Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

write.” The
Eddas
constitute the most detailed and complete source of Germanic mythology that has survived to this day.
4. The Venerable Bede (673–735), Anglo-Saxon historian, theologian, and chronicler. He was one of the most erudite figures in Europe during the Middle Ages. His most famous work is
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
, though he produced many other scientific, historical, and theological works. Bede spent most of his life at St. Paul’s Monastery in Jarrow and was known in his lifetime for his erudition as well as his pious character. In 1899, Bede was canonized; his saint’s day is May 25. Borges explores the fundamental aspects of his life in
Medieval Germanic Literature
, OCC, 882–85.
Borges is also referring here to Rædwald, King of East Anglia (d. ca. 624), who is believed to be buried in Sutton Hoo. The Venerable Bede writes, “Rædwald had long before been initiated into the mysteries of the Christian faith in Kent, but in vain; for on his return home, he was seduced by his wife and by certain evil teachers and perverted from the sincerity of his faith, so that his last state was worse than his first. After the manner of the ancient Samaritans, he seemed to be serving both Christ and the gods whom he had previously served; in the same temple, he had one altar for the Christian sacrifice and another small altar on which to offer victims to devils.”
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
, Book II, Chapter XV, ed. and trans. by Judith McClure and Roger Collins (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 98. This fragment seems to have particularly impressed Borges, for he includes it, with slight changes, under the title “
Por si acaso
” [“Just in Case”] in his book
Cuentos breves y extraordinarios
[
Extraordinary Tales
], written with Adolfo Bioy Casares.
5. Borges is referring to the four codices containing most of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that has survived to this day. The codices are: 1)
Cotton Vitellius A. xv
, in the collection of the British Museum and contains
Beowulf
and
Judith
; 2)
Junius 11
, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, which contains the poems “Genesis,” Exodus,” “Daniel,” and “Christ and Satan”; 3)
Codex Exoniensis
or
Exeter Book
, held at the cathedral of the same name, which contains the elegies, “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” “The Ruin,” some riddles, and several minor poems; 4)
Codex Vercellensis
or the
Vercelli Book
, which Borges mentions here, and is in the Vercelli cathedral, near Milan, and contains “The Dream of the Rood.” In addition, there are approximately four hundred manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon prose texts, a fact Borges fails to mention here but which he explicitly mentions at the beginning of class 6.
6. A Spanish translation of the prose dialogue between Saturn and Solomon appears under the title
“Un diálogo anglosajón del siglo XI”
[“An Anglo-Saxon dialogue from the eleventh century”] in Borges’s
Breve antología anglosajona
[
Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology
], a book he wrote with María Kodama and included in his
Obras completas en colaboración
[
Complete Collaborative Works
].
7. Borges is probably referring here to the
Dharma Shastras
, verses derived from the
Dharma Sutras
or “Hindu Law.” The
Dharma Sutras
are manuals of conduct and contain maxims that guide all aspects of human life—legal, social, ethical—from the religious point of view. They define, among other things, the caste system and each person’s role in society. The Dharma Sutras were originally written in prose but with time illustrative stanzas were added after each maxim. This finally led to codices that were written in verse, called the
Dharma Shastras
. Today this term is used to refer collectively to the rules and laws of the Hindu religion.
8. Borges develops this subject in his essay
“Las kenningar,”
from his
History of Eternity
. There he uses the Norse plural
kenningar
, whereas in these classes he preferred using the plural “kennings.”
9. The ancient Germanic inhabitants of England called their own language
englisc
. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their language was called “Anglo-Saxon” from the Latin
anglo-saxonicus
. In 1872, the philologist Henry Sweet, in his preface to a collection of texts by King Alfred, explained that he would use the term “Old English” to refer to “the pure flexional state of the English language … the barbarous and