Philologica Canariensia 29 (2023), pp. 237-257

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20420/Phil.Can.2023.598

Received: January 4, 2023; revised version accepted: February 23, 2023

Published online: 31 de mayo de 2023

Amazement and fear in Guthlac A and Guthlac B: Emotional Communities, Polysemy and Models of Sainthood

Asombro y miedo en Guthlac A y Guthlac B: comunidades emocionales, polisemia y modelos de santidad

Étonnement et peur dans Guthlac A et Guthlac B : Communautés émotionnelles, polysémie et modèles de sainteté

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez

Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

ORCID: 0000-0002-9141-1782

Abstract

This article explores the role of fear and awe in Guthlac A and that of wonder in Guthlac B. Based on recent emotion theories, scholarship on the adaptation of Latin sources into Old English verse, and studies on emotional communities in the Middle Ages, the purpose of this paper is to examine how these two Old English authors interpret emotional experience in these poems and how they construct an effective emotional dimension in their texts that is linked to doctrinal ideas. This research reveals how each of these authors prefers some emotional response over others and how they also employ figurative language to transmit a series of doctrinal messages that are constructed around an appreciation of saintly virtue and secular and religious knowledge, and a fear of moral contamination that is triggered by the demonic.

Keywords: Old English, amazement, fear, emotions, Guthlac

Resumen

En este artículo se explora el rol del miedo y el temor reverencial en Guthlac A y el del asombro en Guthlac B. A partir de una serie de teorías de la emoción recientes, publicaciones sobre la adaptación de fuentes latinas en inglés antiguo y estudios sobre las comunidades emocionales en la Edad Media, el propósito de este artículo es examinar cómo estos dos autores interpretan la experiencia de emociones en sus poemas y cómo construyen una dimensión emocional en sus textos que va vinculada a ideas doctrinales. Esta investigación resalta cómo cada uno de estos autores demuestra una preferencia por unas emociones sobre otras y cómo también emplean el lenguaje figurativo para transmitir una serie de mensajes doctrinales que se centran en la apreciación de la virtud del santo, en el conocimiento religioso y secular y en un miedo de contaminación moral provocado por lo demoniaco.

Palabras clave: inglés antiguo, asombro, miedo, emociones, Guthlac

Résumé

Cet article explore le rôle de la peur et de l’effroi dans Guthlac A et le rôle de la crainte dans Guthlac B. Sur la base de théories récentes sur les émotions, d’études sur l’adaptation de sources latines en vers en vieil anglais et d’études sur les communautés émotionnelles au Moyen Âge, le but de cet article est d’examiner comment ces deux auteurs en vieil anglais interprètent l’expérience émotionnelle dans ces poèmes et comment ils construisent une dimension émotionnelle effective dans leurs textes qui est liée aux idées doctrinales. Cette recherche souligne comment chacun de ces auteurs préfère une réponse émotionnelle à d’autres et comment ils utilisent également un langage figuré pour transmettre une série de messages doctrinaux qui sont construits autour d’une appréciation de la vertu sainte et des connaissances laïques et religieuses, et une peur de la contamination morale qui est déclenché par le démoniaque.

Mots-clés : vieil anglais, crainte, peur, émotions, Guthlac

1. Introduction

Hagiography is typically associated with certain emotional response, like anger, shame, or happiness. These emotions are generally found in textual motifs that range from the anger that is generally experienced by those who persecute the saints or the shame that the male suitors feel when they are rejected, to the heavenly bliss that is triggered in the saints when they behold the divine figures that sometimes intercede on their behalf.^[1] Another group of emotions that is frequently found in early Medieval hagiography is the emotion family that Fingerhut and Prinz (2020) denominate emotions of amazement.^[2] Minaya Gómez (2022) describes how these emotions, that is, wonder, awe and the experience of the sublime, are found in all of the prose hagiographical texts attributed to Ælfric, and how these emotions become potent conversion tools inside and outside these narratives, contributing to the development of the emotional and aesthetic dimension of these lives.

Based on the most recent research on aesthetic experience, emotions of amazement, and other related emotions, this paper examines the emotions of awe and fear in Guthlac A and their role in the narrative, similarly focusing on the portrayal of Saint Guthlac that is offered by this poem. Starting from the assumption that emotion terminology is not “unproblematically translatable from one culture or historical period to another” (LeVine, 2007, p. 398), this article tackles the polysemy of a series of Old English terms that describe both awe and fear (see Díaz-Vera, 2011 and 2015). So as to differentiate instances of fear and episodes of awe, this paper draws on the appraisal theory of emotion as defined by Roseman and Smith (2001) and on more specific appraisal models of awe and fear. In this sense, this research goes in line with cognitive approaches to Old English language (Díaz-Vera, 2015) and literature (Harbus, 2012; Lockett, 2011), and with the ongoing examination of emotional and textual communities in the Middle Ages (see Rosenwein, 2006).

Furthermore, previous research on the translation dynamics of the anonymous prose Life of Saint Guthlac and a comparison with its Latin source (Minaya Gómez, forthcoming) evidence a series of original inclusions on the part of the Old English author as regards aesthetic and emotional phenomena that contribute to a more sensational treatment of Guthlac legend.

