This article reassesses the grammatically problematic half-line prologa prima (l. 89a) in the Old English wisdom poem Solomon and Saturn I, and suggests that it ought to be emended to the grammatically viable reading of “prologa prim”. Line 89 a introduces a passage in which the words of the Pater Noster become anthropomorphised as warriors and attack the devil. I will argue that “prologa prim” is an exegetical exercise, informed by grammatical theory and liturgical practice, designed for an audience of monastic readers. This multivalent half-line offers different levels of meaning when read according to different permutations of language and metaphor, in a process analogous to the interpretation of scripture according to the influential model of fourfold exegesis. When read literally, as ‘the first of the initial letters’, “prologa prim” indicates the unfolding and time-bound process of reading. Previous scholars (Anlezark 2009; Anderson 1998) have noted the allusive references in line 89 a to Greek logos (‘word’) and Old English prim (‘first hour’, ‘Prime office’), but not their full significance. Through these allusions, the reader shifts from a literal reading to a spiritual and metaphorical reading of the half-line, achieving a diachronic perspective of the Pater Noster’s recitation across time, and finally an atemporal perspective, reading in line 89 a a paraphrase of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word”. In conjunction with the subsequent episode of the battle, line 89 a forms an exemplum of the monastic practice of lectio divina. This example of ‘monastic poetics’ (O’Camb 2014; Niles 2019) moves from grammatical analysis to a vision of the Word.
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While the unnamed creatures of Exeter Book Riddle 13 have been read as ‘chickens’ since the early twentieth century, this solution has never fully satisfied either the narrative description or the cryptic puzzles of this short verse text. In this article, I propose a new solution, the Old English word SCEAPHEORD (‘flock of sheep’), which fulfils the various clues of the riddle and fits more satisfactorily among the quadruped cluster of neighbouring Riddles 12, 14 and 15. Far from settling the meaning of the text, this new solution opens the riddle to a range of interpretative possibilities. Following previous critical work on the role of medieval riddles in teaching interpretative practice, I will demonstrate that the riddle invites readings of the wandering sceapheord on several discrete levels, in a process analogous to fourfold biblical exegesis: the literal (a flock of sheep), the historical (allusions to biblical Eden, following Patrick Murphy) and the anagogical (images of renewal and salvation). A fourth, moral level of interpretation is revealed through attention to the riddle’s letter-games and etymological puns, which, in the Isidorean tradition, portray human language as reflective of material reality. By emphasizing this relationship between the textual and the real, the poem encourages monks to apply their skills of exegetical analysis to their daily labour (represented by the ubiquity of sheep-rearing in the early medieval English economy). While celebrating the spiritual meaning of individual acts of manual labour, Riddle 13 also reinforces the moral and theological importance of collective monastic work.
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