Beowulf, the Wrath of God and the Fall of the Angels
April 2024
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Journal article
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English Studies
This article argues that Beowulf’s anger is not only a form of furor
heroicus but also a manifestation of the wrath of God. Through comparison with
Genesis A and other Old English biblical poems, as well as biblical and apocryphal
sources, the article identifies the Fall of the Angels as an important context for
Beowulf’s first two monster-fights. Countering arguments that Beowulf is a flawed or
even failed hero, I propose that when read in the light of Old English biblical poetry,
Beowulf emerges not as a doomed pagan or frenzied berserker but as a righteous
avenger whose anger is controlled and directed against evil.
FFR
The Age of Alfred: rethinking English literary culture c.850-950
February 2024
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Edited book
King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) remains a key figure in English literary history. Although his reputation as a scholar who was personally responsible for the translation of a number of Latin works is no longer secure, the figure of the wise king nevertheless casts a long shadow over vernacular writing from the late ninth century through to the twelfth. This volume takes stock of recent developments and debates in the field of Alfredian scholarship and showcases new directions in research. Individual chapters consider how English authors before, during, and after Alfred’s reign translated and adapted Latin works, often in innovative and imaginative ways. Other contributions provide new contexts and connections for Alfredian writing, highlighting the work of Mercian scholars and expanding the corpus beyond the works traditionally attributed to the king himself. Together, these essays force us to rethink what we mean by ‘Alfredian’ and to revise the literary history of the ‘long ninth century’.
Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Latin literature, Old English literature, King Alfred, Old English poetry, Old English prose
Introduction: rethinking English literary culture c.850-950
February 2024
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Chapter
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The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c.850-950
Old English literature, King Alfred, Anglo-Saxon literature
The haunting of Heorot: a Gregorian analogue and possible source for Beowulf's fight with Grendel
October 2023
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Journal article
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Medium Aevum
Gregory the Great, hagiography, Anglo-Saxon literature, Beowulf, Old English literature
End of empire? Reading The Death of Edward in Cotton Tiberius B I
December 2022
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Chapter
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Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, SBTMR, Old English literature, Orosius
Introduction: foreign contacts, landscapes and empire building
December 2022
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Chapter
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Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature
Anglo-Saxon studies, SBTMR, Old English literature
Ideas of the World in Early Medieval English Literature
December 2022
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Edited book
Across three thematically-linked sections, this volume charts the development of competing geographical, national, and imperial identities and communities in early medieval England. Literary works in Old English and Latin are considered alongside theological and historical texts from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Accounts of travel, foreign contacts, conversion, migration, landscape, nation, empire, and conquest are set within the continual flow of people and ideas from East to West, from continent to island and back, across the period. The fifteen contributors investigate how the early medieval English positioned themselves spatially and temporally in relation to their insular neighbours and other peoples and cultures. Several chapters explore the impact of Greek and Latin learning on Old English literature, while others extend the discussion beyond the parameters of Europe to consider connections with Asia and the Far East. Together these essays reflect ideas of inclusivity and exclusivity, connectivity and apartness, multiculturalism and insularity that shaped pre-Conquest England.
Anglo-Saxon studies, Old English literature
Beowulf
November 2022
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Journal article
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Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism
Old English Literature, FFR, Beowulf
Beowulf and the hunt
March 2022
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Journal article
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Humanities
The presence of hunting imagery in Beowulf has often been noted, but the significance of the figures of the stag and the wolf to the thematic design of the poem has yet to be fully explored. In this article, I first analyse the sustained presentation of the Danish royal hall as a stag, before exploring how the Beowulf poet exploited the various traditional associations of the wolf in the development of the figures of Grendel and Grendel’s mother. Finally, I consider the elaboration of the hunting imagery in the final section of the poem, which focuses on the Geatish Messenger’s account of the pursuit and killing of King Ongentheow by Eofor and Wulf, and the beasts-of-battle motif. The article concludes that the Beowulf poet made extensive use of animal and hunting imagery in order to ground his work in the lived experiences and fears of his audience.
medieval hunting, FFR, Old English literature, Anglo-Saxon literature, Beowulf
Dishonouring the dead: Beowulf and the Staffordshire Hoard
December 2020
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Journal article
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Quaestio Insularis
FFR
The Dynastic Drama of "Beowulf"
March 2020
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Book
The original audience of Beowulf was steeped in ancient Scandinavian royal legend. But for modern readers of the poem, these traditions are frustratingly obscure and confusing.
