Going Interspecies, Going Interlingual, and Flying Away with thePhoenix

Abstract

This article examines the Phoenix as a poem that is deeply sensitive to Anglo-Saxon ecosystems and considers the importance of bird behaviors in relation to Old English poetry and Anglo-Saxon cultural productions. In this poem, native, Anglo-Saxon biota and Old English alliterative formulas function as interdependent, terrestrial, and poetic ecosystems. The phoenix is at the center of these networks, but locating it requires both the Old English poet and the poem's Anglo-Saxon souls to fly and sing like the phoenix in acts of interspecies body crossings and interlingual song. This article suggests that material ecosystems are at the heart of the Phoenix's alliterative poetics, and bird behaviors are cues by which its human participants envision and achieve paradise.

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