7 - swa ne wenaþ men: The Limits of Wisdom in Riddle 84 and the Storm Riddles

Summary

Thus far in this study I have explored themes of transformation, creation, accountability and control, looking at the physical nature of objects and their environment and how the natural world is employed by humans. In this final chapter, I discuss the riddle collection's programme of resistance to anthropocentrism by exploring the depiction of human wisdom and its failure in the face of the vastness and complexity of creation. Previous studies of wisdom in Old English literature have focused on categorising, defining and understanding the role and nature of wisdom poetry, whilst the riddles have received notably less attention for what they have to say about the subject. Here, I turn to the representation of the natural world in wisdom literature and to the understanding that humanity's exhibition of its own wisdom or intelligence is ‘the quintessential anthropocentric act of appropriation’. It has been argued that, according to Anglo-Saxon thinking, the employment of human intelligence was perceived as a demonstration of mastery over the natural world, and, furthermore, that early medieval riddles endorsethis concept. Drawing on the Old Testament's book of Job, with its ecocentric proclivities, I argue that Riddles 1, 2, 3 and 84 challenge humanity's belief in the supremacy of its wisdom and endorse a more ecological view of wisdom and knowledge.

The Earth Bible Team has done much to improve our understanding of the non-human perspective in the biblical wisdom tradition, with a volume dedicated to an ecological approach to these texts. The questions the Team set out to answer include ‘where is the voice of the Earth and the Earth community [in wisdom literature]’? and ‘is the voice of Earth silenced, suppressed and ultimately dominated by the wise who have an anthropocentric view of the world?’ Certain wisdom texts, write Habel et al., offer us a typically anthropocentric view of the world. For example, in the Proverbs, especially Proverbs 10–21, ‘Human beings – not Earth, creation, or Earth community – are central’. The focus, it is argued, is on ‘social relations, human behaviour and communal justice’ and the few references to domestic animals ‘do not highlight the wonders of creation but the instrumental value of these animals for humans’.