It has long been established (Ramey, 2017; Jorgensen, 2015; Mize, 2013) that, whenever there is a Latin source for an Old English poem, the poem is generally a more verbose rendition and expansive version of its source, and it pays closer attention to psychological and affective phenomena. Similarly, other authors, like Weber (2015), have pointed out systematic differences between Guthlac A and Guthlac B, particularly as far as the “ideals of spiritual perfection” are concerned, or, in other words, the standard of sainthood that these two poems depict. Therefore, additional aims of this paper include carrying out an analysis of how Guthlac B might have been adapted from its Latin source, paying attention, specifically, to the emotion family mentioned above. This is aimed, first of all, at establishing how the emotional dimension of this text is constructed (or adapted and modified) on the part of the Old English poet, but also at looking into how the poet interprets the affective experience in this source and how they adapt them in their composition to trigger the experience of particular responses.

2. Saint Guthlac: Texts and Contexts

There are several Old English texts that narrate the life and death of Saint Guthlac of Crowland. He was born around 674, and he was heir to a rich family from Mercia. As Kramer et al. (2020, p. xvii) explain, he “first lived the life of an aristocrat and a warrior, leading a band of roving raiders. According to his life, he experienced a conversion at age twenty-four and became a monk at Repton monastery under Abbess Ælfthryth.” When these two years of secular and religious learning had passed, he moved to the fens of East Anglia, on the island of Crowland, where he lived as a hermit and died around the year 714. As the Old English Martyrology indicates, his feast was celebrated on April 11 in early Medieval England, and it is also worth noting that “twenty Anglo-Saxon litanies include his name” (Kramer et al., 2020, p. xvii).

There are several early Medieval English prose and verse hagiographical texts that recount Saint Guthlac’s life, miracles, and death. The earliest of these is the Latin Vita sancti Guthlaci (BHL 3723), which was written a few decades after the saint’s death by the East Anglian writer Felix, abbot of Crowland (Colgrave, 1956, p. 9).There are two verse renditions of this saint’s life in Old English sources, typically referred to as Guthlac A (Clayton, 2013, pp. 89-146) and Guthlac B (Bjork, 2013, pp. 33-76), and, despite the fact that they are two different compositions, they are found in folios 32v-52v in the Exeter Book (Roberts, 1990, p. 2019). There are other well-known Old English texts on Saint Guthlac, the anonymous life (see Kramer et al., 2013, pp. 141-218) and homily number XXIII from the Vercelli Book (Scragg, 1992, pp. 383-393) both of which are close translations of Felix’s vita.

Guthlac A, a poem of 818 lines, has no known source and, “is the only Old English poem on a saint to have no known direct source, though the poet must have been familiar with Latin hagiography and with texts dealing with the soul leaving the body to journey to an otherworld destination” (Clayton, 2013, pp. xii-xiii). Regarding the dating of the poem, the text “appears to date itself to an early period by saying that Guthlac was tested within the time of people who remember” and that “all these things happened in the age of our times” (Kramer et al., 2020, p. xiv.) Scholars, however, do not agree on whether these lines should be taken literally. Roberts (1986, p. 369) points out that the evidence indicates “an earlier rather than later time of composition within the Anglo-Saxon period.”

Guthlac B, which narrates the saint’s death, is “loosely based on Vita S. Guthlaci […] particularly chapter 50, by Felix” (Bjork, 2013, p. xiv). Bjork (2013, p. xi) explains how for “metrical, stylistic, and thematic reasons” he and other scholars believe this poem to be a composition by Cynewulf. Regarding this text, Roberts (1990, p. 202) explains how, despite the fact that it is based on Felix’s vita, “it is not mechanical and uninspired, for themes absent from or unimportant in his source are developed by him.” Therefore, it can be ascertained that the two texts under analysis in this paper, Guthlac A and Guthlac B, belong to two separate emotional and textual communities, and that, presumably, the analysis of their emotional dimensions will yield important information about the values of these communities.

3. Theoretical and Methodological Background: Culture-Specific Adaptations From Latin Sources, Emotions of Amazement, and Lexical Tools

3.1. Adapting Latin Sources Into Old English Verse

There is a broad consensus about the fact that Old English authors generally adapt their Latin source greatly to best reflect the emotional, psychological, and cultural values of the target culture. This a consensus that is reached more or less unanimously by a series of authors, for example by Mize (2013), who discusses the Old English poetics of mentality, and how mental processes are adapted when they are translated from Latin into Old English, by Harbus (2012 or 2015), whose cognitive approach to Old English verse stresses a series of culture-specific genre traits, or by Lockett (2011), whose work on early Medieval English psychologies in Old English and Latin text evidences a different conceptualisation (and hence adaptation through translation) of mental processes and affective experience.

