‘Beowulf’ and the Celtic World: The Uses of Evidence
Sporadic attempts have been made in the past to demonstrate direct connexions between the various Celtic literatures and Beowulf; I think it fair to say that the proposed links have always seemed tenuous or imaginary and have not been taken seriously by most students of the Old English poem. A centu...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1981
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 1981, Volume: 37, Pages: 109-160 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | Sporadic attempts have been made in the past to demonstrate direct connexions between the various Celtic literatures and Beowulf; I think it fair to say that the proposed links have always seemed tenuous or imaginary and have not been taken seriously by most students of the Old English poem. A century of desultory comparisons, leading to a negative result, by persons qualified in either Old English or Celtic or neither, does not, however, exhaust the subject or indicate its irrelevance. It seems to me that a determined attack on the subject may indicate desirable approaches and cautions which students of Beowulf could consider as they contemplate further work on the poem. I shall organise my remarks under five headings: the possibility of Irish (or other Celtic) influence on Beowulf in particular and on Old English literature in general; archaism in the language and metrics of ‘traditional’ verse; problems of archaism and anachronism in ‘traditional’ literature; the search for a text-history of Beowulf with its consequent issues of transmission and problems of dating; and general historical questions. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S036215290000667X |