Dating Beowulf: Studies in Intimacy

Abstract

It has become a convention to open reviews of books written before 2020 with the caveat that we cannot judge with the same eyes anything published before the recent global pandemic and the impending realization of several dystopian scenarios (the environmental cataclysm, the encroachment of fascism in the world, the ongoing war in Ukraine). Fortunately, Beowulf the poem and its hero seem fitting for pondering dystopias, but unlike many contributors to Dating Beowulf, I do not think that they have much to offer us in terms of solutions, utopian or otherwise. It is nevertheless moving to see a group of scholars turn to an ancient literary work, seeking intimacy that will, at best, not be returned. Said differently, the project bespeaks a belief in art and humanities that we should keep alive and carry outside our fields and subfields, especially outside academia.Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver note in their introduction the urgency of reaching across disciplines. They hope that the individual essays “will shape critical conversations and knowledge about that particular poem, and [contribute] to a larger theoretical conversation in the humanities—beyond medieval studies—about intimacy as a critical term and its place in fields such as affect studies, queer theory, and histories of the emotions and the senses” (p. 19). Earlier on, the editors speak about the pressing need to include those historically excluded from the field; their generous, theoretically rich conceptualization of intimacy with Beowulf might help toward such an objective (p. 8). I commend Manchester University Press for making the volume available in open access. Yet the question of accessibility goes beyond the ability to obtain the actual book. While I appreciate the excited, sweeping tone of the introduction, I find it difficult to imagine a nonspecialist, or indeed a specialist without an immediate recall of all the theorists, deftly disentangling crucial passages requiring much theoretical sophistication. Let me quote one instance: “Dinshaw's queer historian, we recall, may be a queer historiographical fetishist who is ‘decidedly not nostalgic for wholeness and unity’ and yet ‘nonetheless desires an affective, even tactile relation to the past such as a relic provides’. If the touch imbues the historiographical act with latent intimacies, positing a queer fetish as its object multiplies their complexities but also the potential for intimacies that eschew the intimate as determined by the private, the known, and the lasting, in favour of the public, the anonymous, the fleeting, the ghostly, or even the utopian, as in José Esteban Muñoz's conception of ‘queer futurity’.” (p. 16). These are important points that should be explained as patiently and clearly as possible for full impact.Not surprising for a book that asks “is Beowulf on Grindr?” in its introduction (p. 2), Dating Beowulf abounds with queer discoveries. In “Beowulf and Andreas: Intimate Relations,” Irina Dumitrescu queers the Oedipal model of literary influence by Harold Bloom (the young poet metaphorically kills and displaces his father, the older poet, while having sex with the muse) by looking at the Andreas-poet's homage to and challenging of the Beowulf-poet's text. Dumitrescu's witty and erudite undertaking complicates even Stephen Guy-Bray's reconceptualization of Bloomian influence as a gay coupling between the younger and older poets, in his Loving in Verse: Poetic Influence as Erotic (2006). We cannot be certain about the Beowulf- and Andreas-poets’ gender, and so the male couple first imagined could be two lesbian nuns in drag or some other gender and sexuality configuration entirely. After all, as Dumitrescu writes, “If Andreas borrows Beowulf's clothing sometimes, the goal is . . . drag” (p. 259).Peter Buchanan's essay, “Beowulf, Bryher and the Blitz: A Queer History,” introduces the readers to Bryher's novel, “a queer, feminist masterpiece of documentary realism and modernist whimsy” (p. 280). The contributor writes charmingly about this charming book bristling with matter-of-fact toughness set during the WWII German bombardment of London. He finds occasion to describe Bryher's intimate circle, including the bisexual poet H. D. who, when first meeting Bryher, asked: “have you ever seen a puffin and what is it like?” (p. 282). While championing a playful femme medievalism, it is not necessary to distance oneself from more explicit butch adaptations, as Buchanan does in his endnote 74 (p. 303). I have no reason to defend Robert Zemeckis's disastrously bombastic Beowulf (a.k.a. Joliewulf [2007]), but why would not Santiago García and David Rubín's graphic Beowulf (2013) be worthy of closer inspection? The comic features: a