This 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
September 21, 2012 By
Returning 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
September 11, 2012 By
In 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?
July 24, 2012 By
The 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
July 13, 2012 By
A video lecture on the origin and vagaries of the English language up to the 15th century
Reading Beowulf in the Rubble of Grozny
July 7, 2012 By
From 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
June 26, 2012 By
Fantasy 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
June 26, 2012 By
This work also explores the conflict between the warrior culture of the pagans and the ideologies behind the Christian conversion.
Queer Pedagogy (A Roundtable)
June 21, 2012 By
A 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
June 17, 2012 By
The 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
June 14, 2012 By
In 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
May 25, 2012 By
This 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
May 4, 2012 By
The 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
April 26, 2012 By
Thus, 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 overall scholarship in the field.
The Peace Weaver: Wealhthrow in Beowulf
April 10, 2012 By
My 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.
VAGANTES: “What has Beowulf to do with a Christian King?” Heroic Legend as Poetic Speculum Principis
March 30, 2012 By
Through a rhetorical analysis based in grounded theory that analyzes fifteen speeches and their contexts made by Hroðgar, Beowulf, and Wiglaf, I will show how the poet appropriated the Beowulf legend to present a dramatized speculum principis using the rhetorical devices common to oral-traditional narratives to articulate the three traits of kingship most highly valued by both secular and sacred authorities: generosity, faith, and protectiveness.
Dragons: ancient creatures in modern times
March 28, 2012 By
Then an old harrower of the dark happened to find the hoard open, the burning one who hunts out barrows, the slick-skinned dragon, threatening the night sky with streamers of fire.
The Hero as a Reflection of Culture
March 27, 2012 By
As heroes, Achilles, Aeneas, Beowulf, and Roland reflect the values of the societies that created them.
Alfred the Great’s Burnt Boethius
March 25, 2012 By
One can trace the reason for these curious editorial developments to two factors: (1) the inaccessibility of the tenth-century manuscript, which everyone thought was destroyed in the 1731 fire, until its burnt remains were recovered at the British Museum in the 1830s; and (2) an overpowering edition-in-progress of the twelfth-century manuscript by the great seventeenth-century scholar Francis Junius, with extensive collations from the missing tenth-century manuscript.
Manuscript Variation in Multiple-Recension Old English Poetic Texts: The Technical Problem and Poetical Art
March 13, 2012 By
Twenty-six poems and fragments of poems are known to have survived the Anglo-Saxon period in more than one witness. These include poems from a variety of genres and material contexts: biblical narrative, religious poetry, riddles, charms, liturgical translations, proverbs, a preface and an epilogue, occasional pieces like ‘Durham,’ and historical poems like the Battle of Brunanburh.
A Response to Anglo-Saxon Heroism and Fourteenth Century Chivalry: Ideals for the Warrior in the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien
February 29, 2012 By
While the chivalric ideal has continued to appear in British literature, Anglo-Saxon heroism with its bond between lord and thane has largely dropped away. The writings of J.R.R. Tolkien provide the striking exception to this.
Ingeld and Christ: A Medieval Problem
December 31, 2011 By
Students of Beowulf are familiar with the notion that the poem can be read as an attempt to answer Alcuin’s question, ‘Quid enim Hinieldus cum Christo?’ (What has Ingeld to do with Christ?).
Beowulf, Orality and the Anglo-Saxon Conversion
December 19, 2011 By
There is no source quite like the Beowulf manuscript, as it is the longest poem and the only epic composed in Old English which has survived to the modern era, and thus is central to any understanding of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Indecent bodies: gender and the monstrous in medieval English literature
September 25, 2011 By
Indecent bodies: gender and the monstrous in medieval English literature Oswald, Dana Morgan Thesis: Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English, (2005) Abstract While Old English literature rarely represents sexualized bodies, and just as rarely represents monsters, Middle English literature teems with bodies that are both sexualized and monstrous. In Old English, sexualized bodies appear in […]
Lady killers: Women, violence, and representation in medieval English literature
September 9, 2011 By
The women of medieval English literature kill children, invade kingdoms, torture devils, and murder their enemies.
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