Joinings: Compound Words in Old English Literature by Jonathan Davis-Secord (review)

This detailed, insightful volume examines the use of compounds in Old English literature through a "paradigm of joining," revealing the interconnectivity of Anglo-Saxon grammar, rhetoric, and culture. Whereas previous studies of Old English compounds have been limited to analyses of linguistic function, formal features, or participation in literate and oral traditions, Jonathan Davis-Secord focuses instead on compounds in their cultural context. Davis-Secord's analysis of Beowulf, the Cynewulfian Elene and Juliana, the Old English Boethius, and Wulfstan's homilies is bolstered by in-depth engagement with a wide variety of theoretical frameworks, including translation studies, neurolinguistics, Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of hybrid discourse and speech genres, and modern film theory.

Davis-Secord's first chapter, which serves as an introduction, convincingly demonstrates the importance of compound words in Old English literature; he argues that no other linguistic feature is as important to the composition, translation, and exegesis of Old English texts. However, as he notes, there remain no extant Anglo-Saxon discussions of compound words. To combat this lack, this first chapter triangulates an Old English theory of compounds from three different sources: Latin and Greek grammatical traditions, treatises on the Old Norse poetic traditions, and modern oral theory. The combination of these diverse perspectives is reflective of the volume's greatest strength: Davis-Secord's ability to find creative and productive "joinings" between seemingly distant subjects.

The second chapter examines the use of compounds in Old English translations of Latin texts, showing that they actively create new meaning in the translated text by eliminating resonances from the source culture and expanding aspects deemed important for the target audience. Far from simply ensuring accuracy, compound words in these texts increase acceptability within the new context. Davis-Secord's examination of the use of the compound anweald ("sole-power") in the Meters of Boethius, for example, shows that the translated text expands the Latin original's discussion of divine power to include earthly rulers, recontextualizing it to suit Anglo-Saxon concerns.

Chapter three examines the ability of Old English compounds to provide rhetorical emphasis. The chapter begins with an exhaustive discussion of the cognitive processing of compounds, which may prove challenging for readers (such as myself) unfamiliar with modern experimental neurolinguistics. It is worth pushing through this section, for his ultimate conclusion – that compounds produce greater emphasis than simplices through the very nature of their compound structure – is supported by his analysis of compound clusters in Beowulf and certain homilies of Wulfstan. Davis-Secord's reading of several weapon-related compound clusters throughout Beowulf is a useful demonstration of the emphatic potential of compounds.

Drawing on Bakhtin's theories of speech genres and studies of Old English lexomics, the fourth chapter shows that Juliana and the prosimetric Old English Boethius manipulate the generic resonances inherent to compounds in order to create hybrid discourses and argues that this hybridity produces stylistic representations of the texts' thematic concerns. Of note in this chapter is Davis-Secord's careful distinction between "poetic" and "prose" compounds, which, in turn, produce "poetic" and "prose" registers. He argues that the interplay of these registers in Juliana differentiates the heroine from her adversaries, stylistically enacting the poem's thematic concerns.

Chapters five and six of Joinings explore the use of compounds in controlling the pace of prose and poetry through close readings of Wulfstan's homilies and Beowulf, respectively. Davis-Secord shows that, throughout the homilies, Wulfstan compiles pairs of parallel compounds into lists, forming set pieces that slow the pace of the text in order to emphasize key ideas. Most convincing in this chapter is the argument that Wulfstan's purpose in these homilies is not to convince his audience exactly but, rather, to help strengthen their identity as Anglo-Saxon Christians through affirmation of shared beliefs. In chapter six, Davis-Secord suggests that compound clusters in the most violent scenes of Beowulf slow narrative action by imposing "the maximum possible cognitive demands" on the audience. The...