Concealment and revelation: Fatherhood in the literature of Anglo -Saxon England

Concealment and Revelation: Fatherhood in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England examines paternity in Old English literature, especially in terms of how clerical texts model "fatherhood" for priests and abbots, and secular texts model "fatherhood" in terms of kingship. In Chapter One, these concepts are discerned in early Christian commentary on the binding of Isaac by Abraham, two Old English homilies and the Old English poem "Precepts.";Chapter Two examines two Old English female saints' lives, those of Eugenia and Eufrasia. These texts are literally about women who preserve their virginity through entering monasteries dressed as men, and allegorically allow us to see the female body comprising wolfish sexual temptation. I examine the power of clothing to transform, and the motif of the "wolf"---carnal feminine sexuality---as it turns to "sheep," the asexual, docile person. Exploring non-biological fatherhood, this chapter looks at women who take on the roles of fathers in the Church community. In the concluding chapter, I continue this motif by looking at men who "father" through kingship in Beowulf and Apollonius of Tyre .;Chapter Three explores the fatherly relationship between Hrothgar and Beowulf, fraught with emotion and tears, and the 'father's lament,' which recalls Beowulf's struggle as an heirless king and offers an analogy between kingship and fatherhood. I look at proper and improper relationships between fathers and their daughters, both presented in Apollonius through the literary devices of concealment, riddle, and deception. Here, I discuss the Anglo-Saxon riddle as naked text---and the explication of it as the allegorical goal of the reading. The dissertation argues that by incorporating medieval exegesis, we can, perhaps, read these texts as multi-faceted, layered documents. We must look through the naked text for the concealed truths within it. With respect to fatherhood, we then can reveal that for the Anglo-Saxon monastic community which produced these texts, fatherhood on earth mirrored the Divine will.