Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-2002

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

English

Major Professor

Thomas J. Heffernan

Committee Members

Joseph B. Trahern Jr., Laura L. Howes

Abstract

Anglo-Saxons believed that human existence was brief and brutal. Belief in the inevitable decay of the world into chaos was strong in pagan tradition and fit well with the precepts of the Christian apocalypse. To their eyes all creation was wending its way toward destruction. During the eighth century, as Christianity blended with pagan beliefs, two genres of poetry, the epic and the elegy, convey two different responses of the Anglo-Saxons to chaos. Courage in the face of death was the hope of each Anglo-Saxon warrior and the dominant ideal in the epic. He wished only to serve his lord and to earn immortality in the memory of men. Even if all were lost to chaos, at least his memory would remain forever in song and legend. If he was unable to defeat the chaos of the universe, at least through a glorious death he could defy it. For the poets of the elegy nothing was able to escape fate. Heroes might do battle with the chaotic forces that were unleashed in ever increasing number but in the end it would have no effect. The world that man had constructed for himself was eroding and would certainly collapse. The penitent of Resignation sums up well the attitude of the genre: Giet bip paet selast, ponne mon him sylf ne maeg wyrd onwendan, paet he ponne wel polige (Yet this is best, when man is unable to change fate, then he must endure it well.) Christianity found an ally in the poet of the elegy. Instead of opposing fate with the sword, the elegiac poet mournfully embraced it. The worldview espoused by the Anglo-Saxon poet meshed with that of the Christian. Through this alliance the conversion of England was facilitated and completed.

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