Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T13:52:40.123Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Secrecy and the Hermeneutic Potential in Beowulf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Benjamin A. Saltzman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Beowulf confronts the limits of knowledge in various forms: the unknowability of death, the secretive behavior of the poem's monsters, the epistemological distance of the past, and our inevitably fragmentary understanding of the poem itself. In the process, the poem also tells us something important about the methods and possibilities that it imagines for the work of discovery and literary interpretation more broadly. Scholars commonly address the poem as a text whose secrets need uncovering, but the poem's engagement with the mechanics of secrecy can be a cue for thinking through our own methods as literary critics in encounters with texts of the past. If we take Beowulf's treatment of secrecy as a guide for the poem's hermeneutic potential, then we find that the poem invites a kind of reading that rigorously, yet humbly, acknowledges how little we can actually know.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 133 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 36 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aldhelm. Prosa de uirginitate. Edited by Scott Gwara, vol. 2, Brepols, 2001. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 124a.Google Scholar
Andersson, Theodore. “The Thief in Beowulf” Speculum, vol. 59, no. 3, 1984, pp. 493–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of Joseph Bosworth. 1898. By Joseph Bos-worth, edited and enlarged by T. Northcote Toller, with revised and enlarged addenda by Alistair Campbell, Oxford UP, 1972.Google Scholar
The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: Collective Edition. Edited by George Philip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, Columbia UP, 1931–53. 6 vols.Google Scholar
Anlezark, Daniel. “Poisoned Places: The Avernian Tradition in Old English Poetry.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 36, 2007, pp. 103–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bammesberger, Alfred. Der Aufbau des germanischen Verbalsystems. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1986.Google Scholar
Bartlett, Robert. Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal. Clarendon Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. edited by Colgrave, Bertram and Mynors, R.A.B., Clarendon Press, 1969. Oxford Medieval Texts.Google Scholar
Bede. In Genesim. Opera exegetica, edited by Jones, Ch. W., Brepols, 1967, pp. 1–242. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 118a.Google Scholar
Bede. The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Edited by homas Miller, Oxford UP, 1959–63. Early English Text Society, old series, 110–11.Google Scholar
Bede. On Genesis. Translated by Kendall, Calvin B., Liverpool UP, 2008. Translated Texts for Historians.Google Scholar
Beowulf. Klaeber's Beowulf and he Fight at Finnsburg, edited by Fulk, R.D. et al., 4th ed., U of Toronto P, 2008, pp. 1–109.Google Scholar
Best, Stephen, and Marcus, Sharon. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bok, Sissela. Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation. Vintage Books, 1984.Google Scholar
Bolintineanu, Alexandra. “Declarations of Unknowing in Beowulf.” Neophilologus, vol. 100, no. 4, 2016, pp. 631–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bull, Malcolm. Seeing Things Hidden: Apocalypse, Vision and Totality. Verso, 1999.Google Scholar
Certeau, Michel de. The Mystic Fable: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by Smith, Michael B., U of Chicago P, 1992. Vol. 1 of The Mystic Fable. Chickering, Howell D., Jr. Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition. Anchor Books, 1977.Google Scholar
Christie, E.J. “Writing.” A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Studies, edited by Stodnick, Jacqueline and Trilling, Renée R., Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 288–93.Google Scholar
