Old English Riddles

一千多年来，《埃克塞特书的古英语谜语》一直在挑战读者，尽管它们的状态支离破碎，风格不一致，还有一些顽固的无法解决的文本，但它仍然具有非凡的吸引力。最近对谜语的批评，借鉴了各种传统和理论方法，表明还有许多新的工作可以做，但这些工作主要是以文章和简短笔记的形式出现的。这项研究的目的不仅是总结以往零散研究的进展，而且还对谜语提出新的解读。它将根据对个别文本的详细仔细阅读，并按五个大主题排列：英雄成语、家庭世界(包括性)、创造的奇迹、宗教和识字，对整个收藏进行专著长度的文学分析。这项研究有三个主要观点。首先，它认为这些谜语不仅展示了对盎格鲁-撒克逊社会的罕见的批评距离，也展示了对古英语诗歌传统的罕见的批评距离。其次，它提出，集合的不均衡性提供了对文本的性质和功能的洞察：处理集合的求解者很少依靠过去的经验来指导解决过程，因为以前成功的方法和技术不仅可能指导人们找到可接受的解决方案，也可能具有欺骗性。第三，这项研究质疑了通常强调解决方案的做法，这种做法过去垄断了最关键的努力，而是聚焦于谜题在读者中启动的过程--即使找不到解决方案也可能存在的过程，而不一定会在找到解决方案时停止。这项研究的好处和应用包括：主题的巩固，旨在改变谜语在古英语文学经典中的边缘地位的文本的新方法，以及未来研究的焦点。

The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book have been challenging readers for over a thousand years and retain a remarkable appeal despite their fragmentary state, inconsistent style, and some stubbornly unsolvable texts. Recent criticism of the riddles, drawing upon various traditional and theoretical approaches, have demonstrated that there is much new work that can be done, yet this work has mainly appeared in the form of articles and short notes. This study aims not only to draw together the advances of previous, scattered studies but also to propose new readings of the riddles. It will produce a monograph-length, literary analysis of the collection as a whole, based upon detailed close readings of individual texts and arranged according to five large themes: the heroic idiom, the domestic world (including sexuality), the wonders of creation, religion, and literacy. The study has three main points. First, it argues that the riddles demonstrate a rare critical distance on not only Anglo-Saxon society but also the Old English poetic tradition. Second, it proposes that the unevenness of the collection offers insight into the texts' nature and function: a solver proceeding through the collection can rarely rely on past experience to guide the solving process, for previous successful approaches and techniques are as likely to deceive as to guide to an acceptable solution. Third, this study questions the usual emphasis on solutions, which has in the past monopolised most critical efforts, and focuses instead on the processes that riddles initiate in their readers-processes that can exist even if a solution is not found and that do not necessarily stop when a solution is reached. The benefits and applications of this study include: consolidation of the topic, new approaches to the texts that aim to change the riddles' marginal status in the canon of Old English literature, and a focus for future research.