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THE BEOWULF POET'S SENSE OF DECORUM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2021

LEONARD NEIDORF
LEONARD NEIDORF*
Affiliation:
Nanjing University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper reassesses the relationship between Beowulf and the legendary tradition that existed prior to its composition. Through wide-ranging comparative analysis, it identifies probable departures from the antecedent tradition and argues that these departures are best understood not in impersonal terms, as Christian reactions to a pagan tradition, but in terms of a singular poet's sense of decorum, which was not possessed by all Christian authors throughout the Middle Ages. Focusing on interpretive controversies related to matters such as slavery, kin-slaying, the posthumous fate of pagans, and violence orchestrated by women, this paper argues that a series of ostensibly unrelated problems in the poem's critical literature could be resolved with a single coherent explanation: namely, that Beowulf was composed by a poet who sought to preserve as much as possible from the antecedent tradition, while not hesitating to obscure indecorous features and to express value judgments alien to the inherited material. The Beowulf poet's sense of decorum is shown herein to be idiosyncratic yet coherent and pervasive, responsible for various minor departures from tradition and for the selection of the untraditional protagonist around which the poem is structured.

Keywords

BeowulfslaveryHlǫðskviðaHildebrandsliedSaxo GrammaticusNibelungenlied
Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 76 , 2021 , pp. 1 - 28
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fordham University

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References

1 The text of the poem is cited throughout by line number from Klaeber's Beowulf: Fourth Edition, ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles (Toronto, 2008). Translations of block quotations from Beowulf are cited throughout from The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts, and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. and trans. R. D. Fulk (Cambridge, MA, 2010). Translations of individual words and phrases are guided by Fulk's translation, but will occasionally depart from it.

2 See Stanley, Eric Gerald, Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial by Jury (Woodbridge, 2000), 63–76Google Scholar; and Jurasinski, Stefan, Ancient Privileges: Beowulf, Law, and the Making of Germanic Antiquity (Morgantown, 2006), 49–75Google Scholar.

3 Müller, Johannes, Das Kulturbild des Beowulfepos (Halle, 1914), 2Google Scholar; the translation is cited from Stanley, Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past, 65.

4 See Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici, ed. J. M. Kemble (London, 1839–48), 2:ix. For an analysis of this tradition and its intellectual history, see Jurasinski, Ancient Privileges, 54–63.

5 Beowulf, ed. C. L. Wrenn, rev. W. F. Bolton (London, 1973), 100.

6 Jurasinski, Ancient Privileges, 67.

7 Frank, Roberta, “F-Words in Beowulf,” in Making Sense: Constructing Meaning in Early English, ed. diPaolo Healey, Antonette and Kiernan, Kevin (Toronto, 2007), 9Google Scholar.

8 Bammesberger, Alfred, “The Meaning of Old English folcscaru and the Compound's Function in Beowulf,” North-Western European Language Evolution 72 (2019): 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 7–8.

9 Bammesberger, “The Meaning of Old English folcscaru,” 8.

10 The inadequacy of all of the proposed meanings for folcscaru is signaled in the question marks that appear in the glossary of Klaeber's Beowulf, where the word is defined as “nation (?), heritable land (?).” My discussion focuses on the more transparent phrase feorh gumena, but I would assume that folcscaru refers to something (land? property?) that a king could distribute, but Hrothgar, because he is an exceptionally good king, voluntarily refrains from distributing it. In a recent note, David Hullinger proposes that the term could mean “private property,” a solution that is devoid of external parallels, but fits the context relatively well. See Hullinger, David, “The Meaning of Folcscare in Beowulf 73,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 34 (2021): 7–8Google Scholar.

