In The Poetics and Politics of Witnessing, Derrida argues that trust in a witness’ account is derived from the belief of those listening. Derrida explains, “Bearing witness appeals to the act of faith, and thus takes place in the space of pledged or sworn word” (Derrida, 75). Here, Derrida notes that the relationship between a witness and an audience is one of faith. To prove this faith an oath must…
The story of Cain killing Abel is found three books earlier in the Vulgate Genesis: the Latin version, given on the right above, is significantly more succinct than the Old English, a fragment from which is given on the left.
The personified Earth drinking the blood of the first murder is only found in the Old English telling of the story, which leans into and elaborates on the act itself and the fallout experienced even before God arrives and calls Cain to account for his brother. Once we arrive at the interrogation point in the story, the words track more directly: in every iteration, Cain’s retort that he is not his brother’s keeper is preserved.
This two-part post set will pull out moments in the Old English Genesis where I found translation questions particularly pertinent. First, I will compare some residual effects the most proximate language of translation left on the Modern English versions of the Old English and Vulgate descriptions of the Flood, respectively, how the two poems look at the horror of the destruction. In this moment, the two versions are mostly similar,…
The human life is a mediated experience: we do not encounter an unfiltered world, but rather we process every input through our senses. Among our five senses, sight often reigns supreme; this article is not one of Professor Saltzmann’s podcasts, and I assume you aren’t understanding it via tactile telepathy. However, in the Old English poem Daniel, visuality is typically portrayed as an incomplete phenomenon through which one cannot fully…
Of all the fascinating passages in The Life of St. Margaret, the passage that most gave me pause was Margaret’s interaction with Rufus (the “brother of the devil”) in the form of a dragon. As a student who has had relatively little interaction with hagiography, I had rarely encountered dragons in Christian texts; as such, I decided to dig a little deeper into the tradition of battling dragons within Christian…
Drenched in blood and covered in gore, there is no shortage of violence in Prudentius’ Psychomachia — a gruesome battle between Vices and Virtues for control of the human soul. However, despite all the blood in the poem, and the fact that the Virtues do not always clearly have the upper hand, it is striking that the Virtues only actually bleed once: Discord had entered our ranks wearing the counterfeit…
The extreme violence and war-like imagery of Prudentius’ Psychomachia can be quite startling—and even shocking—for many, especially for those who associate the Christian scripture on which this text is based with the loving and peaceful preaching of Jesus. However, quite a few aspects of the Psychomachia are directly reminiscent of Christian scripture—most closely, the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Prudentius describes an epic battle between the forces of…
