Notes
1.
Elias 1994, 1:158. Also see endnote
22 in The History of Manners, where Elias discusses the
epic cycle.
2.
Despite the notable differences between Elias' response to Freud
and Foucault's rejection of psychoanalysis as a whole, both work
from the notion that the drives and instincts are, at least,
partially, constituted by language and culture.
3.
A. Kent Hieatt, "Introduction" to Hieatt
1967, 4.
4.
William V. Harris calls attention to Elais' neglect of classical
precursors in Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control
in Classical Antiquity (2001,
150ff).
5.
The Dictionary of Old English,
University of Toronto, in progress.
6.
The translations we cite are chosen because they are among the
most often used in classrooms, those of Kevin Crossley-Holland
(1968; repr. 1987); E. Talbot Donaldson
(1966); Charles W. Kennedy (1940);
Burton Raffel (1963; rpt. 1971);
Seamus Heaney (2000). All appear
in major text anthologies: Donaldson in Norton's English literature,
Raffel in Norton's world literature until it was recently replaced
by Heaney, Crossley-Holland in both Longman's British literature
and Prentice Hall's world literature, Kennedy in both Macmillan's
and St Martin's world literature and in Heath's British literature.
We have also included Howell D. Chickering (1977) because it
is a major dual-language text and, as Bjork and Niles describe
it, "the choice of many scholars who teach the poem"
(1993, 357), especially in advanced
courses.
7.
In Beowulf, bolgenmod appears twice, gebolgne
and gebulge once each, and gebolgen six times.
Since there are other words associated with kinds of anger, yrre
and hreoh, for example, one might be tempted to suggest
that the choice of forms of belgan is more a matter of
poetic variation or alliteration, but to do so would be to ignore
the similarity of contexts in which forms of belgan were
chosen by the poet.
8.
All quotations from the poem are cited by line numbers from Klaeber,
and all typographical features within the quoted Old English
text, such as words or letters inserted in brackets or italicized
letters, are Klaeber's as well. The translations are our own,
based on Klaeber's glossary unless otherwise noted, and created
with an eye more toward accuracy than elegance.
9.
He points out the "oral base to fratricidal violence",
and the awareness in the poem of feasting as a hostile metaphor
(Hill 1989, 21). Additionally, the
scene of the feast is represented as a form of primal scene,
whose violence affects Grendel, who listens from outside to the
sounds that exile him (Hill 1989,
23).
10.
Guilt here is both a moral construct and a literary and psychological
phenomenon. A good source for a more extended discussion of guilt
in literary history is John Carroll's Guilt:
The Grey Eminence Behind Character, History and Culture.
11.
Niles expands briefly on the notion of swelling in "Rewriting
Beowulf: " . . . for etymologically, [gebolgen]
derives from the verb (ge)belgan, 'to swell up' (cf. 'bellows').
The adjective refers to the way that-whether voluntarily or involuntarily,
as with rage-a person will expand his chest to maximum capacity
at the onset of a supreme physical test, perhaps terrifying others
and certainly packing in the breath that carries vital oxygen
to muscles that will soon be straining" (1993,
865). In suggesting that rage can be an involuntary response,
however, Niles fails to notice that Beowulf's rage, always appearing
as it does at appropriate times, is quite voluntary.
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