Papers by Jacek Olesiejko
Emotions as Engines of History, 2021
As Mary Carruthers observes in her seminal Book of Memory, the cultivation of memory was consider... more As Mary Carruthers observes in her seminal Book of Memory, the cultivation of memory was considered a mark of superior ethics in the Middle Ages. She claims, for example, that "the choice to train one's memory or not, for the ancients and medievals, was not a choice dictated by convenience: it was a matter of ethics. A person without a memory, if such a thing could be, is a person without moral character and, in a basic sense, without humanity" (Carruthers 14). In the present article, which aims to discuss the Old English biblical paraphrase Daniel, I argue that memory plays an important, if not essential, role in Nebuchadnezzar's conversion. The poet expands on the biblical source, the Old Testament Book of Daniel, to depict the Babylonian king as commencing a process of rectifi cation of the self by incorporating and internalizing the word of God, mediated in the poem by Daniel the prophet, as part of his self.
Anglica Wratislaviensia
The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identit... more The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identity and masculinity in Andreas. Andreas is a religious poem composed in Anglo-Saxon England around the ninth century. It is an adaptation of the Latin recension of the Acts of the Apostle Andrew, but the poet uses heroic diction borrowed from Old English secular poetry to rework the metaphor of miles Christi that is ubiquitous in Christian literature. The poet uses the military metaphor to inculcate the Christian notion of masculinity as the inversion of the secular perception of manliness. He draws upon a paradox, attested in the early Christian writings, that spiritual masculinity is true manliness, superior to military masculinity, and that it is expressed through patient suffering and the acknowledgment of defeat. The poem inverts the notions of war and victory to depict the physical defeat of the martyr as a spiritual victory over sin and the devil.
Anglica Wratislaviensia
The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identit... more The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identity and masculinity in Andreas. Andreas is a religious poem composed in Anglo-Saxon England around the ninth century. It is an adaptation of the Latin recension of the Acts of the Apostle Andrew, but the poet uses heroic diction borrowed from Old English secular poetry to rework the metaphor of miles Christi that is ubiquitous in Christian literature. The poet uses the military metaphor to inculcate the Christian notion of masculinity as the inversion of the secular perception of manliness. He draws upon a paradox, attested in the early Christian writings, that spiritual masculinity is true manliness, superior to military masculinity, and that it is expressed through patient suffering and the acknowledgment of defeat. The poem inverts the notions of war and victory to depict the physical defeat of the martyr as a spiritual victory over sin and the devil.
Anglica Wratislaviensia
The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identit... more The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identity and masculinity in Andreas. Andreas is a religious poem composed in Anglo-Saxon England around the ninth century. It is an adaptation of the Latin recension of the Acts of the Apostle Andrew, but the poet uses heroic diction borrowed from Old English secular poetry to rework the metaphor of miles Christi that is ubiquitous in Christian literature. The poet uses the military metaphor to inculcate the Christian notion of masculinity as the inversion of the secular perception of manliness. He draws upon a paradox, attested in the early Christian writings, that spiritual masculinity is true manliness, superior to military masculinity, and that it is expressed through patient suffering and the acknowledgment of defeat. The poem inverts the notions of war and victory to depict the physical defeat of the martyr as a spiritual victory over sin and the devil.
Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies, 2019
In Cynewulf’s Juliana, Juliana’s suitor Heliseus, called “the guardian of treasure,” represents s... more In Cynewulf’s Juliana, Juliana’s suitor Heliseus, called “the guardian of treasure,” represents secular material culture, in which women are weakened by the male control of materiality. The material culture of the heroic world reproduces the masculine body politic, reducing women to objects of exchange in contractual relationships between men. The
present paper makes a case that from the poem emerges a contrast between a perception of materially constituted masculinity, aligning manhood with wealth and status, and a more inclusive spiritual manhood, available to both sexes. In relation to this Juliana achieves
spiritual manhood as a miles Christi exampling how feminine holiness empowers women. Consequently Juliana’s emasculation of the devil becomes a challenge to the secular patriarchal order in which they are the currency of exchange.
