St. Beowulf: Hagiography and Heroic Identity in Beowulf

Abstract:

Debates over the role of Christianity in Beowulf have not fully taken into account hagiographic models. Although saints' lives were among the first written materials to flourish in early medieval England, relatively little has been done to examine the influence of hagiography on Beowulf. After considering some of the reasons for the lack of such approaches, this essay examines Beowulf in light of hagiographic conventions and concepts, arguing that the Beowulf-poet invests the traditional warrior identity of the hero Beowulf with conceptions of sanctity found in saints' lives composed by Bede, Felix, and others. In the process, this essay challenges the prevailing "dramatic irony" view of the poem that divorces the religious understanding of the narrator from that of the characters. A thorough analysis reveals that characters and narrator speak a shared theological language and that the religious perspectives of narrator and dramatis personae are indistinguishable.