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Female Representations of Heroism in Old English Poetry University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2018 Breaking with tradition(?) : female representations of heroism in old english poetry. Kathryn A. Green University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Green, Kathryn A., "Breaking with tradition(?) : female representations of heroism in old english poetry." (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2971. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2971 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BREAKING WITH TRADITION(?): FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS OF HEROISM IN OLD ENGLISH POETRY By Kathryn A. Green B.A., University of Louisville, 1987 M.A., University of Louisville, 2012 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities Department of Comparative Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, KY May 2018 Copyright 2018 by Kathryn A. Green All rights reserved BREAKING WITH TRADITION(?): FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS OF HEROISM IN OLD ENGLISH POETRY By Kathryn A. Green B.A., University of Louisville, 1987 M.A., University of Louisville, 2012 Dissertation Approved on April 19, 2018 by the following Dissertation Committee: ___________________________________________ Dr. Blake Beattie _____________________________________________ Dr. Pamela Beattie ____________________________________________ Dr. Simona Bertacco ____________________________________________ Dr. Andrew Rabin ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Joyce Green, for her selflessness and unconditional love—a timeless heroine. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is made possible through the commitment and encouragement of my committee members. I would to thank my chair and faculty advisor Professor Blake Beattie for his guidance, kind words, and historical perspective which made this a better interdisciplinary project. I would like to thank Professor Pamela Beattie, my mentor, for her constructive criticism, immense patience, thought-provoking comments, and gifting me with several interesting articles and books including Key Concepts in Medieval Literature, which was not only timely but provided the foundation for this dissertation. I am grateful to Professor Simona Bertacco, my program director, for her incredible organizational skills and her straight-forward direction. Her attention to detail and expertise in translation concerns made me a better writer. I also want to thank her for introducing me to Brian Friel’s Translations and Juno Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: two unforgettable modern texts that inspired my thinking. I am also grateful to Professor Andrew Rabin, my outside reader, for his support and expertise in Anglo- Saxon studies and the Old English language. His class “Women in Medieval Literature” introduced me to a variety of female characters who appear in this dissertation. My committee has been extremely influential in my thinking and supportive during my entire tenure at the University of Louisville. I humbly thank you. I also want to thank Professor Elain Wise for her encouragement and all of her efforts on my behalf, and Professor Alan Golding for sound advice and inspiring my love iv of female poets and women in poetry. I am appreciative of Brenda Mary Walker whose early and thorough investigation of the women in Anglo-Saxon literature informed my research and got me started. I am also grateful to Professor Carmen Hardin for our long conversations, her generosity, and her passion for Ecclesiastical Latin. I especially want to recognize the Anglo-Saxons and the Old English poets for their beautiful literature and language. It has been my tremendous privilege and my joy to engage with them on such an intimate level. Finally, I want to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to my family: Donna DeLucia, Samuel DeLucia-Green, Kellye Green, and Donald and Joyce Green, who throughout my academic career have put their lives on hold to be physically and emotionally supportive in the best possible ways. Because of their love, I have been able to pursue my dreams. v ABSTRACT BREAKING WITH TRADITION(?): FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS OF HEROISM IN OLD ENGLISH POETRY Kathryn A. Green April 19, 2018 For the Anglo-Saxons, strength, bravery, and the willingness to put oneself in harm’s way for king and kingdom were not only part of contemporary society but recurring themes in Old English literature. Poems like Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon reinforce the important bond between lord and retainer and the heroic ethos key to that relationship. Women were not historically part of this relationship and, therefore, not subject to the heroic code in the same way; consequently, they are rarely seen as anything more than conventional mothers, queens, wives, sisters, daughters, and virgins, all identified by their relationships to men, the “real” heroes in the literature. The poets of Beowulf, Judith, and Juliana, expanded this tradition by introducing the Anglo-Saxon world to a new kind of female character, a physically powerful heroine. By constructing heroines that connect Germanic tradition with changing Christian sensibilities, poets not only reveal their appreciation for strong women in literature but their willingness to afford women the opportunity to break with tradition and perform autonomously. The characters of Grendel’s mother, Judith, and Juliana serve as primary examples for this analysis. This dissertation identifies these three figures as exhibiting a heroic ethos, explores how they fit into and deviate from the defined Old English heroic vi ideal, and examines select character traits in order to reveal how their unique performances broaden the conventional definition of a hero. Chapter I centers on the Anglo-Saxon heroic ideal and situates both men and women within the tradition. It emphasizes how the motivational factors driving heroic behavior differ between the sexes by examining specific performances within the genre. Chapters II, III, and IV, are individual case studies focusing on Grendel’s mother, Judith, and Juliana, respectively, emphasizing one significant way each serves to shape a new version of the heroic ideal. Chapter V focuses on four of the major similarities identified between the characters and the texts in which they appear—the trope of self-sufficiency, the “manly” woman, the symbol of the head, and the female voice—which demonstrates how these specific females engage with certain themes and symbols embedded within heroic poetry. Finally, the conclusion provides a collective view of the three characters which shows how Old English poets created powerful, engaging female heroines that audiences could believe in. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................1 1 Methodology ...................................................................................................7 2 Issues of Dating Old English Poetry .............................................................11 3 Germanic Society and Anglo-Saxon Women ...............................................12 CHAPTER I THE HEROIC TRADITION.................................................................19 1 The Masculine Heroic Ideal ..........................................................................19 2 Women’s Participation in the Heroic Ideal ...................................................26 CHAPTER II GRENDEL’S MOTHER: CHANNEL OF FAITH .............................45 1 The Centrality of Grendel’s Mother .............................................................48 2 Breaking with Tradition ................................................................................60 3 Male Domination ..........................................................................................63 3.1 A Masculine Heroic Ethos ................................................................66 4 The Scariest Thing about Grendel’s Mother .................................................73 5 Grendel’s Mother as a Channel of Faith .......................................................75 CHAPTER III JUDITH: LEADER OF MEN ............................................................80 1 The Historical Judith/Judith ..........................................................................81 viii 2 The Anglo-Saxon Poet’s Judith ....................................................................88 3 Expanding the Heroic Ideal ........................................................................104
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