Brian O'Camb

Textual editors, notably the influential Swedish scholar Olof Arngart, have enumerated myriad Latin sources and Middle English parallels for the early Middle English poem The Proverbs of Alfred, whereas literary critics have mostly focused on its evocation of Alfredian England as an antiquarian exercise in cultural nostalgia. Building upon Elaine Treharne’s suggestion that the copying of the Old English translations of Augustine’s Soliloquies and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy in the twelfth-century helped cement Alfred’s reputation as a gnomic figure in the vernacular tradition, this chapter re-assesses the influence of the Alfredian Soliloquies and Consolation on the Proverbs of Alfred.

The Old English verse catalogue of proverbial statements and gnomic reflections known as Exeter Maxims (or Maxims I) is written out as three scribal sections in the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. Often remarking on general resemblances between Exeter Maxims and the Old Testament book of Proverbs, critics have not fully accounted for the importance of Proverbs’ overall structure as a poetic source for the vernacular poem. Authorized by King Solomon, the tripartite Proverbs is framed by a thematic antithesis of wandering and wise women that informs the lexical and thematic content of Exeter Maxims 62–65a and 93–106. These Old English passages paraphrase Proverbs and other Solomonic texts that share an interest in divine Wisdom. By identifying the influence of these Solomonic sources on Exeter Maxims, the present essay offers new interpretations of two difficult passages about women and wisdom in this sapiential poem. It also offers a new intellectual context for Exeter Maxims by connecting it to a rich tradition of Biblical poetry in praise of Wisdom, and thus contributes to a better understanding of the ‘Solomon complex’ in Old English poetry. This essay also sheds light on some of the ideological interests of an Anglo-Saxon readership contemporary with the poem’s inscribed form as well as its integrity as a tripartite poem.

THE LAST SECTION OF THE TRIPARTITE GNOMIC CATALOG known as Exeter Maxims or Maxims I, begins with a precis of one of its most frequently-studied themes, namely the poem's relationship to oral and textual traditions: (1) Raed sceal mon seegan, rune writan, leop gesingan, leofes gearnian, dom areccan, daeges onettan. (138-40) [One should speak counsel, write secrets, and sing poems; a dear friend must be earned, good repute should be proclaimed, and one should make use of the day.] (2) While the distinction between orality and textuality does little to clarify the rune, 'secrets' of Exeter Maxims's inscribed form on fols. 88v-92v of the Exeter Book, the poet's balanced phrasing and head-rhyme formally indicate that the singing of poetry (leop gesingan) brought together people in friendship (leofes gearnian), a unifying theme repeated in Exeter Maxims's three scribal sections. (3) Section B asserts "god scop [gerisep] gumum" [A good poet is fitting for...

The tripartite Exeter Maxims, or Maxims I, is an Old English verse catalogue of proverbs and gnomic utterances that is often assumed to be a Germanic repository of pre-conversion lore. Departing from this critical assumption, this essay identifies book twelve of Isidore’s Etymologiae as the probable source for an evocative passage featuring predatory wolves who threaten travellers in Maxims I.C, lines 7–14. This Isidorean analogue introduces several new rhetorical contexts for interpreting this proverb poem as a sophisticated cultural synthesis of vernacular traditions and imported Latin learning. Comparing the wolf of Maxims I.C with lupine imagery in the writings of ecclesiastics like Wulfstan, Æthelwold and Ælfric—and with several early English wolf proverbs—emphasises the spiritual symbolism and didactic value of wolves in the poem and Anglo-Saxon culture more generally. It also connects the diction of Maxims I.C with the legal vocabulary of the “Durham Proverbs” and Old English law codes meant to adjudicate secular feuds and the cultural practice of church sanctuary. Thus, this intertextual source study sheds light on the intellectual preoccupations and compositional context of the Maxims-poet and some of the rhetorical resources available to the poetic community he composed for.

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