REVIEWS

ANTONINA HARBUS. Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry. Pp. ix + 211 (Anglo-
Saxon Studies 18). Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012. Cloth, 50.
The introductory chapter of this book outlines recent applications of cognitive science to

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literary studies, with sections on cognitive science itself, cognitive poetics, cognitive cultural
studies, conceptual metaphor, the embodied mind, together with a brief overview of how
the study proposes to bring these to a reading of Old English poetry. Successive chapters
present these differing cognitive theories in greater detail before they are applied to various
Old English poems (or sections of them): cognitive theory of metaphor is used to interpret
images of the wandering mind in The Wanderer and the mind imaged as enclosure in Soul
and Body II (chapter 2); cognitive notions of conceptual blending are applied to The Dream
of the Rood, Riddle 43 and part of The Battle of Maldon (chapter 3); Text World Theory is
brought into relation with Wulf and Eadwacer and sections of Beowulf and Genesis B (chap-
ter 4); ideas of cognition or Theory of Mind are illustrated by reference to The Dream of the
Rood, Beowulf and Elene (chapter 5). The nal two chapters, conversely, set out to dem-
onstrate the contribution that can be made by Anglo-Saxon Studies . . . to Cognitive Science
itself (p. 130): notions of the self and of identity trigger a discussion of The Wifes Lament
and other Old English elegies (chapter 6), and, nally, some recent psychological ideas
about the emotions are given a historical context with further discussion of Wulf and
Eadwacer and of Beowulf. There is a short conclusion (with paragraphs summing up
each of the chapters), an extensive bibliography, and a rather brief index.
The authors aim to bring together new science and old art is ambitious and laudable
but not unproblematic. One problem for the author is that she writes for two audiences,
medievalists and cognitive scientists, hoping to bring the two into fruitful conversation. She
is widely read both in Old English literary criticism (the coverage of North American PhD
theses being particularly unusual) and in relevant modern work in the scienceslinguistics,
biology, psychology, anthropologywhich have input into Cognitive Studies, but few of
her readers are likely to be so knowledgeable. She covers much territory in the brief reviews
of cognitive theory in each chapter in order to introduce these to the non-specialist, but
parts of them become clotted with series of quotations from, and bibliographical references
to, the major contributors to each eld of enquiry. A difculty here is that these elds also
come with their own technical terminologies (some of it overlapping), together with a good
deal of verbal junk or phrasing lacking denition (representative examples are: dynamic
megablend (p. 60), cultural relevance factors (p. 65), function-advancing propositions
(p. 75), megametaphor (p. 94), cognitive smorgasbord (p. 126), and off-line simulation
(p. 172), but this list could be greatly expanded). A glossary of technical terms for the
general reader would, perhaps, not have been out of place. On the other hand, the discus-
sions of Old English poems are not as straightforward for cognitive scientists as they pre-
tend to be. At almost every turn, the application of these modern theories raises questions
about the precise meanings of key Old English words in the quoted passages from the
poems (if, indeed, they all have precise meanings), but detailed semantic discussions are
absent and a consequence of this is that the non-medievalist is frequently reliant for their
sense on Harbuss translationsand some of these renditions are arguable (or on occasion
contentious), but all are necessarily limited, and yet are used to conrm the t of practice to
theory. For example, the section on The mind as a wandering entity (pp. 409) is partly
The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 267
The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press 2013; all rights reserved
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illustrated by the difcult lines of The Seafarer (ll. 5864) in which the speakers hyge or
modsefa leaves its connes and travels over the home of the whale, and the lone-ier incites
his hreer over the ocean. All three Old English words are here translated mind (p. 42)
which suits the argument neatly enough, but the dictionaries offer a range of meanings for
them in addition to mind (heart, soul, spirit, breast, bosom) and other published
translations differ markedly (Richard Hamer, for example, offers heart, thoughts, breast
at these three junctures). True synonymy is here casually assumed. Or again, the argument
that the self is dislocated from the mind in The Wanderer (pp. 151-3) is illustrated by the
speakers statement that he seeks a giver of treasure who might recognise my mine in the

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meadhall (l. 27), which Harbus also renders by mind, although the clause is a well-known
crux and competing translations such as [show me] love or [know of] my origins offer
more obvious sense.
There is, however, probably more value in this book for the scientists whose theories of
cognition Harbus borrows. In the later chapters she shows very clearly how many of these
writers have made ill-informed assertions about the modern origin of ideas of the self which
can readily be found in older literatures and which are seen in some Old English poems. It is
less clear, however, that there is much new in this for the Anglo-Saxonist. A new theory
should explain what has hitherto remained unexplained or expose wrong-headed explan-
ations, and it is not apparent from their application here that cognitive theories do indeed
generate radically different interpretations of Old English poems, or, alternatively, that they
can plausibly be used to discredit widely held views of them. On the contrary, the inter-
pretations of the poems are, as the author acknowledges, largely ones that are well estab-
lished in the critical tradition (Goddens views of Anglo-Saxon ideas of the relationship of
mind and soul are, for example, inuential throughout, but especially so in the interpret-
ation of Soul and Body II in the second chapter; the discussion of literary structure and
verbal echo in The Dream of the Rood in the third chapter derives much from a well-known
article by Hieatt, and so forth) and Harbus regards it as a strength of these cognitive
theories that they combine well with existing scholarship on the poems (p. 89). But
where, then, is the added value that new theory should bring? What is the distinctive
contribution to Old English studies? Do we, for example, really need a Text World
Framework to tell us (p. 94) that Genesis B presents Satan as a villain?
MARK GRIFFITH New College, Oxford
doi:10.1093/res/hgt010
Advance Access published on 21 February 2013

STUART MCWILLIAMS (ed.). Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon

Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis. Pp. viii + 280. Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 2012. Cloth, 60.
This collection brings together a diverse range of essays by 16 leading scholars, many of
whom are former pupils or colleagues of Hugh Magennis. The book is one of two
Festschrifts produced in honour of Magennis (see the special issue of English Studies,
93.5 [2012]), a scholar whose fundamental contribution to the discipline is evinced by
the impressive breadth and depth of the list of his publications printed at the end of the
volume. The individual essays, which vary widely in length and subject matter, attend to
many of Magennis interests, including feasting and consumption, the emotions and the
senses, humour, communal and individual identity, and the religious prose of lfric of
Eynsham.
Part I, entitled Hagiography and the Homiletic Tradition, opens with two essays that
examine gendered expressions of emotion in Old English literature. Elaine Treharnes