11 There has been considerable debate throughout the history of Beowulf criticism about the peculiar theological status of the poem's historically pagan characters. I adhere to the view that these characters, especially Beowulf and Hrothgar, are depicted as enlightened monotheists who have not received the Christian revelation (and hence make no explicit references to Christian dogma), but have intuited the existence of the single deity that governs the universe and judges the behavior of mankind. A view comparable to the one I have outlined is developed, with differing nuances and emphases, in the following studies: Donahue, Charles, “Beowulf, Ireland, and the Natural Good,” Traditio 7 (1949): 263–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Beowulf and Christian Tradition: A Reconsideration from a Celtic Stance,” Traditio 21 (1965): 55–116; Osborn, Marijane, “The Great Feud: Scriptural History and Strife in Beowulf,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 93 (1978): 973–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Thomas D., “The Christian Language and Theme of Beowulf,” in Companion to Old English Poetry, ed. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr. and Aertsen, Henk (Amsterdam, 1994), 63–77Google Scholar; Cronan, Dennis, “Beowulf, the Gaels, and the Recovery of the Pre-Conversion Past,” Anglo-Saxon 1 (2007): 137–80Google Scholar; and Russom, Geoffrey, “Historicity and Anachronism in Beowulf,” in Epic and History, ed. Konstan, David and Raaflaub, Kurt A. (Malden, 2010), 243–61Google Scholar. In his most recent take on the matter, Cronan argues persuasively that the moral intuitions of the characters (particularly Hrothgar) develop concomitantly with the poem's narrative. See Dennis Cronan, “Hrothgar and the Gylden Hilt in Beowulf,” Traditio 72 (2017): 109–32.

12 As David A. E. Pelteret observes: “At no time in the Middle Ages did the Church condemn the institution of slavery.” See Pelteret, David, “Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England,” in The Anglo-Saxons: Synthesis and Achievement, ed. Woods, J. Douglas and Pelteret, David A. E. (Waterloo, 1985), 117–34Google Scholar, at 131.

13 The temporal extent of the migration-period legendarium is reflected in Widsith, where the earliest historically verifiable figure in its catalogues is the Gothic king Ermanaric (d. 375) and the latest historically verifiable figure is the Langobardic king Alboin (d. 572). This “heroic age” was apparently closed to anyone born after the sixth century. For discussion of the history of this period, the legendary traditions that developed therefrom, and the extant witnesses to these legends, see Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend, ed. R. W. Chambers (Cambridge, 1912); Theodore M. Andersson, A Preface to the Nibelungenlied (Stanford, 1987), 3–16; Edward R. Haymes and Susann T. Samples, Heroic Legends of the North: An Introduction to the Nibelung and Dietrich Cycles (New York, 1996); and Carolyne Larrington, “Eddic Poetry and Heroic Legend,” in A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia, ed. Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn (Cambridge, 2016), 147–72.

14 The formulation “heroic, courtly, and Christian” is indebted to an apt phrase of Andreas Heusler, who described Beowulf as a didactic poem designed to inculcate “heldisch-höfisch-kirklich” values in the audience of young aristocrats for whom it was presumably composed. For his assessment of Beowulf as a “geistlich-höfisches Heldenepos,” see Andreas Heusler, Die altgermanische Dichtung (Potsdam, 1929), 184. Heusler's view of the poem, briefly propounded in his literary history, was recently developed at length in Edward Currie, “Political Ideals, Monstrous Counsel, and the Literary Imagination in Beowulf,” in Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Projections, Dreams, Monsters, and Illusions, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin, 2020), 275–301. In this learned essay, which came to my attention after the draft of my article was completed, Currie discusses Beowulf in relation to some of the same witnesses to migration-period legend that are used in the present article, though he reaches conclusions that are rather different from my own. A reader interested in the poet's relationship to antecedent tradition should consult Currie's essay for an alternative take on the matter.

15 James W. Earl, “The Forbidden Beowulf: Haunted by Incest,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 125 (2010): 289–305, at 291. Earl's essay will be discussed in the concluding section of the present article. In the vast critical literature on Beowulf, Earl's essay appears to represent one of the few concerted discussions of the poet's sense of decorum, which has usually been discussed only in a piecemeal manner. There is one essay on Beowulf with the word “decorum” in its title — Lenore Abraham, “The Decorum of Beowulf,” Philological Quarterly 72 (1993): 267–87 — but this essay is actually concerned with the poem's structural unity, not with the poet's sense of decorum and the departures from tradition for which it is responsible.

