AMAZEMENT and FEAR in Guthlac A and Guthlac B: Emotional Communities, Polysemy and Models of Sainthood

Authors

DOI:

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

Keywords:

Old English, amazement, fear, emotions, Guthlac

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 responses 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.

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Author Biography

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, where he teaches Medieval English Literature and Translation. His research focuses on the experience and conceptualisation of emotions in Old English language and literature from a cognitive perspective. He has published on the role of aesthetic experience in Old English verse, and, more recently, he has worked on the expression of emotions in the Old English hagiography corpus.

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Published

2023-05-31

How to Cite

Minaya Gómez, F. J. (2023). AMAZEMENT and FEAR in Guthlac A and Guthlac B: Emotional Communities, Polysemy and Models of Sainthood. Philologica Canariensia, 29, 237–257. https://doi.org/10.20420/Phil.Can.2023.598

Issue

Vol. 29 (2023)

Section

Miscellany

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