Perception and anxiety in Old English poetry

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dc.contributor.advisorBlockley, Mary Evaen
dc.contributor.advisorCable, Thomas, 1942-en
dc.creatorDavis, Glenn Michaelen
dc.date.accessioned2011-04-18T21:49:05Zen
dc.date.available2011-04-18T21:49:05Zen
dc.date.issued2002-05en
dc.descriptiontexten
dc.description.abstract“Perception and Anxiety in Old English Poetry” identifies sensory anxiety— recognition that the bodily senses are literal and figurative conduits of sin—as a major trope in Old English poetry. Modern critics have essentially dismissed the influence of sensory anxiety, however, primarily because the texts in which it most frequently and openly appears—liturgies of penance and confession, and also private devotional works—have only just begun to be regarded as valuable sources for studying Anglo-Saxon culture. By considering the phenomenon of sensory anxiety in all its textual manifestations, however insignificant they may seem, new readings of poems such as Beowulf, Genesis B, The Wanderer, and the Exeter Book Riddles emerge. After defining Anglo-Saxon sensory anxiety and locating its precedents in a Christian Latin culture in Chapter One, the dissertation explores the role played by the senses in articulating three related somatic anxieties, about the failure of experiential knowledge, sex, and the physical vulnerability of the human body. v Chapter Two shows how changes registered in Eve’s senses in Genesis B call into question the reliability of human perception. The Tempter promises Eve not the metaphorical “opening of the eyes” offered her in the Bible, but rather an elaborate and covert system of literal sensory modifications. The influence of her altered perception prompts Eve to convince Adam to eat as well, which seals the couples’ fate. Chapter Three identifies a conventional language of sexual expression in the erotic riddles of the Exeter Book, a small group of poems that, unlike the rest of the verse corpus, openly invoke sexual acts and themes, and traces that language in a variety of other genres, including Old English penitentials and confessionals. It then demonstrates how other poems, notably Beowulf, employ this same mode of sexual expression to emphasize anxious moments in their narratives. Chapter Four examines a connection between the senses and the human body’s physical vulnerability. Specifically, it investigates the unprecedented violence of Soul and Body I, in which the sensory organs become literal breaches through which natural decay and an army of worms enter to defile a corpse.
dc.description.departmentEnglishen
dc.format.mediumelectronicen
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/10950en
dc.language.isoengen
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.en
dc.rights.restrictionRestricteden
dc.subjectEnglish poetry--Old English, ca. 450-1100--History and criticismen
dc.subjectPerception in literatureen
dc.subjectAnxiety in literatureen
dc.titlePerception and anxiety in Old English poetryen
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglishen
thesis.degree.grantorThe University of Texas at Austinen
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen

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