Beowulf Archive
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Human Monstrosity in Terminator II: Judgement Day, Beowulf and The Passion of St Christopher
Posted on May 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe idea of a humanoid monster that can be reluctantly empathized with can be traced back to various source texts. For example, Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is a bloodthirsty savage, however upon a close reading of the poem he appears more human. -
Symbel: The Heathen Drinking Ritual?
Posted on April 19, 2013 | No CommentsExamination of symbel in Anglo-Saxon society from archaeological and literary evidence and its role in modern Heathen/Pagan societies -
Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsWhat the Anglo-Saxons ‘‘knew’’ about Moslems and Jews, and about Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints’ lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these are quite varied in genre and in content. -
A Feminist Critique of Beowulf: Women as Peace-Weavers and Goaders in Beowulf’s Courts
Posted on April 9, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis will examine the fundamental roles of women in the societies described in Beowulf, paying specific attention to the function as peace-weavers and goaders. -
Heorot and the Plundered Hoard: A Study of Beowulf
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsTime and again the Beowulf poet's choice of words and details reveals that he practised his craft within a tradition in which his creativeness was bound and disciplined by the objectiveness of a particular structure of images. We perceive in all the rich variety of his work the unifying effect of the typological imagination. It is in the typological mode of Beowulf that the key to its meaning and artistry is to be found. -
An Ecoritical Approach to Chaucer. Representations of the Natural World in the English Literature of the Middle Ages
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe choice to write and present a study of nature in medieval English literature from an ecological perspective has been originated by a personal interest in the urgency of the deep environmental crisis we are faced with and by the drive to expand the eco- oriented study of representations of nature in literature to chronological and spatial areas well beyond those originally typical of ecological criticism. -
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
Posted on December 11, 2012 | No CommentsJ. R. R. Tolkien's classic work on the Old English poem -
”Beowulf” and the Influence of Old English on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
Posted on December 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe Lord of the Rings is set in the fictional but incredibly vast and detailed universe of Middle-Earth. Tolkien has put great effort in developing an impossibly gigantic realm peopled by many diverse races. Of the immeasurable number of characters and locations present in Tolkien’s work, many bear a name deeply rooted in Old English. -
Beowulf and Boyology: The Processes of Medievalism
Posted on December 8, 2012 | No CommentsBetween 1870 and 1914 more than twenty children's versions of Beowulf were published, with twenty more done in rest of 20th century. -
Monstrosity in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature
Posted on October 31, 2012 | No CommentsIn medieval Europe belief in monsters allowed for corresponding acceptance of the possibility of humans transforming into monsters. In medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England the mixture of Christian and pagan world views and beliefs create a situation where the boundaries are not merely fluid but can be transgressed, in either direction. -
Hafa nu ond geheald husa selest: Jurisdiction and justice in “Beowulf”
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsThis coincidence of literary image with legal significance, is as I shall attempt to show in this study, by no means unique in Beowulf. -
Running Widdershins Round Middle Earth: Why Teaching Tolkien Matters
Posted on September 21, 2012 | No CommentsReturning to Tolkien’s allegory, it is clear that he suggests that his fellow medievalists have taken a work of great imaginative and artistic power, and instead of using it to “see the sea”, they have mined it for words and phrases, and pulled it apart, looking for bits and pieces from other ancient works, and even reworked it after their own notions of how it “ought” to be built. -
Beowulf and Hygelac: Problems for Fiction in History
Posted on September 11, 2012 | No CommentsIn Beowulf, the key historical figure with whom the hero interacts is Hygelac, and Arthur G. Brodeur has convincingly demonstrated that their relationship is central to the entire poem. -
Beowulf: a heroic tale of fact or fiction?
Posted on July 24, 2012 | No CommentsThe Old English epic Beowulf is under discussion in this essay and the idea of the truth embedded in the poem. As no concrete evidence exists on the provenance of the poem, its authorship, date or truth of content, all statements from published writers on the subject are mere conjectures -
The Evolution Of English
Posted on July 13, 2012 | No CommentsA video lecture on the origin and vagaries of the English language up to the 15th century -
Reading Beowulf in the Rubble of Grozny
Posted on July 7, 2012 | No CommentsFrom December of 1994 through January 1995, and again in August 1996, Russia launched bombing campaigns against Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, as part of its war against Chechen separatists. -
The Treatment of Mythology in Children’s Fantasy
Posted on June 26, 2012 | No CommentsFantasy stories trace their roots back to far older tales: the myths and legends of various cultures, which grew from oral storytelling in the days when myths were the only explanation for the mysterious workings of the real world. -
Pride and Prudentius: Beowulf and the Seven Deadly Sins
Posted on June 26, 2012 | No CommentsThis work also explores the conflict between the warrior culture of the pagans and the ideologies behind the Christian conversion. -
Queer Pedagogy (A Roundtable)
Posted on June 21, 2012 | No CommentsA roundtable discussion on teaching Queer Theory with Susannah Mary Chewning (Union County College) Lisa Weston (California State University–Fresno); and Michelle M. Sauer, (University of North Dakota) -
Constructions of Gender in Medieval Welsh Literature
Posted on June 17, 2012 | No CommentsThe discussion of gender in medieval literary criticism is generally considered to be a relatively new field, having achieved real momentum only in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, since it was the early fifteenth century when Christine de Pisan wrote a response to Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose, it cannot really be imagined that the medieval audience was too primitive to be fully aware of the subtext inside their stories. -
The Staffordshire Hoard and the Mercian Royal Court
Posted on June 14, 2012 | No CommentsIn England, whatever date you prefer for the composition of Beowulf, it is of interest that the poet thought of the king as a goldwine gumena – the gold-friend of the warriors - or as the goldwine Geata – the gold-friend of the Geats. -
Beowulf, a Christian poem: an approach to certain difficulties
Posted on May 25, 2012 | No CommentsThis work has for its object to show that Beowulf is a Christian poem, written by a Christian poet, for a Christian audience of the eighth century. -
Recreating Beowulf’s “Pregnant Moment of Poise”: Pagan Doom and Christian Eucatastrophe Made Incarnate in the Dark Age Setting of The Lord of the Rings
Posted on May 4, 2012 | No CommentsThe following chapters will explore how Tolkien fuses themes and imagery from the pagan Norse apocalyptic myth of Ragnarök with Christian apocalyptic imagery and themes in a recreated Dark Age historical setting to create The Lord of the Rings. -
The Verb in Beowulf
Posted on April 26, 2012 | No CommentsThus, in a paper of the nature of this thesis, the Beowulfian novice is limited in scope and must be satisfied, at best, to open a small breach in the subject, examine one segment, focus his attention on one aspect, single out one featture of it, and channel the efforts of his research towards some contribution, no matter how small, to the over- all scholarship in the field. -
The Peace Weaver: Wealhthrow in Beowulf
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsMy goal in writing this fictional novella is twofold: to make Beowulf more accessible to modern readers and to expound upon the less articulated female point of view in the poem.
