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Winner of Van Courtland Elliott Prize
John Bugbee's article, "Sight and Sound in St. Erkenwald:
On Theodicy and the Senses," published in Medium aevum
77 (2008), 202-21, reads in masterly fashion the late-medieval
poem in relation to both aesthetic and theological contexts,
convincingly demonstrating that our understanding of the
senses in medieval poetry must be linked to Christian accounts
of seeing and hearing. He begins by considering the words
on the page, making the incisive point that St. Erkenwald
explores the intersections of seeing and hearing in
its narrative of baptism and redemption. With great precision
Bugbee shows that the poem emphasizes sound in its repeated
descriptions of crowd noise, speeches, sighs, and other
acoustic phenomena. Further, he shows how the poem consistently
portrays visual perception as an inadequate tool for human
understanding, even though sight is considered a higher
sense than hearing. Bugbee links these representations of
the senses to two crucial contexts. First, he shows that
the primary intertexts for the poem are two passages from
the Gospel of John-the story of Jesus and Lazarus, and the
cure of the man born blind-rather than the usually cited
Trajan story. Recognizing these intertexts allows Bugbee
to point to the role of theodicy in the poem, which he then
links to philosophical discussions of the relation between
hearing (a passive sense) and sight (an active sense) in
the later Middle Ages. Moments of spiritual recognition-like
Job's climactic repentance or the salvation of the dead
judge in St. Erkenwald-become moments of transition
from hearing to sight. Because human vision remains inadequate,
the result of the judge's salvation is disintegration of
the body; human beings can see only darkness and ashes.
As St. Erkenwald shows, until the moment of their
own salvation, human beings must be listeners and not seers.
Bugbee's exposition is beautifully written and his reading
of St. Erkenwald is brilliantly sensitive to the
nuances of Middle English. It is a truly interdisciplinary
work, drawing from literary studies, theology, and biblical
studies, making it a perfect example of the synthesis for
which medievalists strive. The article's significance reaches
beyond the study of St. Erkenwald; its method and
conclusions suggest promising new avenues of interpretation
for Middle English poetry and for the study of late-medieval
religious thought.
Respectfully submitted,
JEFFREY BOWMAN
DEBORAH DELIYANNIS
MAURA NOLAN, Chair
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