Hybrid Healing
Garner, Lori Ann (Associate Professor of English)
Hybrid creatures emerging from the pages of Old English medical texts readily capture the modern imagination. A potent medicinal root is rendered with distinctly human arms and legs, a swarm charm addresses bees as valkyrie-like beings, at once both natural and mythical. Yet the most powerful forms of hybridity in the Old English healing tradition often result from more subtle mergings: Latin and vernacular, liturgical and folkloric, oral and ...