This process of adaptation is not exclusive to the poetic genre. For example, Bitterli (2016, p. 137) discusses how the Old English Wonders of the East is translated from the Latin text De rebus in Oriente mirabilibus, and, in doing so, is adapted according to the understanding of bodily senses in early Medieval England. Jorgensen (2015, p. 2) claims that poets who are “working from non-poetic or non-English source material” tend to amplify or import “references to the inner life.” In fact, the study by Mize (2013, p. 66) shows how poets are prompt to “vastly elaborating on the Latin original,” and the resulting translation reflects better early Medieval English values. For example, his analysis of Genesis A suggests that “Old English versecraft as a rule entails strong emphasis on character’s mental states and positions of subjectivity,” and that these poets generally “can be seen interacting with features of that source, but never being fully guided by them.” (Mize, 2013, p. 79). More specifically:

Attention is likely to be given to the emotional states or mental qualities of any character who occupies an experiential position for which there exists a traditional repertoire of expressive devices, or who will be involved in a scenario of hierarchical relations or agonistic conflict; and entire opportunities to provide access to different minds may even be created for no other apparent reason than to have subjectivities available with which to work in such situations. Thus the emphasis on mentality and emotion frequently shifts from one character to another and does not especially prefer those we would identify as protagonists (Mize, 2013, p. 79).

My argument here relates, therefore, to Mize’s (2013) and Jorgensen’s (2015) remarks, but it is more specifically based on the notion of emotional and textual communities proposed by Rosenwein (2006). In her work, Rosenwein (2006, p. 2) postulates “the existence of ‘emotional communities’,” that is, “groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression.” These communities, which might be also textual communities, are characterised by what “assumptions, values, goals, feeling rules, and accepted modes of expression” they favour or censor (Rosenwein, 2006, p. 24), and they have “shared vocabularies and ways of thinking that have a controlling function, a disciplinary function” (Rosenwein, 2006, p. 25). The driving notion here is that, while Old English verse is adapted to best reflect the more specific goals and values of the larger communities that are early Medieval England and early Medieval Christianity, these poems are also adapted to reflect the values of smaller textual and emotional communities, and that individual authors choose specific emotions to convey particular messages and evoke calculated responses that are associated to these messages.

3.2. Methodology, Lexical Studies, and Lexical Tools

This paper is partly based on the methodology sketched by Rosenwein (2006), and, mainly, on her notes on how to treat hagiographical narratives:

To discover and analyze these communities I read related texts, noting all the words, gestures, and cries that signify feelings—or absence of feelings. I am interested in who is feeling what (or is imagined to feel what), when, and why. Are there differences between men and women? I look for narratives within which feelings have place, and I try to find common patterns within and across texts. I also seek implicit theories—insofar as possible—of emotions, virtues, and vices (all of which are related in the Western tradition) (Rosenwein, 2006, p. 26).

Because this study is more linguistically oriented, it will be based on a series of lexical studies on awe and fear in Old English (Díaz-Vera, 2011 and 2015), and more in-depth studies on wonder in Old English verse (Minaya Gómez, 2022b), and it will rely on several tools, like the Thesaurus of Old English (TOE), the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) and Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (BWT). I will scan these texts, Guthlac A and Guthlac B, with a preliminary list of potential lexical aesthetic emotion markers in order to identify instances of these emotional experiences, and, in the case of Guthlac B, I will compare the Old English text with its Latin source as edited and translated by Colgrave (1956). Thereafter, I will group these emotion episodes by themes, which will be discussed in the next two sections.

3.3. Emotions of amazement: Similarities and Differences Between fear and awe

While the choice to focus on the emotion family of amazement is motivated because of the predominance of this response in other hagiographical narratives, the final selection of emotions that will be analysed in this study is partly conditioned by the emotion episodes that have been identified in a preliminary analysis of these two texts. There are two main problems that stem from a joint analysis of awe and wonder, on the one hand, and fear on the other. The first challenge relates to the lack of appraisal models or detailed studies on the nature of wonder, but this has proved not to be an obstacle in light of this study, because, contrary to the Old English lexical domain of fear, the Old English lexis for wonder is not as polysemous.

Connected to the idea mentioned above, the second challenge relates to the polysemy of Old English fear/awe terminology.^[3] As it has been mentioned before, emotions are not unproblematically translatable from language to language or historical period to historical period, but contemporary emotion research stresses how different these two responses are in nature. fear, as described by Scherer (2005, p. 706), can be categorised as a utilitarian emotion, because it serves the purpose of preserving the well-being and safety of the individual, while amazement, which, according to Fingerhut and Prinz (2020), is an umbrella term that covers both wonder and awe, is strictly categorised as an aesthetic emotion, that is, an emotion that involves a non-pragmatic appraisal, and therefore, very different in nature to utilitarian emotions.

Over the last years, several studies on awe and fear have been published, and these detail the appraisal pattern that generally precedes and elicits them. Based on these studies, the driving assumption here is that it is possible to analyse at a textual and literary level the emotional experiences that are narrated by a given poet and to determine the exact nature of the emotion being represented, particularly in the cases where the polysemy of Old English emotion vocabulary complicates matters further. In fact, the very notion of appraisal is key in this study. Moors et al. (2013, p. 120) define an appraisal as “a process that detects and assesses the significance of the environment for well-being,” and this well-being is defined by whether there is an obstruction or satisfaction of “the individual’s needs, attachments, values, current goals, and beliefs.” Roseman and Smith (2001, pp. 6-11) summarise this theory around seven main points, two of which are central to this study, that “emotions are differentiated by appraisals” and that “appraisals precede and elicit emotions.”

Beginning with fear, some researchers exclusively define this emotion around an appraisal of danger or threat, like Herrera and Moffat (2005, p. 1), while others like Roseman and Smith (2001, p. 10) explain that “fear is elicited by appraisals that include uncertainty as well as motive-inconsistency.” Schorr (2001, p. 345) also claims that “the emotion event ‘fear’ is appraised as unpleasant and obstructive to one’s own goals and is characterized by a high level of uncertainty about whether one will be able to escape or avoid an unpleasant outcome.”

