Literature

This book argues for the importance of synoptically examining the whole range of same‐sex relations in the Anglo‐Saxon period, revisiting well‐known texts and issues (as well as material often considered marginal) from a radically different perspective. The introductory chapters first lay out the premises underlying the book and its critical context, then emphasise the need to avoid modern cultural assumptions about both male‐female and male‐male relationships, and underline the paramount place of homosocial bonds in Old English literature. Part II then investigates the construction of and attitudes to same‐sex acts and identities in ethnographic, penitential, and theological texts, ranging widely throughout the Old English corpus and drawing on Classical, Medieval Latin, and Old Norse material. Part III expands the focus to homosocial bonds in Old English literature in order to explore the range of associations for same‐sex intimacy and their representation in literary texts such as Genesis A, Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, The Phoenix, and Ælfric's Lives of Saints. During the course of the book's argument, it uncovers several under‐researched issues and suggests fruitful approaches for their investigation. It concludes that, in omitting to ask certain questions of Anglo‐Saxon material, in being too willing to accept the status quo indicated by the extant corpus, in uncritically importing invisible (because normative) heterosexist assumptions in our reading, we risk misrepresenting the diversity and complexity that a more nuanced approach to issues of gender and sexuality suggests may be more genuinely characteristic of the period.

This book suggests that the Old English poem Beowulf was composed between the reigns of Kings Beornwulf (823-6) and Wiglaf (827-9 and 830-39) of Mercia, in the winter of 826-7, in the monastery of Breedon on the Hill in NW Leicestershire, by Abbot Eanmund (ruled 814x816-c.848). The premise seems clear enough in the Beowulf–Wiglaf sequence in the last fifth of Beowulf. With Old Norse analogues, Beowulf's kinship with Hygelac, friendship with Hrothgar, interest in Freawaru, later role as king and kinship with ‘Wiglaf’ are all argued to be the poet's invention, one fashioned partly on the model of Vergil's Aeneid, while the sequence of big names in the Geatish part of Beowulf, Offa of Angeln – Hygelac – Beowulf – Wiglaf, is taken to be a reference to leaders of Mercia: Offa – Cenwulf – Beornwulf – Wiglaf. Three tales from Viking mythology are presented as sources for morally defining moments in the poem. Beowulf's death and Wiglaf's uncrowned status at the end are used to date Beowulf to between 826, when Beornwulf died in battle, and 827, when the historical Wiglaf took over from an intermediary named Ludeca. It is concluded that Beowulf was Wiglaf's propaganda for succession, a requiem for Beornwulf from the man who wished to rule after him; that Wiglaf cast himself as his own ancestor; and that, in the words Eanmundes laf (‘Eanmund's legacy’, line 2611), nine lines after introducing Wiglaf (line 2602, head of Fitt XXXVI), the poet leaves us his signature.