Clemoes, Peter. Interactions of Thought and Language in Old English Poetry. Cambridge UP, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, S.J. “Grendel's Descent from Cain.” Modern Language Review, vol. 23, no. 2, 1928, pp. 207–08.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, S.J. “Grendel's Descent from Cain.” Modern Language Review, vol. 24, no. 1, 1929, p. 63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dailey, Patricia. “Riddles, Wonder and Responsiveness in Anglo-Saxon Literature.” The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature, edited by Lees, Clare A., Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 451–72.Google Scholar
Damico, Helen. Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England. West Virginia UP, 2015.Google Scholar
Deskis, Susan E. Beowulf and the Medieval Proverb Tradition. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996.Google Scholar
Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. Compiled by Antoinette diPaolo Healey with the assistance of John Price Wilkin and Xin Xiang, U of Toronto, 2009, tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/.Google Scholar
Dietz, Klaus. “Altenglisch dīgol, dīgle ‘verborgen, heimlich’: Etymologie und Geschichte einer Wortfamilie.” Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 25, no. 2, 2000, pp. 201–27.Google Scholar
“Dīgol, Adj., Dīgle.” Dictionary of Old English: A to H, edited by Cameron, Angus et al., U of Toronto, 2016, tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/.Google Scholar
“Dīgol, Noun.” Dictionary of Old English: A to H, edited by Cameron, Angus et al., U of Toronto, 2016, tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/.Google Scholar
Dockray-Miller, Mary. “Beowulf's Tears of Fatherhood.” Exemplaria, vol. 10, 1998, pp. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, Ian. “Epitaphs for Æglæcan: Narrative Strife in Beowulf.” Beowulf, edited by Bloom, Harold, Chelsea House, 1987, pp. 111–30.Google Scholar
“Dyrne, Adv.” Dictionary of Old English: A to H, edited by Cameron, Angus et al., U of Toronto, 2016, tapor .library.utoronto.ca/doe/.Google Scholar
Earl, James W. “Beowulf and the Origins of Civilization.” The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook, edited by Joy, Eileen A. and Ramsey, Mary K., West Virginia UP, 2006, pp. 259–86.Google Scholar
Earl, James W. “The Forbidden Beowulf: Haunted by Incest.” PMLA, vol. 125, no. 2, 2010, pp. 289–305.Google Scholar
Estes, Heide. “Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf: Challenges to Generic Boundaries in Anglo-Saxon Biblical Literature.” The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe, no. 13, 2010, www.heroicage.org/issues/13/estes.php.Google Scholar
Fell, Christine E. “Runes and Semantics.” Old English Runes and Their Continental Background, edited by Bammesberger, Alfred, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1991, pp. 195–229.Google Scholar
Frantzen, Allen J. “Writing the Unreadable Beowulf: ‘Writan’ and ‘Forwritan,‘ the Pen and the Sword.” Exemplaria, vol. 3, no. 2, 1991, pp. 327–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fulk, R.D. Preface. Interpretations of Beowulf: A Critical Anthology, edited by Fulk, , Indiana UP, 1991, pp. i-xix.Google Scholar
Fulk, R.D., et al. Commentary. Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, edited by Fulk et al., 4th ed., U of Toronto P, 2008, pp. 110–272.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Weinsheimer, Joel and Marshall, Donald G., 2nd rev. ed., Bloomsbury, 2013.Google Scholar
Gelling, Margaret. “The Landscape of Beowulf” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 31, 2002, pp. 7–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, Margaret E. The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf. Athlone Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Greenfield, Stanley B. The Interpretation of Old English Poems. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.Google Scholar
Gregory the Great. Moralia in Job. Edited by Marc Adriaen, vol. 3, Brepols, 1979. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 143b.Google Scholar
Harris, Joseph. “A Note on the Other Heorot.” The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, edited by Neidorf, Leonard, D.S. Brewer, 2014, pp. 178–90.Google Scholar
Hill, John M. The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf: Arrivals and Departures. U of Toronto P, 2008.Google Scholar
