Navigating Landmarks of Identity in Pre-Conquest English Literature

Early English writers describe their landscapes in the same way they describe themselves. Illuminating the forms medieval people used to write their world – from land charters to riddles to epic poems – Amy W. Clark here provides a new epistemological model for understanding early medieval English relational selves and positions.

Early English writers describe their landscapes in the same way they describe themselves. Illuminating the forms medieval people used to write their world, Amy W. Clark provides a new epistemological model for understanding early medieval English relational selves and positions. Beginning with the relationally oriented streams, oaks, and gates of Old English charters, she shows that Old English riddles similarly describe paths between long noses, loud voices, and puzzling contradictions, guiding readers to hidden mysteries. Widsith revisits legendary landmarks to comment on knowledge, power, and what it means to 'give good,' while the Old English elegies cope with catastrophic loss by mapping the remembered past onto an inverted present. In particular, Clark demonstrates how repetition becomes a key formal strategy when landscapes and selves are threatened. From bounds to Beowulf, she shows that Old English and Anglo-Latin texts revisit relational landmarks to stabilize knowledge and selfhood in an ever-changing world.