By placing the Scyldings, Scylfings and Hrethlings at the centre of the discussion, this book presents a new reading of Beowulf in which the hero's three great monster-fights are viewed as part of a wider dynastic drama concerning the fates of royal houses and nations. It offers a new theory of the work's structure, fresh readings of contentious passages and a re-consideration of the poet's originality. It also brings into sharper focus the poet's debt to biblical paradigms of kingship and the work's cultural relevance to the Anglo-Saxons as their own Book of Kings.
Beowulf, Kingship, Old English Literature, Anglo-Saxon England
The departure of the hero in a ship: The intertextuality of Beowulf, Cynewulf and Andreas
September 2019
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Journal article
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SELIM
This article identifies a new Old English poetic motif, ‘The Departure of the Hero in a Ship’, and discusses the implications of its presence in Beowulf, the signed poems of Cynewulf and Andreas, a group of texts already linked by shared lexis, imagery and themes. It argues that the Beowulf-poet used this motif to frame his work, foregrounding the question of royal succession. Cynewulf and the Andreas-poet then adapted this Beowulfian motif in a knowing and allusive manner for a new purpose: to glorify the church and to condemn its enemies. Investigation of this motif provides further evidence for the intertextuality of these works.
FFR
The Psalms and Medieval English Literature
March 2017
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Edited book
The Book of Psalms had a profound impact on English literature from the Anglo-Saxon to the late medieval period. This collection examines the various ways in which they shaped medieval English thought and contributed to the emergence of an English literary canon. It brings into dialogue experts on both Old and Middle English literature, thus breaking down the traditional disciplinary binaries of both pre- and post-Conquest English and late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. Its three main themes, translation, adaptation and voice, enable a rich variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature to emerge.
Psalms, Psalter, Old English, Middle English, Translation, Adaptation, Voice
Introduction: a case study of Psalm 50.1-3 in Old and Middle English
March 2017
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Chapter
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Psalms and Medieval English Literature
Middle English, Old English, psalms, translation
Making the psalter sing: the Old English 'metrical psalms', rhythm and 'ruminatio'
March 2017
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Chapter
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Psalms and Medieval English Literature: from the Conversion to the Reformation
metre, alliteration, translation, ruminatio, psalms, Old English
The Psalms in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England
January 2017
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Edited book
Psalms, Psalter, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Old English, Early Middle English, Translation
The Psalms in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England
November 2016
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Journal article
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English Studies
Translatio imperii: The Old English Orosius and the rise of Wessex
November 2015
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Journal article
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Anglia: Zeitschrift fuer Englische Philologie
This article argues that the Old English Orosius, a work traditionally viewed as a product of the educational reforms of King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871–899), can be constructively read in relation to developments in Anglo-Saxon political thought in the early tenth as well as in the late ninth centuries. The earliest extant manuscript of the Orosius was probably copied at Winchester in the early tenth century by the same scribe responsible for the entries for the late ninth and early tenth century in MS A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This section of the Chronicle charts both the break-up of the Carolingian Empire and the conquests of Alfred and his successors, Edward the Elder and Æthelstan, over various kings and peoples of Britain. Treating the reports of Ohthere and Wulfstan contained in the geographical preface to the Orosius as an integral part of the text as it was read in the early tenth century, rather than as an extraneous interpolation, I suggest that this passage invites readers to consider the rapidly expanding West Saxon kingdom in relation to the great empires which preceded it. I then outline how the translator refashioned Orosius’s ‘universal history’ into a work of imperial history which is more directly concerned with Rome’s long and difficult rise than with its fall to the Goths in 410. I conclude that the Orosius might have encouraged early tenth-century Anglo-Saxon readers to interpret the recent rise of Wessex to overlordship in Britain as part of an ongoing process of translatio imperii, the transference or succession of empires, contingent on the Christian virtue of its rulers.
