Premodern and Postcritical: Medieval Enigmata and the Hermeneutic Style

"'A Certain Enemy Robbed Me of My Life': Medieval Riddles, Digital Transformations, and Pandemic Pedagogy"

“…Through riddles and puzzles, Aldhelm and Alcuin teach Latin poetic form and meter and transmit an encyclopedic knowledge of nature and history (Howe 1985, Salvador-Bello 2015. Aldhelm and Alcuin also use the riddlic form to cultivate wonder (Dailey 2012;Lockhart 2017, 56) and to teach readers how to read and interpret literary and religious texts (Weaver 2019). §27 As Jessica Lockhart observes, teaching through inquiry is central to riddle poetics.…”

“…Turning from technology to metacognition, Dietrich Bitterli discusses the riddles' metacognitive and metatextual play, their invitation "to think about the very act of riddle-making and riddle-solving, of writing and reading" (Bitterli 2009, Chapter 7, "Silent Speech," 135-150). (For other reflections on the materiality and metatextuality of the riddles, see Shook 1974, Lerer 1991, Bitterli 2009, Symons 2017, and Weaver 2019.) §29 Jessica J. Lockhart sees another one of the writing technology riddles, the Bookmoth riddle, in its meditation on books, reading, and memory, as "a model of reception for the [riddle] tradition as a whole" (Lockhart 2017, 133-135).…”