the pivot redirecting the mind

and soul toward the divine. In so doing Alfred reflects a contemporary, ninth-century

interpretation of the Consolatio, reinterpreting the Neoplatonic tripartite world-soul so

that it conforms to the Alcuinian notion of a human soul created in the image of the

Trinity, consisting of reason, emotion, and desire, and placing agency largely, if not

entirely, in the hands of God. Alfred’s states that one’s placement on the wheel is out of

the hands of humanity—we have no control over the vicissitudes of fate—but he

describes the turning toward or away from the divine axle as agent action, giving humans

partial agency in their response to fate.

In contrast, Ælfric’s emphasis on will and choice can be seen in the turning

metaphors in his Epiphany homily. Not only does Ælfric use an extended metaphor of the

magi turning back and forth between Christ and Bethlehem and Herod and Jerusalem in

their journey, but he accompanies it with an explication of free will and agency. Ælfric

emphasizes a Gregorian notion of free will, rather than an Augustinian one where God

shapes human volition, but, like Alfred, he clearly places agency in the hands of God.

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Unsurprisingly, Anglo-Saxon commentary on free will and agency is focused on

the theology of salvation, and this focus is also reflected in their views on translation.

While Anglo-Saxon commentary on translation, appearing predominantly in prefaces to

translated works, focuses on the word-for-word and sense-for-sense distinction, a third

mode of translation arises in practice, a mode that centuries later Dryden would dub

imitation, the reconfiguring and transforming of source material to suit a different

purpose and genre. Such adaptation in Anglo-Saxon translations ranges from the

relatively subtle changes in Alfred’s translations of Boethius and Gregory to

transformations of genre as in the Old English biblical poetry to homilies. These last do

not fall within the bounds of what we today would consider to be translation because

homilies are not a new version of the source text, but their creation entails the use of the

same exegetical tools and interpretive practices as translation, and therefore they exist on

the same continuum as more conventional translations. The dual metaphors of

TRANSLATION AS TRANSFER and TRANSLATION AS TRANSFORMATION underlying the verb

awendan allow this type of adaptation to bubble up within various Old English

translations without explicit commentary.

Of particular concern when translating scripture is the risk of altering the

mysterium or gastlic andgyt (spiritual understanding) of the text. The risk, most famously

expressed in Old English literature by Ælfric, is less that the translator has insufficient

agency to preserve the gastlic andgyt while translating the text and more that the reader

will misinterpret the text due to the lack of commentary, such as that found in a homiletic

exegesis. This concern over the gastlic andgyt is most acute in the translation of scripture,

but the metaphor of a divine core of a text encased by a physical form, which is

218

analogous to the soul encased in a body, is present in a variety of literary forms, such as

riddles, which use wordplay to transform or translate the literal description of the object

into the riddle’s “answer.” Needless to say, the theological stakes of misunderstanding a

riddle are less than misunderstanding scripture, but the cognitive process of interpretation

and exegesis are the same, with similar opportunities for getting it wrong.

Furthermore, translation is not simply the transfer of meaning from the source

language to the target, but it can also entail a transformation of the target culture and an

appropriation of authority. Roman translations of Greek works served to valorize Latin

culture, and scriptural translations were a form of translatio imperii from Hebrew to

Greek to Latin. And Old English translations, particularly the biblical poems, reposition

the Anglo-Saxons as the heirs to Israel and the chosen people. An epitome of this transfer

of authority and identity can be found in the story in the life of Gregory the Great and his

encounter with Anglo-Saxons in the Roman slave market, where the translators use

Gregory’s wordplay to valorize both the Anglo-Saxon people and the Old English

language, equating Old English with Latin in the Latin versions of the tale and effacing

the Latin and replacing it with English in the vernacular versions. In a similar fashion,

translation valorizes the translator himself. In the Latin prefaces to his translations, for

instance, Ælfric positions himself at the end of a chain of scholarly authority, while in the

Old English prefaces he assumes sole authority for the text. Again, the Old English

awendan encodes this transformation in a way that the Latin transferre does not, and only

an examination of the metaphors underlying the words reveals it.

In this dissertation I have attempted to examine how one particular set of

metaphors, those relating to turning, operate across the Old English corpus, and in so

219

doing illuminate Anglo-Saxon ideas about the nature of the mind and of free will. There

are, of course, other metaphors that could receive similar treatment and shed light not

only upon questions of the mind and cognition, but upon topics ranging from physiology

to theology. Conceptual metaphor theory allows for not only examination of the textual

message itself, but also provides a framework for examining how the words; the sources,

analogues, and influences; and the thoughts of the author and reader intersect to

contribute to, and sometimes undermine, that message.

220

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