Conversely, Keltner and Haidt (2003) define the experience of awe around a different appraisal pattern. Their description of the appraisals involved in this emotion includes two compulsory features, a perception of vastness and a conceptual need for accommodation: “Vastness refers to anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self, or the self’s ordinary level of experience or frame of reference,” and “accommodation refers to […] the process of adjusting mental structures that cannot assimilate a new experience” (Keltner and Haidt, 2003, p. 303). Their model also contemplates a series of peripheral features which may flavour awe-experiences, and which might account for changes in valence of the emotion: beauty, ability, virtue, supernatural causality, and threat. As a result, instances of awe that are flavoured with a perception of threat will be considered negative emotions, and, in these cases, they can be mistakenly identified as instances of fear, where threat is a central appraisal. Therefore, in order to determine whether the Old English lexeme denotes utilitarian fear or aesthetic awe, this study will try to reconstruct the appraisal process behind the emotional experience that is being represented, trying to determine if the emotion is triggered by the perceived sense of threat or by vastness and need for accommodation, and flavoured by threat.

4. Guthlac B and the Experience of Wonder

Despite the large number of instances of wonder that can be found in Old English prose hagiography (Minaya Gómez, 2022, p. 220), Guthlac A does not contain any instances of terms for wonder being used to describe people’s reaction at Guthlac’s miracles or divinity. Guthlac B does contain several instances that are more consistent with the role of wonder in prose hagiography.

Minaya Gómez (2022, p. 133) discusses how in Ælfric’s Life of Saint Basil this saint’s intelligence and secular and religious wisdom are cause for wonder. This emotion is, therefore, presented as an appropriate response to somebody’s intellectual abilities and knowledge of the scriptures inside Ælfric’s emotional community. A similar circumstance can be found in Guthlac B. Consider the following passage, which describes Guthlac’s conversation with his servant when he lies sick in bed:

Ongon þa his mod staþelian

leohte geleafan […]

ond his þegne ongon, swa þam þeodne geras,

þurh gæstes giefe godspel bodian,

secgan sigortacnum, ond his sefan trymman

wundrum to wuldre in þa wlitigan gesceaft

to eadwelan, swa he ær ne sið

æfre to ealdre oðre swylce

on þas lænan tid lare gehyrde,

ne swa deoplice dryhtnes geryne

þurh menniscne muð areccan

on sidum sefan (Bjork, 2013, p. 54).^[4]

The poet here employs the noun OE wundrum to describe Guthlac’s religious wisdom, knowledge of religious literature and, hence, his intelligence, and how his speech strengthens his servant’s faith. Interestingly enough, even though this poem is based on Felix’s vita, a comparison between the above passage and its corresponding Latin text highlights how this emotional experience is an original inclusion on the part of the poet:

praefato fratri verbum Dei evangelizare coepit, qui numquam ante neque post tam magnam profundiatem scientiae ab ullius ore audisse testatur

“he began to preach the word of God to this same brother, who bears witness that never before nor since has he heard such profundity of wisdom from the mouth of any man” (Colgrave, 1956, pp. 154-155).

This is consistent with how Ramey (2017, p. 465) describes the process of translation from Latin into Old English verse, which is characterised by an expansion via descriptive terminology. In the Old English phrase on his sefan trymman wundrum, the noun sefa makes reference to the mind or more generally to human understanding, as Lockett (2011, p. 18) explains, “functions that we might label psychological or mental.” What this instance of OE wundor showcases is an appraisal of virtue that is flavoured with conceptual vastness, depicting thus an example of wonder that is not triggered by supernatural occurrences but by this saint’s virtue. Weber (2016, pp. 214-215) points out “Guthlac’s identity as a spiritual teacher” in this passage, and, yet, this is not, in the context of the passage, and observation on the part of his servant, but rather an emotional experience that is here deliberately inserted by the poet.

Furthermore, the verb OE trymman, which complements OE wundor, highlights a metaphorical understanding of spiritual wisdom either as strength or more specifically as a human construction: “1. of material objects, to construct strongly,” and “3. of mental or moral strength, to confirm, establish, give strength to mind or heart” (BWT, s.v trymman, vb., 1 and 3). The usage of this verb is interesting because it suggests a series of figurative conceptualisations that are original inclusions of the Old English author, and that highlight the presence of the following mappings: on the one hand, wisdom is (mental) strength;^[5] on the other hand, the usage of OE trymman has the following implicatures intelligence is a human construction, which is a sub-metaphor of the body is a building.

The Old English poet continues with his explanation of how he construes Guthlac’s servant’s appraisal of Guthlac’s religious wisdom, and, in this case, they include another figurative expression that is not present in the Latin text:

Him þæt wundra mæst

gesewen þuhte, þæt swylc snyttrucræft

ænges hæleða her hreþer weardade,

dryhta bearna, wæs þæs deoplic eall

word ond wisdom, ond þæs weres stihtung,

mod ond mægencræft, þe him meotud engla,

gæsta geocend forgiefen hæfde (Bjork, 2013, pp. 54-56).^[6]

This passage is remarkable for several reasons. First of all, it contains an emotion term, OE wundor, which relates to the emotions under analysis here. However, what is interesting about it, other than the experience of wonder that is connected with the poet’s portrayal of Guthlac’s wisdom and the emotional dimension of this text, is the way in which the poet, partially constrained by the meter and alliteration, talks about this wisdom figuratively. This passage contains a term for visual perception, OE geseon, in an evaluation of the content of Guthlac’s speech, instead of a term for aural or cognitive processing.