16 See David A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in Early Mediaeval England: From the Reign of Alfred until the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 1995); Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, 1988); and the essays collected in The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and Labor in Medieval England, ed. Allen J. Frantzen and Douglas Moffat (Glasgow, 1994).

17 On the distinction between poetic and prosaic vocabulary in Old English, see M. S. Griffith, “Poetic Language and the Paris Psalter: The Decay of the Old English Tradition,” Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991): 167–86; and Dennis Cronan, “Poetic Meanings in the Old English Poetic Vocabulary,” English Studies 84 (2003): 397–425. In referring to wer and wif as “relatively prosaic,” I do not mean to imply that they are normally excluded from poetry, but rather that they are not exclusively or predominantly poetic words. They possess a lower, more colloquial register than a word like secg, which is a marked piece of poetic diction.

18 The notion that Wealhtheow's name indicates that she is or was a slave is widespread. See, for example, Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Cambridge, 2003), 219; and Thomas D. Hill, “‘Wealhtheow’ as a Foreign Slave: Some Continental Analogues,” Philological Quarterly 69 (1990): 106–12. For arguments against the supposition that Wealhtheow bears a meaningful, characterizing name, see Stefan Jurasinski, “The Feminine Name Wealhtheow and the Problem of Beowulfian Anthroponymy,” Neophilologus 91 (2007): 701–15; and Leonard Neidorf, “Wealhtheow and Her Name: Etymology, Characterization, and Textual Criticism,” Neophilologus 102 (2018): 75–89. For arguments against the supposition that any name in Beowulf should reflect meaningfully on its bearer, see R. D. Fulk, “The Etymology and Significance of Beowulf's Name,” Anglo-Saxon 1 (2007): 109–36.

19 For an argument that þēof is the missing word, see Theodore M. Andersson, “The Thief in Beowulf,” Speculum 59 (1984): 493–508. For a defense of þēo(w), see R. D. Fulk, “Some Contested Readings in the Beowulf Manuscript,” Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 192–223, at 214–15. Pelteret supports Andersson's position and doubts that the thief of the dragon's cup would have been a slave: “To have introduced a slave, or even an ordinary freeman, would have been inappropriate in such an heroic world where all men were eorlas, a word which itself denotes aristocratic status. Thus for Beowulf to have died as a result of the action of slave would have reduced his stature.” See Pelteret, Slavery in Early Medieval England, 53.

20 See Pelteret, “Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England” (n. 12 above), 120–21.

21 Christopher Tolkien, “The Battle of the Goths and the Huns,” Saga Book 14 (1955–56): 141–63, at 141. Larrington recently concurs with Tolkien in deeming Hlǫðskviða “one of the oldest poems preserved in Old Norse.” See Larrington, “Eddic Poetry and Heroic Legend” (n. 13 above), 155. See also Eddica minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken, ed. Andreas Heusler and Wilhelm Ranisch (Dortmund, 1903), xiii–xiv; and Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems, ed. Nora Kershaw (Cambridge, 1922), 142–44.

22 On the connections between Hlǫðskviða and Widsith, see Kemp Malone, “Widsith and the Hervararsaga,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 40 (1925): 769–813. On the connections between Beowulf and Widsith, see Klaeber's Beowulf, ed. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles (n. 1 above), clxxvii.

23 The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, ed. and trans. Christopher Tolkien (London, 1960), 49.

24 The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, ed. and trans. Tolkien, 50.

25 On Hygelac's joint kingship with Beowulf, see Frederick M. Biggs, “The Politics of Succession in Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England,” Speculum 80 (2005): 709–41.

