I've written two
articles about the interaction of Anglo-Saxon (AS) culture with early
Jewish and Christian literature. One was about the AS adaptation
of the apocryphal book of Judith; the other was about the AS poem The
Wanderer. The theme of both articles was the profound mutual
influence of Christianity and pre-Christian AS culture.
 The
Judith AS adaptation is fascinating because the original
book was Jewish and the AS author altered it to make it both more
Christian and more Anglo-Saxon. For example, Judith invokes the trinity and
there are fundamental changes in battle tactics to suit AS
sensibilities.
The Wanderer''s protagonist floats
around sunk in deep depression (please excuse the nautical metaphors!)
then suddenly changes his attitude at the end. I argued that this
structure related closely to the book of Ecclesiastes - it has a
similarly strange change of attitude, most likely due to an
interpolation.
I haven't worked on
Anglo-Saxon poetry for a long time due to my preoccupation with
linguistics. However, the minor poetry still fascinates me, and I
hope to get back to it soon.
The photo, by the way, is from
Sutton Hoo.
References
de Lacy, Paul (1998). Thematic and structural affinities: The Wanderer
and Ecclesiastes. Neophilologus 82.1: 125-137.
[abstract]
[article]
de Lacy, Paul (1996). Christianisation and social adaptation: The Old
English Judith. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 97.4: 393-410.
[abstract]
[article]
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