This term is used here in order to render Guthlac’s servant’s cognitive evaluation of Guthlac’s wisdom, claiming that, in his view, it is indeed wonderful that a human person might hold such knowledge, and ultimately this suggests the presence of the following mapping: thinking is seeing.^[7] This metaphor is certainly culture-specific, which explains why there is no equivalent for this passage in the Latin text, and it is consistent with the figurative role of sight in early Medieval England, which “was used metaphorically to describe the workings of the mind” (Hindley, 2016, p. 21), and how it played “a hegemonic role in cognition” (Díaz-Vera, 2016, p. 36).

Guthlac B contains one more instance of wonder that can be seen a few lines after the preceding passage, and, in this case, it is described through OE wundrian. Minaya Gómez (2022, p. 220) explains how in Old English prose hagiography this verb is used in instances where one actively beholds a miracle or a wonderful thing, but it also describes more intense instances of wonder. Neither of these are, however, the case in the poem. Guthlac’s servant continues asking him questions, and he wants to know who the invisible person was with whom he often heard him speak. To this, Guthlac replies:

Hwæt, þu me, wine min, wordum nægest,

fusne frignest, þæs þe ic furþum ær

æfre on ealdre ængum ne wolde

monna ofer moldan melda weorðan,

þegne on þeode, butan þe nu ða,

þy læs þæt wundredan weras ond idesa,

ond on geað gutan, gieddum mænden

bi me lifgendum (Bjork, 2013, p. 62).^[8]

This instance of wonder is notably different to the two previous episodes, not only because it is described through a verb and, therefore, the wonder experience that is being described has a different perspective, but because the semantic dimension of OE wundrian is, in one respect, different to that of OE wundor. If it were not for the reference to Guthlac’s fear of mockery (OE geāþ), this instance of OE wundrian could be taken to mean ‘marvel at’, and it could be taken to describe people’s reaction at the fact that Guthlac is speaking with an angelic messenger, where amazement would result from the experience of a supernatural occurrence. Nevertheless, Guthlac’s assumption that people would mock him implies that OE wundrian does not refer to an instance of amazement, but a simpler emotional reaction that is based on people’s surprise and, ultimately, incredulity.

These are the only three instances of wonder in Guthlac B, and their analysis further clarifies that the poet does not greatly depend on them to create an effective emotional dimension to this poem. Instead, what this Old English author does is to adapt the Latin source according to more culture-specific mappings and conceptualisations, and by limiting the experience of wonder to Guthlac’s wisdom, they are conveying a clear message: that wonder is not something to be experienced lightly, but that, instead, this emotion should be linked to appraisals of virtue and intimately connected with admiration and reverence.

5. Guthlac A and the More Negative Dimension of Amazement

The approach of the Guthlac A poet to the emotional dimension of their poem is different to that of the Guthlac B poet. Rather than resorting to wonder and to its Old English lexical field, the Guthlac A poet employs the lexical domain of fear/awe to describe what seem to be ambiguous emotional experiences as far as their valence is concerned. This section examines the usage of the lexical domain of fear/awe and the emotional experiences that it describes in order to look into the role of this emotion inside this text and what this might reveal about different or similar poetic strategies and how they relate to the position of this emotion in the Guthlac A poet’s emotional community. This poem has no known source, and it is not possible to examine instances of culture-specific adaptations. Neither is it possible to determine whether this poem has a Latin or Old English source, but in the first case-scenario, it will be assumed here that, as is the case in most of the existing Old English poetic production, there is an important degree of adaptation with “amplifying or importing references to the inner life” (Jorgensen, 2015, p. 2).

Broadly speaking, Guthlac A contains three types of emotional reactions that stem from Guthlac’s relationship with the divine, from the interactions between Guthlac and the demons that torment him, and from these demons’ encounters with the angel that intercedes for Guthlac. To begin with, the poet highlights Guthlac’s moral character by stating that he is a God-fearing man:

Him wæs godes egsa

mara in gemyndum þonne he menniscum

þrymme æfter þonce þegan wolde (Clayton, 2013, p. 100).^[9]

The collocation Godes egsa is not uncommon throughout the Old English corpus, as Díaz-Vera (2011: 89) points out, and, in this case, it could simply be taken to mean that Guthlac is a proper Christian and that, for fear of God, he obeys his commandments and renounces pleasure and vainglory. Nevertheless, there is also an important aesthetic dimension to this notion. If this is taken to be an instance of fear, it is undeniable that it also indexes a significant degree of reverence, which is another aesthetic emotion, according to Fingerhut and Prinz (2020). However, this instance is better understood under Keltner and Haidt’s (2003) model for awe, as the inclusion of this particular passage under the heading “1.a. awe, fear (of God)” in the DOE suggests (DOE, s.v. egesa, egsa, n., 1.a.). Following this model, this instance of OE egesa can be read as the poet’s depiction of Guthlac’s understanding of God as a figure that is larger than himself, with the additional need for accommodation that this understanding requires.

