The Epic England Never Had: A Review of eÞanðun

Many of my finest hours have been spent reading epic poetry. Which is paradoxical because whatever else he got right, Sir Philip Sidney absolutely got it wrong when he attributes “attentive, studious painfulness” only to the reading of philosophy, and not to poetry. I’ve yet to encounter an epic that doesn’t require a certain degree of attentive, studious painfulness. To read an epic poem is to undertake a challenging quest—however easier it may be than those faced by Odysseus or Aeneas. Working through The Faerie Queene, for example, was onerous, even tedious, as I waded through Spenser’s archaic language, meandering syntax, and endless wordplay. Yet the rewards were tremendous. The Temple of Isis and, in a different way, the Blatant Beast, gripped my attention like few other texts had. What I mean to say is, reading epic poems is inherently laborious, but the investment reaps considerable profit. The ascent to the peak of Parnassus is gruelling, but there is no other way to enjoy magnificent views of the fruitful spreading plains.

To be honest, I was nearly defeated in my latest encounter with an epic poem. Few people have heard of William G. Carpenter’s eÞanðun—yet. I hope they will, for eÞanðun is at home among its more famous peers in difficulty and recompense alike. It’s brilliant, but certainly not easy. Carpenter doesn’t pander to the easy-going, dopamine-seeking spirit of the age. No one who uses defunct characters in the title of his poem gives a hoot about widespread popularity. He’s obviously seeking a Miltonic audience, fit though few. His title suffices to weed out virtually anyone unfit to finish the poem. It attracted my inner medievalist, but the dense, allusive erudition of the first few dozen lines nearly overcame my will to read. I discovered, however, that those who persevere unto the end will by no means miss lavish compensation. If you’ve completed an epic poem, you’ll know what I’m talking about. eÞanðun surely merits the honourable title of epic, which is no small compliment to bestow.

In an era when good art is believed to push boundaries, blur lines, and muddy waters, eÞanðun is refreshingly conventional. That is to say, Carpenter observes the well-established conventions of the epic mode: eÞanðun occupies twelve books in blank verse, each headed by a compressed summary reminiscent of the ‘Arguments’ in Paradise Lost. It begins with an invocation to the poem’s presiding deity—not the Muses in this case but the Christian God. The poem includes catalogues of belligerents, accounts of love and war, a (half) blinded sage, concourse with the dead, and a hatful of nods and allusions to its forebears in the epic tradition.

The high matter of eÞanðun takes a particular flavour. You could describe it as the national epic that England never had, memorializing the brutal conflict that resulted in the Saxon king, Alfred the Great (d. 899), vanquishing the Danish invader Godrum at the Battle of eÞanðun (Edington) in AD878. eÞanðun savours of early medieval England, where the combat (figurative and literal) between Christianity and paganism was by no means settled, and where Viking invasions forced Christian rulers to defend the faith by the sword. Alfred was a pivotal figure in that clash, and eÞanðun narrates how he managed to defeat Godrum after nearly losing everything when Godrum raided his stronghold at Chippenham. It’s worth noting that eÞanðun does not pursue strict historical facticity. Carpenter has capitalized on the dearth of information about Alfred by imaginatively filling in gaps to create a magnanimous character.

Imagine, if you will, that by a miracle of God, the following Poetic Collective was assembled and asked to write about Alfred:

• Head of Artistic Vision: Beda Venerabilis
• Writers: Publius Vergilius Maro and Marly Youmans
• Linguistic Consultant: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
• Theological and Philosophical Advisers: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
• Lead Historical Researcher: Clive Staples Lewis

Cram all that wisdom, erudition, and poetic talent around a table, let them set to work, and out would emerge a work of literature closely resembling eÞanðun: it inhabits Lewis’s ‘medieval model of the universe’ from a late 9^th century, Christian, Anglo-Saxon standpoint, with the disintegration of Rome colouring the background, related in language subtly inflected by contemporary usage.

Thus far I have described eÞanðun’s flesh (the career of Alfred the Great) and bones (epic poetry). Most epics are born naked, only receiving their full clothing when scholars craft their critical editions and bung in loads of footnotes. But eÞanðun has appeared fully dressed from the beginning. Its first edition is also a critical edition whose apparatus includes a list of abbreviations (including bap=baptised and OEN=Old East Norse) to elucidate the multitudinous marginal glosses, a series of maps, a glossary (really a list of dramatis personae), and a substantial, eclectic bibliography. All these are Carpenter’s work, and they cast an academic sheen across the whole work. They also present eÞanðun as an old, established poem whose individual words have been debated by generations of scholars before some judicious editor painstakingly collated the results of their research into a very handy monograph. The one regrettable lapse in the academic scenery is the lack of line numbering.

The book itself, a handsome crimson hardback with the title in gleaming gold letters, is aesthetically satisfying without entering the realm of the stupendous. The image on the dustjacket, and its twelve peers, one for each book, are just about tolerable. There’s something about them that led me to assume they were electronically generated before I learned they were the work of a human artist. A more pleasing aspect of the edition is the red silk bookmark, which, for reasons that will become apparent, I found incredibly useful.

Carpenter’s attempt to evoke the late 9^th century in England is exceptionally well-worked. The closest analogue I can think of is the Ossian forgeries, though with two significant differences. First, eÞanðun is not a forgery; unlike James Macpherson, Carpenter makes no pretence to have unearthed an ancient document. Second, in my view, Carpenter is a better mockingbird, with a more authentic imitation of his chosen historical era.

