Abstract
The Exeter Book poem, 102 lines long, traditionally and appropriately called The Wonder(s) of Creation, was renamed in The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, III, 163-6, The Order of the World. This article traces the tradition (since 1842) and shows the inappropriateness of the new name. The whole poem is edited and translated in the article. The sentence structure is complex, and the unit of discourse is the sentence paragraph, rather than the gnome. Two thoughtful personae open the poem, one far-travelled and experienced, the other about to set out on his journey. The first twenty lines are about the intellectual grasp of the mystery of creation. There is a long eulogy of God the Creator and the wonder of his creation, Cædmonian and psalmodic in spirit. Line 46b, unemended þurh þa miclan gemynd, is shown to be pivotal, and the emendation gecynd, to avoid double alliteration in the second half-line, is rejected. The human mind is insufficient to grasp the greatness of God, as Creator and as Judge. The sun is glorified as the best of God’s Creation, reminiscent of Psalmody. The lability of initial /h/ in Old English may lead to subtle wordplay. Towards the end of the poem thought turns to heaven, the eorðwerud ‘that household originally on earth’ may form the heorðwerud ‘inhabitants of (God’s) homestead’ in heaven.
Throughout, the paper stresses that rules established by prosodists from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first have frequent exceptions, and should not be used by editors in the hope of regularizing the transmitted texts of Old English poetry. A substantial appendix confirms manuscript readings rejected by martinetish editors; it ranges more widely than The Wonder of Creation, and the ‘impossible’ second half-line þurh þa miclan gemynd is at the centre of this appendix.
© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
