Abstract EN:

Genesis a and genesis b are two very different works. The former is a traditional poem, which modifies the biblical narrative to adapt it to the norms of old English poetry: each episode is divided into paragraphs by rhetorical structures. The author underlines the opposition between righteous and evil men and demonstrates the need to serve god. - the clumsy verse of genesis b and, in contrast, its subtle puns and envelope patterns, indicate that the author, though a beginner in vernacular verse, may have been trained in Latin writing. The main theme of the work is how to distinguish good and evil, and the author may have been opposing heresy (perhaps Gottschalk’s), choosing vernacular poetry as a means to secure a wider audience. The other fragments of the old-Saxon genesis, written by several authors, would then have been composed later to complete the biblical paraphrase. - the study of the illustrations indicates that the exemplar of the Junius XI MS already contained the two genesis poems, and two intermediates can be posited between the source of the drawings and MS Junius XI. This number of MSs indicates how famous the poem was, as does the fact that echoes of some lines can be found in Judith.