Presentation Type
Textual Analysis
Release Option
Open Access
Description
In this presentation, I discuss the role of the Old English scop in the context of the transition from orality to written works in Old English society. Scops served the role of the storytellers, historians, and moral authorities within Old English society, and they utilized Oral-Formulaic composition to compile and share the Germanic poetic tradition with the largely illiterate population, whose only written language before Christianity was made up of crude runic characters. When Christian missionaries made their way to England and brought with them the written language of Latin, the necessity of the scop dissipated; many stories were written down in Latin and the authority on moral and historical teachings fell to the church. Orality continued in many regards, but the occupation of the scop was no longer relied upon. However, the legacy of the scop was preserved through the written works that followed. I discuss the historical context of Old English society, outline the role of the scop, and analyze the scop as a character in poems such as "Beowulf," “Widsith,” and “Deor” to highlight the legacy of the scop within written works and raise questions regarding the compositional choices of Christian scribes.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Faculty Mentor
Carol Jamison
Department of Primary Presenter's Major
Other
Symposium Year
2024
”Widsith Came to Talk: Preservation of the Scop within Old English Poetry”
