THE HERO ON THE EDGE: CONSTRUCTIONS OF HEROISM IN BEOWULF JN

THE CONTEXT OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL EPIC

by

Rodger Ian Wilkie

B.A. University of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, 1988

M.A. University of New Brunswick, 1993

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in the Graduate Academic Unit of English

Supervisor: Anne Klinck, Ph.D., English

Examining Board: Edmund Biden, Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Chair James Noble, Ph.D., English John Geyssen, Ph.D., Classics and Ancient History Christoph Lorey, Ph.D., Culture and Language Studies

External Examiner: Anne Dooley, Ph.D., Celtic Studies, University of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto

This dissertation is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK

April, 2007

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Table of Contents

List of Tables iii

Acknowledgements iv

Abstract ix

Note on the Presentation of Primary Texts and Translations x

Introduction: A Defence of Speculation 1

Chapter One: The Importance of Being Wild: Beowulf s Furor Heroicus 20

Chapter Two: Gendering the Hero: Beowulf and the Construction of Masculinity.. 86

Chapter Three: Hero as Other, Hero as Monster, Hero as Cyborg 146

Conclusion and Reflections: Of Wild Men, Manly Men, Monsters, and Cyborgs .. 201

Works Cited 209

Curriculum Vitae iii

List of Tables

Table 1: Masculine pronouns and epithets used to refer to Grendel's mother ... 134

Table 2: Occurrences of simplex hyrde (grammatically masc.) in Beowulf .... 140 iv

Acknowledgments

I began my Ph.D. in September of 1993, the month I turned 28.1 am now 41, about half way to 42: this degree, whether I have been in pursuit of it or in hiding from it, has consumed about a third of my life. Now, it is ending. And with only one last step to go, I would like to acknowledge some of the many people to whom I owe so much. Should the list seem long, I offer only the explanation that the route to this end has been similarly long and that the manuscript that follows represents not merely a course of study but also an expenditure of life that I could not have imagined when I began and that, had I imagined it, would surely have persuaded me to choose another path. I'm glad I didn't.

First, of course, I need to thank my supervisor, Dr. Anne Klinck for teaching me

Old English, and for her many comments and contributions, her challenging questions, her patience in working with an often-temperamental grad student, her help with Latin, and her generosity in agreeing to work with me again after I had disappeared for five years without saying a word.

Thanks are also due to my departmental readers, Drs. Christa Canitz of the UNB

English Department and Andrea Schutz of the STU Department of English Language and

Literature. Dr. Canitz's many comments on both the details of the manuscript and the structure and validity of the argument have been invaluable, and will continue to be so as the project is revised toward publication. Among Dr. Schutz's contributions are the recognition of the problematic nature of categories themselves, and a number of interesting connections between the gender argument and the cyborg argument. Without her support, especially where the latter argument is concerned, I would not have been able to write the dissertation that I wanted to write. V

I would also like to thank the UNB examining committee members, Dr. Christoph

Lorey of the Culture and Language Studies Department, Dr. John Geyssen of the Classics

Department, and Dr. James Noble of the English Department (UNBSJ), for their interest in the project and for the time, thought, and effort they put into reviewing it. Dr. Geyssen deserves additional thanks for allowing me to audit his Latin class in 2004-05.

I owe many thanks for many reasons to my external examiner, Dr. Ann Dooley of the Celtic Studies Department at the University of St. Michael's College, University of

Toronto. The current project is in the culmination of a line of thought that I began to follow as an undergraduate in a seminar she conducted in Medieval Celtic Literature in

1990-91. It was she who introduced me to both the Tain Bo Cuailnge and the theories of

Georges Dumezil, and her example, along with that of Dr. David Klausner of the U. of T.

Centre for Medieval Studies, that inspired me to pursue Medieval Literature at the graduate level. That she was willing to be involved again so many years later is something for which I will always be grateful.

I am also grateful to the UNB English Department as a whole for accepting me back after I had disappeared without notice for several years. The department, and particularly the members of the Graduate Committee in the spring of 2002, at that time headed by Dr.

Mary Rimmer, treated me far better than I deserved. Director of Graduate Studies Dr.

John Ball has also been very helpful, both in his capacity as an administrator and in directing me toward the work of Homi Bhabha, upon which much of the argument of

Chapter Three hinges.

I must also thank my students, colleagues, and friends at St. Thomas University for their ongoing interest and encouragement. In particular, I would like to thank Drs. Barry Craig and Sara MacDonald, my co-instructors in the Aquinas Programme. Our many classes on both the Iliad and the Aeneid over the last four years have contributed to my understanding of those works and thus to the development of this dissertation. The good will and frequent inquiries of Drs. David Ingham, Alan Bourassa, Kathleen McConnell,

Elizabeth McKim, Ranall Ingalls, Shawn Narine, Mark Nyvlt, and Tom Bateman, Kitty

Elton, and my students Meghan Loch and Brad Young, have meant a great deal to me.

Past students whose good will has also been important include Grace Esty, Shawn

Stevenson, Corinne Gilroy, and Darrel Rhodenizer, all of whom were members of the

Medieval Literature course that I taught in 2003-04.

I would also like to thank my closest friend, Joe DeSommer, not only for his good wishes but also and especially for our conversations, early on, on the topic of the hero as cyborg. It was in these conversations that the earliest form of that argument took shape.

I am grateful, as well, to the late Dr. Larry Lane, who, had he survived, would have been a member of my dissertation committee. Dr. Lane's capacious and generous mind provided a model to be both admired and followed, and his suggestions in the early stages of this project, in which he showed great interest, are here thankfully acknowledged.

Some of the best advice I ever received came long ago from my friend and early mentor Dr. Kathleen Scherf, formerly of the UNB English Department and now with the

University of Calgary. On the topic of writing a thesis, Dr. Scherf once advised a room full of young graduate students always to remember that their work belonged to them, and that they should never hesitate to assert their ownership. Through following this advice, sometimes a little bull-headedly, I was able to maintain the integrity of my work vii despite the often-conflicting suggestions and demands that are inevitable in such a project.

An undertaking such as this one is never just the result of study: it is the product of a life whose energy, texture, and currents underlie every page, paragraph, and punctuation mark. Any adequate list of acknowledgements must also, therefore, include my dear and whimsical friends Adam Nashman and Bryan Hachey. It must include the many members of UNB's Stage Left Theatre company between 1992 and 1997, particularly Eric Hill, Greg and Heather Doran, Paula Dawson, Matt Tierney, Melinda

Arsenault, Tina Buott, Lance Ceasar, Steve Maclsaac, and Jon Jurmain. The frequent inquiries and good wishes of my friends in the Fredericton Road Runners Club, particularly Roy, Liz, Shannon, Jason, Tony, John, Harry, and Sandy, have also been appreciated. The encouragement of my friends and colleagues at the UNB Writing

Centre, particularly my good friend Dr. Richard Spacek, are also gratefully acknowledged. And though they have been physically distant, my oldest friends Andreas

Gausrab and Roger Briant are present here as they are present in all that I do.

I must also thank my father, Ronald H. Wilkie (1934 - 1988). Though he did not have the opportunity to attend university himself, he loved learning all his life and passed this love, along with much else, to me. I wish he could have been here: he would have been very happy. My success is in many ways his.

Finally and most importantly, I must thank my wife, Heather Brander. Were it not for her suggestion, I would never have returned to my studies, and were it not for her support, patience, and many sacrifices, I could never have completed this or any viii dissertation. Her love has been the greatest gift of my life, and I dedicate this project, and all good things that flow from its completion, to her. ix

Abstract

One defining attribute of ancient and medieval epic heroes is a rage through which the hero threatens his own society. Traces of heroic rage, prominent in such figures as the

Greek Achilles and the Irish Cu Chulainn, are detectable in Beowulf, and this rage anchors Beowulf within the context of Indo-European epic heroism. Yet the question of how epic texts construct epic heroes remains. This study considers such heroes generally, and Beowulf specifically, as liminal figures inhabiting the fluid boundaries between order/disorder, masculine/feminine, us/them, human/monstrous, and organic/technological. Through violent and verbal public performances against a disordered or disordering other, the hero emerges as an agent of his society's masculinity.

He also emerges not only as monstrous, but also as a specific kind of monster, a cyborg, and thus paradoxically as both agent of and tool for violence. X

Note on the Presentation of Primary Texts and Translations

The primary sources for this study are written in a variety of languages—a wider variety

than I have mastered. Thus, the following system is employed. Quotations from Old

English are given in the original and followed by my translations. Works written in

languages other than Old English are quoted in translation. In the case of long quotations,

the original appears in a footnote. In the case of short quotations, the original follows the

translation in the text, except for quotations taken from Greek, for which transliterations

are instead supplied. In the case of such transliterations, the correspondences between

Greek and Roman letters are the expected ones and thus require no comment, with the possible exceptions that r\ is represented by e, co by o, v byy for simple vowels and by u

for diphthongs, and % by ch. 1

Introduction:

A Defence of Speculation

"'A land that has no more legends,' says the poet, 'is a land condemned to

die of cold.' This may well be true. But a people without myths is already

dead" (Dumezil 1969, 3).

Few works of Medieval English literature are more studied and more written about than

Beowulf. A poem of notoriously indeterminate origin, Beowulf has been mined for historical, archaeological, philosophical, religious, mythological, and philological data, and since the 1930s has even come to be appreciated as a story, and a rather good story at that. The main character himself has been variously interpreted as a reflex of a pagan god, a pagan hero, a Christian hero, a Christ figure, an ideal warrior-king, a less than ideal warrior-king, and a downright travesty of a warrior king wallowing in ignorance and sin. He is praised and condemned, saved and damned—an admonitory paragon of everything a good man should aspire to and shun while stumbling toward the ecumenical mead-hall of dubious salvation where monks lament, valkyries pour drinks, and Ingeld arm-wrestles Christ to a draw.

Whatever else he may be, though—and he may be any or all of these things—

Beowulf is a hero. It is as a hero that he presents himself upon a first reading of the poem in which he lives, and it is as a hero that he has made and continues to make his strongest impression upon readers both specialist and generalist. But he is not just a hero in the general sense: he is an epic hero in a specific cultural model—the Indo-European model. 2 As such, he can claim for his kindred such figures as Achilles, Cu Chulainn, Aeneas and

Turnus, Siegfried, Roland, and a long list of others. The following study, therefore, offers an interpretation of Beowulf in the light of the heroic tradition as reflected in Indo-

European literature. In comparing Beowulf to other works of heroic literature including

The Iliad, TheAeneid, and The Tain Bo Cuailnge, I discuss the tensions that exist between the hero and his society, and offer explanations for these tensions from a variety of theoretical points of view. Specific topics for exploration include the hero's rage, the gendered construction of his identity, and his function as a monstrous—and technologically modified—other.

Inevitably, my methodology is comparative. My primary texts are not confined to the corpus of Old English literature, but rather offer a sampling of the literatures of various Indo-European peoples, particularly—for reasons primarily of keeping the materials manageable—those in the western regions of the Indo-European diaspora, that may be considered part of the cultural context of early medieval Western Europe. Thus, a study of the Indie Mahabharata, which would undoubtedly have been both interesting and rewarding, is simply outside the scope of this study and will have to remain as a tantalizing possibility for future research. Similarly, much as Gilgamesh has long been a favourite, it is not referred to more than tangentially here as it belongs to the Semitic, not the Indo-European, literary/mythological corpus. The primary texts I have selected are used in two complementary ways: to establish patterns to which Beowulf can then be

compared, and to offer corroborating evidence for patterns identified in Beowulf.

