Materials of Wonder: Miraculous Objects and Poetic Form in Saint Erkenwald

This essay contends that Saint Erkenwald, a poem about a speaking object and the problem of signification, offers a strikingly apt contribution to new materialist discourse. It considers the miraculous objects in the poem—the corpse and the tear—as nonhuman agents rather than as vehicles of meaning; it also considers the poem itself as an object, as something finally opaque, a thing that invites contemplation but resists interpretation. This object-oriented reading illuminates the central mystery of the poem, the sacrament of baptism, at the same time as it suggests the limits of the new materialism. Object-oriented criticism tends to equate materialism with physicalism, insofar as it equates consciousness with vitality or energy, and does not restrict it to human being. The poem, however, insists on the transcendence of human consciousness, even as it enjoins us to heed the call of irreducible objects. The poet thus reminds us that to meditate on objecthood is not only to wonder at a world full of surprising transformations; it is also to meditate on all that decays and passes away—on history, but also, ultimately, on death itself.