Verse and Virtuosity: The Adaptation of Latin Rhetoric in Old English Poetry (review)

How did Latin rhetoric, and especially the notorious rhetorical figures, influence Old English poetry? This is the question Steen attempts to answer in this most ambitious book. She does so in an Introduction and six chapters.

The Introduction concentrates on clarifying the difference between the "native tradition," that is, Anglo-Saxon poetic technique, and "Latin rhetoric," the poetic techniques, and primarily the rhetorical figures, introduced into Anglo-Saxon England with the conversion to Christianity. Chapter 1 moves to a general examination of the knowledge of Latin rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England, and Steen finds that very few classical rhetorical works survive in manuscripts and that therefore in all likelihood formal rhetoric was not taught. Rhetorical figures, however, were known, less as part of rhetoric and more as part of exegesis and grammar, and they were almost certainly studied in conjunction with Christian-Latin poets such as Juvencus, Arator, and Sedulius. The rhetorical figures which do appear in Old English poetry therefore seem to have "seeped" into the vernacular from the Christian-Latin poets taught in Anglo-Saxon classrooms. Chapter 2 begins with the realization that "rhetorical terminology is a potential minefield" (p. 21). Steen rightly sets out to defuse some of these mines by juxtaposing a passage from Bede's Latin verse Vita Cuthberti to one chosen from the Cynewulfian Andreas and by naming, and commenting on, the rhetorical patterns she finds in each. With the terminological groundwork laid, she can move into chapter 3 in which she traces the rhetorical "seeping" from Lactantius's Carmen de ave Phoenice to the Old English Phoenix. Steen shows that the Old English poem is replete with rhetorical effects in the same passages in which they abound in the Latin poem. What's more, the Old English poet is not content with simply translating the Latin rhetorical figures but also draws on the full repertoire of the Old English poetic tradition in order to achieve a similar effect in the Old English poem as Lactantius had done in the Latin. Chapter 4 shows a less successful adaptation of a Latin work, namely Bede's or Alcuin's De die iudicii and its Old English translation Judgement Day II. With his great faithfulness to the Latin, the poet does reproduce some of the Latin rhetorical figures, but on the whole the Old English version does not achieve the same poetic vitality as the Latin original. The poems examined in chapter 5, however, namely Riddles 35 and 40, both of them translations of riddles written in Latin by Aldhelm, do achieve that poetic vibrancy, though in different ways: the translator of Riddle 35 takes great pains to stay close to the native poetic tradition, while the translator of Riddle 40 is more Latinate by, for example, allowing classical names such as Vulcanus and Zephyrus stand as metonyms for "fire" and "wind." Chapter 6, finally, presents select passages from Cynewulf's poetry and argues for a most successful melding of native and Latinate poetic traditions in the uses of anaphora, paronomasia, rhyme, and simile.

There can be little doubt that Steen is correct in arguing that the rhetorical figures the Old English poets either learned in school or read in the sources they translated, paraphrased, or imitated had an influence on the way they wrote in the vernacular. The difficulty lies in determining the exact influence, and Steen throughout is cautious in showing that, for example, Cynewulf "may" have been inspired by Arator's imagery, or "may" have drawn on Latin-inspired homilies (both on p. 123). This caution, however, does weaken the overall argument somewhat, since it removes the certainty that in any given passage the Old English poets drew on Latin rhetorical figures, and leaves no more than a possibility, especially when the supposed Latin rhetorical influence is completely translated into poetic elements from the native tradition. Moreover, the very act of translating often means that rhetorical elements present in...