One of the ways, according to the Church Fathers, in which those guilty of mortal sin manifested their spiritual corruption was in their perverted imitation of the good.
Beowulf in 100 Tweets
January 19, 2014 By
How Elaine Treharne took over 3000 lines of Beowulf and made it into 100 tweets.
Who cursed whom, and when? The cursing of the hoard and Beowulf’s fate
January 7, 2014 By
The article provides an interpretation to lines 3051-3075 of the epic poem “Beowulf,” concerning the death of Beowulf and the curse on the dragon’s treasure. It outlines the actions contained in the passage, including Beowulf’s slaying of a dragon, his mortal wound, and the actions of his people following his death. It discusses various translations and readings of the passage, and focuses particularly on readings of the curse on the dragon’s hoard.
Towards A Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative
January 1, 2014 By
I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts.
Hunting in Medieval literature: Satisfaction of Conquest or Thrill of Pursuit?
November 10, 2013 By
Hunting in Medieval literature: Satisfaction of Conquest or Thrill of Pursuit? Katherine Correa The Adelphi Honors College Journal of Ideas, Volume 11 (2011) Abstract In the medieval period, hunting was a pastime reserved exclusively for the nobility. While hunting in ancient civilizations was the primary way of obtaining food, furs, and other useful animal parts, […]
Beowulf: a regime of enforcement
November 9, 2013 By
I approach the Beowulf text as a discourse valuable in the process of constituting early Germanic kingdoms, specifically, Denmark and those which would give name to England. I will talk about the possible relationship between the poem and events in Denmark, then suggest how similar connections may have obtained in early Britain.
Creating the Christian Anglo-Saxon and the Other in the Old English Judith and Beowulf
September 21, 2013 By
This thesis explores the thematic relationship between the Old English poem Judith and the Old English epic Beowulf. I focus on seven narrative similarities between the two texts that are used to distinguish between the heroes, Judith and Beowulf, and their enemies, Holofernes, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother.
The hero on the edge: Constructions of heroism in Beowulf in the context of ancient and medieval epic
September 13, 2013 By
Whatever else he may be, though — and he may be any or all of these things — Beowulf is a hero.
Wild woman and her sisters in medieval English literature
August 18, 2013 By
The subject of this work is the concept and figure of the Wild Woman. The primary focus will be on various forms this figure assumes in medieval English literature: Grendel’s mother—the second monster Beowulf faces—and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, along with other figures.
Lost in translation: The queens of Beowulf
August 14, 2013 By
When Bēowulf first arrives to the Danish shore with his troop of armed warriors, he is of course challenged by Hrōðgār’s sentinel to state his purpose. This delicate situation could end in violence or in welcome depending on Bēowulf’s reaction.
Heroic Worlds: The Knight’s Tale and Beowulf
August 2, 2013 By
Epic and Christianity are not incompatible, but they are uneasy bedfellows.
What Seamus Heaney Did to Beowulf : An Essay on Translation and Transmutation of English Identity
July 24, 2013 By
Heaney’s Beowulf provides us with a great deal which other translations do not: a poetic fluency rendered in Modern English, a skilled understanding of linguistic choices, and most importantly, a consciousness of the translative act which negotiates fluidly between modern perspectives and Anglo Saxon artistry.
Beowulf Is Not God Cyning
June 28, 2013 By
By understanding the etymology of the Old English cyning, and by recognizing the poet’s use of Scyld as the model for a good king, we can see that each of the three uses of the phrase ‘Þæt wæs god cyning’ has a different meaning…
Medievalism in the Medieval: Gothic Elements in Old English Literature
June 9, 2013 By
The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic genre of literature is difficult to define. In reality, the genre is a set of tropes rather than a clearly articulated literary system. Interestingly, these Gothic elements are also apparent in several works in the Old English poetic tradition.
Human Monstrosity in Terminator II: Judgement Day, Beowulf and The Passion of St Christopher
May 6, 2013 By
The 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?
April 19, 2013 By
Examination 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
April 11, 2013 By
What 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
April 9, 2013 By
This 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
March 31, 2013 By
Time 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
December 15, 2012 By
The 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
December 11, 2012 By
J. 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
December 11, 2012 By
The 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
December 8, 2012 By
Between 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
October 31, 2012 By
In 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.
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