The second type of fear/awe that is commonly alluded to by the author of Guthlac A is centred around Guthlac’s interaction with the demons that torment him throughout the narrative and in references to the devil. When the devil is first mentioned in the text, the poet chooses a term that denotes fear, but not necessarily awe:

Tid wæs toweard; hine twegen ymb

weardas wacedon, þa gewin drugon,

engel dryhtnes ond se atela gæst (Clayton, 2013, p. 98).^[10]

In this passage, rather than describing the devil in visual detail, the poet is employing an Old English term that is fairly polysemic: “horrible, terrible, hideous,” “exciting revulsion or loathing,” or “revolting to the moral sense” (DOE, s.v. atol, adj., 1.a., 1.b. and 1.c., respectively) and “Dire, terrific, terrible, horrid, foul, loathsome” (BWT, s.v. atol, adj.). Through this term, the poet evokes a series of responses that, ultimately, link back to an experience that is negatively coloured because of the threat that is implicit in the experience of the devil, and the fear of moral contamination. According to Olatunji and Sawchuk (2005: 937), fear of moral contamination is present in the cognitive dimension of an entirely negative emotion, disgust. This explains the inclusion of terms like ‘foul’ or ‘loathsome’ in the above dictionary entry, and it stresses the fact that this emotion episode might have many different readings, depending on the interpretation of this Old English adjective. In the DOE, OE atol is defined as described above, but this particular instance is categorised in a different section, under “of devils, spirits, monster,” in such a way that it resembles how this term is used as substantive in collocations like se atola ‘the terrible one’ (DOE, s.v. atol, 1, 1.a, 1.a.iv, and 1.a.v.). Therefore, in this case, rather than describing the emotions that Guthlac experiences when he sees the devil, he is making a more general observation, detailing what emotions this sight would cause.

A similar circumstance can be found in the following passage, which employs OE egeslic to refer to the demons that, later on, torment Guthlac when he retires to live as a hermit:

Oft þær broga cwom

egeslic ond uncuð, ealdfeonda nið,

searocræftum swiþ (Clayton, 2013, p. 98).^[11]

This passage contains two terms for fear, and, potentially, a very interesting personification of this emotion. The phrase broga cwom can be taken to mean two things. At a less figurative level, OE brōga can be taken to mean ‘monster’ (cf., BWT, s.v. brōga, n.), and the action verb cuman describes this monster’s movements as it approaches Guthlac’s dwellings. Nevertheless, and following Clayton’s (2013) interpretation, OE brōga can also refer to the emotion of fear: “terror, horror, danger” (DOE, s.v. brōga, n.), a reading that is supported by the DOE’s inclusion of the above passage under this heading. Through OE cuman, the author personifies the emotion in these devils that torment Guthlac. The poet reinforces the negative aesthetic dimension of this episode by including an additional emotion marker, OE egeslic, which can refer to both fear and awe, and that, in this instance, seems to be triggered by the danger inspired by these demons, but also by their strangeness, as OE uncūþ ‘unknown, strange’ attests. This passage describes fear in a highly figurative way, and these are poetic metaphors rather than prevailing patterns of conceptualisation: fear is a living, moving entity.

The differences in perspective are clarified in another passage, which describes how the sight of these demons triggers neither awe nor fear in Guthlac, and this ultimately stresses his moral character. There are two instances of OE forht and one of OE egesa that, rather than alluding to Guthlac’s fear or awe at these demons, describe Guthlac’s courage and lack of fear/reverence at these demons and their tortures. One of these devils “said that he would have to burn on that hill and that flame would devour his body, so that all his suffering and sorrow would fall upon his kinsmen” (Clayton, 2013: 103); the following passage describes Guthlac’s emotional response or, more specifically, the emotion that he would have been expected to feel were it not for his moral strength:

Swa him yrsade, se for ealle spræc

feonda mengu. No þy forhtra wæs

Guðlaces gæst, ac him god sealed

ellen wiþ þam egsan þæt þæs ealdfeondes

scyldigra scolu scome þrowedon (Clayton, 2013, pp. 102-104).^[12]

Rather than making reference to Guthlac’s courage, his lack of fear is emphasised through OE forht, an adjective that renders intense experiences of fear and awe. Despite the fact that this could be read as an instance of awe (“1.b., afraid, in awe,” DOE, s.v., forht, adj., 1.b.), the DOE categorises this occurrence under “1. frightened, afraid; fearful, timid” (DOE, s.v. forht, adj., 1.). In this instance, the human faculty of feeling emotions, fear, in this case, is attributed to the saint’s spirit (OE gæst), which goes in line with Lockett’s (2011) hydraulic model and highlights the following two mappings: emotions are felt in the spirit / emotions are felt in the chest.

