![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
Notes
1. Some critics hold that the poem was never “translated” from Old Saxon; rather, it has undergone a process of repeated “familiarization” (A.N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis. Madison, WI, 1991, p. 49; see also R. Delorez, “Genesis: Old Saxon and Old English.” English Studies 76.5, 1995, 409–23, at 419). Whether or not this hypothesis is correct, my term “Genesis B poet” is not intended to suggest that the poem is primarily an Anglo‐Saxon creation, nor does the word “poet” reflect a supposition on my part that Old Saxon or Old English poetry consisted of isolated creations that formed no part of a larger tradition. I use the term “poet” in a loose sense to refer to any individual or number of individuals responsible for the conscious creation or adoption of the elements discussed.
2. Eduard Sievers, Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis. Halle, 1875, p. 22.
3. W.P. Ker, The Dark Ages. 1904. London, 1955, p. 259.
4. S. Humphreys Gurteen, The Epic of the Fall of Man: A Comparative Study of Cædmon, Dante and Milton. 1896. New York, 1964, p. 216. Emphasis Gurteen's.
5. Susan Burchmore, “Traditional Exegesis and the Question of Guilt in the Old English ‘Genesis B.’” Traditio 41, 1985, pp. 117–44, at 119–28.
6. Genesis 3.1–3; De Genesi ad litteram 11.30; Burchmore pp. 130–31. All biblical references are to Robert Weber, ed., Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Stuttgart, 4th rev. ed., 1994. The reference to Augustine's De Genesi ad litteram is to Joseph Zycha, ed., Sancti Aureli Augustini De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim eiusdem libri capitula, De Genesi ad litteram inperfectus liber, Locutionum in Heptateuchum libri septem. 1899. New York and London, 1970.
7. Burchmore pp. 131–34.
8. Glenn M. Davis, “Changing Senses in Genesis B.” Philological Quarterly 80.2, Spring 2001, pp. 113–31, at 115–16.
9. Rosemary Woolf, “The Fall of Man in Genesis B and the Mystère d'Adam.” Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Stanley B. Greenfield. Eugene, OR, 1963, pp. 187–99, at 190–93.
10. 1 Corinthians 11.3, 7–9; Ephesians 5.22–24.
11. References to Genesis B are by verse line to George Philip Krapp, ed., The Junius Manuscript. The Anglo‐Saxon Poetic Records I. New York, 1931.
12. Woolf 195–96; cf. De civitate Dei 14.13. Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, eds., Sancti Aurelii Augustini De civitate Dei. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 48. Vol II: Libri 11–22. Turnhout, 1955.
13. Doane pp. 143–44; 152.
14. “From here I can see where he himself is seated (in the southeast, that is), surrounded by riches, who created the world; I see his angels moving about him in feather‐dress, the greatest of all races, the most delightful of hosts.”
15. John F. Vickrey, “The Vision of Eve in Genesis B.” Speculum 44.1, January 1969, pp. 86–102, at 86–91.
16. “[B]eati mundo corde quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt,” i.e., “blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.”
17. Vickrey pp. 96–98.
18. “I know that the Lord God will become angry with the two of you, if I myself convey this message to him when I come the long way from this errand, that you do not properly follow whatever message he sends on this journey from the east. Now he himself will have to journey to [obtain] your answer; his messenger cannot deliver his message; by this I know that he will become angry with you, [the] mighty in mind.”
19. “You are not like any of his angels that I have seen before.”
20. Woolf pp. 194–95.
21. Woolf p. 198.
22. Genesis 2.20, 16–17.
23. Cf. Robert Emmett Finnegan, “Eve and ‘Vincible Ignorance’ in Genesis B.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 18.2, Summer 1976, pp. 329–39, at 329–30.
24. Finnegan pp. 330–33.
25. Finnegan pp. 333–36. Finnegan seems to reject the view that the understanding of Eve's culpability as expressed in Genesis B is heterodox; it is unclear to me how this position may be maintained in the recognition that Eve is not guilty of superbia (Finnegan p. 330).
26. “But she did it out of a loyal mind. She did not know that so many harms would follow, fiery torments to mankind, because she had taken to heart what she had heard by the counsels of the hateful messenger; but she thought that she was carrying out the allegiance of the heavenly King with those words which she presented to the man as a token, and she vowed [her] trustworthiness until from within his bosom Adam's mind changed and his heart turned to her will. At the hands of the woman he received hell and death, although it was not so called, but instead it had to bear the name of fruit; but it was death's sleep and the devil's deception, hell and death and the loss of salvation, the death of mankind, that they took for food, an evil fruit.”
27. “The serpent was more cunning than all the animals of the earth.”
28. “You will be like gods.”
29. Woolf p. 198.
30. Mark 14.32–40.
31. 1 Corinthians 11.3, 7–9; Ephesians 5.22–24.
32. Confessiones 13.32. Lucas Verheijen, ed., Sancti Augustini Confessiones libri XIII. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. Turnhout, 1981.
33. 1 Corinthians 11.7.
34. See, e.g., Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050. Royal Historical Society Studies in History N.S. Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001.