A word about the specific texts I have chosen is in order here. The most obvious

choice is the Iliad, long and justly held to be the fountainhead of much of the best in 3 Western literature generally and heroic literature specifically: Achilles is simply too important a hero to ignore. The case for the Aeneid is not quite so straightforward, not least because Virgil's poem is so self-consciously literary, a circumstance that might

argue against its inclusion in a study focusing on patterns that seem to predate literacy itself. However, I have long suspected Turnus of harbouring qualities far more primitive—to use a politically problematic but nonetheless accurate term—than his more

refined and ultimately victorious counterpart Aeneas. It was thus in the hopes of

exploring this fascinating character that I included Virgil's epic; references to characters

other than Turnus simply grew out of the demands of my research. Finally, there is the

Tain. A number of reasons for including this tale present themselves. Bringing in a work with origins closer to Beowulf's own time and place than the Classical epics boast, could

only be constructive given the nature of the project. Moreover, some of the most

interesting work on Indo-European heroism gives Cu Chulainn a prominent place; he

might, therefore, serve as a useful mirror for Beowulf, on whom relatively little work, in

the context of Indo-European heroism, has been done.

That the works in question are drawn from disparate cultures and periods may

make some readers uncomfortable with the cultural and chronological distances involved.

Comparisons of epic heroes from different cultures are common, however, indeed

standard, not just in older scholarship but also in scholarship published in the present

decade (see, especially, Miller's The Epic Hero). What has always fascinated me in the

figure of the hero is that so many similarities should be apparent in spite of just such

chronological and cultural differences. Thus, though one of my readers suggests that I

may be "comparing apples and oranges," a more apt analogy might be that I am 4 comparing varieties of apple. And though the orchard is extensive, I have in fact confined myself to a relatively small corner of it. Many authorities cited in the following pages are far more wide-ranging.

Because the Indo-European language group is characterized by many common mythological elements, the discussion of Indo-European heroism often takes a mythological slant. As the current study acknowledges the frequently close relationship between myth and epic, and as myth criticism has long been viewed as suspect, some discussion of this body of scholarship is also appropriate. Beowulf has often been read in the context of one body of myth or another. Mullenhoff interprets the poem in the light of the nature mythology popular during the latter half of the nineteenth century, seeing

Grendel and his mother as personifications of the North Sea, Beowulf s fight against them as a season myth about the checking of the floods, the dragon as an incarnation of winter, and Beowulf s death at its hands as another season myth (in Klaeber xxiv-xxv), an interpretation influential in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century studies of the poem. Blackburn (1897) argues that the poem's Christian elements are interpolations, and that a pagan version without such elements once existed (225), a position accepted by

H.M. Chadwick (1907). Panzer (1910) suggests that the Bear's Son folktale motif can

account for much of Beowulf s character and behaviour (in Klaeber xii), an argument developed most fully and compellingly in Stitt's Beowulf and the Bear's Son (1992). Von

Sydow (1914), on the other hand, suggests that the episodes focusing on Grendel and his mother originate in Celtic folklore, specifically in the hand and child motif (in Carney 92-

102). The connection of Beowulf to Celtic literature, and hence to Celtic mythology, has been a subject of considerable disagreement over the decades of modern Beowulf 5 scholarship, with critics such as Carney (1955), Martin Puhvel (1979, 1998), and

Scowcroft (1999) arguing for a direct Celtic influence on the Germanic tale and others, such as Jorgensen (1978), arguing against any connection between the two, while yet others, such as Nagy (1985) and McHugh (1987), discuss Beowulf in the context of Celtic literature and mythology with reference to their shared Indo-European heritage. Taking a

different but still essentially mythic approach to the poem, Glosecki (1989) argues that the narrative displays reflexes of the ancient form of shamanism that originated in central

Asia and can be found in many cultures of both the Old and the New Worlds. In a more

explicitly Germanic context, Chambers and Klaeber list many apparent parallels

including references to the bear's son motif as noted above, and the functions of Sceaf,

Scyld and Beow as agricultural deities (Chambers 41-97, Klaeber xxiv-xxvii). Dronke

(1969), among others, sees an echo of the Norse Ragnarok myth in the killing of

Herebeald by HaeScyn, and Damico (1983) identifies Wealhbeow, Hildeburh, and

Grendel's mother as the demythologized remnants of Valkyries. The number of

mythological readings that have been attempted with this poem is legion—to say nothing

of the many Christian readings that, from a non-Christian point of view, must be also

regarded as mythological.

Mythological readings, however, are not uniformly accepted. They have in fact

been seen as methodologically problematic since at least the early decades of the

twentieth century, and continue to be held in suspicion. The comments of two influential

scholars, one early and one recent, illustrate the nature of the methodological criticisms in

question. Lawrence (1909) rejects mythological readings of the poem in general,

including Mullenhoff s attempt to read it in the context of nineteenth-century nature 6 mythology, suggesting that "the fire-drake and Grendel and the she-demon are more terrible when conceived as uncanny and abominable beings whose activities in the world can only be dimly imagined by men than they are when made mere personifications of the forces of nature" (272-73). In his later and more comprehensive study of Beowulf,

Lawrence expands upon his anti-mythological stance, referring to mythological interpretations of the poem as "a series of unproven hypotheses," and suggesting that

"The whole theory hangs in the air, a creation of the imagination" (1928, 147). Then, conceding that "Perhaps these ingenious guesses—more than one of them—have some measure of truth in them," he states, "it all lies too far in the mists of the past for analysis," and suggests that "The reason why mythological hypotheses were so readily received is really that this method of interpreting popular literature, and artistic literature based on traditional sources, was a widely accepted fashion among scholars" (1928, 148).

Lawrence then goes on to remark, "It is especially disquieting that the mythologists themselves so often disagree as to the meaning of a myth. They cannot all be right.

Which man should be believed?" (1928, 149).

More recently, Niles identifies what he calls a "mythic fallacy"—the assumption that the "master narratives, or myths" that are often believed to underlie certain texts, in

fact lend those texts their "chief significance and value" (1997, 216), or in other words

that the search for myth in literature often places the literature itself in a secondary

position relative to the myths for which it functions, or is assumed to function, as a

medium. He sees such criticism as "reductive and totalizing" (1997, 223), and suggests

that "Any approach to Beowulf that reduces a long, involuted narrative action into a

single pattern of initiation or a single clash of demiurges is missing too much" (1997, 7 224). Niles goes on to note that if a particular reading has nothing to say about matters obviously important to the poet—such as feud, gift-giving, dynastic succession, leader- thane loyalties, exogamy, fosterage, or wergild—"it is missing too much." Commenting on the Jungian approach as one example of mythical interpretations generally, he continues, "Perhaps the most important question ... is not 'Is it a true account of the poem?' but 'Is it a complete enough account of the poem's particulars to satisfy our desire for period-specific, socially grounded understanding?'" He suggests that myth criticism "can only fall to the ground of its own weight at such time as it ceases to offer answers to the kinds of questions that critics are increasingly inclined to ask" (1997, 224), and finally concludes that "We will continue to spin out such theories all the same, at the risk of having them seem quaint to future eyes" (1997, 232).

The two critics, separated by seven decades and at least as many apparent revolutions in critical practice, have much in common. Both comment, quite scathingly,

on the speculative tendencies of myth criticism—on the non-provability of many of its

claims, for instance, and on the danger of emphasizing apparent myths at the risk of de-

emphasizing the literary creations themselves. These pitfalls are certainly real, and

Lawrence and Niles' concerns therefore well founded: myth criticism does run the risk of

projecting what it purports to discover, and those who engage in myth criticism must

constantly be aware of this hazard.

However, Lawrence and Niles also share certain assumptions, and are occupied

by certain concerns, the validity of which is by no means self-evident. Both, for instance,

assume that there is a right way—one right way—to interpret the poem. One of

Lawrence's chief complaints about mythological criticism is that there are so many myths 8 to choose from and that, as he says, the mythologists themselves frequently disagree.

While he is certainly correct in asserting the impossibility of every critic being right, his assumption that only one can be right is misguided, as is the accompanying assumption that a question is only worth asking if it leads to a definite answer. Lawrence is right, in other words, in claiming that the answers to many mythically oriented questions lie "far in the mists of the past," but he is wrong in concluding that such distance invalidates the questions themselves—wrong, that is, in concluding or perhaps assuming that only the prospect of a definite, unambiguous answer makes a question worth asking, and that the goal of any question must necessarily be the attainment of such an answer. Considering what little actually can be known about Beowulf—the impossibility, for instance, of agreement even on such basic questions as the century of its composition and the nature of the audience for which it was composed—the setting of such a procrustean limit upon critical speculation would preclude innumerable questions, and thus innumerable potential insights, not only into the poem itself and the mindset of the poet but into the mindsets of his many unknowable but nonetheless real antecedents as well.

Niles betrays a similar tendency to restrict critical inquiry to that, and only that, which is susceptible to a more or less quantitative analysis. He provides a fairly specific list of what he sees as acceptable avenues of inquiry into the poem, and uses as his criterion for validity the rather crude method of being guided by the poet's own emphasis. The assumptions here are that the interests of the critic must necessarily align with those of the poet, that the poet was fully aware of every possible meaningful interpretation of every detail of the poem, and that in the act of composition he was not in any way influenced by psychological, historical, or mythico-religious factors of which he 9 was not completely aware. Niles' criteria for valid inquiry, in other words, are no less restrictive than Lawrence's, and his approach no less "reductive and totalizing" than the one that he condemns. One might even say that an approach that limits itself to the societal minutiae preferred by Niles is missing at least as much as an approach that seeks to understand a text through speculation upon the mythic patterns that may underlie and, perhaps only on an unconscious and thus inevitably unquantifiable level, inform it.

We come now to a key difference between the two critics: their attitudes toward scholarly fashion. Both allude to scholarly fashion—Lawrence in his assertion that arguments founded on the myth criticism of the nineteenth century were accepted merely because such criticism was fashionable, and Niles in his suggestion that mythological interpretations of the poem may look "quaint to future eyes." Lawrence, of course, is using fashion as a pejorative term insofar as he sees it as an insufficient reason for accepting any argument and condemns many mythical arguments, quite rightly, on the grounds that fashion had played a role in their acceptance; responsible scholarship, one hopes, demands that fashion be rejected out of hand—and perhaps that studies dealing with fashionable topics or employing fashionable theoretical models be treated with greater-than-usual suspicion.

With Niles, however, the case is otherwise. He condemns mythological criticism because it does not "satisfy our desire for period-specific, socially-grounded understanding," and does not answer "the kinds of questions that critics are increasingly

inclined to ask." Here, one might wonder whether every school of criticism must conform to the approach that Niles prefers. Nothing, for example, about a mythic reading of the poem necessarily excludes a "period-specific, socially grounded understanding." The two 10 approaches are based on different assumptions and ask different questions. One may just as well condemn period-specific, socially grounded criticism on the basis that it is insufficiently mythical. The attempt to do so, however, even though it employs the same

logic Niles uses, would fly in the face of what might be called critical desire: the desire,

on the part of critics, to have only certain types of question admitted to their community

of discourse. In short, Niles is appealing to fashion. Where Lawrence identifies and

rejects an argumentum adpopulum fallacy, Niles employs one as though it were actually

an argument. Niles is of course correct in his assertion that myth criticism is not currently

fashionable; where he goes astray is in assuming that this circumstance has any bearing

on the validity of myth criticism itself.

