Contradictions: From Beowulf to Chaucer

Selected Studies of Larry Benson

Theodore M. Andersson, Stephen A. Barney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781859281734
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351948760
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume brings together a series of key essays by Larry D Benson, well-known for his work in editing the Riverside Chaucer. Of the studies selected, the opening three deal with Old English, recasting the possibilities for the critical study of Beowulf, above all the relation between oral and written literary production. The following ten essays turn to Middle English literature, with the focus first on Chaucer, and the evolution of his works and his language, then on the social and cultural context of medieval chivalric texts. Throughout, Professor Benson approaches his subjects with a skeptical intent, even a seeming contrariness in seeking to contradict received views, but in fact with the purpose of questioning in order to understand more deeply. Scattered in their original publications, and with one hitherto unpublished, together these studies present a powerful argument for this questioning approach to fundamental issues and constitute a major contribution to the study of the literary and cultural history of the medieval world. Larry D Benson is Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English, Harvard University.

1 The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry*

Perhaps the most fruitful and exciting development in Old English studies in recent years has followed from F. P. Magoun's discovery that the Parry-Lord theory of oral verse-making can be applied to Old English poetry.¹ This theory has caught the imagination of critics and has produced a "kind of revolution in scholarly opinion" not simply because it shows us that the style of this poetry is traditional – that has been known for many years – but because it offers a new and useful way of approaching the problems raised by this style, because it provides a new way of considering some of the relations between these poems, and because it casts light on an area that we thought was forever darkened, the pre-literary history of Germanic and Old English verse.²

So useful has the theory proved and so widely has it been accepted that it is not surprising to find it already hardening into a doctrine that threatens to narrow rather than broaden our approach to Old English poetry. It is this doctrine, this object of faith rather than the good works based upon it, that I wish to consider in this short paper, for despite the caution of Magoun in his original work and of the perceptive critics who followed him, there are many for whom the demonstration that the techniques of analyzing oral verse can be applied to Old English poetry is proof that this poetry was itself orally composed. It has consequently become fashionable to speak of "oral singers" rather than "Old English poets" and to warn the readers of Old English verse that they must reject their idea of a poet writing in his cell and regard the surviving poems as something closer to records of performances than to fixed literary texts. Assuming that Old English poems are oral compositions and also that the oral tradition has been fully defined, the unwary critic is apt to believe that his job is finished once he has fitted the poem to the doctrine and that he can reject whatever is left over, deciding, as one does, that transverse alliteration must be accidental because "it is out of harmony with both formulaic theory and practice," or holding, as does Magoun himself, that Beowulf must be a number of lays "soldered" together because "seldom, if ever, does an oral singer, composing extemporaneously without benefit of writing materials, compose a cyclic poem."³

Few of us would want to follow the theory this far. And yet we seem to have no choice. We know that there was a lettered as well as an oral tradition in Old English times, and we know too that the difficulties of collecting even modern oral poetry would argue for the fact that our surviving texts come from this lettered tradition.⁴ Perhaps we even, as Professor Lord writes, "cannot tolerate the unwashed illiterate," but we "cannot disprove the evidence of his style."⁵ That evidence does seem to be overwhelming, for the formulaic character of Old English poetry has been amply demonstrated, and the only explanation for this fact seems to be the oral theory, which holds that "oral poetry is composed entirely of formulas ... while lettered poetry is never formulaic."⁶ Thus, though we have Cynewulf's own word for the fact that he was literate and used written sources, and even though the visual punning of the runic signatures shows that he wrote for readers, the theory holds that "If the narrative parts of his poem prove on testing to be formulaic, one must assume that those parts at least were composed in the traditional way."⁷

