This is a serious, highly polemical study by a distinguished scholar. Vickrey seeks to establish his view that the Anglo-Saxon poetic fragment known as Genesis B, dealing with the fall of Eve and Adam, was composed in conformity with the Christian 'happy ending' of human salvation from that original sin through Christ (this he terms 'the comedic imperative'). In particular, ... Read morehe seeks to discredit critics who espouse the 'exonerative' reading of the poem as treating that act as merely a lapse of judgment, while God remains a remote and inscrutable deity. Vickery argues with great plausibility, through much explicit textual citation and interpretation, that the poem has a tropological structure enabling it to represent the temptations of Genesis 3 and their consequences while reflecting the tribus modis structure of temptation (through suggestio, sensus, and ratio); the comitatus structure of early medieval Frankish and Germanic societies; and the doctrine of the 'fortunate fall,' with the correlative importance of the sign of the cross. . . .Vickrey decisively achieves his objective. Summing Up: Recommended . . . Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
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Vickrey is at his best when he offers detailed analyses of subtle dramatic movements in Genesis B that arise from grammatical structures and semantic change. He explores themes of obedience, Anglo-Saxon martiality, the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon warrior ethos and vocabulary, the languages of visionary experience and cunning. His close readings reveal a sharp ear for modulations in tone, especially in dialogue, where he teaches us to hear the living voice as it cajoles, threatens, commands, and defies. At such moments, Vickrey makes his most convincing case for the poet’s largely unacknowledged wit. Throughout the book he also illuminates Genesis B’s historical and theological contexts in ways that modern critics should find instructive…. There is much to be learned from this book, the summa of the author’s lifelong study of Genesis B.
Modern Philology
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