Group Identity and the Early Medieval Riddle Tradition

数百个诗歌谜语--从公元7世纪到公元10世纪创作并记录下来--记录了中世纪早期英格兰日常生活和世俗智慧的细节。他们告诉我们，洋葱可能是粗鲁的笑话的靶子，猫当时(和现在一样)非常独立，当剑有机会说话时，暴力并不是不受质疑的。因为它们以古英语和拉丁语两种语言存在，所以这些谜语很少被带到彼此的对话中，其中一些除了专家之外几乎没有人知道。该项目将通过一个网站，提供开放获取的文本和翻译，以及解开文学和文化信息的评论，一个论坛和比赛，邀请公众以创造性的方式参与谜语，从而揭开整个中世纪早期谜语传统的面纱。如果中世纪早期的谜语是一扇了解许多世纪前生活的窗户，这个项目试图打开它。在探索谜语的过程中，该项目团队还旨在收集有关作曲家群体身份的信息。猜谜语的竞争性质和这些诗歌在中世纪课堂上的使用，以及我们从已确定的作者传记中了解到的情况，表明在英格兰工作的高地位男性和与英格兰有密切联系的岛国网络具有共同的群体身份。即便如此，这一传统本身也是建立在国际合作的基础上的，北非和泛欧洲的诗歌材料被广泛传播、模仿和改编。谜语传统在英格兰和国外的流行强调了中世纪早期谜语者的共同群体身份具有全球视野。谜语本身也可能具有极大的颠覆性，并为人们提供了一种感同身受的愿景，即生活在与那些名字和作品保存下来的地位很高的男性谜者截然不同的生活中。考虑到这一切，项目团队的成员试图通过四种方式来检查群体身份：-首先，他们将调查在英格兰和欧洲大陆工作的谜者网络--不同的谜语收藏是如何相互参照的？哪些是一起传播的，我们如何绘制它们的关系？-第二，他们将检查身份在谜语本身中的表现--高地位/男性身份是如何通过谜语的主题来探索和强化的？哪些谜语颠覆了这些“规范”？我们可以从这些谜语中获得什么文化洞察力？--第三，他们将把镜头对准自己，询问研究谜语的学者如何复制传统的群体认同管理--出版物中的口头争辩以及对寻找“正确”解决方案的强调，如何模仿创作这些谜语的环境的竞争？--第四，他们将探索与谜语的当代接触--翻译和评论如何通过谜语为学习历史打开机会？如何将其用于博物馆/遗产活动和教育资源？简而言之，该项目旨在调查与谜语的制作、文本内容、对谜语的批判性参与以及学术界以外的各种用户社区对谜语的接受有关的群体身份。谜语对中世纪早期生活的方方面面都有很大的影响。最终，他们告诉我们，当我们想到武器、英雄和战斗时，这个世界比我们想象的要微妙得多。除了这种勇士文化，还有复杂的文学创作传统，包括双语谜语和阅读社区，跨越了整个中世纪早期，创作了数百首诗，至今仍让读者感到高兴。

Several hundred poetic riddles -- composed and written down from the seventh- through tenth-centuries -- record the minutiae of daily life and worldly wisdom in early medieval England. They tell us that onions could be the butt of a rude joke, cats were then (as now) fiercely independent, and violence did not go unquestioned when swords were given the chance to speak. Because they exist in two languages, Old English and Latin, these riddles are rarely brought into conversation with each other and some are little known to any but specialists. This project will bring the entire early medieval riddle tradition to light, through a website that provides open-access texts and translations, alongside commentaries that unpack literary and cultural information, a discussion forum and competitions that invite members of the public to engage with the riddles in creative ways. If the early medieval riddles are a window onto life many centuries ago, this project seeks to throw it wide open.In exploring the riddles, the project team also aims to gather information about their composers' group identity. The competitive nature of riddling and the use of these poems in the medieval classroom, along with what we know from the biographies of identified authors suggests a shared group identity of high-status men working in England and insular networks with strong links to England. Even so, the very tradition itself was founded on international collaboration, with North African and pan-European poetic material widely circulated, imitated and adapted. The popularity of the riddle tradition both within England and abroad emphasizes that the shared group identity of early medieval riddlers had a global outlook. The riddles themselves could also be deeply subversive, and provide empathic visions of what it meant to live a very different life to that experienced by the high-status, male riddlers whose names and works survive.With all this in mind, the members of the project team seek to examine group identity in four ways:- First, they will examine the networks of riddlers working in England and on the continent -- how did different riddle collections reference each other? Which ones were circulated together, and how can we map their relationships?- Second, they will examine performances of identity within the riddles themselves -- how are high-status/masculine identities explored and reinforced through the subject matter of the riddles? Which riddles subvert these 'norms', and what cultural insights might we glean from them?- Third, they will turn the lens on themselves, to ask how scholars working on the riddles replicate the tradition's policing of group identity -- how does verbal sparring in publications and an emphasis on finding the 'right' solutions mimic the competitiveness of the environment in which they were composed? - Fourth, they will explore contemporary engagements with the riddles -- how might translations and commentaries open up opportunities for learning history through the riddles? How might they be channelled into museum/heritage activities and educational resources?In short, the project seeks to investigate group identity in relation to the production of the riddles, the content of the texts, critical engagement with the riddles, and the reception of the riddles by various user communities outside academia.The riddles have a great deal to say about all aspects of life in the early medieval period. Ultimately, they tell us that this world was much more nuanced than we imagine it when we think of weapons, heroes and battles. Alongside this warrior culture was a complex tradition of literary production, including bilingual riddling and reading communities, which spanned the entire early medieval period and produced hundreds of poems that continue to delight readers today.