So the case against myth criticism, while persuasive in many of its elements, is by

no means clear-cut; in fact, it is based largely upon critical desire—or, to be even more

blunt, upon the preferences of the scholarly in-crowd. But what are the virtues, or at least

the potential virtues, of such criticism? If it does not restrict itself to the tangible,

quantifiable elements of any given text, of what use can it possibly be? The question is

not easily answered, and it can only be answered honestly if I am at least as scrupulous in

identifying my own assumptions and biases as I have been unscrupulous in identifying

those of others. Here, then, are the assumptions and principles upon which my approach

to Beowulf-—and in fact my approach to literary scholarship as a whole—is based:

1. a poem, even an ancient poem, is—as Tolkien (1936) has amply demonstrated—a

work of art, and a source of historical, philological, religious, or mythic

understanding only second, and a comparatively distant second at that;

2. a work of art need not have only one single meaning or one single proper 11

interpretation; it is not an argument and can thus embrace different or even

opposing ideas or bodies of ideas without being invalidated by the resulting

logical contradictions1;

3. myth criticism is one possible method of analysis among many; as a method of

analysis, it is concerned with narrative and ideological patterns that underlie or

may underlie certain works—patterns of which the author(s) of the work(s) in

question may or may not have been aware;

4. the conclusions drawn from myth criticism must often, given the nature of the

evidence, remain speculative, but questions whose answers must often remain

speculative are still worth asking insofar as such questions encourage the

contemplation and appreciation of the work(s) with which they are concerned;

5. the concerns of the critic need not be the same as the concerns of the poet;

6. and finally, the popularity of a given method of analysis has no bearing on that

method's value.

The reader is not to conclude from the foregoing that I accept all manifestations of myth criticism equally and uncritically. The nature mythology that informed much of the early analysis of Beowulf, for example—and that tends to serve as the whipping boy for those who would disparage myth criticism generally—has been long and justly disregarded. It was unsystematic and based, as Lawrence and others have pointed out, upon both unrestrained imagination and the assumption that the poet simply got the story wrong.

Not all mythically based approaches, however, are so unsystematic. One approach that

1 For example, a work may have been written to an explicitly Christian agenda and yet employ images and narrative patterns that predate Christianity. Such a work, and even the same passages or elements in such a work, would then be susceptible to analyses that privileged Christianity on the one hand and discounted it 12 recommends itself, though it may seem dated to many, is the approach that Georges

Dumezil developed in his life-long study of Indo-European religion and society.

Dumezil's tripartite ideology provides a useful theoretical backdrop for the

current study. In summary, Dumezil's theory is as follows. Ancient Indo-European

society and religion were organized according to a tripartite model, with three overall

functions reflected by three categories of persons and three categories of gods. The first,

or sovereignty, function was concerned with sacred kingship and priesthood. The second,

or warrior, function was concerned with force and those who used it. The third, or

fecundity, function was concerned with such operations as farming, labouring, and

reproduction, among others—those operations upon which any society depends for its

physical continuity and prosperity. Clear examples of this tripartite system can be seen at

the eastern and western extremes of the Indo-European world,2 in the caste system of

India and the organization of ancient Roman and Celtic society respectively (Dumezil

1966, 148-75). The three-estate system of medieval Western Europe—those who pray,

those who fight, and those who work the fields—also bears a remarkable similarity to the

pattern Dumezil describes. As one of my readers pointed out to me,3 despite the currently

unfashionable status of Dumezil's theories, one cannot escape the fact that "he just

explains so much." In fact, he contends in many of his works, including Horace et les

Curiaces, Archaic Roman Religion, and The Destiny of the Warrior, that reflexes of this

archaic pattern can be found in the myths and social organization, and more importantly

entirely on the other, depending on the nature of the questions being asked. 2 It may be worth mentioning that the term Indo-European is cultural-linguistic, not racial, in its application. Indo-European peoples are thus defined not by any physical or quasi-biological criterion, but rather by virtue of their speaking a language whose grammar, syntax, and lexicon identify it as belonging to that particular group. 3 Andrea Schutz, in conversation. 13 the epic literature, of many Indo-European peoples, including the Germanic peoples of ancient and medieval Europe.

Unsurprisingly, Dumezil's ideas have not met with universal acceptance.

Criticism of his theories can be broken roughly into two categories—methodological and ideological—with earlier critics falling primarily into the first group and more recent falling primarily into the second. Methodological criticism has often come from specialists in the various fields to which Dumezil's wide-ranging interests have taken him. Thieme has criticized his interpretation of certain Sanskrit words as well as his contention that Mitra and Varuna constitute a sovereign pair of gods illustrative of the hypothesized first function (Littleton 1973, 186 - 88), and Kuiper (1961) offers an interpretation of Vedic mythology based not upon Dumezil's three social functions but rather upon geographic orientation. Rose questions Dumezil's interpretation of certain

Roman deities in that he often relies on sources "with no popular tradition, but learned reconstructions" (1947, 186), and suggests instead that the Romans based their gods upon the notion of numen (divine power or essence), seeing them as powerful to the degree that they possessed this divine substance (1948, 21-22). Lambrechts, moreover, rejects

Dumezil's interpretation of Mars as a second-function deity (Littleton 1973,201).

Dumezil has also been accused of selective interpretation of his source texts, for instance of over-reliance on the one-handedness of Tyr in his assertion that this Germanic god is a sovereignty (i.e., first-function) figure associated with the making of contracts (Dumezil

1973, 45-48) when his actions might just as easily place him in the second, or warrior, function (Haugen 860-61; Strutynski 31,43).

Another methodological criticism is the assertion that Dumezil is "not dealing 14 with typical Indo-European schemes, but with general human ones" (Belier 1996, 37).

Brough has proposed that all three functions appear in the Old Testament.4 Dumezil has responded that Brough is misapplying his system—that, unlike the proto-Indo-Europeans who recognized the trifunctional structure of their society and pantheon, the Hebrews had no such recognition (Littleton 1973,199-200). That is, according to Dumezil, Brough was bending over backward to find a way to apply a system that, in an Indo-European

context, was self-evident in that it was already present and apparent in the relevant texts.

The Indo-European division of the world into three functions, then, was systematic and was done in full awareness (Belier 1996, 41) while the individual functions, themselves perhaps extant in and apparent to any society, did not constitute discrete structural units in non-Indo-European religion or social structure.5 In other words, though the functions themselves may be apparent to any thoughtful civilization, the trifunctional pattern is

interwoven into Indo-European myth to a degree unmatched by any other society.6

Criticisms of Dumezil, however, are not exclusively methodological; they are also

ideological: he has often been criticized because his politics are too far to the right for many people's comfort. He has described himself as "un homme de la droite" (Lincoln

1999, 124)—an admission hardly likely to endear him to the predominantly left-leaning

4 He refers not just generally to the aspects of "God of the Covenant," which he associates with the Mitra- aspect of the first function, the 'jealous God," which he associates with the Varuna-aspect of the first function, the "Lord Almighty", which he associates with the second function, and the Lord Provider, who makes the crops grow and the world blossom, which he associates with the third function (Brough 72), but also and more specifically to the Book of Judges (74-84). 5 Belier traces this line of thought a little further, suggesting that the bipartitioning of the sovereignty function "is important because the non-universal nature of the tripartition is demonstrated by this characteristic bipartition of the first function alone" (1996, 57). He further suggests that this bipartitioning is reflected in the second function in the savage and chivalric, or antisocial and social, warrior-types respectively. Belier also sees a connection between the contractual aspect of the first function and the second function, and the magical/sacred aspect of the first function and the third function (1996, 58). 6 For an extended and relatively recent assessment of Dumezil's system, see Belier's Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumezil's "Ideologie Tripartie" (1991). 15 schools of criticism that have flourished in the humanities since the end of World War

II. Much, moreover, has been made of his sympathy during the pre-war period for

Charles Maurras, the "ideological master of Vichy France" (Lincoln 1991, 235). One particularly hostile critic, Arnaldo Momigliano, dwells much on DumeziPs relationships

established during the pre-war years, especially those with Maurras as noted above, and with Maurras's close associate Pierre Gaxotte, publisher of the "right-wing organ"

Candide (1984, 314-15), who offered no opposition to Nazism during the period of 1938-

39. Momigliano refers to the Dumezilian functions as "corporations" (1984, 317), and

suggests that "the new commitment, dating precisely to 1938, to a tripartite and hierarchical picture of Indo-European society, has some connection with ideas that were

then current in Nazi and Fascist circles of a hierarchical and corporatist society" (1983,

289). He also refers to DumeziPs system explicitly as "hierarchical-fascistic" (1983,

296), thus suggesting a compatibility with the ideologies of Mussolini and Hitler. The

unspoken syllogism underlying such rhetorically extravagant criticism is as follows:

Major Premise: Theories proposed by right-leaning scholars are invalid.

Minor Premise: DumeziPs theories have been proposed by a right-leaning

scholar.

Conclusion: DumeziPs theories are invalid.

The logic of the syllogism is valid, and the minor premise is certainly true. The major

premise, however, is by no means self-evident and is in fact based upon assumptions no

less ideologically constructed than those it labels as invalid. In fact, politically motivated

7 Dumezil in fact sheltered friends from the Gestapo at considerable personal risk (J. Puhvel 1996, 154). 16 criticisms such as Momigliano's constitute ad hominem attacks that, even were they sound, would have no bearing on the validity and usefulness of Dumezil's ideas.

Before proceeding, certain words, specifically hero and heroic action, need to be defined. The word hero has been used so often and in so many contexts that its meaning is at best problematic. The heroes in which I am interested are epic heroes, the heroes whom C. M. Bowra, in his important study Heroic Poetry, describes as "men who display prowess to a high degree because their gifts are of a very special order" (1952, 91).

Jackson identifies the qualities of "bravery, superhuman strength, success in battle, and contempt for wounds and death" as being typical of the hero (4). Thomas Van Nortwick suggests that heroes "might exhibit all the strengths and weaknesses of deities" and adds that "they sometimes transcend the reach of human morality, because they are simply too powerful" (1992, 12). Dean A. Miller in The Epic Hero, a study influenced by Bowra's, describes heroes as "indubitably human, though almost always invested with oversized and probably superhuman characteristics" (32). Similarly, the hero is understood as a character whose actions fall within the second, or warrior, function of Dumezil's tripartite scheme of Indo-European social and religious organization as outlined in The Destiny of the Warrior (Dumezil 1969) and elsewhere. This definition of hero being understood, a working definition of heroic action should be clear: action carried out in a context of physical prowess by a person who conforms to the foregoing description and function.

The first chapter of this study concerns itself with one of the traits typical of the epic hero: the destructive and often uncontrolled rage that he possesses and by which he is at times possessed. This rage has been often noted in studies of such heroes as Achilles and Cu Chulainn, and is clearly present in other characters such as Virgil's Turnus; it has 17 not, however, been discussed in relation to Beowulf. The absence of such a rage, moreover, would disqualify Beowulf from any discussion in the context of Indo-

European heroism. This chapter therefore necessarily contends that Beowulf is affected by just such a heroic rage. In addition to considering the pattern of heroic action as manifested by Beowulf, in comparison to analogous patterns as manifested by other ancient and medieval epic heroes, through a discussion of the lived experience of twentieth-century combat veterans, it considers the possible psychological basis of such a pattern.