The negation of forhtra implies that this is a hypothetical emotion, but the fourth line in the passage above further defines the emotional profile of this envisioned experience through OE egesa, a term that in other Old English hagiographical texts describes the negative emotions that arise from these saints’ encounters with the demonic (Minaya Gómez, 2022, p. 219). This lack of fear or reverence to these demons further stresses the saint’s moral superiority and virtue. The author highlights this idea once more, and, in the following passage, the description of fearlessness is complementary to the previous one in the bodily localisation of the emotional experience:

Nis min breostsefa

forht ne fæge, ac me friðe healdeð

ofer monna cyn se þe mægna gehwæs

weorcum wealdeð (Clayton, 2013, p. 110).^[13]

This poet, regardless of what source material they are working with, clearly claims that the part of Guthlac’s anatomy that is responsible for the emotions of fear/awe or, again, lack thereof is his mind-in-the-chest, in the words of Lockett (2011). In her work, she explains how the compound OE breostsefa describes various mental and emotional states across different Old English poems, highlighting “the mind’s residence in the breast” (Locket, 2011: 54), and an identification of thoughts with emotions. In this passage, the poet’s usage of the term OE forht parallels their usage of other terms from the lexical domains of fear/awe in the preceding example, in the sense that it denotes a lack of fear that exemplifies his virtue and bravery, but also the fact that the demons’ boasts or presence do not cause him to experience any sort of awe or reverence, because he does not appraise them as having any sort of virtue, a peripheral feature in the experience of awe. Similarly, this circumstance would not have been appraised by Guthlac as being potentially threatening, as he himself in his speech acknowledges that he has God’s protection against these monsters.

Later on in the poem, Guthlac’s torments continue, and these devils bring him to the door of Hell, threatening him and claiming that that place is where he would have to spend eternity. Hell is described as a horrible house, atule hus (Guth A 562), and this description is particular in that it draws on the effect that this place is supposed or envisioned to cause in order to describe the place in itself. Just as most of the examples in this poem, and some from Guthlac B, this continues to be a construal on the part of the poet, as is also the case in the following passage:

Hy hine bregdon, budon orlege,

egsan ond ondan arleaslice,

frecne fore, swa bið feonda þeaw,

þonne hy soðfæstra sawle willað

synnum beswican ond searocræftum (Clayton, 2013, p. 128).^[14]

In this passage, OE egsan is employed in a similar way to how OE forht is used in the preceding passage, describing how these demons actively try to inflict fear on Guthlac, and how they fail to do so. Therefore, even though OE egesian can also describe experiences of awe (cfr. DOE, s.v. egesian, vb., 1.: “to terrify, inspire with fear / awe”), it is clear that, here, because it aims at rendering the demon’s intention, it is describing a more utilitarian sort of emotion. In fact, when the narrator is trying to make sense of the demon’s intentions, he construes the emotions that Guthlac would be expected to feel as fear:

Ongunnon gromheorte godes orettan

in sefan swencan, swiþe geheton

þæt he in þone grimman gryre gongan sceolde,

hweorfan gehyned to helwarum,

ond þær in bendum bryne þrowian (Clayton, 2013, p. 128).^[15]

Here, Hell is described through the construction grimman gryre. The adjective OE grimm, when it is applied to a place, alludes to what inspires feelings of terror: “1.c.iii. of places: dreary, gloomy, terrible” (DOE, s.v. grimm, adj., 1.c.iii), and it is a term that is closely linked to the emotion of fear. Furthermore, the noun OE gryre alludes to “the state of being terrified; fear, terror, dread” (DOE, s.v. gryre, n., 1.), but, in this passage, it is used in a more concrete manner: “a thing or person that excites fear or dread” (DOE, s.v. gryre, n., 2), mentioning again Hell based on the emotions that its sight is supposed to cause. And, indeed, this seems to be the perspective in this passage; the poet, based on their own background, and carrying out a hypothetical appraisal of the situation, interprets this to be a case of fear that is triggered by the bodily danger that is implicit in the fire and the fetters.

More specific emotional experiences can be found around lines 680 and 690, in this case focusing on the emotions that are felt by the devils when they see what is described in the poem as God’s holy messenger, that is, Saint Bartholomew, when he comes to Guthlac’s rescue in the scene that follows the narrative discussed in the preceding pages:

Ða cwom dryhtnes ar,

halig of heofonum, se þurh hleoþor abead

ufancundne ege earmum gæstum (Clayton, 2013, p. 136).^[16]

These observations are found immediately after Guthlac’s speech, where he proclaims how strong in his faith he is. The poet does not detail what exactly the contents of Bartholomew’s speech are, so it is not totally possible to reconstruct the narrator’s appraisal pattern, but the poet chooses to describe the emotion that the sight of Bartholomew and his speech cause on the devils through OE ege. This is a frequent term in the Old English poetic corpus, with circa 900 occurrences (DOE), and, while its prototypical sense is that of “fear, terror, dread” (DOE, s.v. ege, n., 1), it might also refer to an aesthetic sort of fear: “awe, respectful fear, reverence” (DOE, s.v. ege, n. 2.). This last sense is more common in the experience of divine figures, like God or the saints (cfr. DOE, s.v., ege, n. 2.a). The appraisal pattern here involves a perception of something greater than the self that triggers a conceptual need for adaptation, as well as an awareness of the fact that these divine figures are, to a certain extent, threatening. This is the point that the poet here is trying to emphasise through OE ege, that these demons ultimately deem Saint Bartholomew to be threatening.

