At the Limits of Knowledge: the Iron Poetics of Old English Verse in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Scholars in recent decades have critiqued the notion of Old English as a poetry of iron: evoking a hypermasculine, primitive past, the metaphor is emblematic of outdated practices in the field. This article builds upon these critiques, while showing that they oversimplify the metaphor’s function in disciplinary history. Part I traces desires and unknowns in the nineteenth century that made iron embody Saxon poetry’s primitive artlessness. From these struggles, Part II turns to draw forth a counter-narrative, in which Bosworth’s metaphor of the hammering smith served to clarify difficulties of metrical knowledge c.1825. Part III then situates a later extension of iron imagery in the potentialities of late nineteenth-century iron architecture. Examining the challenges that early scholars faced helps us better perceive the literary, linguistic, and political ramifications of their solutions. Spotlighting the metaphor’s changing relationship to beauty versus utility also points forward, as we imagine new metaphors that might once more be productive for conceptualising poetic structure.