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The Heroic AgeIssue 5Summer/Autumn 2001 |
Gæst, gender, and kin in Beowulf:
Consumption
of the Boundaries
Notes and
Bibliography
Notes
1.
Damico(1984) on the term ides
and aglaecwif. Also Menzer (1996)
andTaylor(1996).
2.
All Beowulf citations are from Klaeber.
3.
Alfano (1992) discusses instances
of gæst and gist in the poem.
4.
Dictionary references are to Simpson
and Weiner, eds. Oxford English Dictionary; Lewis
and Short, eds. A Latin Dictionary; Liddell
and Jones, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon and Supplement;
and Calvin Watkins, Ed. (1969)The
American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
5.
On theories of woman as the archaic feminine, see Kristeva (1982).
6.
Allen (1971: 132).
7.Overing 1990:81, Lees (1994),
reviews the specifically gendered views of the text.
.
9.
Earl 1979, Earl
1983, Hill 1989.
10.Richardson1997, Renoir1962.
11.Cohen1999:26
12.
Murnaghan 1987 on the shifting and
ironic roles of guests and hosts in the Odyssey. Women
provide baths and new clothing to guests, in a peaceful, domestic
version of male interrogation and reply between guest and host.
For an analysis of the literary reflexes of cultural tensions
in Homeric texts, see Redfield 1975.
Finley (1954) opened the discussion
of Homeric texts and the custom of potlatch, drawing on Marcel
Mauss' (1925) analysis in The Gift:
Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. For
a more recent critical view, see Herman
1987.
13.
Durrenberger 1992: chapter 5, "Exchange."
Miller's (1990:4) is the most comprehensive
discussion of feud in legal and economic terms. For a discussion
of the differences between blood and marriage relationships in
the feud process, see Miller, "The Bonds of Kinship,"
chapter 5. Miller focuses on an anthropological/economic view
of the legal and literary evidence for responsibilities to blood
and affines. For a more general overview of kinship, see the
collection of essays in Palsson and Durrenberger
1989. Mary Douglas' ideas in 'Purity and Danger' are suggestive
here, but do not fall within the scope of this article. See Davies
and Fouracre (1986:239-40) which
notes that "even in Iceland, despite the near absence of
any coercive role for legal institutions at all, and despite
a society probably more oriented towards interpersonal violence...people
tended to make peace through the courts in the end"; See
also Byock (1982:1), for the fact
that "feud stands at the core of the narrative, and its
operation reaches into the heart of Icelandic society. The dominant
concern of this society -- to channel violence into accepted
patterns of feud and to regulate conflict -- is reflected in
saga narrative". For legal homogeneity and complexity in
Iceland, see Dennis,Foote, and Perkins
1980.
14.
For a constructionist series of views, see . Halperin,
Winkler, and Froma Zeitlin 1990, Clover (1993),
Partner (1993). Heinrichs(1986:110-140),
Linke (1992: 265-288), and Jochens
(1996).
15.Orchard 1995: 30-7.
16.Edelman 1994:10.
17.Burger 1998: 117-30, 121.
18.As
many critics have noted, the use of psychoanalytic theory as
a means of exploring medieval texts is problematic. However,
the discourse of language and desire offered by Lacan and Kristeva
are productive of insights, especially in the realm of gender
and power. As Julia Kristeva (1980)
notes, women, loss, and origin are associated concepts.
19.Carlson 1967.
21.Miller1979.
22.Mellinkoff 1979 and 1981.
23.Butler
(1993: 136) notes that "gender
identity and its signs are performative in the sense that the
essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are
fabrications manufactured through corporal signs and other discursive
means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it
has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute
its reality.
24.
I borrow the term from Searle 1988.
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