Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 1886
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Brown , Marjorie.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Juliana: Arrows of Seduction [Thirtieth International Congress on Medieval Studies, the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, May 4-7, 1995. Thirtieth Symposium on the Sources of Anglo- Saxon Culture, co- sponsered by the Institute and CEMERS, Binghamton University. Session 244].
  • Source: Old English Newsletter 28, 3 (Spring 1995):
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Conference Paper Abstract
  • Subject (See Also): Cynewulf, Poet- Juliana Literature- Verse
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 9-10
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract: In writing the Old English poem "Juliana," the poet known as Cynewulf has chosen to integrate Christian legend with a Germanic martial style and to present a woman as a convincing "hero" of the Christian faith. The poet does so by not only increasing Juliana's goodness and the villains' evil, but also by suppressing any possibility that she might enter into a sexual relationship even if it is a legal marriage. Thus "Juliana" serves an Anglo-Saxon religious agenda that rejects secular love and marital relationships and associates sexuality with the crimes of the devil. Cynewulfs poetic account of St. Juliana's "passio" derives from a Latin source resembling the hagiographic legend printed in the "Acta Sanctorum" (Feb. 16). The "Acta S. Iulianae" may therefore serve as a general contrast to the later work. Cynewulf alters his poem from the Latin version by emphasizing the conflict between the heroic saint and her human and diabolical tormentors, eliminating some of the minor characters, and changing the focus and content of the story to center on marriage and bodily sin. Juliana refuses all secular forms of "lulu," although her Latin counterpart seems willing to marry her pagan persecutor. In their pride, anger, and lust, the Old English tonnentors represent monal sins, while Juliana is a model for the vinues. Whereas the Latin version depicts the traditional hagiographic tonures of a virgin saint, with sexual ovenones, Cynewulfs Juliana becomes an abstract model of goodness, whose beauty Cynewulf describes in terms of heavenly light. In keeping with this model of saintliness, the devil who visits her in her cell ponrays his assaults on sinful mortals as "arrows of seduction" that enter the body to tempt it to sensual pleasures. Cynewulf alters the "passio"'s ending by neglecting to describe the senator's wife who buries Juliana's body in a mausoleum. Her mortal remains disappear in the psychomachia that he constructs, adding to the impression of profound anxiety about the female body and its potential connection with sin [Reproduced by permission of Robert Schicler, the “Abstracts of Papers in Anglo-Saxon Studies” editor, and the editors of the “Old English Newsletter.”].
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  • Author's Affiliation: Binghamton University
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1995.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 00301973