Speaking the Unspeakable: Appetite for Deconstruction in Exeter Book Riddle 12

Although one of the notorious “obscene” riddles, Exeter Book Riddle 12 contains more than sexual titillation and denial. This article will address the text’s antithetical pairings. Observing these pairings highlights issues of race, class, gender, and morality, but the text confounds any straightforward process of separating self from other in any of these areas and presents a disturbing enmeshing of the two that contradicts the usual expectations of a well-ordered, moral Anglo-Saxon society.