A farewell to Old English elegy: the case of Vainglory

A farewell to Old English elegy: the case of Vainglory* This article examines the structure and origins of the short Old English poem known as Vainglory,1 and seeks to demonstrate that it is a poetic meditation based on parts of 1 John 3, influenced by the ideas and occasionally by the phraseology of a patristic source, which was probably either Bede's In Epistolas Septem Catholicas or some related text. It is a highly conventional poem whose substance seems to be derived almost entirely from familiar sources and topoi; this might be held to diminish its poetic interest, but it makes it likely that the poem is also conventional in terms of genre—that is to say, that it would have been recognized by its poet and original audience as conforming to a particular poetic type with which they were already familiar. I shall argue that its clear structural organization is shared by a number of other poems which appear in the same section of the Exeter Book, and which the compiler of that codex may also have regarded as generically related to each other. These include The Wanderer and The Seafarer, which have traditionally been regarded as central examples of a supposed genre of 'elegy' in Old English, but not the shorter and apparendy more secular poems that have conventionally been assigned to the same genre. The same conventional structure can also be seen in one or perhaps two poems of religious meditation to be found in other manuscripts. This would suggest that the concept of a genre of 'elegy' in Old English should be replaced by study of two distinct poetic types: religious meditations in poetic form (of which Vainglory m a y be a deliberately conventional example), and shorter secular monologues. Future research may be able to identify the biblical and patristic material on which other poems of the former group are founded. Vainglory is a well-organized poem with a clear theme: how to distinguish between God's child and his opposite, the child of the devil (feondes beam, 47b). In analysing its structure and that of other poems that resemble it, this article will use the term 'Frame' to refer to a poem's introductory statement of theme andfinalstatement of moral and to those lines which identify the speaker(s) in * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Society of AngloSaxonists Conference at Durham in August 1989; I am grateful to a number of scholars who have made helpful suggestions during its preparation and revision, especially to Dr Clare Lees of Fordham University and Dr Andrea Smol of St Vincent University. 1 The text of Vainglory is quoted from The Exeter Book, ed. G.P. Krapp and E. van K. Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (ASPR) 3, N e w York and London, 1936, pp. 147-49; I have also used the edition by T. Shippey in his Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English. Cambridge, 1976, pp. 54-57, with notes on pp. 128-29. Emendations made in these editions are sometimes removed from m y quotations, but not without explanation. 68 J. McKinnell the Movements they enclose. The term 'Movement' will be used of a major section of a poem which can be distinguished from the text that precedes or follows it by a clear and obvious change of subject matter; sometimes these boundaries are also marked by the presence of frame tines. Occasionally, frame tines may be used to divide a movement into two related halves; these are not counted as separate movements without a major change of subject also being present. I believe that these structural features are objectively present in the text, can be recognized by any sensible reader or listener, and are not open to the objection that they are the subjective creations of a m o d e m critic. The structure of Vainglory is characterized by a Frame at beginning, middle and end which is used to co-ordinate two clearly articulated Movements: 1-8 Frame: introducing a witega ('prophet'), whose words a wise scholar has enabled the speaker to interpret; his Theme is how to distinguish between godes agen beam...