26 For an analysis of the scenes of feasting in Beowulf, see Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 60–81.

27 For examples, see Andersson, A Preface to the Nibelungenlied (n. 13 above), 3–16; Larrington, “Eddic Poetry and Heroic Legend” (n. 13 above), 147–56; and W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance, 2nd ed. (London, 1908), 75–87. For a recent reading of Beowulf as a poem focusing in its foreground not only on the monster fights, but also on the protagonist's relationship with the concept of kingship, see Francis Leneghan, The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf (Cambridge, 2020).

28 Thomas D. Hill, “The Confession of Beowulf and the Structure of Volsunga Saga,” in The Vikings, ed. R. T. Farrell (London, 1982), 165–79, at 177.

29 Richard North, noting that the phrase morðorbealo māga is also used in the Finnsburg episode (l. 1079a), writes of Beowulf's dying words: “Hereby, perhaps, Beowulf shuns the example set by the Frisians in Finnsburh.” He goes on to suggest that the speech might also allude to Beowulf's restraint toward Wiglaf and Weohstan. See Richard North, The Origins of Beowulf: From Vergil to Wiglaf (Oxford, 2006), 286. More recently, North conjectures that the phrase morðorbealo māga could also allude to Beowulf's relationship with Heardred and serve thereby to contrast Beowulf's refusal to kill his cousin with Hrothulf's possible killing of Hrethric. See idem, “Hrothulf's Childhood and Beowulf's: A Comparison,” in Childhood and Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Susan Irvine and Winfried Rudolf (Toronto, 2018), 222–43, at 242.

30 R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn, rev. C. L. Wrenn, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1959), 29.

31 The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, ed. and trans. Tolkien (n. 23 above), 58.

32 On the date and context of Hildebrandslied, see J. Knight Bostock, “The Lay of Hildebrand,” in idem, A Handbook on Old High German Literature, rev. K. C. King and D. R. McLintock, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1976), 43–82.

33 The text of the poem is cited from the edition in Althochdeutsches Lesebuch: Zusammengestellt und mit Wörterbuch versehen, ed. Wilhelm Braune, rev. Ernst. A. Ebbinghaus, 17th ed. (Tübingen, 1994). The translation is cited from Bostock, “The Lay of Hildebrand,” 46.

34 Bertha S. Phillpotts, “Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought,” Essays and Studies 13 (1928): 7–27.

35 For an argument that kin-slaying might have formed a part of Hrothgar's back-story, see James H. Morey, “The Fates of Men in Beowulf,” in Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill, ed. Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall (Toronto, 2007), 26–51. Morey's argument is difficult to credit, and it has not gained much traction in subsequent scholarship. If Morey were correct, then the poet evidently sought to conceal this aspect of Hrothgar's past and exculpate his wise and pious king.

36 The only other human character in Beowulf to be depicted in a decidedly negative manner is Heremod. Some readers find that the poet is also critical of Hygelac, but a strong case can be made for viewing Hygelac as a largely admirable (if somewhat tragic) character. See Arthur G. Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley, 1959), 78–87.

37 On the probable veracity of Beowulf's allegation, see Carol Clover, “The Germanic Context of the Unferþ Episode,” Speculum 55 (1980): 444–68, esp. 463. Most of the critics cited in the following two footnotes concur with Clover and accept that Unferth had genuinely killed his kinsmen, but for a dissenting view on the matter, see Scott Gwara, Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf (Leiden, 2008), 126–29, who argues that Beowulf is bending the truth here.

