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Its servant is the body, whose proper role is to tend to this guest honourably arlice before it departs for a journey. These compressed metaphors miniature riddles, if you like suggest that human bodies are temporary dwellings, sheltering and safeguarding something dear that must nevertheless be on its way again before long. Photo of the 8th-century whalebone Franks Casket by Michel wal.
The woman referred to in lines has proved a little trickier to identify, but most critics and translators think that she represents the earth.
She is called a mother, because the body of Adam was made from dust see Genesis , and a sister because she the earth was shaped by the same father, God. The critic John D. Niles has recently encouraged us to answer the Exeter Book Riddles in their own Old English, though sometimes Latin tongue whenever possible. But speaking the solution is not where this riddle ends; it is, perhaps, where it begins to reveal its meaning. But Riddle 43 examines medieval ideas about what it means to be a human being: embodied yet rational of mind or soul, of this world yet alienated from it, intellectually curious yet driven by carnal desire.
For a Christian Anglo-Saxon audience, humans are essentially embodied souls.
So the owner of a body really ought to be its master. But that servile role is tested throughout these riddles. Recall Riddle 25 onion? As we read this riddle and, tellingly, Riddles 44, 45, 46 , genitalia and sex acts shift in and out of focus… and our body responds?
Even the act of reading a non-obscene riddle is not purely intellectual. Riddles are about body parts and they call on body parts: eyes, ears, mouths, even hands. Mastery of the body is central to Riddle The body, described as an esne , must keep his noble guest honourably, serve him, and fear retaliation after death should he disobey the superior soul. Notice how Riddle 43 uses this term, esne , three times in sixteen lines to emphasise the role of the body. Therefore, an esne performs a servile role yet has more autonomy than a slave. This is definitely worth remembering when thinking about the relationship between soul and body in Riddle Those two versions appear in the Vercelli Book and in the same Exeter Book that contains the riddles.
In this poem, the damned soul speaks to an offending body which, during their life-journey together, indulged its own desires, worked against the soul, starved it of spiritual sustenance, and imprisoned, even tortured, it. The contrasting depictions of a servile body labouring for its noble guest on the one hand, and a damned soul addressing a domineering body, to which it was bound unwillingly, suggest that Anglo-Saxon poets had complex ways of comprehending the human condition.
Of course, these issues remain fascinating and maybe even disquieting for us as modern readers of early medieval poetry….
Who or what is in control of our everyday thoughts, words and deeds during life? Do we know where our dreams and desires come from? Does our body always behave as we want it to? Are our bodies us, or are we our brains, or minds, or do we still believe our true identity to be spiritual in nature? The Exeter Riddles seem to be about speaking objects.
In the body? In the mind? Or within that elusive concept of a soul? Dailey, Patricia.
Edited by Clare A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , pages Lockett, Leslie. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Murphy, Patrick J.
Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. Niles, John D.
Turnhout: Brepols, Williamson, Craig, ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Dear friends, Riddling really is a quite exciting business. Concerning riddle 43 I would like to suggest a new approach to the problem of the mother, brothers and sister mentioned in lines 10 — In Dietrich considered the mother as representing the earth, since the earth gives birth to every living being.
And thus we are all brothers as well. This is certainly a possible line of thought. But the relationships among the others remain slightly confusing. Tools Request permission Export citation Add to favorites Track citation.
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I (Vercelli Book version). [The numbering stems from the fact that the Vercelli Book was the second volume in the ASPR, whereas the Exeter Book was the fourth. Soul and Body refers to two anonymous Old English poems: Soul and Body I, which is found in the Vercelli Book, and Soul and Body II, found in the Exeter Book.
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