'Heo spraec thicce': The privileges and proprieties of female speech in Anglo-Saxon poetry

Female characters give direct speeches 46 times in Old English verse, comprising 606.5 lines of poetry. If there are approximately 30,000 lines of extant Old English poetry, female speeches make up only 2.02 percent of the Anglo-Saxon poetic corpus; yet their speeches are surprisingly complex. Women have direct speeches in ten Old English poems: Beowulf, Christ I (Advent Lyrics 4 and 7), Christ and Satan, Elene, Genesis (A and B), Judith, Juliana, Waldere, The Wife's Lament, and Wulf and Eadwacer. The present study compares these female speeches with one another exclusive of the poems in which they appear in order to demonstrate that women in the poetry had specific speech privileges. Furthermore, pragmatic analyses of these female speeches reveals rhetorical and linguistic strategies common to the speaking female characters of these poems. The regular and complex use of indirect language, implicature, and politeness strategies by female voices in Old English poetry indicates that women---so often represented as sage counselors in the literature---were meant to be listened to carefully.;Because the heroic culture represented in Old English poetry placed a heavy emphasis on reputation, speeches in the literature (both by men and women) exhibit a tendency toward politeness. Of the eleven women who give direct speeches in the poetry, seven of them wield imperatives. The four female characters that do not use imperative speech are exiled figures (Hagar, the Wife in The Wife's Lament, the anonymous woman in Wulf and Eadwacer, and Eve in both Genesis A and Christ and Satan). The women who do employ imperatives often preface their demands with language meant to inspire sympathy or agreement in the hearer (e.g. Wealhtheow, Judith, Juliana, Hildegyth, Mary), though some use more direct imperatives, permitted to do so because of the rights and obligations owed to them by their hearers (e.g. Sarah and Elene). Because female characters in Anglo-Saxon poetry are usually unable to wield weapons, their words---perhaps especially their imperatives---are the means by which they display their power, knowledge, and authority.