The second chapter considers the gendered nature of heroes and heroic action. It addresses the socially constructed nature of gender itself, relying largely on Thomas

Laqueur's theory of a one-sex model of humanity that dominated Western thought from

Classical times to the Enlightenment. Specifically, the chapter addresses the gendered nature of violence, and thus of heroic action. The disordered and disordering nature of the hero's rage takes on a special significance in this chapter insofar as order and disorder have shown a tendency in western culture to work as a gendered pair, with order associated with the masculine and disorder associated with the feminine. Specifically, this chapter identifies a systematic strategy, often in the face of the facts of the narratives themselves, to exclude the feminine from the image and discourse of the hero and thus to present the hero as the guardian of his people's masculinity. The often problematic relationships of heroes with supernatural females, and the narrative accounts of heroes' actions both by the narrators and by the heroes themselves, are examined here.

The third chapter considers heroes in the context of alterity. Specifically, it builds on the image of the hero as monster, and suggests a mutually defining relationship 18 between heroes and monsters in which a monster is a monster simply by virtue of being other while a hero, whose otherness is established in Chapter One, is constructed as heroic by virtue of being, at least provisionally, "one of us." In its discussion of alterity, this chapter draws on postcolonial theory, particularly on the ideas of Edward Said and

Homi Bhabha, and more heavily still on the monster theory of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. The principal contribution of this chapter, however, is its consideration of the intimate relationship of the warrior with the technology of war, and specifically of the role that technology plays in the construction of the hero as such. Insofar as heroic identity is bound up with and, at least in the context of narrative, dependent on the technology of war, this identity is—even though the concept cyborg is of very recent coinage—a cyborg identity. Through my discussion of the hero as a cyborg, I offer a new interpretation of the roles of arming scenes and the conferring of weapons in Beowulf, and of the resultant agency of society itself in the hero's actions.

The conclusion draws the preceding arguments together and offers several suggestions for future speculation and study. What hopefully emerges is an understanding that a variety of theoretical approaches—based upon diverse political and ideological suppositions—can contribute more to an overall understanding and appreciation of the poem than any single theoretical approach can hope to do. I also suggest, at least tentatively, further inquiry into the Dumezilian system, and specifically the second

function, in the light of my own explorations.

A few words are required on the topic of categories. Each chapter in this study is

framed within a certain set of categories, for example gender, monstrosity, etc., and this

framing runs the risk of creating the illusion that heroism itself can be easily categorised. 19 But epic heroes are messy fellows: they do not fit into arbitrary categories any more comfortably than they fit into the societies for which they fight. They embody contradiction. Thus, one may find that on the one hand the hero is characterized by a chaotic and destructive energy, while on the other hand he functions as a force for order.

Or one may find that while he defines, embodies, and defends his society's vision of masculinity, the hero is also closely associated with forces that tend to be culturally gendered feminine. In short, the argument of one chapter may well contradict the argument of another chapter—contradictions that are addressed in the conclusion. The resulting paradoxes, however, are to be embraced rather than resolved; the tensions they engender are integral to the hero himself. 20

Chapter One:

The Importance of Being Wild: Beowulf s Furor Heroicus

"I became a fucking animal. I started fucking putting fucking heads on

poles. Leaving fucking notes for the motherfuckers. Digging up fucking

graves. I didn't give a fuck anymore. Y'know, I wanted—. They wanted a

fucking hero, so I gave it to them. They wanted fucking body count, so I

gave them body count. I hope they're fucking happy. But they don't have

to live with it. I do."

—anonymous Vietnam combat veteran (Shay 83)

Of the three Dumezilian functions, the one on which this study focuses is the second or warrior function, which is concerned with "force, and, primarily, as one might expect, the use offeree in combat" (Dumezil 1969, x). Specifically, the current chapter illustrates that Beowulf is a second function character possessing, and sometimes dangerously close to being possessed by, the rage that is one of the defining attributes of the Indo-European warrior hero. That this rage, or furor—this fureur transfigurante (Dumezil 1942, 17)—is intimately associated with the Warrior Function is something that Dumezil makes clear both in Horace et les Curiaces (1942), in which he draws attention to its manifestation and cooling in both the Italic Horatius and the Celtic Cu Chulainn (11-33) as well as in other Indo-European traditions (121-26), and in The Destiny of the Warrior (1969), in which he summarizes the former (8-11), discusses additional Indo-Iranian examples (13-

14), and asserts that the ''furor—both physical and supernatural—... in Indo-European 21 times was engendered by the warrior elite" (22). The destructive and unstable nature and widespread presence of the heroic rage is widely attested in the works of others, as well,1 but has not received much discussion in the context of Beowulf. This pattern of heroic wildness is evident in both the Iliad and the Tain, and a reading of Beowulf in the light of these epics reveals many elements of the pattern in the Anglo-Saxon poem. In demonstrating its presence, I therefore compare several episodes in Beowulf s career to analogous episodes in the careers of Achilles and Cii Chulainn. This chapter also addresses the nature of the rage itself in terms of both the hero's liminality and the rituals that begin and end it, and the lived experience of modern combat veterans.

To begin, then, it is not the warrior's rage alone that sets the hero apart. The fury is one among many factors in a pattern of wildness that marks the hero as an outsider even in his own society, and for the sake of context much of the current chapter is devoted to discussing this pattern and establishing Beowulf s participation in it. While the ensuing discussion refers to various elements of what has come to be known as the

"heroic biography," it does not entail a point-by-point application of that pattern to any hero.2

The motif of the hero as outsider is a logical place to begin. That Achilles is not at one with the Greek army and its supreme king Agamemnon is a commonplace; his lack of unity with them is the source of the Iliad's dramatic movement. Yet this lack of unity is not confined to their disagreement over the disposition of Briseis: Achilles differs from

1 Dean Miller defines it thus: "Furor, ferg, wut, margon, or ... berserksganger all signify that the warrior- hero is out of control, has escaped the set limits of combat conducted as a ritual, and may have passed into a killing trance, quite possibly to the point where he cannot distinguish between friend and foe, or kinsman and nonkinsman" (Miller 218). In a Germanic context, this rage has been noted in saga heroes (J. Puhvel 1989, 196-98) and in tales of berserkers (Henry 239-42; J. Puhvel 1989, 196; Lincoln 1991, 133). 2 For information on the general pattern of the hero's life, see Chapter Three of C. M. Bowra's Heroic Poetry, Jan De Vries' Heroic Song and Heroic Legend, Tomas O Cathasaigh' s succinct introduction to The Heroic Biography ofCormac Mac Airt, or Dean Miller's recent and expansive Epic Hero. 22 the rest of the Greeks. He is the son of a divine mother, Thetis the Nereid. While not rendering him unique, Achilles' parentage does place him in elite company: Aeneas the son of Aphrodite, and Sarpedon the son of Zeus, for example.3 Divine parentage is in fact common among epic heroes from many traditions (Miller 70-73).4 Also important is

Achilles' father Peleus, a grandson of Zeus but, more significantly for the moment, a hunter: a person who spends much of his own time on the margins of society and thus occupies a liminal or neutral zone of the sort identified by Arnold van Gennep, who remarks that "The neutral zones are ordinarily deserts, marshes, and most frequently virgin forests where everyone has full rights to travel and hunt" (18). Such a zone functions as a No-Man's-Land in which no society's rules can be said to apply fully.

Thus Achilles is a marginal or liminal figure, and the marginality he inherits from his parents is at least twofold: divine-human and wild-civilized.5 Perhaps more important for the moment, however, is his education. Raised in the wilderness by the centaur Chiron, tutor of such earlier heroes as Hercules and Jason, Achilles was brought up on the margins of society rather than at its centre. He was not reared as a member of an ordered and human polls, but was raised instead on its margins, in the non-human and often disordered realm of nature. As Tuite observes, "the centaur Chiron, who raises Achilles,

3 Achilles' association with the sea and thus the element water, through his mother Thetis and his maternal grandfather Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, will be discussed in Chapter Three. 4 hi the Iliad, Miller identifies the following non-exhaustive list of deity-hero ancestries: Zeus is ancestor to Achilles, Patroclus, Telemonian Ajax, and Teucer; Poseidon to Nestor and Menesthius; Hermes to Odysseus; Aphrodite to Aeneas; and Thetis to Achilles (70-71). Regarding divine parentage specifically, as opposed to divine ancestry generally, Miller comments that "for us the hero biographies of Theseus and Herakles show divine parentage in its richest meaning, as an injection of Otherness into the mortal world. For these two ... the divine father's seed is contaminative with power and leads to the first,th e birth act of a drama in which the second act is the separation of the hero, his isolation and exile in or into a nonhuman or extrahuman world" (71). Miller locates other, non-Greek heroes with divine blood in traditions as broadly distributed as the Indie (Kama), the Welsh (Pryderi), and the Tibetan (Gezar of Ling) (72). 5 As Tuite observes, "being the son of a water goddess and a hunter, Achilles occupies not only an intermediate status between the divine and the human, but also between human society and the savage spaces outside of the settlement" (297). 23 is an especially striking case in point, reflecting in his very body—half-human, half- horse—the conjunction of the human and the savage" (297 fn. 15). Thus, by education as well as by birth, Achilles is outside the norms of human society: there is something other about him from the outset.

To return for the moment to van Gennep, one point needs to be clarified. While his study is primarily concerned with initiation rituals, his findings, insofar as they are concerned with "the passage from one social and magico-religious position to another"

(18), are applicable to the circumstances and exploits of the mature warrior hero, who typically begins his adventure by leaving a relatively stable centre, often going through a ritual of separation in the process, then engages in heroic action while in a liminal zone,

and finally—typically in all adventures but his last and fatal one—returns to the stable

centre, often by means of a ritual of incorporation. He thus passes through the preliminal,

liminal, and postliminal stages that van Gennep identifies, and is a suitable object of

discussion in the context of van Gennep's paradigm.6

As early as 1900, Alfred Nutt observed the similarities between Achilles and Cii

Chulainn, seeing both as exemplars of a primitive heroic type (34-36)7 In terms of

beginnings, the origins of Cii Chulainn similarly place him outside the norms of his

6 Though developed to discuss transitions from one stage of life to another—for example, adolescence to adulthood, or single life to marriage—van Gennep's paradigm has frequently been applied to the passage of other boundaries, for example, geographical and psychological/spiritual boundaries. Victor Turner's The Forest of Symbols (1967) and The Ritual Process (1969) provide two of the better-known examples. 7 Though Nutt was working under the influence of the romanticism that inspired much of the antiquarian scholarship of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and though he was also working within the context of naturism, largely inspired by the work of Karl Mullenhoff and Max Muller—work that led to the reduction of much of Indo-European mythology to endless iterations of a solar myth (Littleton 1973, 33-35; Niles 1997, 218)—his basic observation is still valid: both Cii Chulainn and Achilles, in their luminescent rages, are characteristic of a heroic type that has since been widely observed and documented. 24 society. Having two fathers—the human Sualdam and the god Lug8 (E. Gray 1989/90,

38)—he shares the fact of divine parentage with Achilles and thus occupies "a liminal position between man and god" (Sjoblom 162). He is initially raised on the margins of society, by his human father and his mother Deichtine (TBC1 374-75), and receives training in arms from the otherworldly Scathach (Shadowy One, TBC11.378; Kinsella

31-37). Thus, though his mother is sister to the king, Cii Chulainn himself is very much an outsider, both by birth and by education.

