Hana Videen

The art and literature of the Middle Ages and modern comics may seem worlds apart, but what happens if they are brought into contact? For 'Medieval Comics', a project funded by the Cultural Institute at King's in collaboration with the Department of English at King's College London, I asked comic creator Karrie Fransman to interpret and respond to manuscripts, images, and literature of the medieval period, recreating the wonderful creatures of those stories in new and informative ways.

I have taught seminars for the Medieval Literary Culture module at King’s College London for two years. The first year I taught the module, a requirement for first-year undergraduates majoring in English, I was surprised when it was time to mark the students’ written assessments; despite the fact that these students were majoring in English, a writing intensive discipline, a majority of the essays I read demonstrated a lack of understanding of basic essay-writing skills. For this reason, the second year I taught the module I decided to make essay-writing skills a priority in my teaching. This case study analyses the reasons for the students’ poor writing skills, explores different ways I attempted to improve these skills, and uses anonymous student surveys and feedback as well as teaching observations to examine the effectiveness of my teaching practice. I will be teaching this module again next year (for the third time), and so this essay ends with ideas on how to further improve my students’ writing skills within this particular module.

The topic of blood in the later Middle Ages has acquired considerable critical attention over the last twenty years, but this literature consistently glosses over or completely ignores the Anglo-Saxon period. Much has been written on the feast of Corpus Christi and the worship of the Holy Blood in the later Middle Ages (c. 1200-1500), and the mass is argued to be the most important cultural function of blood in medieval times. The Anglo-Saxon period (c. 550-1150), if considered at all in these studies, is thought of as a precursor to the more developed and significant symbolism of blood in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, to which it contributes nothing but the underdeveloped seeds of the ideas of later times.

This thesis explores two critical issues: first, it redresses the lack of research into discourses of blood in Old English literature, and second, it explores whether or not this discourse has the same cultural meanings and symbolization as that of later periods of the Middle Ages. As the first detailed analysis of the meaning of blood in Anglo-Saxon literature, this thesis fills a critical gap in our knowledge of the early Middle Ages, contributing to the study of the historical semantics of the word ‘blood’ as well as the study of its meanings in religious, medical, and poetic discourses. Through close critical reading of Old English and Latin texts and analysis of the semantic fields of key words, this thesis explores the symbolism of blood from an Anglo-Saxon perspective and discusses where in Anglo-Saxon literature blood is actually described or articulated rather than where it is assumed or is implied to be. To understand blood’s significance in Anglo-Saxon culture, this thesis uses case studies from a range of genres, including poetry, homilies, hagiography, and leechbooks or medicinal texts.

The art and literature of the Middle Ages and modern comics may seem worlds apart, but what happens if they are brought into contact? This project asked comic creator Karrie Fransman to interpret and respond to manuscripts, images, and literature of the medieval period, recreating the wonderful creatures of these stories in new and informative ways. Both medieval literature/art and modern comic books question what it means to be human, sharing a fascination with superheroes (the super-human), robotics and artificial intelligence (the non-human), and fantasy (human-like creatures that are familiar and yet uncomfortably Other).

Medievalists composed literary prompts to inspire Karrie’s exploration of what it means to be human in the Middle Ages and today. These prompts, or "snapshots", included stories and imagery from medieval manuscripts, and from these Karrie created a series of comics. Karrie and I facilitated two workshops for KS3 students (thirteen-year-olds), funded by the Cultural Institute at King’s and hosted by the British Library. Karrie's and the workshop participants' works were displayed at the British Library at an event for parents, teachers, medievalists, and comic artists. Orbital Comics, a comic store in Soho, then hosted an exhibition of Karrie's comics alongside images and text from medieval manuscripts.

The project is now centred around a blog that explores what medieval comics can tell us about comics, the Middle Ages, and human nature.