38 The critical literature on Unferth is enormous. For some papers that adumbrate the possibilities of interpretation, see James L. Rosier, “Design for Treachery: The Unferth Intrigue,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 77 (1962): 1–7; Norman E. Eliason, “The Þyle and Scop in Beowulf,” Speculum 38 (1963): 267–84; Fred C. Robinson, “Personal Names in Medieval Narrative and the Name of Unferth in Beowulf,” in Essays in Honour of Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams, ed. Howard Creed (Birmingham, 1970), 43–48; G. C. Britton, “Unferth, Grendel, and the Christian Meaning of Beowulf,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971): 246–50; Carroll Y. Rich, “Unferth and Cain's Envy,” South Central Bulletin 33 (1973): 211–13; Ida Masters Hollowell, “Unferð the þyle in Beowulf,” Studies in Philology (1976): 239–65; Patricia Silber, “Hunferth and the Paths of Exile,” In Geardagum 17 (1996): 15–29; Leslie A. Donovan, “Þyle as Fool: Revisiting Beowulf's Hunferth,” in Poetry, Place, and Gender: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Helen Damico, ed. Catherine E. Karkov (Kalamazoo, 2009), 75–97; Judy King, “Transforming the Hero: Beowulf and the Conversion of Hunferth,” in The Hero Recovered: Essays on Medieval Heroism in Honor of George Clark, ed. Robin Waugh and James Weldon (Kalamazoo, 2010), 47–65; and Francisco J. Rozano-García, “‘Unferþ Maðelode’: The Villain in Beowulf Reconsidered,” English Studies 100 (2019): 941–58.

39 This conjecture concerning Unferth's back-story is entertained in George Clark, Beowulf (Boston, 1990), 65. It is developed in Gernot R. Wieland, “The Unferth Enigma: The þyle between the Hero and the Poet,” in Fact and Fiction from the Middle Ages to Modern Times: Essays Presented to Hans Sauer on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday — Part II, ed. Renate Bauer and Ulrike Krischke (Frankfurt, 2011), 35–46; and in Leonard Neidorf, “Unferth's Ambiguity and the Trivialization of Germanic Legend,” Neophilologus 101 (2017): 439–54.

40 On the context and interpretation of Alcuin's infamous rhetorical question (“What has Ingeld to do with Christ?”), see Donald A. Bullough, “What Has Ingeld to Do with Lindisfarne?” Anglo-Saxon England 22 (1993): 93–125; and Mary Garrison, “Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?” in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe and Andy Orchard (Toronto, 2005), 1:237–59. For an argument (much different from my own) that the Beowulf poet has a theological perspective comparable to that of Alcuin, see W. F. Bolton, Alcuin and Beowulf: An Eighth-Century View (New Brunswick, 1978).

41 See Stanley B. Greenfield, “Beowulf and the Judgement of the Righteous,” in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), 393–407; Bruce Mitchell, On Old English (Oxford, 1988), 30–40; Hill, “The Christian Language” (n. 11 above), 70–76; and Paul Cavill, “Christianity and Theology in Beowulf,” in The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England: Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching, ed. Paul Cavill (Woodbridge, 2004), 15–39.

42 For arguments that the Beowulf poet took a relatively minor figure in antecedent legend and developed him into a protagonist for a new kind of epic poem, see Larry D. Benson, “The Originality of Beowulf,” in The Interpretation of Narrative: Theory and Practice, ed. Morton W. Bloomfield (Cambridge, 1970), 1–43; and Leneghan, The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf (n. 27 above), 104–52.

43 For similar observations, see Phillpotts, “Wyrd and Providence” (n. 34 above), 19–22; Kemp Malone, “Beowulf,” English Studies 29 (1948): 161–72, at 165–66; and Hill, “The Confession of Beowulf” (n. 28 above), 176–77.

44 On the proto-courtliness of the poem's women, see Eric Gerald Stanley, “Courtliness and Courtesy in Beowulf and Elsewhere in Medieval English Literature,” in Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson, ed. Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe (Toronto, 1998), 67–103.

45 See Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, “Gender Roles,” in A Beowulf Handbook, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Lincoln, 1997), 311–24; Stacy S. Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, 2006), 87–124; and R. D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain, A History of Old English Literature (Chichester, 2013), 6–11.

