“Male and female He created them”: on the sources of binary formulas in the Old English poem Genesis

Abstract

The article presents the study of binary formulas in the Old English poem “Genesis” in relation to the question of their origins. Special attention is paid to the influence of the Latin text of Vulgate on the Old English formulaic system. Describing the use of binary expressions denoting man and woman (husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter) in the poem, the article analyses instances of calque translations from Latin, as well as the variation and repetition of formulas. In rendering the Latin “masculum et feminam”, the author of the poem coins two formulas “wif and wæpned” and “fæder and moder”, that are mainly associated with one another in the subsequent part of the text. The use of these expressions is closely connected with the context of their first occurrence. Thus, they are reproduced in the passages describing Adam and Eve or in allusions to them. Coining three equivalents of Latin “filios et filias”, the author mainly reproduces the pair “suna and dohtra” (“sons and daughters”) and calques its syntactic position in the poem. The formulaic pairs of this thematic group are rarely found in other Old English poems due to their semantics or written source.