A review of two books, originally published in the Times Literary Supplement on 25 May 2018:
- "The Evolution of Verse Structure in Old and Middle English Poetry", by Geoffrey Russom (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
- "Signs that Sing: Hybrid Poetics in Old English Verse", by Heather Maring (University Press of Florida, 2017)

Dēor-hord is a blog that reimagines medieval animals. It’s the collaborative endeavour of a medievalist (me) and an artist (James Merry). I translate descriptions of animals from medieval poems and bestiaries, written in Old and Middle English. These translations are meant for everyone – no prior knowledge of medieval literature or language is necessary – and although they include words in the original languages, these are glossed with definitions and pronunciation. The glosses are interlinear to imitate actual medieval glosses. James imaginatively interprets the translations with his illustrations. Although the blog features animal images from medieval manuscripts, he doesn’t use these images as reference when drawing his versions of the animals. Medieval illuminators didn’t always have the opportunity to see the animals they had to draw. Like a medieval illuminator, James has to use his imagination to illustrate someone else’s animal descriptions. The translation of medieval bestiaries into books and websites that are more accessible to non-medievalists is not new. However, Dēor-hord is unique in that it imitates the medieval bestiary-making process, the artist relying upon strange descriptions of animals he has never seen and the scribe using interlinear glosses to translate an unfamiliar language into the vernacular. Thus, the project explores new approaches to the translation as well as teaching of Old and Middle  English texts.

(Attachment is handout from the talk.)
When I began researching blood in Anglo-Saxon hagiography, I expected blood to appear mainly in graphic descriptions of saints’ martyrdoms. I was surprised to discover that this was not the case. Blood is not necessarily graphic in Anglo-Saxon hagiography. Graphic violence is not always accompanied by blood, and sometimes blood appears in scenarios completely unrelated to acts of violence. Today I will discuss various uses of blood imagery in two important collections of Anglo-Saxon prose hagiography: Aldhelm’s Latin prose De uirginitate (c. 675) and Ælfric’s Old English Lives of Saints (c. 998). This paper has two main goals: first, to demonstrate how blood in Anglo-Saxon saints’ lives does not always appear in the violent contexts one might expect; second, to examine other contexts for blood in hagiography, connecting these to blood’s power of transference.

Hana organised the panel 'What Do We Assume? New Thoughts on Old Misreadings of Anglo-Saxon Literature', which includes the paper titled above as well as papers by Victoria Walker and Rebecca Hardie. Hana's paper derives from a chapter of her doctoral thesis that challenges the idea that blood is an omnipresent symbol of violence in Anglo-Saxon literature. This chapter focuses on two specific situations in which blood’s presence is assumed inaccurately: scenes of battle and scenes of crucifixion. This paper considers depictions of Christ’s Passion in the Old English Christ poems (particularly Christ II) and The Dream of the Rood as well as scenes of battle and physical torment in Andreas, Beowulf, and The Battle of Maldon. OE 'blod' does not indicate violence, nor do the words 'swat' and 'dreor'. Although OE 'heolfor' does seem to appear consistently in contexts of violence, blood in these contexts is evoked to indicate something besides killing and death. Blood appears only twice within three OE battle poems (Maldon, Finnsburh, Brunanburh), indicating that the depiction of bloodshed is hardly the most important aspect of violence in these texts.

Heart and mind terms ('mod', 'hyge', 'heorte', and 'sefa') overlap considerably in Old English poetry. How does one differentiate thought from feeling, brain from heart, soul from body, when all these concepts seem to overlap? The 'heorte' serves as a ‘locker’ for one’s thoughts ('hreþerlocena hord') but is also the body’s seat of emotions. While the heart, mind, and blood are each referred to using specific terminology in Anglo-Saxon leechbooks, the Old English poetic corpus contains a wealth of vocabulary for these terms, which, in its abundance, creates ambiguity and a particular challenge translators. Should the words 'mod', 'hyge', 'heorte', and 'sefa' be translated as ‘heart’, ‘mind’, or ‘spirit’?  Why is there a ‘brain’ ('brægen') in leechbooks but not in poetry? This paper examines the function and characteristics of the heart in a variety of genres, medicine as well as poetry and prose.

