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Convention and originality in the Old English ‘beasts of battle’ typescene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

M. S. Griffith
M. S. Griffith
Affiliation:
New College, Oxford
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Extract

The main part of this paper will deal with the typescene of the beasts of battle, and will describe its content and use as rigorously as possible in formulaic terms. In particular, the relationship between the conventional and the original will be examined in order to show that the scene is more traditional than has been thought and that many of the variations occur within conventional parameters. The term ‘typescene’ has been used with too much flexibility by Anglo-Saxonists, and will here be used with the meaning outlined by G. S. Kirk:

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 22 , December 1993 , pp. 179 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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20 The motif is indicated by the formula(e) wide gesyne (Beo 1403b, 2316b, 2947b), wide gesawon (GenA 2087b).

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26 See Turville-Petre, E. O. G., Myth and Religion of the North: the Religion of Ancient Scandinavia (London, 1964), pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

27 Magoun, , ‘Beasts of Battle’, pp. 88–90.Google Scholar

28 All of these appear before the typescene, with the exception of Finn 6, which is after, and Maid 106–7 which is before and after. The proximity of byman sungon in Ex 159 to the beasts may suggest that, though the text immediately after is garbled, little or none of the text has actually been lost. On the reconstruction of the Exodus passage, see Robinson, F. C., ‘Notes on the Old English Exodus’, Anglia 80 (1962), 363–78, at 365–8.Google Scholar Trigger and scene are explicitly connected in Jud 206b, where pæs indicates that the wolf responds to the din of the shields.

29 Goldsmith, M. E., ‘The Seafarer and the Birds’, RES 5 (1954), 225–35, at 234.Google Scholar I do not agree with Goldsmith that urigfepera is ‘empty of meaning’ (p. 235). OE deawig may also have had the general meaning ‘wet’: see Ekwall, E., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (Oxford, 1974), p. 143. The more general meaning would more readily encourage the association with blood, but might weaken the metaphor.Google Scholar

30 See Tolkien, J. R. R., Finn and Hengest: the Fragment and the Episode, ed. Bliss, A. (London, 1982), p. 84.Google Scholar

31 See Davidson, H. R. Ellis, ‘Shape-Changing in the Old Norse Sagas’, Animals in Folklore, ed. Porter, J. R. and Russell, W. M. S. (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 126–42.Google ScholarScott, W. C., The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile (Leiden, 1974), p. 71, notes that wolf similes are used of warriors in Homer.Google Scholar

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35 See Bliss, A. J, The Metre of Beowulf (Oxford, 1967), p. 123.Google Scholar

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37 See Anderson, E. R., Cynewulf: Structure, Style and Theme in his Poetry (Fairleigh, 1983), pp.54–67.Google Scholar

38 For another example of intensification, note the emphasis on slaughter in the Exodus scene – drihtneum, wælceasega, ætes, fyl – which grimly anticipates the expected, but in the event unrealized, consequence of the Egyptians catching the Israelites. On the typescene in Elene, see Fry, D. K., ‘Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene, 1–113’, Speculum 44 (1969), 35–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, comp. Venezky, R. L. and diPaolo Healey, A. (Toronto, 1980)Google Scholar, æftan: WHom 20.1.59, 20.2.67, 20.3.61, in passages that are virtually identical.

40 For the most important discussion o f this word, see Hall, J. R., ‘Exodus 166b, cwyldrof: 162–167, the Beasts of Battle’, Neopbilologus 74 (1990), 112–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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