Anglo-Saxon, Old English, Wessex, empire, Orosius, Carolinigian, Alfred
Preparing the mind for prayer: The Wanderer, hesychasm and theosis
October 2015
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Journal article
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Neophilologus
This article reads the celebrated Old English lament The Wanderer within the context of the early monastic tradition of hesychasm, the harnessing of meandering thoughts prior to approaching the stillness of prayer, and the doctrine of theosis, the belief that humankind can share in the divine nature of God through grace. In identifying new analogues and possible sources in scriptural and patristic writings, it suggests how the poem might have been understood within an Anglo- Saxon monastic milieu.
Anglo-Saxon, patristics, prayer, Old English, The Wanderer, poetry, Exeter Book, contemplation, monasticism
Teaching the Teachers: The Vercelli Book and the Mixed Life
October 2013
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Journal article
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English Studies
In this article I propose that the rationale of the compilation of the Vercelli Book is best appreciated if we group texts according to theme and content rather than form. The distinction between prose and verse appears to have been of little concern to the compiler, who combines homiletic texts with exemplary narratives concerning the education of teachers and, finally, a life of a hermit. This points to an interest in the tension between the pastoral duties of the preacher and the contemplative virtues of the ascetic life. Drawing on Gregory the Great's influential formulation of the “mixed life” of the ideal pastor in his “Cura Pastoralis”, I argue that the Vercelli Book invites the implied preacher-reader to balance the duty of preaching with the need for prayer, thereby harmonizing the active and contemplative lives.
Vercelli Book, Old English, Gregory the Great, Mixed Life
Reshaping Tradition: The Originality of the Scyld Scefing Episode in Beowulf
January 2012
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Chapter
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Transmission and Generation in Medieval and Renaissance Literature: Essays in Honour of John Scattergood
Royal wisdom and the Alfredian Context of Cynewulf and Cyneheard
January 2010
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Journal article
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Anglo-Saxon England
The Poetic Purpose of the Offa-Digression in Beowulf
January 2009
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Journal article
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The Review of English Studies
Making sense of Ker's dates: the origins of "Beowulf" and the palaeographers
January 2005
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Journal article
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Proceedings of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Postgraduate Conference
Ever since the Nowell Codex began to attract serious interest, almost two hundred years ago, scholars have debated the antiquity of its fourth text, referred to since J. M. Kemble’s edition of 1833 as Beowulf. The question continues to engage Anglo-Saxonists because, as Roy Liuzza points out, it ‘foregrounds the most important questions of Old English poetry – creation and tradition, transmission and reception, context and the limits of interpretation’. Judging by the wealth of publications in the last thirty or so years we are now further away than ever before from reaching a consensus save that the poem was composed at some time between the conversion of the AngloSaxons and the date of the manuscript. Scholars are divided over the significance of the manuscript for the dating of the composition of the poem: while Michael Lapidge and Kevin Kiernan have used the manuscript to argue for eighth and eleventh century composition respectively, R. D. Fulk claims that the manuscript has nothing to tell us about the poem’s date. Considerable disagreement has surrounded the interpretation of Neil Ker’s system of dating Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, accepted as standard since the publication of his invaluable Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon in 1957. In this paper I hope to clarify some of the issues surrounding Ker’s dating system, and in particular his dating of the Beowulf manuscript, before discussing some related questions concerning the literary, historical and political context of the poem’s copying and composition.