A Place to Weep: Joseph in the Beer-Room and Anglo-Saxon Gestures of Emotion

Jonathan Wilcox

doi:10.7722/j.ctt81w2q.7

Where do Anglo-Saxon men go when they want to have a little weep, away from the public eye? Or, more precisely, where would an Anglo-Saxon audience imagine a man of power going when he wanted to conceal his crying? The question touches on some interesting issues for understanding Anglo-Saxon culture. Did real men cry in Anglo-Saxon England? What was the value of tears? Are there constraints of gender and class in displaying emotion? How is the public/private division imagined? Hugh Magennis has looked at the body's emotional expression through laughter in Anglo-Saxon literature; this essay in his honour will examine the body's emotional outpouring through weeping by focusing on a single symptomatic instance. The example occurs in a text that has been largely overlooked by contemporary scholarship, perhaps because it is a translation, although it is a translation with such massive cultural significance that it may well have influenced the gestural repertoire available to Anglo-Saxon men and women: the story of Joseph as told in the Old Testament book of Genesis. Resonating with the moment of weeping at the centre of this essay is a rather peculiar scene of feasting – a subject well elucidated by Magennis's scholarship – which, I will suggest, successfully plays with Anglo-Saxon expectations. Applying a Magennis-like attentiveness to images and gestures within this biblical translation, I will endeavour to open up an understanding of potential gestures of masculinity available in Anglo-Saxon England.

A Place to Weep: Joseph in the Beer-Room and Anglo-Saxon Gestures of Emotion

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