Beowulf similarly has marginal beginnings. Though like Cii Chulainn he is nephew to a king on his mother's side, he is not purely Geatish: his father was a

Wsgmunding (2814) from the Swedish marches and thus, from a Geatish point of view, an outsider. Moreover, and more importantly for the Heorot episodes, he is not a Dane; he approaches the Danish kingdom from the outside and only gradually gains admittance to the society of the hall through what van Gennep might describe as a ritual of incorporation, of which more below. His marginality relative to the Danes is underscored by the presence of a theme identified by David Crowne as the "Hero on the Beach" both upon his arrival in Denmark (Crowne 369; Beowulf 301-307a) and again upon his departure (Crowne 368; Beowulf 1963-66).9 As Sarah Higley observes, "Crowne's Hero on the Beach depicts a liminal situation in that it shows a man standing on some kind of threshold or marginal area (such as a beach) at an important and perilous point in the

8 Though the conception tale may be less than clear on this point, Lug later identifies himself to Cii Chulainn as "your father ... fromth e fairy mounds" (TBC1 2109; O'Rahilly 83). 9 Crowne defines the theme as "(1) a hero on a beach (2) with his retainers (3) in the presence of a flashing light (4) as a journey is completed (or begun)" (368). 25 drama" (346).10 Thus, in regard to both of the societies for which he fights, Beowulf stands initially in the position of the marginal or liminal figure.

The beach, of course, is not the only threshold that the hero has to cross before being accepted in Heorot. He must also face the physical threshold of the door to the hall.

Yet, as Renoir notes, a doorway is just as much a "separation between two worlds" as a beach is, as it denotes not the boundary between land and water but rather "that of the finite inside and that of the infinite outside" (1964, 73). Should Beowulf s own liminal status upon reaching the doorway, before being formally accepted by the court at Heorot, be in any doubt, one might ponder a small nomenclatural curiosity: the door guard's name. A compound consisting of the second elements in Beowulf s and Hro6gar's names respectively, the name Wulfgar designates the person to whom Beowulf speaks upon his arrival and who bears his message to HroSgar. Both functionally and lexically, Wulfgar is a transitional figure between hero and king, and between the outside and the inside; he is the limen that Beowulf must cross before gaining recognition at society's centre.

Such recognition can sometimes be problematic: as useful as heroes are, they are also dangerously unstable, prone to violent outbursts and apt, at times, to attack the very people whom it is their function to protect. Thus, though necessary, they constitute a threat to the stability and well-being of their societies, a threat often manifested or perceived upon the hero's first arrival. Though the Iliad is set well after Achilles' arrival among the Greeks, the motif of the hero as a threat to his own society is nonetheless present. For example, he seriously considers killing Agamemnon in a fit of rage at the king's appropriation of Briseis, actually drawing his blade and being restrained only by

10 Alain Renoir makes a good case, based on his reading of Iliad 19 and Achilles' unarmed combat over the body of Patrochis in Iliad 18, for the theme itself being Indo-European in origin (1989, 112-13). 26 an admonition from Athena (1.188 ff). Thus, on at least this one occasion, the unstable hero is nearly provoked to regicide.

Similarly, though for different reasons, Cu Chulainn is also a threat to his society, and in his case the danger is apparent from the outset. For example, at the end of his initial approach to Emain Macha at age five, he finds his way barred by a hundred and fifty local youths and reacts with sudden and surprising violence. The speaker is Fergus

Mac Roich, and the passage is worth quoting at some length:

"Thereupon he became distorted. His hair stood on end so that it

seemed as if each separate hair on his head had been hammered into it.

You would have thought that there was a spark of fire on each single hair.

He closed one eye so that it was no wider than the eye of a needle; he

opened the other until it was as large as the mouth of a mead-goblet. He

laid bare from [sic] his jaw to his ear and opened his mouth rib-wide(?) so

that his internal organs were visible. The champion's light rose above his

head."

"Then he attacked the boys. He knocked down fifty of them before

they reached the gate of Emain. Nine of them came past me and

Conchobar where we were playing chess. Cu Chulainn leapt over the

chess-board in pursuit of the nine."11 (TBC1 428-38; O'Rahilly 137)

11 Riastartha immi-seom i sudiu. Iiidar lat ba tinnarcan asnort each foltne ina chend lasa comerge conerracht. Indar lat ba hoibell tened boi for each oenfinnu de. Iadais indara siiil do conarbo lethiu indas cro snaithaiti. Asoilgg alaile combo moir beolu midchuaich. Doerig dia glainini co rici a hou. Asoilg a beolu coa inairddriuch combo ecna a inchroes. Atreacht in Man laith assamulluch. Benaid fona maccu iarom. Doscara coecait mac diib siu ristais dorus nEmna. Forrumai nonbor diib thorum-sa ~\ Conchobar. Bamar oc imbirt fidchille.Lingid-so m dano tarsin fidchill i ndegaid ind nonbair. (All quotations from the Tain, unless otherwise specified, are taken fromO'Rahilly' s 1976 edition, Tain Bo Cuailnge, Recension I. Translations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the translation that accompanies this same edition. Line numbers refer to this edition and not necessarily to any manuscript.) 27

Elizabeth Gray comments that "Cu Chulainn does not know the rules," and that he is not entitled to the protection of the law until he has been recognized and incorporated into society (1989/90, 41-42). This observation suggests the third in a sequence of what van

Gennep has identified as rites of passage, which may be subdivided into "rites of separation, transition rites, and rites of incorporation," and which he also identifies as preliminal rites, liminal rites, mdpostliminal rites respectively.12 Specifically, Cu

Chulainn's failure to recognize the proper social forms for entering the court—the physical and symbolic centre of society—from the surrounding liminal zone indicates his failure to undergo a ritual of incorporation, in this case the giving and receiving of assurances of protection, assurances that are ultimately exchanged with the king himself, whereupon the disturbance ends.

Also apparent here, in the first manifestation of Cu Chulainn's signature distortion,13 is an innate instability that threatens the lives of the very people whose community he seeks to join. Gray notes that "Cu Chulainn's scattering of the boytroop is a reminder that the warrior's competitive nature is a standing threat to the social order," and that the threat is ultimately controlled, or at least contained, through the stabilizing offices of the king—the reciprocal offers and acceptances of protection (1989/90, 42).14

Clearly, Beowulf manifests no such threat on his approach to Denmark, nor is he physically attacked. Like, Cii Chulainn, however, he is recognized as an outsider and stopped, in this case by the coastguard, who remarks,

12 He additionally stipulates that "These three subcategories are not developed to the same extent by all peoples or in every ceremonial pattern" and that "in specific instances these three types are not always equally important or equally elaborated" (van Gennep 10-11). 13 The word is given here in its adjective form riastartha, "distorted," but later (1. 2279) as the riastrad referred to so often in Tain criticism, rendered clinically by O'Rahilly as "distortion" (187) and evocatively by Kinsella as "warp spasm" (150). 14 One might note, in this context, that it is only when Agamemnon fails as a king that Achilles emerges as a threat to his own people. 28

"Naefre ic maran geseah

eorla ofer eorban, 8onne is eower sum,

secg on searwum" {Beowulf 247-49).15

("Never saw I a greater earl on earth than is one of you, a man in war-

gear.")

The coastguard observes that eower sum, "one of you," stands out as being unique, and that this uniqueness is due chiefly to his imposing stature (maran). While the poem's language does not depict Beowulf as actively threatening, one need only recall that when the poem was written—be it any time between the eighth and tenth centuries—England was frequently plagued by raiders and invaders from overseas. Thus, for a contemporary audience, the image of a troop of armed strangers, led by a particularly large and well- armed stranger, stepping ashore from some unknown overseas location could not help but have threatening connotations. So, while Beowulf, unlike his Irish counterpart, conducts himself with measured and intelligent eloquence, his arrival from a location that is not only liminal in itself but that an Anglo-Saxon audience would quite naturally associate with danger and disruption, and the size that makes him unique among his men, combine to suggest a recognisable threat.

On a related note, the motif of the potentially disruptive hero also occurs in the scene in the Nibelungenlied in which Siegfried enters the court at Worms. Having arrived and identified Gunther as the ruler, he addresses the king in the following manner:

"I, too, am a warrior and am entitled to wear a crown, but I wish to

achieve a reputation of possessing land and people in my own sole right,

for which my head and my honour shall be my pledge! Now since (as they

15 Quotations from Beowulf we taken fromKlaeber' s edition. Macrons are omitted. 29

tell me) you are so brave—and I do not care who minds—I will wrest

from you by force all that you possess! Your lands and your castles shall

all be subject to me!" (Hatto 29)16

The threat here is explicit: the young hero not only proposes to disrupt the social order; he proposes to take it over. Apparent here, as in the case of Cu Chulainn's initial entrance to Emain Macha, are both the newcomer's energy and his ignorance of social custom—an ignorance that Christa Canitz associates with the young hero's origin in the pre-feudal kingdom of Xanten (103). And, as in the Irish epic, here, too, the king negotiates a peaceful and orderly settlement to a potentially disastrous situation, turning Siegfried into his most valuable warrior. Common to Beowulf, on the other hand, is the arrival of the imposing and potentially destabilizing outsider, incidentally also by water though not by river.

Following his exchange with the coastguard, Beowulf is brought before the king by two other intermediaries: Wulfgar the door guard, discussed above, and Unferb. The

Unferb episode, similar to the case of Cu Chulainn's entrance to Emain Macha, is an example of a postliminal rite by which the initially threatening outsider is incorporated into the society of the hall. Commenting on Unferb's hostility as opposed to HroSgar's hospitality, Carol Clover suggests that, far from being unduly rude, the pyle is fulfilling a function complementary to the king's, "put[ting] the alien through the necessary paces"

16 "Ich bin ouch ein recke und solde krone tragen. ich wil daz gerne fuegen daz si von mir sagen daz ich habe von rehte liute unde lant. Dar umbe sol min ere und ouch min houbet wesen pfant.

Nu ir sit so kuene, als mir ist geseit, sone ruoch' ich, ist daz iemen Hep oder leit: ich wil an iu ertwingen swaz ir muget han: lant unde burge, daz sol mir werden undertan." {Nibelungenlied 3.109-110, Hoffinann's edition.) 30 so that "HroSgar can afford to play the gracious host" (1980, 141). In short, Unferb forces

Beowulf to state his credentials (Enright 310-11)—to submit his heroic resume—before establishing a relationship with the king, to whom he then offers his protection against

Grendel (Beowulf 407-32). Insofar as Unferb's function is traditional, and Clover places it within the Germanic flyting tradition, the exchange constitutes a postliminal rite by which the initiand moves from the position of threatening outsider to that of accepted member of the community. Thus, in the cases of both Cu Chulainn and Beowulf, as well as that of Siegfried, the hero comes from outside society, enters as a disruptive or potentially disruptive force, is challenged, and ultimately finds himself before the king, at which point he undergoes a ritual of incorporation and offers his protection.17

The ways in which this protection is enacted vary from hero to hero and situation to situation, but they can most easily be grouped into two categories: armed and unarmed combat. Both categories are conventional, and each reveals a different facet of epic heroism—the hero's relationship with the technological and cultural aspects of warfare on the one hand, and his own dangerously unstable nature on the other. As unarmed combat is concerned most closely with the hero's innate attributes, it ought to be discussed first.

