Looking for Home at the End of the World: A Study of Regional Belonging in Old English Environmental Literature

近年来，中世纪生态批评领域的兴趣激增，古英语文本证明了一个特别富有成果的研究对象。科琳·戴尔2017年的专著《埃克塞特书的谜题》考察了自然世界，而海德·埃斯蒂斯的《盎格鲁-撒克逊文学景观》涵盖了从《贝奥武夫》到《圣徒的生活》再到《盎格鲁-撒克逊编年史》的段落。然而，古英语的宗教布道和宪章约束仍然是一种未开发的资源。该项目将使用这些文本来研究中世纪早期农业社区是如何概念化并与其直接的物理环境相结合的。通过将这些17世纪的文本与当代生态批评理论和生态诗学进行对话，我不仅试图揭示它们以前被忽视的环境共鸣，而且还探索中世纪生态批评如何为当代环境话语做出贡献。在大曼彻斯特权力下放的背景下，我的研究将特别关注是否像埃斯蒂斯所说的那样——“中世纪早期的例子是回归地方经济是可能的”，以及区域主义和对区域景观的公共认同如何使我们能够在环境崩溃的时候“生态”（蒂莫西·莫顿，2018）。对Rogationtide讲道和宪章边界的研究将开辟新的领域，不仅因为它们尚未从生态批评的角度进行检查，而且因为这两个文本主体都与步行仪式有关，这些仪式使社区沉浸在当地的景观中。在当地被称为gangdagas或“行走日”，Rogation日致力于为土地的持续丰收祈祷，并围绕着日常行走来划定当地定居点的边界。边界行走也是盎格鲁-撒克逊人土地保有权的一个重要方面，它将定居点边界的变化传达给在土地上生活和工作的口头识字的社区。到10世纪，绝大多数拉丁语土地授予都包含古英语的边界条款。这些引人注目的文本通过从一个有意义的地标——一个坟墓、一个黄鼠狼的洞穴、一个妖精的泉水——到下一个地标来追踪新的边界线。突破界限，让步行者对一个熟悉的地方有了一个外围的视角，有力地说明了当代生态写作及其对步行的关注——正如激进的风景诗人马克·狄金森所写的那样，这是一种行为，“距离和亲密，并在世界中重新定位我们自己”。

The field of medieval ecocriticism has experienced a surge in interest in recent years, with Old English texts provingan especially fruitful object of study. Corinne Dale's 2017 monograph examines The Natural World in the ExeterBook Riddles, while Heide Estes' Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes covers texts ranging from Beowulf to Saints'Lives to passages from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Old English Rogationtide homilies and charter bounds, however,remain something of an untapped resource. This project will use these texts to study how early medieval agrariancommunities conceptualised and engaged with their immediate physical environments. Through bringing thesetenth-century texts into conversation with contemporary ecocritical theory and ecopoetics, I seek not only to shedlight on their previously overlooked environmental resonances, but also to explore how medieval ecocriticism cancontribute to contemporary environmental discourse. Contextualised by the Devolution of Greater Manchester,my research will focus particularly on whether as Estes argues - 'the example of the early Middle Ages is that areturn to localised economies is possible', and how regionalism and communal identification with regionallandscapes can allow us to 'be ecological' at a time of environmental breakdown (Timothy Morton, 2018).A study of Rogationtide homilies and charter bounds will break new ground not only because they haveyet to be examined from an ecocritical perspective, but also because both bodies of texts are associated with ritualacts of walking which immersed communities in their local landscapes. Called gangdagas or 'walking days' in thevernacular, Rogation days were devoted to praying for the ongoing fruitfulness of the land, and structured arounddaily walks that marked out the boundaries of a local settlement. Boundary walks also constituted a key aspect ofAnglo-Saxon land tenure, communicating changes in settlement boundaries to the orally literate communities wholived and worked on the land. By the 10th century, the vast majority of Latin land grants contained a boundaryclause in Old English. These remarkable texts trace the new boundary line by moving from one meaningfullyimbued landmark - a grave mound, a weasel's den, a goblin's spring - to the next. Beating the bounds, which gavewalkers a peripheral perspective on a familiar place, speaks eloquently to contemporary ecowriting and itsemergent focus on walking - an act, as radical landscape poet Mark Dickinson writes, 'of distance and intimacy,and of relocating ourselves within the world'.