Beowulf and the Wills: Traces of Totemism?
Glosecki, Stephen O.
The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001
Abstract
This paper accounts for the prominence of the avunculate (the mother’s brother-sister’s son relationship) in Beowulf and other OE sources. Commentary from 1861 to the present is examined in order to establish that the avunculate does indeed reflect matrilineal kinship structure, which in turn suggests that a full-scale totemic kinship system prevailed in prehistoric Germania.
Click here to read/download this article (HTML file)
Beowulf and the Wills: Traces of Totemism?
Glosecki, Stephen O.
The Heroic Age Issue 5 Summer/Autumn 2001
Abstract
This paper accounts for the prominence of the avunculate (the mother’s brother-sister’s son relationship) in Beowulf and other OE sources. Commentary from 1861 to the present is examined in order to establish that the avunculate does indeed reflect matrilineal kinship structure, which in turn suggests that a full-scale totemic kinship system prevailed in prehistoric Germania.
Click here to read/download this article (HTML file)
Related Posts
Subscribe to Medievalverse