The poet further stresses the intensity and the specific characteristics of this emotional experience in the following lines:

Ða wearð feonda þreat

acol for ðam egsan (Clayton, 2013, p. 136).^[17]

This instance is uncommon for one main reason. Unlike other experiences of fear and awe that are found in the Old English poetic corpus, or in the Guthlac poems, this one includes not only an emotion term, OE egsan, which has been discussed in the preceding pages, but also a secondary emotion term that, at first glance, might be evocative of a somatic profile that is characteristic of the emotions in the family of amazement. In Old English dictionaries, OE ācol is defined as “afraid, frightened” (DOE, s.v. ācol, adj., 1.) and “excited, excited by fear, frightened, terrified, trembling” (BWT, s.v. acol, adj., I). The DOE defines the phrase that appears in Guthlac A, acol for ðam egsan, as “frightened by / in the face of terror” (DOE, s.v ācol, adj., 1.). Clayton’s (2013: 137) translation indeed seems to suggest that OE ācol refers to the feeling of paralysis that characterises awe (as described by Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020), possibly because of its similarity with another Old English verb, OE acōlian, which refers to the process of becoming cold. Nevertheless, the etymology of OE ācol is different. Díaz-Vera (2011: 92) explains how this Old English adjective derives from an Indo-European root, *aig-, which originally meant ‘angry’, and that, in Old English times, OE ācol had shifted to denote ‘fear’, which is consistent with how this term is described in Old English lexical tools. Despite the fact that this etymology would not necessarily have been transparent to Old English speakers, OE ācol could also have been deliberately chosen on the part of the poet because of its semantic dimension to denote animosity or anger, in the sense that these demons’ appraisal of Saint Bartholomew would have included a degree of goal incongruence. What these two examples emphasise is that it is not always possible, in this literary context, and due to the nature of the narrative, to differentiate instances of awe from episodes of a fear that are, exclusively, triggered by an appraisal of threat. However, what remains clear is the fact that the Guthlac A poet does rely on the lexical domains of fear/awe in order to construct an effective emotional dimension to this Old English poem with very specific poetic and doctrinal purposes.

6. Concluding Remarks

The two preceding sections have examined in depth different aspects of the emotional dimension of these poetic compositions. One of the ideas that stands out from this analysis is that these two poets construct these emotional dimensions around two different emotional responses. Guthlac A relies on the terms in the lexical domains of awe and fear to describe a series of experiences that the poet envisions these characters to have, and that are aimed at conveying doctrinal messages to potential audiences. Guthlac B, by contrast, draws on the emotion of wonder to achieve these aims, and to stress Guthlac’s moral character and spiritual enlightenment. In this sense, what both these poets have in common is that, rather than describing the emotions that the characters in these poems feel, they are more concerned with instructing what emotions particular phenomena should trigger. It can be seen how these two verse narratives do, indeed, depict two very different standards of “spiritual perfection,” in the words of Weber (2015, p. 214). In other words, these two authors, who belong to two different emotional communities are concerned with portraying two very different standards of sainthood, which, furthermore, differ from other portrayals of Saint Guthlac which are more sensational and based on the notion of beauty and the experience of aesthetic pleasure (see Minaya Gómez, forthcoming).

This paper has explored the emotions of fear and awe in Guthlac A, and, while the polysemy of these Old English lexical fields is, at times, problematic as far as determining the nature of the emotional experience is concerned, the models discussed in section 3 have been useful in further analysing these emotion episodes. The emotional dimension to this poem is far deeper, and it revolves around three main themes: Guthlac’s reverence towards God, Guthlac’s lack of fear and reverence towards the demons and the devil, and the demon’s fear of Saint Bartholomew. The last theme does not necessarily relate to a given standard of sainthood, but it evidences how this author aims at conveying, through emotional experience, doctrinal messages, in this case the fear resulting from danger that sinners would experience in the face of the divine. Conversely, Guthlac’s reverence towards the divine and his lack of fear towards the demonic does contribute to his portrayal as a courageous and God-abiding saint. What remains clear as regards this text and its relationship with fear, is that the danger of moral contamination, a perceived coping incompetence and a marked goal inconsistency lie at the heart of these emotion episodes.

This portrayal notably differs from the one that can be found in Guthlac B, and this is partly due to the different emotional depth in this poem. The experiences of wonder in this text wildly differ from those that can be found in other hagiographical narratives: rather than resulting from the contemplation of miraculous phenomena, this poem frames the experience of this emotion in a very precise context, as triggered by an appraisal of Guthlac’s intelligence and religious and secular wisdom. The analysis of these passages with their Latin source evidences an original inclusion on the part of the Old English author that is consistent with the general adaptative and expansive trend of other poets. This poet includes these instances of wonder in the text, and in a very particular context, and they also adapt these emotion episodes to reflect more idiosyncratic conceptualisations of these emotions.

All things considered, this paper highlights how the emotional dimensions of these two poems are developed on the basis of two different but related emotional responses. While the emotions that are featured in these texts are dependent on these poems’ narrative focus, their analysis has provided some evidence about these poets’ attitudes to these emotions. Through these two poems, their poets interpret and recreate emotion episodes whose didactic purpose draws upon embodied experience to inspire reverence towards the saintly, and terror at what can potentially contaminate the subject at a moral and spiritual level, while at the same time associating ideal behavioural patterns and virtues (and lack thereof) to these envisioned emotions.

7. Notes