Carpenter knows how to sound like an Anglo-Saxon chronicler. I suspect that many literary scholars specialising in more contemporary fields may be unable to identify eÞanðun as the modern specimen from a lineup of translated Old English texts. The alliteration, the marginal glosses identifying historical figures and linguistic derivations, and the sprinkling of Latin and Old English terms in the text itself are superficially convincing. That said, it’s as if Carpenter is wielding an old sword with new methods: any half decent medievalist should immediately realise he’s a 21^st century poet. There are many turns of phrase (some of them regrettably unwieldy) that no medieval monk could have written, including this amusing bit of dialogue:

"Send in the bishop," Alfred said to Werwulf
As the scribe closed and stowed the scribbled quire.
"You'll find his Stoutness camped out in the kitchen,
Interpreting the wheeling flocks of cocks" (pg. 8)

But historical accuracy is not the point. Atmosphere is the point, and Carpenter seems to have travelled back in time, bottled the atmosphere of those tumultuous times, and returned to let us have a sniff.

A crucial ingredient in this atmosphere is the names. Thus far I have followed current scholarly convention by calling the author of eÞanðun by two names: in the first instance by his full name (William G. Carpenter) and thereafter by his surname (Carpenter). Some of his characters, by way of contrast, go by seemingly dozens of names, patronyms, and epithets. Alfred is Alfred, Athelwulf’s son, Ingeld’s seed, Sceaf’s scion, the Althulfing, and many more. Godrum is also called (among other things) Gormr, Harald’s father, Godfred’s grandson, and the seed of Dan. For this reason, I was glad the book has a bookmark to ease my constant journeys between the text and the glossary. “Who is X?” I kept asking myself as I read. “Oh,” I answered, looking on the appropriate entry at the back of the book, “now I know. Good thing this bookmark kept my place.” For this reason, I contend that purchasing an electronic copy of eÞanðun is tomfoolery. Such frequent trips to the glossary are so important that eÞanðun in ebook format is simply unreadable. It’s worth noting, also, that Carpenter’s choice of epithets at particular junctions often carry thematic significance, as when Godrum is called “young Harald’s father” moments after planning his son’s coronation (pg. 117).

Another ingredient is the monkish intellectual background. Carpenter’s Alfred is a loquacious chap, prone to musing on the sack of Rome while surveying the sack of his bishop’s abbey (pg. 51), or quoting Constantine for his battle-cry: “in hoc signo” (pg. 195). He continually interprets the events of his life through the prism of some textual authority. Likewise, a couple of pigherds who come to Alfred’s aid casually cite the Venerable Bede (pg. 61), and a bishop wields an axe against a Dane while shouting Jeremiah’s prophecies about invaders from the North (pg. 12). But although the characters—and especially the narrator—have the appearance of tremendous learning, virtually all their allusions could be traced to Scripture, Orosius (a colleague of St Augustine and a christianising transmitter of classical history), Boethius (the late-Roman Christian philosopher), Bede (the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar), and Scripture—though to be sure these latter authorities brought with them large swathes of classical learning. One could easily imagine a Saxon monk with such an intellectual formation composing an epic not dissimilar to eÞanðun.

Of course, it takes much more than a mere monk to compose a successful epic. The only poem harder to write than an epic is La Divina Commedia (itself arguably an epic yet more than an epic), with its preposterously challenging terza rima. Carpenter is dreadfully hampered by writing in English rather than Italian with its glut of rhymes, or no doubt he would have attempted terza rima. I say this because in eÞanðun he has bitten off as much as an anglophone poet can chew, and his masticating powers are tremendous. He’s got an excellent historical imagination based on extensive research, commendable (though imperfect) control of language, a solid appreciation of the complexity of human nature, a delicious facility with dramatic irony, and top-notch story-telling ability. Which is not to say he’s a perfect poet: at times, I think, Carpenter demands too much of the reader with rather obscure passages. More than anything, though, Carpenter has managed to purge himself of any chronological snobbery as he presents to us old warlords caught up in the utter brutality of the dying heroic culture entirely on their terms. He doesn’t hide the hideousness of their deeds, but he manages to show the inner logic that makes them (if not justifiable) at least comprehensible. When immersed in a violent world, even learned, pious folks like Alfred bend—but even though undoubtedly bent, Alfred managed to lay the foundations for a far more peaceful society. In these days where much public discourse lurches between demonization and deification of various polarizing figures, there’s a genuine need for characters like Carpenter’s Alfred: a morally complex, indubitably fallen, but nevertheless great-souled king who, though corrupted by the spirit of his age, manages to rise above it.

At the end of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer apostrophises his own poem with his typical understated audacity, telling it to go kiss the steps where the great poets walk—the audacity lying in the assumption that his own poem can ascend to its predecessors’ heights. ‘My little poem’, he says, ‘you can mix with the Illiad and the Aeneid and Metamorphoses.’ Carpenter’s narrative is not so self-conscious or hubristic. But I reckon that eÞanðun can mix with Beowulf and Paradise Lost and not feel out of place. Even if it will never possess the prestige and authority of its seniors, I’d say it’s certainly a member of the guild. There’s about the best thing I can say about a poem.

Image Credit: Alexander Keirincx, “Pontefract Castle” (1640-1641) via Picryl