School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe aesthetic of joy in Old English poetry( 2011)This thesis examines the aesthetic of joy in Old English poetry. Its assessment of the conception and expression of joy works against the perception of Old English poetry as predominantly dark or lacking in positive feeling; in the broadest terms, it seeks to redress this imbalance of critical attention by devoting itself to a survey of joy. The examination of poetic joy-vocabulary defines some important but often overlooked nuances and connotations in the range of key ‘joy-words’ appearing in Old English poetry. The thesis aims to track certain changes in the meanings of the terms, as they are used in different poetic genres, and as the ideological context of their use changes; from this basis, arguments relating to changes in the Old English aesthetic of joy are made. The thesis presents a tentative taxonomy of poetic joy, proposing six major categories of joyful experience, which may be subdivided into ‘joys of place’ and ‘joys of action’. This survey reinforces the breadth and variety in Old English poetic joy; it also begins to clarify some of the lines along which the aesthetic of joy may be divided. Central among these are the distinctions between earthly and spiritual joys, which are often encoded in poetry as ‘hall-based’ and ‘heaven-based’ joys. The thesis argues that aesthetic differences (of style, lexicon and ideology) are apparent between the predominantly female experience of domestic joys, the predominantly male experience of hall-joys, and the religious and spiritual experience of heavenly joys. Where these conceptions share a guiding aesthetic is in the use of the metaphor of the hall as a physical space filled with joy, which journeyers (in both the literal and the spiritual sense) are able to enter. And finally, the thesis suggests that a major impact of the relocation of joy in poetry from an earthly to a heavenly setting is radically to destabilise the role and power of the Anglo-Saxon poet. Poetry’s own joy – which transforms sorrowful experience to joy for those who take delight in artistic narrative – is replaced by the power of Christ to translate the sinful man to the joy of an eternal heaven. The centrality of the positive values of the ‘joy’ aesthetic is presented throughout the thesis as a counterbalance to that emphasis which privileges negative motifs in the appreciation of Old English poetry. The study will thus add to the understanding both of the guiding artistic principles of Old English poetry, and more broadly, to an understanding of the emotional, cultural and linguistic facets of the Old English world.