Holsinger, Bruce. “‘Historical Context’ in Historical Context: Surface, Depth, and the Making of the Text.” New Literary History, vol. 42, no. 4, 2011, pp. 593–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holthausen, Ferdinand. Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1963.Google Scholar
Howe, Nicholas. “Historicist Approaches.” Reading Old English Texts, edited by O'Keeffe, Katherine O'Brien, Cambridge UP, 1997, pp. 79–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huppé, Bernard F. Doctrine and Poetry: Augustine's Jn-fluence on Old English Poetry. State University of New York, 1959.Google Scholar
“Ine (688–95).” Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, edited by F. Liebermann, vol. 1, Max Niemeyer, 1903, pp. 88124. 3 vols.Google Scholar
Isidore of Seville. Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX. edited by Lindsay, W.M., Clarendon Press, 1911. 2.vols.Google Scholar
Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Translated by Barney, Stephen A. et al., Cambridge UP, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Jurasinski, Stefan. Ancient Privileges: Beowulf, Law, and the Making of Germanic Antiquity. West Virginia UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Justice, Steven. “Literary History.” Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches, edited by Raybin, David and Fein, Susanna, Pennsylvania State UP, 2009, pp. 195–210.Google Scholar
Justice, Steven. “Who Stole Robertson?” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 2, 2009, pp. 609–15.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Heath, Peter Lauchlan, edited by Heath and J.B. Schneewind, Cambridge UP, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Vorlesungen über Moralphilosophie. edited by Lehmann, Gerhard, Walter de Gruyter, 1974. Kants gesammelte Schriften.Google Scholar
Kermode, Frank. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. Harvard UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Lapidge, Michael. “Beowulf and the Psychology of Terror.” Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, edited by Damico, Helen and Leyerle, John, Medieval Institute Publications, 1993, pp. 373–402.Google Scholar
Lee, Alvin A. “Symbolism and Allegory.” A Beowulf Handbook, edited by Bjork, Robert E. and Niles, John D., U of Nebraska P, 1997, pp. 233–54.Google Scholar
Lerer, Seth. Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature. U of Nebraska P, 1991.Google Scholar
“Liber monstrorum.” Orchard, Pride, pp. 254–317.Google Scholar
Lochrie, Karma. “Anglo-Saxon Morning Sickness.” Neophilologus, vol. 70, no. 2, 1986, pp. 316–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lochrie, Karma. Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy. U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John. A Letter concerning Toleration: Latin and English Texts Revised and Edited with Variants and an Introduction. edited by Montuori, Mario, Martinus Nijhoff, 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockett, Leslie. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. U of Toronto P, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockett, Leslie. “The Role of Grendel's Arm in Feud, Law, and the Narrative Strategy of Beowulf.” Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, edited by O'Keeffe, Katherine O'Brien and Orchard, Andy, U of Toronto P, 2005, pp. 368–88.Google Scholar
Love, Heather. “Close but Not Deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn.” New Literary History, vol. 41, no. 2, 2010, pp. 371–91.Google Scholar
Love, Heather. “Close Reading and Thin Description.” Public Culture, vol. 25, no. 3, 2013, pp. 401–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maus, Katharine Eisaman. Inwardness and heater in the English Renaissance. U of Chicago P, 1995.Google Scholar
McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Johns Hopkins UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Mellinkoff, Ruth. “Cain's Monstrous Progeny in Beowulf: Part 2, Post-diluvian Survival.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 9, 1981, pp. 183–62.Google Scholar
Miller, D.A. “Hitchcock's Hidden Pictures.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 106–30.
