The Wonder of Creation: A New Edition and Translation, with Discussion of Problems
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E. G. Stanley
Abstract
The Exeter Book poem, 102 lines long, traditionally and appropriately called The Wonder(s) of Creation, was renamed in The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, III, 163-6, The Order of the World. This article traces the tradition (since 1842) and shows the inappropriateness of the new name. The whole poem is edited and translated in the article. The sentence structure is complex, and the unit of discourse is the sentence paragraph, rather than the gnome. Two thoughtful personae open the poem, one far-travelled and experienced, the other about to set out on his journey. The first twenty lines are about the intellectual grasp of the mystery of creation. There is a long eulogy of God the Creator and the wonder of his creation, Cædmonian and psalmodic in spirit. Line 46b, unemended þurh þa miclan gemynd, is shown to be pivotal, and the emendation gecynd, to avoid double alliteration in the second half-line, is rejected. The human mind is insufficient to grasp the greatness of God, as Creator and as Judge. The sun is glorified as the best of God’s Creation, reminiscent of Psalmody. The lability of initial /h/ in Old English may lead to subtle wordplay. Towards the end of the poem thought turns to heaven, the eorðwerud ‘that household originally on earth’ may form the heorðwerud ‘inhabitants of (God’s) homestead’ in heaven.
Throughout, the paper stresses that rules established by prosodists from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first have frequent exceptions, and should not be used by editors in the hope of regularizing the transmitted texts of Old English poetry. A substantial appendix confirms manuscript readings rejected by martinetish editors; it ranges more widely than The Wonder of Creation, and the ‘impossible’ second half-line þurh þa miclan gemynd is at the centre of this appendix.
© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- The Wonder of Creation: A New Edition and Translation, with Discussion of Problems
- Debt and Sin in the Middle English “Judas”
- “Gode in all thynge”: The Erle of Tolous, Susanna and the Elders, and Other Narratives of Righteous Women on Trial
- Language Contact and Prestige
- Verbal Compounding in English: A Challenge for Usage-Based Models of Word-Formation?
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- Claudia Lange. The Syntax of Spoken Indian English
- Jeremy J. Smith. Older Scots: A Linguistic Reader
- Peter S. Baker. Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf
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- Stefan Horlacher (ed.). Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present
- Jens Zwernemann. “Painting and writing have much to tell each other”: On the Conceptualization of Personal Identity in Modernist Painting and Literature
- Stefanie Preuss. A Scottish National Canon? Processes of Literary Canon Formation in Scotland
- Nora Tunkel. Transcultural Imaginaries: History and Globalization in Contemporary Canadian Literature
- Jochen Petzold. Sprechsituationen lyrischer Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur Gattungstypologie
- Stephan Freißmann. Fictions of Cognition: Representing (Un)Consciousness and Cognitive Science in Contemporary English and American Fiction
- Carsten Gansel and Dirk Vanderbeke (eds.). Telling Stories - Literature and Evolution / Geschichten erzählen - Literatur und Evolution
- Ben De Bruyn. Wolfgang Iser: A Companion
- Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- The Wonder of Creation: A New Edition and Translation, with Discussion of Problems
- Debt and Sin in the Middle English “Judas”
- “Gode in all thynge”: The Erle of Tolous, Susanna and the Elders, and Other Narratives of Righteous Women on Trial
- Language Contact and Prestige
- Verbal Compounding in English: A Challenge for Usage-Based Models of Word-Formation?
- Kathryn Allan and Justyna A. Robinson (eds.). Current Methods in Historical Semantics
- Claudia Lange. The Syntax of Spoken Indian English
- Jeremy J. Smith. Older Scots: A Linguistic Reader
- Peter S. Baker. Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf
- David Trotter (ed.). Present and Future Research in Anglo-Norman: Aberystwyth Colloquium, July 2011 / La recherche actuelle et future sur l’anglo-normand: Colloque d’Aberystwyth, juillet 2011
- Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson (eds.). Arthurian Literature XXIX
- Brian Cummings and James Simpson (eds.). Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History
- Helen Cooney and Mark S. Sweetnam (eds). Enigma and Revelation in Renaissance English Literature: Essays Presented to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
- Stanley Wells. Shakespeare, Sex & Love
- Jonathan Baldo. Memory in Shakespeare’s Histories: Stages of Forgetting in Early Modern England
- Rolf Breuer. Englische Romantik: Literatur und Kultur 1760–1830
- Stefan Horlacher (ed.). Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present
- Jens Zwernemann. “Painting and writing have much to tell each other”: On the Conceptualization of Personal Identity in Modernist Painting and Literature
- Stefanie Preuss. A Scottish National Canon? Processes of Literary Canon Formation in Scotland
- Nora Tunkel. Transcultural Imaginaries: History and Globalization in Contemporary Canadian Literature
- Jochen Petzold. Sprechsituationen lyrischer Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur Gattungstypologie
- Stephan Freißmann. Fictions of Cognition: Representing (Un)Consciousness and Cognitive Science in Contemporary English and American Fiction
- Carsten Gansel and Dirk Vanderbeke (eds.). Telling Stories - Literature and Evolution / Geschichten erzählen - Literatur und Evolution
- Ben De Bruyn. Wolfgang Iser: A Companion
- Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science