46 Although Offa's queen has long been known in Beowulf criticism as “Thryth” or “Modthryth,” the sequence of letters transcribed in the manuscript as <mod þryðo> is almost certainly not a proper name. It would appear that the poet either refrained from mentioning the name of this character or the name was lost from the text in the course of its transmission. See R. D. Fulk, “The Name of Offa's Queen: Beowulf 1931–2,” Anglia 122 (2004): 614–39; Eric Weiskott, “Three Beowulf Cruces: Healgamen, Fremu, Sigemunde,” Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 5–6; and Kenneth Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), 41, n. 2. For critical discussion of this character, see Gillian R. Overing, Language, Sign, and Gender in Beowulf (Carbondale, 1990), 101–12; Mary Dockray-Miller, “The Masculine Queen of Beowulf,” Women and Language 21 (1998): 31–38; and Klein, Ruling Women, 105–11.

47 For analyses of this legend, see Otto Gschwantler, “Die Heldensage von Alboin und Rosimund,” in Festgabe für Otto Höfler, ed. Helmut Birkhan (Vienna, 1976), 214–54; Andersson, A Preface to the Nibelungenlied (n. 13 above), 7–8; and Shami Ghosh, Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative (Leiden, 2016), 121–40.

48 On the legendary women mentioned in this paragraph (and their sources and analogues elsewhere in medieval Germanic literature), see Jenny Jochens, Old Norse Images of Women (Philadelphia, 1996); Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Women in Old Norse Literature: Bodies, Words, and Power (New York, 2013); Theodore M. Andersson, The Legend of Brynhild (Ithaca, 1980); Stephanie B. Pafenberg, “The Spindle and the Sword: Gender, Sex, and Heroism in the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun,” The Germanic Review 70 (1995): 106–15; and Eric Shane Bryan, “A Pragmatic Analysis of the Quarrel of the Queens in Völsungasaga, Þiðreks Saga, and Das Nibelungenlied,” Neophilologus 97 (2013): 349–65.

49 See Joyce Hill, “‘Þæt Wæs Geomuru Ides!’: A Female Stereotype Examined,” in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington, 1990), 235–47.

50 There have been various reconstructions of the events narrated in the Finnsburg episode, each possessing certain nuanced differences. For some distinct interpretations, see Finnsburh: Fragment and Episode, ed. Donald K. Fry (London, 1974), 5–25; J. R. R. Tolkien, Finn and Hengest, ed. A. J. Bliss (London, 1982), 159–62; Richard North, “Tribal Loyalties in the Finnsburh Fragment and Episode,” Leeds Studies in English 21 (1990): 13–43; Scott Gwara, “The Foreign Beowulf and the ‘Fight at Finnsburg,’” Traditio 63 (2008): 185–233; Old English Minor Heroic Poems, ed. Joyce Hill, 3rd ed. (Toronto, 2009), 27–29; and Leonard Neidorf, “Garulf and Guthlaf in the Finnsburg Fragment,” Notes and Queries 66 (2019): 489–92.

51 For interpretations of Hildeburh as an unavenged victim, see Edward B. Irving, Jr., A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, 1968), 137; Jane Chance, “The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother,” in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Damico and Olsen, 251; Hill, “‘Þæt Wæs Geomuru Ides,’” 241; and Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (n. 18 above), 178. For the argument that Hildeburh's losses are avenged through the killing of Finn, see Olsen, “Gender Roles” (n. 45 above), 316–18; and John M. Hill, “The Ethnopsychology of In-Law Feud and the Remaking of Group Identity in Beowulf: The Cases of Hengest and Ingeld,” Philological Quarterly 78 (1999): 97–123.

52 For comparable readings of Grendel's mother, see Paul Acker, “Horror and the Maternal in Beowulf,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 121 (2006): 702–16; and Renée R. Trilling, “Beyond Abjection: The Problem with Grendel's Mother Again,” Parergon 24 (2007): 1–20.

53 Numerous readings of Beowulf as a poem fundamentally critical of heroism have been produced. See, for example, John Leyerle, “Beowulf the Hero and the King,” Medium Ævum 34 (1965): 89–102; Linda Georgianna, “King Hrethel's Sorrow and the Limits of Heroic Action in Beowulf,” Speculum 62 (1987): 829–50; and Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, The Condemnation of Heroism in the Tragedy of Beowulf (Lewiston, 1989).

