Anglo-Saxon Charms in Performance

Garner, Lori Ann

doi:10.1353/ort.2004.0089

Cited by 14 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 22 publications

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“…ed. 1961, Ryan (1963), Meaney (1966), Taylor (1967Taylor ( , 1998, Jankuhn et al (1973Jankuhn et al ( -2008, Rubin (1974), Ström and Biezais (1975), Watkins (1995), Jolly (1996), North (1997), Venneman (1998), Rauer (2000, Pettit (2001), Garner (2004), Jackson (2005). þa wyrte gesceop witig drihten, halig on heofonum, þa he hongode; 14 Indeed, the Woden passage features a heathen god, apples, and the enigmatic wuldortanas, and it shares words with other works: Woden is mentioned in Maxims I, in which the name alliterates with wuldor, in The Second Merseburg Charm, while Beowulf mentions the sword Hrunting, which is atertanum fah.…”

Section: The Arithmetical Crux In the Woden Passagementioning

confidence: 99%

An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm

Chardonnens

2009

Neophilologus

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The Nine Herbs Charm is one of the most extensively researched Old English metrical charms, not only in view of its allegedly corrupt text or its religious focus, but also with regard to its arithmetic. Since The Nine Herbs Charm abounds in references to numbers, particularly the number nine, three major arithmetical concerns have been whether the nine herbs, poisons and infections explicitly indicated in the text can actually be matched to referents within the charm. A fourth arithmetical crux, as yet undiscovered, is located in the charm's Woden passage. Here, Woden is said to have smitten a snake into nine parts with nine wuldortanas (''glory-twigs''). Interpretations of this passage have focused on the significance of Woden's presence and the nature of Woden's wuldortanas. These twigs have traditionally been interpreted as runic weapons of magical power, but this seems unwarranted on the basis of the textual evidence. Yet if the wuldortanas are conventional weapons, they cannot possibly strike the snake into nine pieces, unless the nature of the snake is properly understood.

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Section: The Arithmetical Crux In the Woden Passagementioning

confidence: 99%

An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm

Chardonnens

2009

Neophilologus

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A History of Old English Literature

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Oral History and Oral Culture

Cochran¹

2010

The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory

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Oral culture is culture based on the spoken rather than the written word; oral history is a record of the past based on spoken accounts. The enabling insights leading to wide‐ranging and spectacularly fruitful new developments in the study of oral cultures originated, paradoxically enough, in classics, that most venerable of humanities disciplines. The American Milman Parry centered his collecting in the 1930s on Serbo‐Croatian guslari, but his influential “oral formulaic theory,” presented in papers published in French in the 1920s, was developed first of all to describe the compositional methods deployed in the creation of Homeric epics (1987[1971]). For Parry, the key to the art of these epics lay in neither memorization nor improvisation, though it featured elements of both; what was crucial was the performance, each iteration unique in its enactment for a particular audience and situation, of a traditional repertoire of lines and parts of lines, scenes, and tales.

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Anglo-Saxon Charms in Performance

Cited by 14 publications

References 22 publications

An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm

An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm

Works Cited

Oral History and Oral Culture

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