Jacek Olesiejko, 2018
The present article studies Ælfric of Eynsham’s homily based on the biblical books of Maccabees. ... more The present article studies Ælfric of Eynsham’s homily based on the biblical books of Maccabees. It uses Barbara H. Rosenwein’s concept of emotional community to elucidate Ælfric’s treatment of anger and violence in the process of adapting the biblical source in his Old English homily. His presentation and characterisation of characters draws upon the hagiographic technique of polarisation. He makes vivid contrast between fury-driven persecutors and the just Hebrew, whose conduct is a commendable example of self-master over emotion. The argument of the article is that Ælfric handles his representation of anger and violence to enhance the figurative, tropolotical exposition of the homily.
The article considers the significance of the Grendelkin as monsters, bringing to attention the I... more The article considers the significance of the Grendelkin as monsters, bringing to attention the Isidorian understanding of the monster as a sign, portent, and admonition. In the original Beowulf the Grendelkin are not described as possessing many of the inhuman qualities that have been applied to them in the later critical tradition or by its translators. Isidore acknowledges in Etymologies that monsters are natural beings, whose function in the system of creation is significant. The present article considers the significance of the Grendelkin in the poem and argues that Grendel and his mother function as signs underlying themes of feud and succession in the poem. The article also brings attention to the multiple references to body parts, such as hands, and their function within the poem as synecdochic representations of the Danish body politic. The article explores the sexualised and gendered perception of the body politic in the poem.
The purpose of the article is to elucidate the Old English Boethius, Old English translation of B... more The purpose of the article is to elucidate the Old English Boethius, Old English translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, the translation of which is attributed to King Alfred the Great (849-899 A.D). The article provides a special focus on the versified proem to the prosometric version of Boethius. The proem, arguably, represents a view of Ostrogothic Kingdom of Theodoric that counters the notion of Germanic myth of origin pervading Anglo-Saxon textual culture and the memory of Theodoric as Germanic ruler of Rome that is evident in Old English poetic tradition. The Old English Boethius, arguably, contests the established tradition to promote a Christian grooming of the Anglo-Saxon notion kingship in keeping with the Alfredian programme of cultural reform.
The article turns to Judith Butler’s writings on abjection to elucidate the Christian subjectivit... more The article turns to Judith Butler’s writings on abjection to elucidate the Christian subjectivity that emerges from the Old English poetic life of Guthlac of Crowland, known as Guthlac A. The abject is defined as the other within the subject who is in the process of conversion from secular values and the Germanic past. Guthlac’s conversion from his secular and ancestral values informs a notion of masculinity nascent in his subjectivity, masculinity that results from the abjection of ancestral secular identity by transposing it onto the demonic other, the destruction of which transforms and sanitizes ancestral landscape.
AElfric of Eynsham's Life of St Eugenia is an account of a holy cross-dresser's life who infiltra... more AElfric of Eynsham's Life of St Eugenia is an account of a holy cross-dresser's life who infiltrates and eventually heads a patriarchal community of monks in the vicinity of Alexandria and, following the exposure of her real sex, establishes a community of virgins and chaste widows in Rome. The present article attempts to reveal the narratorial masculine authority that contests Eugenia's attempts at her own self-representation as a woman as well as counters the Latin source's representation of Eugenia as a miles Christi.