54 See R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem (n. 30 above), 22–23; Jan de Vries, “Die Starkadsage,” Germanisch-Romanisch Monatsschrift 36 (1955): 281–97; E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia (New York, 1964), 209–11; and Russell Poole, “Some Southern Perspectives on Starcatherus,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 2 (1996): 141–66.

55 In Saxo's version (or in the tradition leading up to it), a conflict between Danes and Heathobards has been altered into a conflict between Danes and Germans, with the original Heathobards now depicted as Danes. On the influence of contemporary politics in Saxo's work, see André Muceniecks, Saxo Grammaticus: Hierocratical Conceptions and Danish Hegemony in the Thirteenth Century (Kalamazoo, 2017).

56 On the various sources concerning the legend(s) of Starkaðr, see Marlene Ciklamini, “The Problem of Starkaðr,” Scandinavian Studies 43 (1971): 169–88; on his three abominable deeds, see Georges Dumézil, “The Three Sins of Starcatherus,” in The Destiny of the Warrior, trans. Alf Hiltebeitel (Chicago, 1970), 82–95; on his hostility toward courtliness, see Kemp Malone, “Primitivism in Saxo Grammaticus,” Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958): 94–104; and on his violence against women, see Poole, “Some Southern Perspectives,” 157–59.

57 On Starkaðr's old age, see Ciklamini, “The Problem of Starkaðr,” 181–82; and William Layher, “Starkaðr's Teeth,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 108 (2009): 1–26. On the hints in Beowulf that the old Heathobard is Starkaðr, see de Vries, “Die Starkadsage,” 283–84; Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, 210; Poole, “Some Southern Perspectives,” 155–56; and Currie, “Political Ideals” (n. 14 above), 295–301.

58 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen, trans. Peter Fisher (Oxford, 2015), 1:430–31.

59 For an argument that Saxo has reshaped native tradition under the influence of Horace's poetry, see Karsten Friis-Jensen, “The Lay of Ingellus and its Classical Models,” in Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author between Norse and Latin Culture, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen (Copenhagen, 1981), 65–78.

60 On the absence of (human-oriented) xenophobia in Beowulf, see Dennis Cronan, “Eotena, Eotenum ‘Jutes’ in the Finnsburg Episode in Beowulf,” Modern Philology 116 (2018): 1–19, at 15–16; and Leonard Neidorf, “Beowulf as Pre-National Epic: Ethnocentrism in the Poem and its Criticism,” English Literary History 85 (2018): 847–75. Vulgarity is manifestly absent from Beowulf, but the possibility that it was present in antecedent tradition is raised by its presence in some Eddic poems. See Folke Ström, Nið, Ergi, and Old Norse Moral Attitudes (London, 1974), 15–17.

61 Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Frederick Klaeber, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1950), 159. For comprehensive analysis of the passage in question, see M. S. Griffith, “Some Difficulties in Beowulf, Lines 874–902: Sigemund Reconsidered,” Anglo-Saxon England 24 (1995): 11–41, esp. 40, where Griffith concludes that the poet resorted to “ambiguity and euphemism” in his treatment of the problematic figure of Sigemund.

62 Earl, “The Forbidden Beowulf” (n. 15 above), 295–96. See also North, “Hrothulf's Childhood” (n. 29 above), 227, where it is suggested that “The moral charge of Halga's til-agnomen (Beowulf, line 61) might therefore tell us that the poet has the same story [of Halga's incest] but omits most of it as distasteful, protesting only that Halga was both father and grandfather to Hrothulf through no fault of his own.”