The term 'fah' demonstrates a complexity of meaning and is an example of one of the ‘untranslatable’ words of Old English poetry.  The various meanings and resonances of the word extend from aesthetically pleasing to dangerous and troubling.  'Fah' can have both good and bad connotations, with definitions ranging from ‘variegated’ and ‘patterned’ to ‘blood-stained’ and even ‘hostile’.  This paper will consider the different ways in which a person or thing can be ‘stained’, or 'fah', and what these signify.  In addition to analysing the ways in which 'fah' is used in Old English poetry, the paper will highlight the differences in the ways this word is glossed by modern translators, assessing their tendency to give it positive, negative or neutral connotations.

This paper was part of a session called 'Distance and Proximity—Anglo-Saxon Translations'.

The Old English word 'fah' is an example of one of the ‘untranslatable’ words of Anglo-Saxon poetry.  The various meanings and resonances of the word extend from aesthetically pleasing to dangerous and troubling.  'Fah' can have both good and bad connotations, with definitions ranging from ‘variegated’ and ‘patterned’ to ‘blood-stained’ and even ‘hostile’.  The 'Beowulf'-poet appears to take a particular interest in the different layers of meaning inherent in the word 'fah'.  In a story that focuses on the implications of achieving everlasting fame — a lasting mark — the poet considers different ways of leaving a ‘mark’ or ‘stain’.  'Beowulf' explores the material and metaphorical qualities of 'fah' and blood in regards to people, objects and places.

A translator must negotiate the borders between languages, endeavouring to use language that does not construct still greater boundaries between the medieval and the modern.  Walter Benjamin, literary critic and translator, writes, ‘It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.’  This paper will consider different modern translations of 'Beowulf' and their contrasting approaches to translating 'fah' in order to capture its multiple layers of meaning.  Each of the twelve translators in this study has his or her own way of ‘liberating’ the word 'fah', of breaking through the boundaries of modern English that cannot contain all possible definitions in one single word of Old English.  Finally, this paper will consider how the act of translating 'fah' reveals the foreignness of the Anglo-Saxon (lack of) division between material and immaterial.

The story of Judith has been told and retold for two millennia, the adventure of a Hebrew woman who enters an enemy camp and, armed only with her feminine allure, her gutsy determination and her faith in God, beheads the Assyrian general with his own sword, saving her people from enslavement and death. Even though the essential details of the story remain the same, each retelling reveals the different interests and values of its author. An author in the fourth century clearly writes in a different context from an author in the tenth century, and even two authors from the same time period may choose to emphasise different aspects of the tale. In this paper I will explore the treatment of Judith as guest and Judith as enemy in two retellings from Anglo-Saxon England – the anonymous Old English poem from Wessex and the homily by Ælfric of Eynsham. The Anglo-Saxon retellings and the biblical Book of Judith offer different representations of Assyrian hostility and hospitality towards guest and foe.

This paper was part of a panel called 'Hostility and Hospitality in the Anglo-Saxon World'.

This paper explores the characterisation of a tree and cross, an object normally inanimate. Objects are ‘obedient’ to the extent that they do what their masters would have them do; they have no other choice, yet neither do they have the sentience to realise what it is they do. However, the rood of this poem has ‘instinct’, something a mere object lacks. The instinct for something comes from having a mind to react to certain situations, and though this is a characteristic of humans and animals, the poet gives this trait to pieces of wood nailed together. What is the 'cynd' or kind of this unique narrator? As tree, rood and human all at once, it defies such narrow definition.