This article uses Charles S. Peirce’s concept of icon and Judith Butler’s idea of genealogy of ge... more This article uses Charles S. Peirce’s concept of icon and Judith Butler’s idea of genealogy of gender to study levels of fictionality in the Old English poem Beowulf. It shows that Wealhtheow, the principal female character in the epic, operates as a diegetic reader in the poem. Her speeches, in which she addresses her husband King Hrothgar and Beowulf contain implicit references to the Lay of Finn, which has been sung by Hrothgar’s minstrel at the feast celebrating Beowulf’s victory. It is argued here that Wealhtheow represents herself as an icon of peace-weaving, as she asts herself as a figuration of Hildeburh, the female protagonist of the Lay of Finn. Hildeburh is the sister of Hnæf, the leader of the Danes, and is given by her brother to Finn the Frisian in a marriage alliance. In her role as a peace-weaver, the queen is to weave peace between tribes by giving birth to heirs of the crown. After the courtly minster’s performance of the Lay, Wealhtheow warns her husband against establishing political alliances with the foreigner Beowulf at the expense of his intratribal obligation to his cousin Hrothulf, who is to become king after Hrothgar’s death.
The present article studies Cynewulf’s creative manipulation of heroic style in his hagiographic ... more The present article studies Cynewulf’s creative manipulation of heroic style in his hagiographic poem Juliana written around the 9th century A.D. The four poems now attributed to Cynewulf, on the strength of his runic autographs appended to each, Christ II, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana are written in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of heroic alliterative verse that Anglo-Saxons had inherited from their continental Germanic ancestors. In Juliana, the theme of treasure and exile reinforces the allegorical structure of Cynewulf’s poetic creation. In such poems like Beowulf and Seafarer treasure signifies the stability of bonds between people and tribes. The exchange of treasure and ritualistic treasure-giving confirms bonds between kings and their subjects. In Juliana, however, treasure is identified with heathen culture and idolatry. The traditional imagery of treasure, so central to Old English poetic lore, is inverted in the poem, as wealth and gold embody vice and corruption. The rejection of treasure and renunciation of kinship bonds indicate piety and chastity. Also, while in other Old English secular poems exile is cast in terms of deprivation of human company and material values, in Juliana the possession of and preoccupation with treasure indicates spiritual exile and damnation. This article argues that the inverted representations of treasure and exile in the poem lend additional strength to its allegorical elements and sharpen the contrast between secular world and Juliana, who is an allegorical representation of the Church.
Since the times of Antiquity, people have looked up to the sky and developed various conceptions ... more Since the times of Antiquity, people have looked up to the sky and developed various conceptions of Heaven and Hell. Already in the ancient Egypt people developed the tripartite conception of universe with earth placed between the Heaven inhabited by gods above and Hell below. The Old English poetic text of Genesis (MS Junius 11; compilation dated to the 10th century) presents the earthly paradise, Hell and Middangeard (or the middle earth). Both Genesis A and B that comprise the poem indeed show a single and consistent descriptions of cosmos. The overt consistency may well seem as interesting as the tradition that the poem draws upon as well as distorts. The universe found in the poem is a fusion of the Christian religious learning as well as Germanic tradition. The idea that marries Heaven, earth and Hell in the poetic sequence of OE Genesis is the concept of hall and anti-hall, city and anti-city. The aim of the following paper is to investigate the modes of this presentation of these parts of the universe by the analysis of the clusters of meaning that are associated with hall and city.
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Papers by Jacek Olesiejko
present paper makes a case that from the poem emerges a contrast between a perception of materially constituted masculinity, aligning manhood with wealth and status, and a more inclusive spiritual manhood, available to both sexes. In relation to this Juliana achieves
spiritual manhood as a miles Christi exampling how feminine holiness empowers women. Consequently Juliana’s emasculation of the devil becomes a challenge to the secular patriarchal order in which they are the currency of exchange.
present paper makes a case that from the poem emerges a contrast between a perception of materially constituted masculinity, aligning manhood with wealth and status, and a more inclusive spiritual manhood, available to both sexes. In relation to this Juliana achieves
spiritual manhood as a miles Christi exampling how feminine holiness empowers women. Consequently Juliana’s emasculation of the devil becomes a challenge to the secular patriarchal order in which they are the currency of exchange.