Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1971

Keywords

Cynewulf, English poetry, Old English, ca. 450-1100, Criticism and interpretation, Saint Juliana of Nicomedia

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric

First Advisor

Bernard F. Huppé

Second Advisor

Mario A. Di Cesare

Third Advisor

Frederick Jones

Series

Humanities

Abstract

Cynewulf’s Juliana has aroused little critical attention and virtually no systematic study of its rhetorical design. The Elene, on the other hand, has become accepted as a poem of some importance in Old English studies. Although both are signed poems of Cynewulf, some scholars still dismiss Juliana as undeserving of a detailed critical study. In fact, its latest editor has concluded: "Though it parades remnants of the old heroic style, the spirit and general effect are different. There could be no poetic progress from it: beyond lie monotony or prose” (Woolf 19). Surely, however, the poetic mastery generally recognized in Elene justifies detailed studies of Juliana. In such a study the right questions about the poem should be asked, and the poem carefully read.

Since Cynewulf’s subject, the martyrdom of a Christian saint, is Christian, it follows that the proper approach to the poem is through Christian patterns and convention, not so-called “Germanic” or “heroic” traditions. It is not the latter that provides a significant approach to Juliana, but the former. It is the conventions of Christian medieval literature that provide an understanding of a fine complexity unified by a poetic mastery in the poem.

The purpose of this thesis is to establish the thematic design of Cynewulfe’s Juliana through a detailed explication of the poem. Although Adeline Bartlett in The Larger Rhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry recognized some of the more obvious rhetorical units in Juliana, the value of her work to my study is limited by her failure to explain the meaningful function of these patterns in terms of the entire poetic structure. Professor Bernard F. Huppé’s article on the Wanderer, his Doctrine and Poetry, and the recently published The Web of Words provide an effective technique to show thematic and structural unity in Old English poetry. I shall explain the structural design of the poem, using the terminology and punctuation system established by Professor Huppé in The Web of Words. I will describe its structure in terms of its major divisions: episodes; scenes, speeches; and its smaller divisions, the rhetorical periods and clausules as defined by Huppé. At times, a detailed study of small portions is necessary to reveal major divisions. The contrary is also true. The proper understanding of the structure of major divisions at times can be helpful to the proper understanding of problems of detail. Thus, a running commentary on the progress of all matters relevant to theme and structure comprises a large portion of the thesis.

The Latin prose version of Juliana's martyrdom from the Sanctorum, accepted by most scholars as Cynewulf’s source, is provided throughout for the reader’s convenience. Since the literal differences between the Latin prose and the Old English poetry have already thoroughly been described, such a description is not the aim of this paper. Significant differences, such as Cynewulf’s adoption of a metaphoric vehicle to build upon the literal and matter-of-fact manner of the Latin, are discussed primarily in terms of the development of such features in the Old English. The major aim of the thesis is to understand the Old English poem. When the Latin prose version is of use in this aim, then it is used.

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