Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative by John F. Vickrey (review)

This is a new book devoted to an old debate, concerning the theological orthodoxy of the ninth-century Old Saxon/Old English poem Genesis B. The main point of contention is whether the poem represents the Fall in a way that mitigates the guilt of Adam and Eve, perhaps even exonerating them. The author, John F. Vickrey, himself played a major role in initiating this debate in the 1960s. At that point his position was that the "exonerative school," as he terms it here (p. 2 and passim), is wrong and that the text is theologically orthodox. That continues to be the case in this study, which synopsizes and summarizes much of the author's earlier work, though with much added and with a major refocus. In exploring the "comedic imperative," Vickrey seeks to uncover a positive perspective on the Fall hitherto lacking in the orthodox camp. This perspective is most clearly in evidence at the poem's conclusion, which strongly suggests that Adam and Eve undertake "Christian" penance, therefore "Christianizing … the Fall" (pp. 22–23) and attaining to "the happy ending typical of early medieval Christian narrative" (back cover).

The first chapter summarizes main positions of the exonerative school, with special emphasis on feminist critics and their allies (pp. 12–14), at whose hands the author has come in for criticism for alleged "condemnations of Eve" (p. 13). Vickrey responds sarcastically, asking whether the interpretation of a poem like the Genesis B necessarily means that "we must find the worldview of the poet to be compatible … with our own" (p. 14). As if speaking to a class of undergraduates (in some cases it seems merited), Vickrey sternly reminds his pro-Eve scholarly interlocutors that the views and values of the Saxon poet differed vastly from those of "modern western people" (pp. 14–16). As antidote he promises both a more thorough investigation of the Carolingian worldview that gave rise to the text and a return to a more philological mode of inquiry.

Chapter 2 lays out the main interpretive categories guiding the reading: Comedy, Wit, Tropology, and Allegory. Comedy, as mentioned above, refers to the way in which the perspective of Christian redemption is opened up for the protoplasts. Though most clear at the end, Vickrey identifies a "comedic counter theme" subtly operative at several junctures. This counter theme "is a succession of reminders to the audience or reader that the calamity of the Fall has been set right" (p. 33). In a sense, Vickrey is not disputing the exonerative school's claim that the text elicits a certain sympathy with Adam and Eve. But for him, the sympathy expresses itself via the comedic move of interweaving the pessimistic story of the Fall with the understanding that Adam and Eve have, as it were, always already been saved. "Wit" is an unusual and broad—perhaps overbroad—category, defined as "imaginativeness, intellectual audacity on the part of the poet"; "inventiveness"; various forms of irony; but also as something completely different: "allusions to beliefs and practices widely known in the ninth century" (pp. 34–35). In this latter capacity it is linked with "Tropology," a term brought to bear on the Genesis B by Alger Doane. Essentially, tropology describes the ways in which figures in the text are informed by audience awareness of future events, both in salvation history and in contemporaneous life. By allegory, Vickrey is referring to a particular theological interpretation of Adam and Eve, originating in the Church fathers, whereby Adam is a figure of human reason and Eve of human bodily sense. The temptation proceeds in three stages, according to what is known as the tribus modis rationale: the devil suggests, Eve qua the body delights, and Adam qua human reason consents.

The following chapters 3–8 form the meat of the study. A sense of how closely packed and densely argued it is can be gained from a brief quantification: 160 pages of analysis...