The literary and digitals otters of <i>the Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot</i> and <i>Brendan’s Voyage</i>

Abstract Composed in Anglo-Norman French during the 1120’s, The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot features a striking episode in which an island hermit named Paul recalls his reliance on an otter who brought fish to the ascetic for thirty years. This little studied passage is remarkable for the way in which the poet positions the otter as a humanlike source of technical skill and hospitality alongside a hermit who exhibits animal qualities in his rugged physiognomy far from human community. Such an arrangement of the otter and hermit suggests that vulnerability and hospitality are shared features of animality and humanity. This specific vision invites readers—both medieval and modern—to construe animals and humans as distinctive while sharing in a common identity rooted in bodily precarity as well as the possibility of extending aid. These dynamics recur in Brendan’s Voyage, a five-module video game prototype supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities with the aim of teaching basic features of Anglo-Norman French through the story of St. Brendan. By comparing the literary and digital otters of the medieval source poem and its video game adaptation, this article positions Brendan’s Voyage as an opportunity to remediate the original poem’s expansive vision of animals, humans, vulnerability, and hospitality for a modern audience.