63 Earl, “The Forbidden Beowulf” (n. 15 above), 291.

64 See Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, trans. Fisher, 1:xxix–xxxiii.

65 On the morally questionable character of Hagen, see Ursula R. Mahlendorf and Frank J. Tobin, “Hagen: A Reappraisal,” Monatshefte 63 (1971): 125–40; Francis G. Gentry, “Hagen and the Problem of Individuality in the Nibelungenlied,” Monatshefte 68 (1976): 5–12; Holger Homann, “The Hagen Figure in the Nibelungenlied: Know Him by His Lies,” Modern Language Notes 97 (1982): 759–69; Stephen Jaeger, “Hagen and Germanic Mythology,” Res Publica Litterarum 6 (1983): 171–85; Joachim Heinzle, “Gnade für Hagen? Die epische Struktur des Nibelungenliedes und das Dilemma der Interpreten,” in Nibelungenlied und Klage: Sage und Geschichte, Struktur und Gattung: Passauer Nibelungenliedgespräche 1985, ed. Fritz Peter Knapp (Heidelberg, 1987), 257–77; and Katherine DeVane Brown, “Courtly Rivalry, Loyalty Conflict, and the Figure of Hagen in the Nibelungenlied,” Monatshefte 107 (2015): 355–81.

66 Fred C. Robinson, Beowulf and the Appositive Style (Knoxville, 1985), 11.

67 Robinson, Beowulf and the Appositive Style, 11.

68 Robinson, Beowulf and the Appositive Style, 13.

69 See James Cahill, “Reconsidering Robinson's Beowulf,” English Studies 89 (2008): 251–62.

70 On the representation of the foregrounded characters as intuitive monotheists, see especially Donahue, “Beowulf and Christian Tradition” (n. 11 above); Osborn, “The Great Feud” (n. 11 above); Hill, “The Christian Language” (n. 11 above); and Cronan, “Hrothgar and the Gylden Hilt” (n. 11 above). Much has been written about the meaning of sōðfæstra dōm. I subscribe to the view put forward by Cavill in “Christianity and Theology in Beowulf” (n. 41 above), 20–24. For a contrary view, see A. J. Bliss, “Beowulf, Lines 3074–3075,” in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca, 1979), 41–63, at 49–50. For counterarguments to Bliss's interpretation, see Mitchell, On Old English (n. 41 above), 30–40. For further discussion, see Greenfield, “Beowulf and the Judgement” (n. 41 above); and Marie Padgett Hamilton, “The Religious Principle in Beowulf,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 61 (1946): 309–30, at 328.

71 For an argument against Robinson's supposition of thematic tension between Christianity and paganism in Beowulf, see C. E. Fell, “Paganism in Beowulf: A Semantic Fairytale,” in Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, ed. T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen, and A. A. MacDonald (Groningen, 1995), 9–34.

72 There is longstanding disagreement among Beowulf critics as to whether the poet casts a critical or an admiring eye upon the protagonist. For readings that ascribe to the poet a perspective ranging from negative to ambivalent, see E. G. Stanley, “Hæþenra Hyht in Beowulf,” in Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Stanley B. Greenfield (Eugene, 1963), 136–51; Leyerle, “Beowulf the Hero and the King” (n. 53 above); Margaret E. Goldsmith, The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf (London, 1970); Georgianna, “King Hrethel's Sorrow” (n. 53 above); Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Cambridge, 1995); North, The Origins of Beowulf (n. 29 above); and Gwara, Heroic Identity (n. 37 above). For readings that ascribe to the poet a broadly positive perspective on the protagonist, see Kenneth Sisam, The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965); Irving, A Reading of Beowulf (n. 51 above); Mary P. Richards, “A Reexamination of Beowulf ll. 3180–3182,” English Language Notes 10 (1973): 163–67; T. A. Shippey, Beowulf (London, 1978); Clark, Beowulf (n. 39 above); and John M. Hill, The Cultural World in Beowulf (Toronto, 1995). For an overview of the voluminous scholarship on both sides of the debate, see George Clark, “The Hero and the Theme,” in A Beowulf Handbook, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Lincoln, 1997), 271–90.