WINFRIED NOTH Semiotics of the Old English Charm 1. FOUR APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE OE CHARMS: LITERARY CRITICISM, PHILOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND SEMIOTICS In his contribution to Hermann Schneider's Germanische Alter- tumskunde, Helmut de Boor (1938:346) outlines the literary approach to the study of Germanic charms as follows: "Magic is practised by means of action, sign and word. Literary history is only concerned with it as far as the magic word attains aesthetic form." The approach outlined by de Boor is characteristic of many studies of the OE charms published until today. To disregard the dimensions "sign and action" means to neglect the semiotic or the pragmatic dimension of the OE charm. Moreover, the restriction of the studies on the "aesthetically formed word" meant that often only the metrical charms were taken into consideration while the prose charms, which constitute the great majority of the texts edited by Cockayne (1864-66), Grendon (1909), and Grattan and Singer (1952), were disregarded. Besides the analysis of the aesthetic qualities of poetical charms, the literary interpretation of single charms, and philological analyses of the texts, it is true that much work has been done to clarify the cultural context of OE charms. In particular, aspects concerning medical history, the history of religion, and anthropology have been dealt with in detail. 1 The main concern of these studies is with problems of comparative analysis and espe- cially the historical reconstruction of the OE charm in its cultural context. In respect to these problems, considerable progress in research has been made. Less satisfactory, however, is the state of the research concerning Semiotica 19:1/2,1977 Brought to you by | Columbia University Library The Burke Library New York (Columbia Univ Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 7/22/12 10:00 PM