One must, that is, if it is indeed true that the presence or absence of formulas is a test of oral composition, for the whole doctrine of the oral composition of Old English poetry rests on its use of formulas. But the fact is that poems which we can be sure were not orally composed use formulas as frequently and sometimes more freqently than supposedly oral compositions such as Beowulf or the poems of Cynewulf. Alfred's Pastoral Care, for example, contains a preface that was undoubtedly intended for readers and almost certainly composed in writing, since the poem itself is made to say, in the style of the Riddles, "Siððan min on englisc Ælfred kyning [heht] / awende worda gehwelc, and me his writerum / sende suð and norð" (vv. 11–13a). Yet the poem contains about the same percentage of formulaic verses as the poems of Cynewulf.⁸ Likewise, Riddle 35 of the Exeter Book is a very close translation of Aldhelm's De Lorica, with exactly two lines of English text for each line of the Latin; despite the closeness of the translation and the untraditional nature of its materials, at least half of its verses are demonstrably formulaic.⁹ Robert Diamond's study of the Old English translation of the Psalms shows that it too is a close, word for word translation and yet is written in a style that is heavily formulaic.¹⁰ Or, to take a more artful and even more heavily formulaic example, there is the lovely Old English Phoenix. It is almost unique in subject matter, and it employs the allegorical technique in a way that links it as closely to Latin learning as to Germanic song. Moreover, it is also a translation, a freer translation, than the riddle mentioned above but nevertheless so close to its Latin source that it is almost impossible to assume that its poet worked in the traditional way of hearing a tale, meditating on it, and then simultaneously singing and composing his own version.¹¹ Yet its style is as heavily formulaic as can be found in any Old English poem:¹²

85 Đone wudu weardaþ wundrum fæger
fugel feþrum strong, se_is fenix haten.
þær se anhaga eard bihealdeþ,
deormod drohtað; næfre him deaþ sceþeð
on þ;am will wonge, þenden woruld stondeþ.
90 Se_sceal þære sunnan sið behealdan
ond ongean cuman godes condelle,
glædum gimme, georne bewitigan,
hwonne up cyme æþlast tungla
ofer yðmere eastan lixan
95 fæder fyrngeweorc frætwum blican,
torht tacen godes. Tungol beoþ ahyded,
gewiten under 1waþeman westdglas on,
bideglad on dægred, ond seo deorce niht
won gewiteð; þonne waþum strong
100 fugel feþrum wlonc on _ fireenstream
under lyft, ofer lagu locað georne.
hwonne up cyme eastan glidan
ofer sidne sæ swegles leoma.
Swa se æþela fugel æt þam æasspringe
105 wlitigfæst wunað wyllestreamas.

Other passages drawn at random from the poem are as heavily formulaic as the passage printed above, and so traditional is the poet's style that he uses formulas even in the macaronic conclusion to his poem, as in these final lines:¹³

675 geseon sigora frean sine fine,
ond him lof singan laude perenne,
eadge mid enelum. Alleluia.

When a poet can write in Latin and English simultaneously and yet use formulas – and the author of the Phoenix is not the only one to do so¹⁴ – then I think we must accept the fact that literate poets could quite easily write in a formulaic style, and when such a poet writes so heavily formulaic a style as we find in the Phoenix I think we can reject any lingering suspicion that the relative percentages of formulas might be used to distinguish between oral and lettered productions. To prove that an Old English poem is formulaic is only to prove that it is an Old English poem, and to show that such a work has a high or low percentage of formulas reveals nothing about whether or not it is a literate composition, though it may tell us something about the skill with which a particular poet uses the tradition.

By "literate composition" I mean a work composed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Tabula Gratulatoria
• Bibliography of the Publications of Larry D. Benson
• 1 The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry
• 2 The Pagan Coloring of Beowulf
• 3 The Originality of Beowulf
• 4 Chaucer’s Spelling Reconsidered
• 5 The Order of The Canterbury Tales
• 6 The Authorship of St. Erkenwald
• 7 The Date of the Alliterative Morte Arthure
• 8 The Occasion of The Parliament of Fowls
• 9 The “Love-Tydynges” in Chaucer’s House of Fame
• 10 The “Queynte” Punnings of Chaucer’s Critics
• 11 The Beginnings of Chaucer’s English Style
• 12 The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal
• 13 Courtly Love and Chivalry in the Later Middle Ages
• Index