In the Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Dream of the Rood', the cross begins to speak when the 'reordberend', the speech-bearer, is at rest. The cross itself becomes a ‘speech-bearer’, its poetic voice allowing it to express itself verbally, filling the silence left by sleeping humans. It tells the story of its life as just another tree in the forest, and how it was made to suffer great agony by humans who wanted to make it an instrument of death. The cross changes perspective throughout its narration, sometimes using the first-person ‘I’ and other times referring to itself as ‘the cross’. Why does it use varying perspectives, and why tell the story of Christ’s crucifixion in the voice of the rood? What is the significance of this narration occurring in a dream or vision, a time when most humans are asleep or at a different level of consciousness?

My paper explores the importance of blood in the Old English poem 'Beowulf'. Blood streams and gushes through this epic poem of the Anglo-Saxons, flowing from wounds, mixing with the elements, nourishing demons, transforming objects with its otherworldly power and yet embodying the essence of earthly life. No battle, no death scene of hero or villain is complete without the spilling of blood. Parting from this world is never so simple for a Germanic hero as passing away in quiet slumber. Made drunk by sword-bites, the hero is haunted by the ravening beasts of battle who crave his flesh for their supper. The spirit flows out of the body in the form of life-blood, signalling the hero’s departure from this world. The Anglo-Saxon poem 'Genesis A' uses the compound ‘sawldreore’ (or ‘sawul-drior’, meaning ‘soul-blood’), thus connecting the abstract soul or spirit with an actual, physical substance of the body. In 'Beowulf' blood has a unique relationship with the spirit, sharing its qualities and its power, a symbolic visualisation of that which would otherwise remain unseen.

Blood provides a graphic image of death in Anglo-Saxon battle poetry, but more importantly it symbolises the inner spirit, the soul that governs a human being and which has a profound effect on all around it. Streaming and gushing, staining and boiling, marking people and things for good or ill, blood provides a visual icon for one of the most abstract yet important concepts in Old English poetry.

The topic of blood in the later Middle Ages has acquired considerable critical attention over the last twenty years, but this literature consistently glosses over or completely ignores the Anglo-Saxon period. Much has been written on the feast of Corpus Christi and the worship of the Holy Blood in the later Middle Ages (c. 1200-1500), and the mass is argued to be the most important cultural function of blood in medieval times. The Anglo-Saxon period (c. 550-1150), if considered at all in these studies, is thought of as a precursor to the more developed and significant symbolism of blood in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, to which it contributes nothing but the underdeveloped seeds of the ideas of later times. This thesis explores two critical issues: first, it redresses the lack of research into discourses of blood in Old English literature, and second, it explores whether or not this discourse has the same cultural meanings and symbolization as that of later periods of the Middle Ages. As the first detailed analysis of the meaning of blood in Anglo-Saxon literature, this thesis fills a critical gap in our knowledge of the early Middle Ages, contributing to the study of the historical semantics of the word ‘blood’ as well as the study of its meanings in religious, medical, and poetic discourses. Through close critical reading of Old English and Latin texts and analysis of the semantic fields of key words, this thesis explores the symbolism of blood from an Anglo-Saxon perspective and discusses where in Anglo-Saxon literature blood is actually described or articulated rather than where it is assumed or is implied to be. To understand blood’s significance in Anglo-Saxon culture, this thesis uses case studies from a range of genres, including poetry, homilies, hagiography, and leechbooks or medicinal texts.

At King's, part of our interest in the "creative medieval" is of course driven by a desire to increase the appeal of medieval studies among students, but we are also interested in the history of creativity in medieval studies, which we feel has often been overlooked. Translation and performance are at the heart of Anglo-Saxon Studies. A teacher of Old English needs to develop pedagogic skills to ensure that students feel comfortable taking creative risks—whether that is venturing a new translation, or simply voicing an unfamiliar word. So one of the aims of the projects described in this essay was to encourage early career researchers and teachers to think about how creativity is threaded through their academic practice. Another, broader, aim of the Spiral, was to invite the public at large to consider how the early medieval is threaded through the contemporary.