Writing Speaks: Oral Poetics and Writing Technology in the Exeter Book Riddles

Abstract

In Riddle 59, a luminous object, passed from hand to hand, speaks. (1) Although (dumba), it nevertheless proclaims a message of salvation to those gathered together in a hall. Again, in Riddle 67, a wondrous creature (wroetlice wiht) recites an enchanting song to an assembly and, although it has no mouth, instructs the people in wisdom. These two riddles, usually solved as Chalice and Bible, respectively, are of course describing the technology of writing, in this case two ritual items that are enlivened and made to speak through the writing engraved or marked upon their surfaces. Throughout the 95 or so riddles of the Exeter Book, writing technology crops up repeatedly in the form of books, pens, ink, and inscribed objects of various kinds, and in these riddles writing is depicted, with evident fascination, as investing inanimate objects with voice and power. In them, a distinct Anglo-Saxon vernacular concept of writing emerges, one that perceives writing technology, through the lens of an oral poetics, as a material form of speech. (2) A precedent for this interest in writing implements and materials can be found in the Latin enigmata of Symphosius, Aldhlem, and others, which plainly inspire many of the Exeter Book riddles. (3) Not only do the Latin enigmas share with the Old English riddles an interest in scribal implements and activities, but they similarly make use of prosopopoeia--the rhetorical device through which objects and nonhuman creatures are given speech. Despite these shared features, however, there are important and often overlooked developments between the Latin and Old English riddle genres, particularly in terms of their treatment of chirographic topics. As the concept of writing is translated from the Latin riddles into the Anglo-Saxon vernacular, its meaning undergoes a significant shift, and as a result even those writing motifs taken from the enigmata are creatively repurposed. (4) Tropes found in the Latin such as silent are given greater thematic weight as the Old English riddles gravitate with perceptible fascination toward the paradox of material speech, transforming a literary conceit into a wondrous talking creature, and incorporating it into the formal logic of the Old English riddle genre itself. (5) As writing becomes more prominent in the Exeter Book collection, it also grows more paradoxical. The mysterious quality of the written word as inanimate yet somehow is repeatedly stressed, and the objects of writing frequently attract riddle key words such as wundor, wroetlic, searolic, denoting the marvelous, paradoxical qualities that define the riddles generically. One of the most significant developments, however, is the appearance of completely new forms of writing, such as engraved objects and finished codices, finely wrought inscribed artifacts that are pictured as to groups of eager listeners. Such items are not found among the enigmata at all. Where Symphosius and the Anglo-Latin riddlers do little to exploit the association between writing technology and prosopopoeia, the Old English riddles fasten upon this idea of writing as a material voice and present it repeatedly in the act of speaking. (6) In the vernacular riddles, writing concretely embodies and thus informs the riddles' aesthetics of prosopopoeia--the mysterious voice, arising out of the reflexive relationship between speech and thing, that is the salient feature of the Old English riddle genre. (7) Although this curiously inanimate voice is less perceptible in the enigmata, we do encounter it, in a basic form, in the Anglo-Saxon epigraphic speaking objects, inscribed artifacts such as the ninth- or tenth-century gold ring that announces EAPEN MIE AH (Eawen owns me) through the lettering encircling its band. (8) While the prosopopoeia of the Old English riddles clearly does not originate in this epigraphic practice, the speaking object inscriptions demonstrate a vernacular concept of writing as a material form of speech, and it is precisely this vernacular notion of writing as a voice that mysteriously inheres within the object, yet also stands apart and comments upon its own material identity, that informs the more concrete prosopopoeia of the Exeter Book riddles. …

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