After receiving news of Patroclus's death, Achilles flies into the first of his great luminescent rages—of which more below—and ventures out unarmed to retrieve his comrade's body (Iliad 18.190 ff). As he nears the trench in which the battle for his

17 While many epics dramatise the hero's initial approach to his society and its accompanying offer of protection, the Iliad does not. What it does do, however, is dramatise the inverse situation: the hero's withdrawal of protection, and the resulting devastation of the society formerly protected, hi fact, it is exactly this withdrawal of protection that initiates the string of defeats that forms much of the subsequent action of the poem, and it is precisely to prove to the Achaeans that they desperately need Achilles—much as the Ulstermen need Cu Chulainn to hold off the armies of Connacht, and as the Danes need Beowulf to fight the Grendel kin—that Zeus, at Thetis' request, provides for those defeats in the firstplac e (1.492 ff). 31 friend's body is being fought, he lets out a war cry that Athena echoes, causing such panic that twelve enemy soldiers are either run over by chariots or run through by their own side's spears (Iliad 18.210-24). This unarmed foray is Achilles' first engagement with the enemy after withdrawing from the fighting—in fact, since the beginning of the poem.

The scene is reminiscent of several passages in the Tain, most obviously, the episode in which Cu Chulainn, looking out over Muirthemne plain, sees the assembled armies of Ireland arrayed against him. He is filled with rage, and lets out a bellow that is echoed by ghosts and demons and that summons an attack by the war goddess Nemain herself, with the result that a hundred warriors drop dead from pure terror

(TBC1 2082-87). In both cases, the hero's war cry is echoed by supernatural forces, including goddesses associated with warfare. In both cases, as well, the resulting panic leads to fatalities. One question arising from these episodes, and in particular from the goddesses' reactions, is who is in control. The hero in each case—not the deity—initiates the shout; the sequence of events suggests that the hero is acting as a bridge between the mortal and immortal realms, drawing the power of the latter into the former with predictably lethal results. Although the heroes' war cries have no exact parallels in

Beowulf, the passages are interesting and relevant in their illustration of the hero's unique, destructive, and not entirely human energy that Beowulf amply demonstrates in

other regards once his own rage is awakened, as demonstrated below.

More important for the moment are the unarmed combats in the 71am and

Beowulf, specifically Cu Chulainn's first encounter with Medb's army, and Beowulf s battle with Grendel, both of which episodes share several elements. In the first of Cii 32

Chulainn's single combats, the hero meets his opponent Fraech in the ford of a river. Cu

Chulainn offers a choice of modes of combat, and Fraech chooses to wrestle in the ford.

Once he is overcome, a band of green-clad women come along and bear his body into a nearby fairy mound (TBC1 842-57; O'Rahilly 148-49). The first similarity is clear: rather than fight with weapons, they grapple, much like Beowulf and Grendel grapple in Heorot

{Beowulf 745-819). Both Beowulf and Cii Chulainn, then—much as Achilles in his one-

man sortie to recover Patroclus' body—begin their defences of their adopted societies by

engaging in unarmed combat, establishing that their heroic qualities reside in themselves

rather than in their weapons. They also establish that the hero's business is savage:

neither scene contains descriptions of artful combat. Rather, the enemies tear at and

wrestle with each other until one stands victorious and the other is either dead or fatally

wounded—or they simply, in the cases of Achilles' and Cu Chulainn's war cries, open

their mouths and articulate their enemies' deaths in the wordless terror of divinely

augmented voices that become weapons in themselves (Miller 230).

This correspondence between the English and the Irish tales is reinforced by two

other elements. For example, a troop of women comes to bear the dead Fraech away.

Similarly, when Grendel's mother attacks the hall, she takes his severed arm with her

when she goes {Beowulf 1302-3). Whether one sees the mere in terms of the Christian

Hell (McNamee 94-95; Lee 215) or a Germanic netherworld (Battaglia 431-33), the

association of the place with some sort of otherworld is difficult to escape. It is located in

a dygel lond (mysterious land, 1357b), is perpetually cold and thus surrounded by hrinde

bearwas (hoar-frosted groves, 1363b), and displays characteristics at odds with those of

the regular world, for example^r onflode (fire on the flood, 1366a)—to say nothing of 33 the monsters it houses and the anti-hall it conceals, a hall only accessible through swimming underwater much, for example, as the Celtic otherworld is also often accessed

(M. Puhvel 1979, 73-81). Similarly, the sid or grave-mound in Irish myth and literature is virtually always an entrance to the otherworld, and the characters who live in or come out of them are virtually always otherworld characters. So in both cases the enemy's remains are retrieved by a woman or women18 and taken to otherworld locations. Thus, the hero, a uniquely potent individual who stands alone in defence of society, is fighting something that in itself has connotations of the non-human. Both he himself and what he fights

against exist only partly within the socialized or merely human sphere.19 Just how far

outside the realm of the human they may venture is discussed below, in an examination

of the heroic rage itself.

No discussion of epic heroes, however, would seem complete without at least a brief treatment of the tools of his trade. Accordingly, discussion now turns to armaments,

particularly the possession of weaponry granted by a superior, be it king or god, and the

use of a unique weapon at some point in the hero's career. Achilles' gift of arms by

Hephaestus in Iliad 18 is an obvious example of the first, and his possession of a spear, a

gift to his father Peleus from Chiron, that only Achilles can lift and wield (Iliad 16.139-

44), is an equally clear example of the second. Similarly, in the Tain, only Cu Chulainn

can wield the gde bolga, a weapon that defies accurate description and that seems to have

been designed especially for combat in rivers (Tarzia 32).21 Interestingly, both Achilles'

18 See Chapter Two for a discussion of the hero in the context of gender and gender relations. 19 Similarly, we might remember that, though no goddess comes to bear away the bodies of the twelve men killed by Achilles' war cry, Aphrodite does protect Hector's body from decomposition (Iliad 23.212 ff.). 20 One is reminded of Odysseus' bow, which according to Book 21 of the Odyssey, only he could draw. 21 Though William Sayers contends that the gde bolga cannot be unique as its use was taught to the Irish hero by Scathach (2001,230), no one else in the Ulster Cycle ever uses a similar weapon. Thus, 34 spear and the gde bolga are associated with liminal characters and locations: Chiron and his wilderness abode, and Scathach and her own, possibly Otherworld but definitely overseas realm. The unique and liminal hero thus wields a unique and liminal weapon.

Similarly, Beowulf finds a unique and liminal sword in Grendel's mother's underwater hall, a sword that Nagler sees as a divine weapon used to combat the forces of chaos

(145) and that, as the text makes clear, only the hero himself could have wielded: "hit wees mare Sonne senig mon o5er to beadulace astberan meahte" (it was greater than any

other man could have borne into battle, 1560-61). Heroes and unique, liminal weapons

are thus intimately associated.

But why is it important for the hero's weapons, some of them at least, to be out of the ordinary—or even, as with Achilles, god-forged? The obvious answer is that the hero himself is unique, and his equipment should be similarly one-of-a-kind. Aesthetically and

emotionally, this response probably makes sense to most readers or listeners, past and present. Yet more can be said. Sayers argues that the imagery associated with Cu

Chulainn's warp spasm "seems modeled on the transmutation of ore into metal and of

iron into arms" (2001, 241), supporting the idea, by no means original here, that the hero himself is in fact a weapon and providing a link to Hephaestus, the smith god, who decks

out Achilles for his climactic rampage. Similarly, one is reminded that Beowulf bears a

corslet forged by the Germanic smith god Weland (Welandes geweorc, 455a).22 Thus,

one may see the equipping of the hero with a unique piece of hardware as the completion

notwithstanding his having learned its use from another, Cii Chulainn's special weapon should be seen as unique within its narrative context. In any case, we never see her use it except with Cu Chulainn. 22 The only other appearance of a similar expression in Old English poetry (Bessinger 1404), Weland[es] wore, occurs in Waldere I: '"Huru Weland[es] wore ne geswiceS / monna aaiigum Sara 6e Mimming can / hearne gehealdan'" ('"Indeed, Weland's work never fails any man, those who can hold onto keen-edged Mimming'", 2-4a). The label, then, should be taken not as extravagant description but rather as an indication of the unique or at least special nature of the item so described. 35 of a single unit: the hero does not so much wield the weapon as the blade, spear, or other implement of destruction, completes the weapon-assembly that is the hero.

There is also another possibility, one that does not preclude those just suggested, but that must be approached tentatively as it is attested in the Tain and Beowulf but not in the Iliad. When Cii Chulainn first takes up arms, he shatters all the weapons given to him by the king until he is given Conchobar's own shield and spear. He also destroys every chariot he is given until he has mounted the king's (TBC1 616-52). Similarly, we are told of Beowulf, in a passage taken from his dragon-fight, in which his sword breaks,

wass sio hond to strong,

se 6e meca gehwane mine gefrasge

swenge ofersohte, Sonne he to saxce baer

waspen wundrum heard. (Beowulf 2684b-87 a)

(That hand was too strong, I have heard, that which overtaxed every sword

with its swing when he bore to battle a weapon wondrously hard.)

One might also note the correspondence between Cii Chulainn's taking up of arms and

HroSgar's rewarding of Beowulf after his defeat of Grendel; the king gives him not only

armour and a precious sword, but also eight horses, one of which is saddled with his own warseat (Beowulf 1020-41). Both tales then, though not in the same order, show the hero who destroys the weapons he wields being given the king's own wargear. Some key

elements are implicit in these parallels. First, with regard to the destruction of weapons, is

an instance of the unique energy possessed by the hero. In Beowulf, this energy is stated

as strength, while in the Tain, the same is clearly implied. Both characters, then, are too

strong to wield the weapons that come to hand; the violence of the hero is too intense to 36 be channelled through the tools that society constructs to direct it. Their strength or ferocity is wild beyond the human—more accurately, the civilized—capacity for wildness. In the light of the hero's unique energy, the possession and use of a unique weapon is perfectly appropriate, and once again one arrives at the notion that it is not the hero who wields the weapon, but rather the weapon that completes the hero, and the society in the person of the king that ultimately but precariously wields both.23

Having discussed the liminal origins and nature of the hero, and the means by which he is provisionally incorporated into society and by which his energies are harnessed, we now examine where and in what circumstances he does what he does best.

Van Gennep comments that, in early Europe, "Each country was surrounded by a strip of neutral ground," and that "Zones of this kind were important in classical antiquity, especially in Greece, where they were used for market places or battlefields" (17). The space between the walls of Troy and the Greek tents on the beach can be seen in these terms; the fighting as a whole takes place in a liminal zone analogous to the No-Man's-

Land of the First World War—a space in which countless men made the transition from life to death. Van Gennep goes on to say that whoever crosses into such a zone "finds himself physically and magico-religiously in a special situation for a certain length of time: he wavers between two worlds," and that "this symbolic and spatial area of transition may be found in more or less pronounced form in all the ceremonies which accompany the passage from one social and magico-religious position to another" (17-

18). Or, to put it in terms more directly applicable to heroic action, "The necessary horizontal plane of adventure begins where settlement and the solidities of culture, political order, and secular authority end" (Miller 151). When the hero goes to work, the

23 See Chapter Three for an elaboration on the foregoing argument. 37 place to which he goes has no stable rules—is not always even a stable place. Given the innate instability of the hero, his compatibility with the unstable liminal zone is clear: they are made for each other.

