'WITE PU ME, WERGA': THE OLD ENGLISH SOUL & BODY IN LITERARY-HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Accounts of the soul and body dialogue tradition of the later medieval and early modern period commonly view the Old English Soul & Body as a crude precursor. With scholars of Old English having shown increasing interest in the poem in the context of specifically early English doctrine and psychology, this article attends particularly to its poetic effects in a broader literary-historical view. By reassessing Soul & Body's relations with its genre across historiographical boundaries, it develops a revised understanding of a poem and tradition marked by ambiguities resonant across early medieval and seventeenth-century England.