Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Map of the Irish Sea and Northern Sea Area c. 1000–1200 CE
- Preface
- Introduction: Manannán and His Neighbors
- 1 Hiberno-Manx Coins in the Irish Sea
- 2 Hunferth and Incitement in Beowulf
- 3 Cú Chulainn Unbound
- 4 Ragnhild Eiríksdóttir: Cross-cultural Sovereignty Motifs and Anti-feminist Rhetoric in Chapter 9 of Orkneyinga saga
- 5 Statius’ Dynamic Absence in the Narrative Frame of the Middle Irish Togail na Tebe
- 6 The Stanley Family and the Gawain Texts of the Percy Folio
- 7 Ancient Myths for the Modern Nation: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf
- 8 Kohlberg Explains Cú Chulainn: Developing Moral Judgment from Bully to Boy Wonder to Brave Warrior
- 9 Language Death and Language Revival: Contrasting Manx and Texas German
- Index
2 - Hunferth and Incitement in Beowulf
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Map of the Irish Sea and Northern Sea Area c. 1000–1200 CE
- Preface
- Introduction: Manannán and His Neighbors
- 1 Hiberno-Manx Coins in the Irish Sea
- 2 Hunferth and Incitement in Beowulf
- 3 Cú Chulainn Unbound
- 4 Ragnhild Eiríksdóttir: Cross-cultural Sovereignty Motifs and Anti-feminist Rhetoric in Chapter 9 of Orkneyinga saga
- 5 Statius’ Dynamic Absence in the Narrative Frame of the Middle Irish Togail na Tebe
- 6 The Stanley Family and the Gawain Texts of the Percy Folio
- 7 Ancient Myths for the Modern Nation: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf
- 8 Kohlberg Explains Cú Chulainn: Developing Moral Judgment from Bully to Boy Wonder to Brave Warrior
- 9 Language Death and Language Revival: Contrasting Manx and Texas German
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Contributed by M. Wendy Hennequin, this essay centers on the figure of (H)unferth in Beowulf, offering an innovative view of the oft-debated function of this character in the story the Old English poem tells. Instead of viewing Hunferth's challenge to Beowulf as gratuitously antagonistic, Hennequin analyzes it in terms of stylized forms of incitement, as documented in the early medieval literatures of Ireland, Britain, and Scandinavia.
Keywords: Unferth, Beowulf, Njal's Saga, Táin, incitement, flyting
Ever since Carol Clover's 1980 essay, “The Germanic Context of the Unferþ Episode,” most critics have accepted that the exchange between Hunferth and Beowulf is a flyting, a ritualized exchange of boasts and insults consisting of a “Claim, Defense, and Counterclaim.” Critics generally agree that Beowulf decisively wins the exchange by refuting Hunferth's claim, by calling Hunferth out for his cowardice and fratricide, and ultimately, by defeating Grendel when Hunferth could not. While Clover convincingly identifies connections between the flyting tradition and the Hunferth interlude, viewing the exchange as flyting, and Beowulf as its winner, is problematic. Most flytings are longer than the conversation between Beowulf and Hunferth. More importantly, Hrothgar becomes joyful afterwards, and, suprisingly, so does the court: “Ðær wæs hæleþa hleahtor, hlyn swynsode,/ word wǣron wynsume” (“There was laughter of heroes, the din sounded, words were joyful”). Most critics explain this joy, and the fact that Hunferth is not reprimanded, by claiming that Hunferth is merely performing his duty as þyle, that his questioning is normal, or that Hunferth is simply not taken seriously. Yet these explanations do not account for the Danes’ joyful response to Beowulf's slur against their bravery and competency:
ac hē hafað onfunden, þæt hē þā fǣhðe ne þearf,
atole ecgþræce ēower lēode
swīðe onsittan, Sige-Scyldinga;
nymeð nȳdbade, nǣnegum ārað
lēode Deniga, ac hē lust wigeð,
swēfað ond snēdeþ, secce ne wēneð
tō Gār-Denum.
But he has discovered that he does not have cause to dread the feud, horrible sword-terror, of your people, the Victory-Scyldings, very much. He takes his toll, he spares none of your people, but he feels pleasure. He puts them to sleep and sends them away. He expects no fighting from the War-Danes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North SeaManannán and his Neighbors, pp. 37 - 58Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019