Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England

Description

Though Anglo-Saxon England is better known for its penitents than peep-shows, glimpses of unclothed bodies peek through in surprising places in the surviving sources. As the essays that follow demonstrate, the spectacle of the unclothed body, at once scandalous and seductive, exposes more than just bare flesh. Like all representations, those of the naked body partake in larger cultural conversations. If some glimpses of naked forms provoke feelings of shame and embarrassment, others signal defiance and triumph, and still others figure as the ambiguous and passing cipher at the crux of a riddling joke. While the body in general occupies an important site at the intersections of many discourses, the naked body, because it so readily captures both attention and censure, can provoke the reevaluation of those discourses in ways that the clothed body cannot. List of Illustrations vii List of Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xii Forward: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England / Benjamin C. Withers, Indiana University South Bend 1 Introduction: Medieval Bodies Then and Now: Negotiating Problems of Ambivalence and Paradox / Suzanne Lewis, Stanford University 15 1. The Wanton Hand: Reading and Reaching Into Grammars and Bodies in Old English Riddle 12 / Sarah L. Higley, University of Rochester 29 2. The Key to the Body: Unlocking Riddles 42-46 / Mercedes Salvador, Universidad de Sevilla 60 3. The Body as Text in Early Anglo-Saxon Law / Mary P. Richards, University of Delaware 97 4. The Sacrificial Synecdoche of Hands, Heads, and Arms in Anglo-Saxon Heroic Story / John M. Hill, United States Naval Academy 116 5. Nudity on the Margins: The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Relationship to Marginal Architectural Sculpture / Karen Rose Mathews, University of Washington 138 6. The Donestre and the Person of Both Sexes / Susan M. Kim, Illinois State University 162 7. Exiles from the Kingdom: The Naked and the Damned in Anglo-Saxon Art / Catherine E. Karkov, Miami University, Ohio 181 8. Breasts and Babies: The Maternal Body of Eve in the Junius 11 "Genesis" / Mary Dockray-Miller, Lesley University 221 9. Penitential Nakedness and the Junius 11 "Genesis" / Janet S. Ericksen, University of Minnesota—Morris 257 10. Naked in Old English: The Embarrassed and the Shamed / Jonathan Wilcox, University of Iowa 275 Index 310