Nonhuman Voices in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Material Culture: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture

Anglo-Saxon writers and craftsmen describe artefacts and animals through riddling forms or enigmatic language, balancing an attempt to speak and listen to things with an understanding that these nonhumans often elude, defy and withdraw from us. But the active role that things have in the early medieval world is also linked to the Germanic origins of the word, where a ing is a kind of assembly, with the ability to draw together other elements, creating assemblages in which human and nonhuman forces combine.