Skin, Ink, Bone and Stone: Craftspeople and their Tools in Old English Literature and Material Culture

Abstract

In recent years, the role of craft in Old English literature and material culture has received a steady stream of scholarship. On the one hand, critics -through theoretical strands such as thing-theory and vital materialism - argue for the essential liveliness of crafted objects in early medieval English verse. Likewise, in art historical discourse, the embodied signatures of by-gone craftworkers are given more enduring thought as we experience an artefact. Nevertheless, the varying extant texts, poems and images are seldom read with and through living craft knowledge. In other words, as a physical and phenomenological experience, the work of the craftsperson has much to say about the seemingly absent role of craftspeople and their tools in Old English things. As a former maker, my central intervention in this thesis is to conceptualise a narrative connected by shared moments of skill, technique, labour and embodied ‘know-how’. Moving away from archaeological discussions of early medieval craftspeople and their tools, such groups and their exchanges with materials and tools, contribute to existing and often new aesthetics. To understand the value living craft knowledge offers to the study of Old English things, chapter one explores absence, or more precisely, ‘withdrawal’ as a literary mechanic of the Old English Ruin. By way of their departure, the poem draws much attention to the important role craftspeople play within and outside of their literary boundaries. Chapter two expands on the interplay between presence and absence by exploring the phenomenological structure of tool-use defamiliarized by riddles 37 and 87 (the bellows). Reminiscent of the defining principles of vital materialism, it is argued that the bellows (as a riddle-creature and tool) is a dynamic participant during acts of making and is thus influential during the form generating process. Where chapter one and two deal with notions of presence and absence, the third and final chapter of my thesis explores the rare depiction of a metal-worker carved on the tenth-century Halton cross. Likewise, the act of repair the smith engages in is an uncommon feature of early medieval monumental sculpture. In response to this, the chapter galvanises ‘repair’ as a theoretical model in order to intersect past and present moments of making, mending, healing and resurrection. Throughout all three chapters, living craft knowledge is the binding agent that facilitates the opportunity to observe how craftspeople and their tools alter and develop our sense of the early medieval world. Consistent, is the notion that the embodied know-how of craftspeople continues to shape our present sense of early English poetry and material culture – and, accordingly - that the work of the craftsperson establishes the foundation for aesthetic experience. To pursue the often-concealed meaning veiled by Old English things in tandem with the recorded experiences of makers, is to observe the fruitful - and at times - contradictory interplay between knowledge acquired through books, and ‘know-how’ gained through tool-use.

Date of Award	20 Mar 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Anke Bernau (Supervisor) & James Paz (Supervisor)