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The Forbidden Beowulf: Haunted by Incest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

James W. Earl
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Abstract

It is sometimes said that unlike other epics Beowulf does not start in medias res, but it does; Beowulf has a backstory, which we are deep into when the poem begins. The backstory is not told in the poem, however, so modern readers may miss it entirely. It is found in the poem's analogues and was the focus of most Beowulf scholarship until 1936, when J. R. R. Tolkien turned our attention to the monster fights in the foreground. Following Tolkien, today's readers focus on what the poem does say, taking little or no interest in the analogues. There is quite a difference, however, between reading Beowulf as complete in itself and reading it intertextually, as part of a cycle of tales. An intertextual reading yields many surprises, among them a hidden incest theme. Beowulf is haunted by this and other dark matters, repressed in its textual unconscious.

Type
Cluster: Philology Matters
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 2 , March 2010 , pp. 289 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

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