In terms of preliminal rituals, the most obvious example in the case of the hero is the arming scene. Much of Iliad 19 is devoted to Achilles' preparations for combat: his donning of his god-forged armour (19.1 ff), his selection of weapons (19.387 ff), and his mounting of his chariot (19.392 ff). As regards the armour, the best example is the shield forged by Hephaestus (18.490 ff.)—a shield whose imagery encompasses all levels of the human world at war and at peace (Bowra 1972, 148; Redfield 187-88) and that thus associates its bearer, both by virtue of its origin and by virtue of its imagery, with a superhuman or extra-human order of reality. Similarly, the arming of Cii Chulainn is narrated in gloriously extravagant detail just after he has been healed by his divine father

Lugh and just prior to one of the young hero's most spectacular distortions. His body is clothed in twenty-seven shirts and bound with strings and ropes intended to hold him together when his warp spasm comes upon him. He is decked out in hardened leather and

assorted finery and takes up an array of weapons including nine each of swords, spears, javelins, and shields, and something untranslatable called a deil chliss.

Then he put on his head his crested war-helmet of battle and strife and

conflict. From it was uttered the shout of a hundred warriors with a long-

drawn-out cry from every corner and angle of it. For there used to cry

from it alike goblins and sprites, spirits of the glen and demons of the air 38

before him and above him and around him wherever he went, prophesying

the shedding of the blood of warriors and champions.24

Over all goes a cloak given him by his Otherworldly tutor Scathach (TBC1 2212-44;

O'Rahilly 186-87). As with Achilles' armour, the associations of Cu Chulainn's

armaments with the non-human realm are hard to miss. The helmet seems to be

associated with the panic-inspiring war goddess Nemain as the conditions under which

she comes to his aid are similar to those created by the helmet itself, namely, the noise of his war cry. Thus, by putting on the helmet, Cu Chulainn is associating himself more

strongly still with forces antithetical to an ordered human society. And, as already

mentioned, it is immediately following his donning of this impressive array of war gear

that the hero flies into a violent distortion that in itself constitutes a liminal state.

Less spectacularly but still significantly, before he descends into the mere, the

poem's most explicitly liminal location, Beowulf s arming is described in exquisite,

though realistic detail, as seen in the account of his donning of the boar-crested helmet:

se hwita helm hafelan werede,

se be meregrundas mengan scolde,

secan sundgebland since geweor5ad,

befongen freawrasnum, swa hine fyrndagum

worhte wspna smi8, wundrum teode,

besette swinlicum, pact hine sydban no

brond ne beadomecas bitan ne meahton. (1448-54)

24 Inbaid fognith ind oclaig faeborchless di, is cumma imthescad da sciath i da sleg ~\ da chlaideb. Is and so ro gab a chirchathbarr catha 1 comraic 1 comlaind ima chend cerna de daig is cumma congairtis de bananaig "i boccanaig ~\ geniti glinne 1 demna aeoir nam i liaso 1 ina imt[h]imchiull each ed no teged re testing fola na mmiled l na n-anglond sechtair. (2236-42) 39

(The shining helm shielded the head, that helm which had to stir up the

lake-bottom, seek the surging water adorned with treasure, wrapped in

lordly bands, as the weapon-smith had worked it in days of old, formed

with wonders, adorned with boar-figures, so that afterward neither brand

nor battle-sword might bite it.)

Similarly, the sword lent to Beowulf for the occasion is also given full, if somewhat ironic, attention:

waes baem haeftmece Hrunting nama;

beet wass an foran ealdgestreona;

ecg wass iren, atertanum fah,

ahyrded heaboswate; nasfre hit set hilde ne swac

manna asngum bara be hit mid mundum bewand,

se be gryresiSas gegan dorste,

folcstede fara; nass bast forma si8

bast hit ellenweorc asfnan scolde. (1457-64)

(The name of that hafted sword was Hrunting; that was one of a kind

among ancient treasures; the edge was iron, set about with serpent-

patterns, hardened in battle-blood; never in battle had it failed any man

who gripped it with his hands, when he dared to undertake dreadful

journeys, a hostile folk-stead; that was not the first time that it had to do a

glorious deed.)

In each case, the hero is publicly seen to suit up for his encounter with the liminal: the putting on of armour and weapons thus functions as a ritual of separation, and signifies a 40 change of what van Gennep refers to as "social and magico-religious position." Or simply, as Turner phrases it, "Ritual is transformative" (1967, 95). By means of this particular ritual of separation, the hero moves into a different position in regard to his relationship with the world; he becomes something other than what he was. To borrow another and oft-cited line from Turner, "Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial" (1969, 95). The hero's armour is a visible sign that he is no longer bound by the rules and mores of day-to-day life.25

One possible objection to the foregoing argument is that, unlike the cases of Cu

Chulainn and Achilles, weapons tend to break on Beowulf, whose hand is so strong that it breaks every weapon it wields (2684b-87a). It would be reasonable to suppose, therefore, that his most significant weapon is in fact his inborn strength: "he britiges manna msegencraeft on his mundgripe heaborof hasbbe" (he, the battle-bold, had the strength of thirty men in his hand-grip, 379b-81a). Yet this strength itself, great though it be, is clearly insufficient when he faces GrendePs mother: only the giant-sword will do. To complete his heroic function in this case at least, Beowulf requires the use of a special weapon. The weapon, then, even though the relationship is not emphasised here as it is in

other heroic tales, is essential. Weapons need not be present in every scene for their necessity in the construction of heroism to be apparent; different scenes demonstrate

A late though excellent example of the function of armour in relation to the hero's identity and social position, or the act of arming oneself as a ritual of separation, occurs in the fourteenth-century Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The firststanz a in the poem's fourth and concluding section shows Gawain lying awake at night, terrified of the ordeal that awaits him the following day (2006-7), then arming himself (2011-18), and finally sending confidently for his horse (2023-24). Gawain's behaviour in this stanza—transforming from a man obviously but naturally afraid of the seemingly certain death that awaits him come sunrise, to a bold knight confidently setting forth on an adventure in the unknown— indicates a complete transition upon his donning of his armour. 41 different facets of heroism, and the hero's relationship to a unique and liminal weapon is one such facet.

Another facet of heroism involves geography. As mentioned above, the hero is not just a liminal character; he also tends to fulfill his function in a liminal zone. In the epics under discussion, that zone is often water, and the associations and connotations of this element must be considered. Donald Mills' recent argument, that the hero, through his encounters with water and watery opponents, does battle with the elemental and

divine forces of chaos, is useful in this context. While Mills deals with Gilgamesh, the

Homeric epics, and the Old Testament book of Joshua, his work is applicable to other

epics and specifically to the Tain and Beowulf as aquatic adventures play key roles in

each.

In his discussion of the Iliad, Mills focuses on Book 21, which tells of the raging

Achilles' battle with the river Scamander, during which his slaughter of the Trojans is so brutal and thorough that the river is churned into turmoil and clogged with men and horses (21.1 ff). Mills identifies the river as "a realm of watery liminality" (67), sees its ruling god as a chaos demon (68), and suggests that "In both the Gilgamesh Epic and the

Iliad, the mythic pattern of heroic conflict with chaos connects liminality and death" (75).

He also observes that the battle

encapsulates the uniquely supra-human qualities of the hero, and the

image of the river's anger, rising upward to a climax, reveals the chaotic

forces at work both within Achilles himself and in the world without....

As the anger of the river mirrors the anger in Achilles' soul, the struggle 42

of mortal hero and divine river expands into a multivalent symbol of

heroic conflict with the chaotic. (55)

Similarly, Van Nortwick observes that, up to this point, Achilles has been an agent of chaos but that, with the commencement of the battle with the river, on the one side, opposed to the hero and his divine allies Poseidon, Athena, and Hephaestus, on the other,

"the river becomes the agent of disorder, while Achilles slips, rather uneasily, into the traditional role of the hero who faces the Chaos Monster" (71). What both writers point out is that, though he does battle with an aquatic and chaotic adversary, Achilles himself embodies considerable disorder. In this context, one might remember that he is the son of a water nymph and the grandson of the shape-shifting Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea.

His own relationship with the element of water is therefore intimate, and whatever else he may be fighting in Book 21, he is also confronting, as Mills and Van Nortwick observe, a facet of his own nature.

Heroic action in the Tain also revolves largely around water. It is in water,

specifically the fords of rivers, themselves both natural and territorial boundaries as was

common in ancient Ireland (Sjoblom 163), that Cii Chulainn mounts his defence against the armies of Medb and Ailill, engaging in numerous single combats, three of them

against his own foster brothers. As for the function of rivers as boundaries, 6 Cathasaigh

observes that they are the natural habitat of the hero (46), whose function it is to

safeguard the order and stability of his own society against whatever disordering force

26 What Mills and Van Nortwick do not comment upon is the ordered or ordering nature of rivers, which nature, too, reflects the hero's own. While the destructive capacity of the Scamander is a close match for Achilles' rage, an equally close match is apparent in that hoth figures are normally contained within boundaries that they have at this point overflowed. While in the river's case the boundaries are physical, in Achilles' case they are social or even spiritual. Thus the river mirrors not just the hero's chaos but also the order that provides this chaos with its context. In this sense, the river may be an ideal representation of the hero himself, or of epic heroism generally: a chaotic force usually contained within ordered bounds, functioning through chaotic means to establish or defend the order of the society for whom he fights. 43 seeks to violate it. Similar to Achilles, Cii Chulainn seems to have a close relationship either with water or with the powers associated with it.28 In fact, Cu Chulainn's unique and apparently undepictable weapon, the gde bolga, seems designed specifically for combat in fords, launched as it is from the foot, which remains concealed—a hidden danger, beneath the surface of the water (Tarzia 32). In other words, the entire scenario of the ford fight—its positioning in water that functions as a boundary along the horizontal, vertical, and human/otherworld axes—places the hero in a position of almost hyperliminality as he straddles threshold within threshold. Thus, the image of the unstable figure in the unstable medium epitomizes the situation of the hero in both the

Iliad and the Tain.

Regarding Beowulf s aquatic encounters, a great deal could be and has been said—far more than can be summed up here. The chaotic nature of the medium in which they occur, however, is clear. The most turbulent images used to describe the waters occur in the context of Beowulf s fights with GrendePs mother and the dragon

(ydgewinn, wave-strife, swimming, tossing water, lines 1434 and 2412; and holmwylm, surge of the sea, line 2411), the two episodes that give the hero the greatest difficulty

(Bonjour 1955, 118-19). Regarding Beowulf s swimming match with Breca (506-81), and disregarding the often cantankerous question of origins—for which, see M. Puhvel

1971, 1979 and 1998, and Jorgensen 1978—one can notice an implicit pattern of the

27 Pamela Hopkins observes that, in addition to functioning as a physical boundary, "symbolically it can be a dividing line between worlds or states of being" and that "it serves as an 'un-place,' neither in this world, nor in the next" (80). Regarding the impracticality of Cu Chulainn's habit of fightingi n the fords, she comments, "the point of the matter is that the fight occurs on a different level" (83). Similarly, Kay Muhr notes the frequentassociatio n of water imagery with the Otherworld (196-97), with women in the form of the tutelary goddesses of the Shannon and the Boyne (200), and with both chaos and revelation (201). 28 As Tom Sjoblom observes, "it becomes evident [when he summons the waters of the Cronn] that Cu Chulainn has the power to actually call on the rivers for help (TBC1 1158-64), which is possible because of his cosmic function as the guardian of borders" (163). 44 struggle against chaos. Though the contest may have begun based on impetuous or even irresponsible motives, motives that in themselves had something of disorder about them, it leads to the seaways being safer for ships as a result of the hero's struggle against the sea monsters. Moreover, referring to GrendePs mother's abode in the context of gender,

Chance notes that "even the mere itself, in whose stirred-up and bloody waters sea monsters lurk and the strange battle-hall remains hidden, and the approach to which occurs only through winding passageways, slopes, and paths, symbolically projects the mystery and danger of female sexuality run rampant" (1986, 259). Chance also notes a definite tendency toward disorder, in this case associated with the feminine,29 in the description of the mere. While the association of water with the feminine in Germanic culture is tenuous, Motz's discussion of I>6rr's fights with the giant GeirroSr in

Skaldskaparmdl and the Midgard serpent in Voluspa as struggles against water-monsters

"representative of chaos" (481-82) suggests that water, as the abode of such disordering beasts, is a chaotic element. The presence, in Beowulf, of water monsters both in the ocean and in Grendel's mother's mere tends to support Motz's conclusions. Beowulf, like

Achilles and Cu Chulainn, plunges into a "watery liminality" in which he does battle with agents of chaos.

