5 - Wisdom and Power: Philosophies of Performance

Summary

This chapter examines conflicting attitudes towards performance in the early medieval period. It demonstrates a contrast between the idealisation of performance activity that appears in Old English wisdom poetry and the condemnation of such activity expressed by the religious hierarchy, who nonetheless produced the manuscripts containing the bulk of the poetic corpus. Moreover, while wisdom poems are written from a Christian perspective, they are shown not to articulate contemporary Christian attitudes concerning performance. The tension between idealisation and admonition results from cultural developments in the process of conversion, particularly the assimilation of pre-Christian philosophies of both wisdom and performance into post-conversion culture. The ambivalence also results from the position and status of performers in early medieval English society: they are seemingly popular and important for some, but a problematic nuisance and a threat to social order for others. This attitude is common in many world cultures, in which poets and musicians occupy a marginalised position in relation to wider society or are ostracised by certain hegemonic groups.

In the introduction to this book we saw exemplified in The Order of the World how the communication of wisdom is seen as a key function of performance in Old English poems. In another Exeter Book poem, Vainglory, which advocates the virtuous Christian path and cautions against and censures pride, the narrator claims to have had contact with a mysterious figure. He describes how that figure offered him valuable Christian knowledge:

Hwæt, me frod wita on fyrndagum

sægde, snottor ar, sundorwundra fela.

Wordhord onwreah witgan larum

beorn boca gleaw, bodan ærcwide,

þæt ic soðlice siþþan meahte

ongitan bi þam gealdre godes agen bearn,…

(1–6)

Listen! A learned man in former days, a wise messenger, informed me of many special wonders. A book-wise man revealed the wordhoard with wise lore to inform me with prophetic proclamations, so that thereafter I might be able to perceive truly through that invocation God’s own son…

The way this frod wita, ‘learned man’, and his store of Christian wisdom is introduced recalls the wis woðbora described in The Order of the World. The man, who converses with the narrator, possesses certain pertinent, enabling knowledge.