Mills, Kristen. “Emotion and Gesture in Hrogar's Farewell to Beowulf.” Anglo-Saxon Emotions: Reading the Heart in Old English Language, Literature and Culture, edited by Jorgensen, Alice et al., Ashgate, 2015, pp. 163–76.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce, and Robinson, Fred C. A Guide to Old English. 8th ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.Google Scholar
Mize, Britt. “Manipulations of the Mind-as-Container Motif in Beowulf, Homiletic Fragment 2, and Alfred's Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care” JEGP, vol. 107, 2008, pp. 25–56.Google Scholar
Mize, Britt. “The Representation of the Mind as an Enclosure in Old English Poetry.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 35, 2006, pp. 57–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Near, Michael R. “Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy.” PMLA, vol. 108, no. 2, 1993, pp. 320–32.Google Scholar
Niles, John D. “Myth and History.” A Beowulf Handbook, edited by Bjork, Robert E. and Niles, , U of Nebraska P, 1997, pp. 213–32.Google Scholar
Nolan, Maura. “Historicism after Historicism.” The Post-historical Middle Ages, edited by Scala, Elizabeth and Federico, Sylvia, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 63–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nordal, Sigurur, editor. Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. Hi Islenzka Fornritafélag, 1933.Google Scholar
Nuttall, A.D. Overheard by God: Fiction and Prayer in Herbert, Milton, Dante, and St. John. Methuen, 1980.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Bruce R. “From Moror to Murdrum: The Preconquest Origin and Norman Revival of the Murder Fine.” Speculum, vol. 71, no. 2, 1996, pp. 321–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien O'Keeffe, Katherine. “Body and Law in Late Anglo-Saxon England.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 27, 1998, pp. 209–32.Google Scholar
Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to Beowulf. D.S. Brewer, 2003.Google Scholar
Orchard, Andy. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript. D.S. Brewer, 1995.Google Scholar
Orlemanski, Julie. “Scales of Reading.” Exemplaria, vol. 26, nos. 2–3, 2014, pp. 215–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborn, Marijane. “The Great Feud: Scriptural History and Strife in Beowulf.” PMLA, vol. 93, no. 5, 1978, pp. 973–81.Google Scholar
Owen-Crocker, Gale R. The Four Funerals in Beowulf and the Structure of the Poem. Manchester UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee. “The Heroic Laconic Style: Reticence and Meaning from Beowulf to the Edwardians.” Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, edited by Aers, David, D.S. Brewer, 2000, pp. 133–57.Google Scholar
Paz, James. “Æschere's Head, Grendel's Mother, and the Sword hat Isn't a Sword: Unreadable hings in Beowulf.” Exemplaria, vol. 25, no. 3, 2013, pp. 231–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rauer, Christine. Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. D.S. Brewer, 2000.Google Scholar
Renoir, Alain. “Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 63, 1962, pp. 154–67.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Translated by Savage, Denis, Yale UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Robertson, D.W. Jr. “The Doctrine of Charity in Mediaeval Literary Gardens: A Topical Approach through Symbolism and Allegory.” Speculum, vol. 26, no. 1, 1951, pp. 24–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, D.W. Jr. “Some Observations on Method in Literary Study.” New Literary History, vol. 1, no. 1, 1969, pp. 22–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Fred C. Beowulf and the Appositive Style. U of Tennessee P, 1985.Google Scholar
Sisam, Kenneth. The Structure of Beowulf. Clarendon Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Smith, Scott Thompson. “Historicism.” A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Studies, edited by Stodnick, Jacqueline A. and Trilling, Renée R., Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 69–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squires, Ann. “Notes to The Panther” The Old English Physiologus, edited by Squires, , Durham Medieval Texts, 1988, pp. 47–68.Google Scholar
Stanley, E.G. “Old English Poetic Diction and the Interpretation of The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Penitent's Prayer'” Anglia, vol. 73, 1955–56, pp. 413–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strohm, Paul. “Historicity without Historicism?” Postmedieval, vol. 1, no. 3, 2010, pp. 380–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
hompson, Victoria. Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Boydell Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Tupper, Frederick Jr. “Anglo-Saxon Dœg-Mæl.” PMLA, vol. 10, no. 2, 1895, pp. 111–241.Google Scholar
“Undern, -es, M.” Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, p. 1099.Google Scholar
“Un-dirne, -dierne, -dyrne, Adj.” Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, p. 1101.Google Scholar
Wardale, E.E. “Beowulf, ll. 848 ff.” Modern Language Review, vol. 24, no. 1, 1929, pp. 62–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Weg, -es, M.” Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, p. 1183.Google Scholar
Williams, David. Cain and Beowulf: A Study in Secular Allegory. U of Toronto P, 1982.Google Scholar
Wormald, Patrick. “Bede, Beowulf, and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy.” The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and Its Historian, edited by Baxter, Stephen, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006, pp. 30–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Thomas L. “Hrothgar's Tears.” Modern Philology, vol. 65, no. 1, 1967, pp. 39–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar