Warp & Weft: The Rhetoric of Historical Identity in Anglo-Saxon Poetry

Warp & Weft: The Rhetoric of Historical Identity in Anglo-Saxon Poetry

Originally written for Emily V. Thornbury, for English 105.

The myth of history and historic identity as a monolithic, stable foundation is a common one. In truth, history, and a group of people’s relationship to that history, is an ever-evolving, adaptable story—it’s a living and breathing thing, just as the people whose identity it continues to form and reform. Indeed, one can glean more about a society’s present in the ways they relate and shape their historical past, rather than the facts of that past itself. This is certainly the case for early medieval inhabitants of Britain, whose turbulent early years of shifting cultural and national borders and identities indicates a complex relationship to their quotidian realities, and thus a shifting perspective towards their past (and by extension, a mutable perspective of their potential and future). With the myriad of impressionable, disruptive, and violent foreign influences acting on this island, it is easy to see just how and why Anglo-Saxon historic identity is not an issue of direct and singular inheritance, but rather an interlacing of identities and historical selves adapting to its contemporary environment. This essay will examine early moments of Anglo-Saxon literature such as “The Ruin” and Beowulf, and how their manipulation of language expresses their respective relationship to history and cultural identity, evolving in accordance with the conditions of their own historical present.

The poem “The Ruin,” is a paradigmatic example of a culture’s identity of itself formed in relation to its perception of its past. “The Ruin” is a lament of an era bygone, a lost “glory” of Roman occupation in Britain, in which “greatness” was possible. Evident in the first few lines, the unknown poet writes “Marvellous is this wall-stone: the fates broke it, / smashed the city; the work of giants decays” (1a-2b). Aside from the obvious elegiac tone employed the poem’s opening lines, it is also interesting to consider foremost that the figure of the “city,” a place of lively commerce and the center of culture and living, is squarely placed in the past tense—“smashed” by the “fates.” This suggests, aside from the idea that this current group of people are only living in its ruins, that the “city” no longer exists, that this place of living culture and occupancy is not possible in the present tense. This continues, “The roofs have fallen, the towers are in ruins, / the fate robbed of its bar; frost is on the mortar, / the protecting walls cracked, scored, crumbling, /eaten from within by age” (3a-6a). Indeed, the present state of this “city” cannot support life, it has been ransacked and the functions of its architecture are rendered useless. The “city” has become an inhospitable place; cold, desolate, stripped of its vitality, the “frost” signaling a wintry death—a familiar image and trope in the Anglo-Saxon imaginary.

The city is the central figure in the poem, appearing multiple times throughout in oscillating states of vitality: luminous, as figured in the past, and decaying, as figured in the present. The poet writes, “The city’s buildings were shining; there were many men’s halls, / tall and gabled, and much noise of the throng— / many mead-halls full of human joy” (21a-23b). The city, exemplified by one of its key features, the mead-hall, is not simply a place of human dwelling, but of “human joy,” figured as having existed within or under the roofs of these buildings. “Human joy” in this poem necessarily exists and is located solely within the shining buildings of this idealized past, yet with the roofs having already been described as collapsed in the previous lines, the poet suggests that this happiness is simply no longer possible in their present moment. The poet continues, “the city’s foundations decayed” (28a). Now, not only are these buildings in disrepair, the very foundation of the city has decayed (the city itself being metonymic for this long-gone society). One cannot even hope to rebuild, return to this former glory as the foundations for its existence are crumbling away.

It is also interesting to consider the theme of warmth and cold within this poem. Earlier on, the poet describes the wall-stone as having “frost.” This stands in direct opposition to the excess of “warmth” in the description of the city (as figured in the past)—“where once many men…proud and wine-flushed” (32b, 34a) and later on, “In this bright city of the vast empire / stone buildings stood, a hot spring cast forth / a broad pool (37a-39a). Warmth is clearly associated with life and joy—the springs and pools of the Roman baths, the face-warmth of drunken revelry, stands in opposition to the “frost” on the mortar. Indeed, the poet seems to luxuriate on this decadent image of the baths, repeating it for many following lines, such as “ the baths were, / hot at heart” (40b-41a), “hot streams over the grey stone,” (43a-43b) and lastly, “until a circular pool hot” (45). Warmth is life and vitality, but again this is still framed in the past tense, and their present moment remains the frost-covered ruins—ice, where once was warm flowing water, death where once was life. This is the reality that informs the present identity of the poet and his contemporaries, witnessed in the buildings that have fallen into disrepair, figured in relation to a past perceived as ultimate and glorious, of which they currently live in its shadow.

The way the poet places the present in such an intense relation and lament for this past signals the ways in which early Anglo-Saxon identity and cultural heritage was being thought of. However, while this poem is in a sense intensely cynical and elegiac, it draws an incredibly strong genealogy, a claim of descent that states while they are living in squalor as simple inheritors of a ruin, they are still its inheritors—and what a glorious inheritance it is. The poet goes into detail about the ingenuity of the wall-stone’s design. Though it exists only in pieces, the wall “has endured the rise and fall of many kingdoms” (10b,) commenting on the “clever work of former days” (16), and the “clever design—into arches, the bold designer bound / together the wall supports with wires in marvelous ways” 19a-20b). This commentary seemingly serving to idealize and pay tribute to the architecture, in fact places the poet and the poet’s contemporaries in direct descent from this “cleverness.” Indeed, the closest the poem gets to specifying the society whose virtues it extolls is when the poet writes “In this bright city of the vast empire” (37a). The poet excludes, or perhaps, does not care, that the vast empire of which he speaks is foreign, and that the Roman occupation in Britannia was a colony or military outpost at the furthest reaches of its territory rather than a fully integrated aspect of the empire. The ruins of the outpost being called a “bright city of the vast empire,” suggests a major importance and centrality to the ruins, shifting the locus of authority, power, and culture away from distant Rome, to their own locality. Instead of being a vestigial aspect of a foreign power, the poet situates themselves as a direct descendant, again, informing us of exactly how they viewed themselves in relation to their history. The Anglo-Saxons might not have currently been in the same state of success and achievement as their Roman “ancestors,” but it is claimed as their cultural heritage, and a suggestion lays deep within these claims that the “greatness” in their inherited past only remains dormant within their present selves, waiting to be reawakened.

It is also interesting to consider the use of mystical elements in “The Ruin,” appearing very early on, particularly in the first two lines. The fall of this once glorious society, metonymized by the “wall-stone” that is so “marvellous,” is figured as having been broken by the “fates” (1a-1b). Later on, the poet after describing the city’s many splendors, writes “until that all was changed by Fate, the strong one” (24a-24b). The idea that it was not human concerns or fallibility but divine interference that wrought the destruction of the empire, greatly idealizes it and places it on an otherworldly, fantastical level. “The work of giants decays,” the poet continues (2b). The mystical element places an even greater disparity between their contemporary selves and their cultural heritage—they are mortal and their “ancestors” are divine. This placement upon a pedestal is even physically realized within the poem as the poet writes “The builders / and their sanctuaries fell to the earth”  (28b-29a). In this image, the builders are figured in the sky, in heaven, not part of Earth, the mortal realm. They live in the ruins of heaven that fell to the earth. Although this seems to cause a greater disparity between these ancient builders from above and themselves on the ground, it actually disguises a rather false humility—that they themselves are demi-gods, partly divine, or at the very least the descendants and cultural inheritors of divinity, of gods and giants. “The Ruin”’s lament and relationship to history conceals the formation of a cultural identity embedded in this poem, that the poet and his contemporaries are actually a part of a grander, divine lineage, warping language and historicity to construct a narrative that suits their cultural needs. As mired in ruin and squalor as they might currently be, their melancholy disguises a stake in a former glory they long to reclaim, what is essentially an optimistic projection of their potential. They may live in the empire’s ruins, but they are the empire’s heirs.

Contrasted with Beowulf’s relationship to history, the two texts have completely different methods, at least culturally, if not rhetorically, of forming a present identity based on their perception of a cultural heritage. It is important to consider their contemporaneous contexts: whereas “The Ruin” was written in the aftermath of the Roman Empire’s fall, and thus the subsequent withdrawal of Roman presence and culture from Britain, Beowulf was written much later, removed from that historical conditions that produced “The Ruin,” and into another situation with its own problems—Viking invasion. Disruptive wars, ravaged lands, increased contact with foreign peoples, increasing foreign settlements: all these demanded a re-evaluation of a cultural identity, or a relationship with history that could account for and adapt to this extremely different environment. Beowulf is an interesting text to consider because, despite its being written in England in Old English, it is exclusively about foreign peoples and lands, i.e. the Geats and the Danes, of whom were part of the peoples invading, and in the case of the Danish, eventually settling on the island. While there is not much of a contemporaneous present in Beowulf, it is important to consider the significance of its retrospect into (a foreign) history, and the relation one can infer from its implications. One instance in which the contemporary present exists is at the very beginning of the poem: “Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days / of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes, / how these noble lords did lofty deeds” (1a-3b). What is interesting about this moment in relation to “The Ruin,” is its evocation of an idealized past, similar, if not parallel to “The Ruin’s” own rhetorical moves. The former glory of these “noble lords” with “lofty deeds” is significant for several reasons: firstly, that there is an underlying and subtle tone of lament—the glory of these Danish kings is “bygone,” situated in the past, not the present. The extent of its mourning is not equal to “The Ruin,” but an implication remains, evoking a sense of glory firmly located in the past. Secondly, that this is a shared past—the use of the pronoun “we” is interesting, considering the glorious past of “bygone days” to which the “we [has] heard” is a past that does not occur on the island, but rather on a faraway shore. There is an assumption in this pronoun, almost like a deictic “we” that seems to depend on a context that occurs outside and prior to this poem, of familiarity and commonality. Thus, this “we” functions as inclusionary—a contemporary of the poet would recognize that this “we” infers a shared knowledge of the “glory” of these foreign kings in “bygone days,” suggesting that this is a shared past. Thirdly, that this epic poem exists at all—foreigners, especially Danish and Geatish settlers were not looked upon kindly in this moment, or at the very least were still considered very much to be outsiders—yet here is a poem written in Old English, located in the Nowell Codex along with other English texts, discussing a history and hero of a foreign people, and using a rhetorical strategy that links and claims this glorious past as a shared past—it is “we.” In an era of diverse cultural settlement on the British isles, it follows that their situation necessitated this evolution of not only cultural identity in the present, but whose history and culture is included in the formation of its present. This suggests a dawning of, or at the very least a wrestling through, of cultural identity formation that is again, basing itself in history, or using a foreign history as a foundation to build a cohesive cultural history and identity.

The immediate use of Christian language in the beginning of Beowulf also serves the necessity of adapting history to present moment to accommodate the ever-evolving cultural landscape of the Britain. When the poet discusses about the birth of Beowulf (not the titular Beowulf but a Danish King who precedes the hero of this poem), he writes “A boy was later born to him, / young in the courts, whom God sent / as a solace to his people—” (12a-14a) and “The Lord of Life, / The wielder of Glory, gave him worldly honor; Beowulf, the son of Scyld…” (16b-17b), the poet anachronistically extends the reach of their present day Christianity into the deep, deep past of a foreign people who weren’t (preceding even the titular Beowulf, who is himself already a historical figure). This rhetorical move serves to fully encapsulate and adapt history, to allow this foreign past to ease into a culture that is not their own—this re-figuring of, this revisionist history, allows the poet to interlace and weave a foreign culture in the historical understanding of their present, and subsequently, of themselves.

It is important to understand that history is written by people, who, are almost always susceptible to the influence of their conditions and contemporary ideology, even with or without a sound methodology of chronicling events. That is, history is never a series of “facts” that speak for themselves, and more often that not shifts to suit our contemporary cultural needs. The way we conceive history, the stories which we repeat to ourselves, explaining how and why we got to where we are in this moment, not only affects our view of ourselves, our identity, as formed in the present, but our outlook in the future as well, and the way we act towards others in our own lives. The poets of “The Ruin” and Beowulf understood the power of knowing where one comes from, not only to make sense of who they were, but to offer glimpses of who they might be, and what might be in their future. As retrospective as these poems are, one cannot take for granted how much stories, how much history shapes our actions. To understand the warp and weft of the cultural narrative we perhaps get closer not just to the truth of our past, but the truth of ourselves.