MS Junius 11 and its Poetry

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 is one of the four major manuscripts of Old English poetry to survive and the only one of these to have had a planned sequence of illuminations. It contains five different vernacular poems - Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan - compiled to resemble a long narrative that represents salvation history from its violent origins to its Last Days. While the poems draw their inspiration from biblical, apocryphal and commentary traditions, their combination in the manuscript creates powerful effects that are distinctive products of the craft and complexity of early medieval vernacular verse. But can the language of the poetry within the manuscript tell us anything about the aims of the Junius 11 project, or the preoccupations of its compilers?

This book approaches the compilation as an ambitious poetic and political endeavour, designed to offer counsel through the drama and metaphoric potential of Old English verbal art. Tracing thematic language across and between the different poems, and offering close readings of them in their manuscript context, it highlights how early medieval political ideas of raed (good counsel) and unraed (ill counsel) underlie the central conflicts of the history of humankind as the makers of the manuscript sought to represent it. The poems themselves, by presenting many examples of rulers and leaders falling to ruin, offer raed to those who may find themselves in related positions, demanding audiences become attentive and active deep readers of poetry so that they may find solace in a world that moves towards destruction.