handful of uncensored depictions of Beowulf's average endowment (unlike Zemeckis's film which only teases and blocks the viewer's gaze with various objects à la Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery [1997]); Grendel's grasping and pricking of said phallus with a tendril-like body part; and the monster's copious ejaculation into Beowulf's bare crotch. We have understood Grendel's mother's grapplings with Beowulf in erotic terms since at least Jane Chance's germinal essay “The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother” (Texas Studies in Literature and Language 22 [1980]). What would it mean for Grendel to desire sexual intimacy with Beowulf, and why are the Spanish artists García and Rubín imagining it so overtly?Beowulf might be “here for a good time, not a long time,” as the phrase goes on Grindr, and he never indicates whether he has gotten his Covid and monkeypox vaccinations. Also, do not ask for his political views. He could be DL and a pillow princess. There are certainly limitations of what we can expect from him. Negative examples, what not to do, and an occasional bittersweet consolation might be our best option. In “Community, Joy, and the Intimacy of Narrative in Beowulf,” Benjamin Saltzman imagines “narrative intimacy” with the potential to intersect with “communal intimacy,” resulting in “a profound experience of joy . . . in the poem” (p. 31). At the same time, he does not hide the dangers of any type of community-building. If communities by their definition always exclude others, or, even more insiduously, require their members to curtail a significant part of their selfhood (Saltzman draws on Roberto Esposito's work [p. 35]), then what hope is there for the important enterprise of creating a less noxious, more embracing community of early medieval English scholars around Beowulf? It is unreasonable to ask for specific, real-life guidelines from a piece of literary criticism, but the essay does bring up the issue.Donna Beth Ellard in “Beowulf and Babies” uncovers in backstories of Scyld and Beowulf the phenomenon of communities caring for babies who were abandoned by their parents. This is an insightful illumination of an aspect of a poem usually considered masculinist. Ellard writes, “As with the micro-narrative of Scyld, Beowulf's mention of childhood ‘survival’ introduces an ambivalence that manages complexity in terms of emotional resilience and transtemporal entanglement” (p. 110). “[E]motional resilience and transtemporal entanglement,” however, only work to produce two powerful warlords. The end result of careful, fulfilling communal parenting is a man who terrorizes all the tribes around him to keep his power (and protect his people).Maria Dahvana Headley's experimental and uneven translation (2020) envisions Beowulf as a Trump figure, which is unfair to the fictional barbarian, and Mary Dockray-Miller presents us with Wiglaf as an Obama figure in “Dating Wiglaf: Emotional Connections to the Younger Hero in Beowulf.” “Wiglaf is,” she summarizes, “young, loyal, brave, skilled, intuitive, and nurturing” (p. 311). He might come from a mixed ethnic background, as he is both a Swede and the Geatish king's relative. A more flexible web of allegiances between men can exist than the mere father-son relationship; Beowulf does not see the promise of the worthy successor that he has in front of him, and Wiglaf might not be interested (p. 305). Dockray-Miller suggests that Wiglaf leaves the poem without a trace because the current political system in Geatland cannot accommodate his “innovative heroic masculinity” (p. 304). I have a less optimistic reading of the situation. Nothing would stop Wiglaf from joining the Swedes when they go to subjugate the Geats. We know from contemporary conflicts that people of mixed ethnic backgrounds often have to prove their loyalty harder to the group in power, resorting to violence as needed.Beowulf provides only temporary consolation, with a bitter edge. You can remember moments of joy, all the more momentous because of the later tragedy, as in the case of Hildeburh (Mary Kate Hurley, “Elemental Intimacies: Agency in the Finnsburg Episode”). Or you can be comforted by the realization that scavenger animals have their own languages, beyond our comprehension, and that they will feast on what remains from us after our demise (Mo Pareles, “What the Raven told the Eagle: Animal Language and the Return of Loss in Beowulf”). Dating Beowulf reminds us of our own limitations and of the dream of a communion with an old, mysterious text that would give us answers despite ourselves, despite itself. To slightly modify the last line of Bryher's novel, with which Buchanan ends his essay (p. 299), “Oh dear . . . I do think it is very embarrassing to live in a dystopia.”