Now—finally—we come to the heroic rage itself: that wild, amoral phenomenon that typifies so many epic heroes. In discussing rage as it pertains to Beowulf, one is immediately confronted with the standard critical observation of his poise and self- control, and with the assertion of Kaske (1958), echoed and expanded upon by Kindrick

(1981), that "the sapientia etfortitudo ideal is . . . the most basic theme in the poem, around which the other major themes are arranged and to which they relate in various

29 For a discussion of the relationship of disorder to the feminine, see Chapter Two. 45 ways" (Kaske 269). I see no reason to dispute this statement as Beowulf s fortitude is clear to any first-time reader, and his wisdom—both the Christian wisdom explored by

Kaske and the Germanic wisdom discussed by Kindrick—is demonstrated and referred to in the poem itself, especially in the Heorot episodes. So one question that must be answered is whether the clear demonstration of sapientia on Beowulf s part necessarily precludes the presence of an utterly irrational rage. The short answer is "No," but this answer should first be placed in context through a discussion of Achilles and Cu

Chulainn, both of whose pyrotechnical tantrums have long been noted as high-proof distillations of the hero's dangerous potency.

When addressing rage and sapientia in these two figures, the terms of the question might easily be reversed: does the indisputable demonstration of rage on their parts necessarily preclude the presence of wisdom? Alternatively, the two versions of the

question might be generalized thus: are rage and wisdom mutually exclusive? In Book 1

of the Iliad, it is Achilles, not Agamemnon, who calls the assembly to address the disaster that has befallen the Greek camp (1.51 ff), and thus Achilles who initiates the solution to their present plague. Even before he demonstrates the personal growth apparent in Book

23 when he resolves all disputes successfully, and more importantly before he is carried

away by his destructive rage, he has already displayed wisdom. Similarly in the Tain, one

of the gifts that Cu Chulainn explicitly claims and demonstrates in his reckoning of the

forces arrayed against him, a reckoning that the text tells us is "one of the three cleverest yet most difficult reckonings ever made in Ireland" ("Is si seo in tres arim is glicu ~\ is

dolgiu dorigned i nHerind," TBC1 327, marginalium; O'Rahilly 134 note a.), is "the gift

of understanding" (intliuchta, TBC11.326; O'Rahilly 133). In both cases, the version of 46 sapientia demonstrated is more closely akin to the worldly or practical wisdom that

Kindrick discusses than to the Christian or spiritual sapientia that is of primary interest to

Kaske, but in each case ample mental acuity is evident in the hero who later emerges as a sub- or superhuman killer. Thus, in the context of epic literature, a hero renowned for his fury can also possess a wisdom appropriate to his social role: rage and wisdom are not mutually exclusive. It follows that a hero often noted for his wisdom is not necessarily immune to possession by fits of violent rage.30 In fact, as the Iliad especially makes clear, it is in the context of its contrast with sapientia that the hero's rage or furor takes on much of its meaning.

As for the rage itself—what is it? What state of being does it signify? What does it reveal about heroes and heroism that the works in which it occurs—and there are many—would not otherwise be able to convey? Perhaps the best way of answering these questions, which need to be answered before asking whether Beowulf himself is possessed of this phenomenon, is to look at some of its graphic descriptions. The first is

This juxtaposition of wisdom and rage calls to mind the image of the river, discussed above. Just as a river requires both the chaos or potential chaos of the water and the ordered boundary of the banks, so heroism may require the chaos or potential chaos of rage and the ordering limits of wisdom. And just as rivers occasionally overflow their banks, so, too, does rage occasionally overflow the constraints of wisdom and thus flood the world—or the narrative context—with the unrestrained energy of its violence. 31 A hero in whom rage and sapientia seem to be mutually exclusive is Roland, whose failure to blow his horn and summon reinforcements when his rear guard is ambushed results in the deaths of himself, his wiser companion Oliver, and every Frank under his command. The simple statement, "Roland is brave and Oliver is wise" ("Rollant est proz e Oliver est sage," 1093; quotations taken from Burgess's translation and Segre's edition) sums up the difference between the two men. Though Oliver is elsewhere referred to as brave (e.g., "Oliver the valiant," "Oliver li ber," 672), Roland is not praised for his wisdom. Oliver even criticises his friend and commander's lack of sense in failing to summon help when he could have done so with honour ("Caution is better than great zeal. Franks are dead because of your recklessness." "Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estultie. Franceis sunt morz par vostre legerie." 1724-5). But this lack of wisdom on the epic hero's part is not universal. Nor is an absolute lack of wisdom necessarily apparent in the case of Roland who, though he lacks the tactical horse-sense of his more cautious companion, is arguably acting in accordance with the wishes of God in such a way that precludes mere rationality: "For Roland, there will be no stopping until the Emperor is universally triumphant; and God, for reasons that may well differ from Roland's, agrees" (Damon 113). For a clear discussion of this line of thought, see Phillip Damon's excellent structural analysis of the Iliad, Roland, and Beowulf in. Old English Literature in Context (1980). taken from Book 18 of the Iliad, from the scene in which Achilles, on hearing of

Patroclus' death, storms out to retrieve his fallen comrade's body:

And Iris racing the wind went veering off

as Achilles, Zeus's favorite fighter, rose up now

and over his powerful shoulder Pallas slung the shield,

the tremendous storm-shield with all its tassels flaring—

and crowning his head the goddess swept a golden cloud

and from it she lit a fire blazing across the field.

As smoke goes towering up the sky from out a town

cut off on a distant island under siege ...

enemies battling round it, defenders all day long

trading desperate blows from their own city walls

but soon as the sun goes down the signal fires flash,

rows of beacons blazing into the air to alert their neighbors—

if only they'll come in ships to save them from disaster—

so now from Achilles' head the blaze shot up the sky.

(18.202-14.; Fagles 18.234-47)

H [iev ap &c, EITCOUCT' aue|3Y] uoSaq wxea^Ipt^, auxap'AjiXkeut; copxo Ait cp£Xo<;- ajjupi 8' 'AQ-qvy) oofxot.? lcp9t(jiot.(Jc. (3aX' alytSa Suaffavoecraav, a[X9c 8e oi xecpaXyj vecpo^ eaxe

At this point, he sends forth the war cry discussed above, killing a dozen enemy soldiers.

Some elements in this description are worth noting. First is the involvement of the gods, particularly Athena, who arms him with a shield and cloaks him in a cloud of light and fire—images that come up repeatedly once he goes into action—and who a few lines later augments his voice to the point of lethality.33 The divine nature of Achilles' rage is elsewhere underscored by the use of the word menis (divine wrath) to refer to it—a word used principally to refer to the rages of Achilles and the gods (Van Nortwick 1992, 40) and that, as Catherine King observes, "is only applied to him five times: the invocation,

Phoenix's reply to Achilles' speech to the embassy (9.517), the retraction of his wrath against Agamemnon (19.35, 75), and his rampage through the Trojan lines (21.523)"

(31). Redfield similarly notes Achilles' departure from the realm of the human both in this and subsequent scenes, suggesting that he "appears not as a leader of men but as an isolated destroyer—a kind of natural force, like fire or flood" (107).34 Thus, the divine fire imagery beginning in the trench but continuing throughout Books 18 to 22

contributes to the perception of Achilles as "an increasingly deadly elemental force"; moreover, the similes comparing Achilles to a lion, discussed below, suggest that

"Achilles' deadly force is not only elemental but bestial as well" (King 17-18). It is clear,

(Quotations from the Iliad are taken from Thomas W. Allen's 1931 Oxford edition, reprinted by Arno Press in 1979.) 33 Seth Schein sees the shield, divine fire, and enhanced war cry as "sublime emblems of Achilles' transcendent power and personality" and points out that for the duration of the poem, "Achilles is sustained by the gods in such a way that he seems more a divine force than a human one," and that "he has ceased to be human and can no longer be measured by the same standards as other heroes, whether Greek or Trojan" (138). King suggests that "Insofar as we see Achilles as still human, we may say that he has crossed the bounds of his own character to that of his unheroic opposite," and that, even farther, "Homer wants us to see Achilles as having somehow crossed the bounds of human nature" [King's emphasis] (17). 49 then, that the hero's rage functions as an expression of his inhumanity—a liminal non- humanity that partakes of both the divine and the bestial: the super- and the subhuman.35

Comparison with Cu Chulainn's rage is instructive. The narrative context of the relevant passage is vital here. The hero, having guarded the border for three months without sleep and having faced and killed his foster brother Loch, who was aided by the war goddess the Morrigan (TBC1 1875-2037), whom Cu Chulainn was tricked into healing (TBC1 2039-73), has issued the supernaturally enhanced war cry that kills a hundred enemy soldiers after he has just spent three days asleep, himself being healed by his divine father Lugh. During the three days of his recuperation, the boy troop, the same band of a hundred and fifty youths who attacked him upon his first arrival at Emain

Macha and with whom he has since sworn oaths of mutual protection, assumed the defence of the border in his stead with the result that, by the time Cu Chulainn wakes up, they are all dead (TBC1 2136-59; O'Rahilly 184). It is at this point that the hero arms himself as discussed above. The subsequent physical and spiritual distortion occurs just before he embarks on one of the most spectacular killing sprees in all of epic literature.

As P. L. Henry observes, "Perhaps the most primitive form in which the fighting warrior is seen to function in early literature is that described in the metamorphoses of the Ulster warrior Cu Chulainn in the Tain.... What we find in these descriptions is obviously possession of the warrior by a martial fury so intense as to change his whole form" (235,

Henry's italics). The young hero's body is virtually inverted, with joints reversing

35 The image of the town under siege (18.208-14, ahove) is worth noting as it prefigures the fall of Troy, a fall that will be inevitable once Achilles' rage has played itself out against Hector. Important as well, though more understated than other images in the scene, is Achilles' deliberate solitude, hi accordance with his mother's advice he "would not mix with the Achaeans" {pud' esAchaious misgeto, 18.215-16), which in turn implies that they must have been there for him to mix with; even when he rejoins the war, he is still alone, as he has been since Book 1 and as he will remain until Book 24. 50 themselves, sinews bunching into head-sized knots and his whole body shaking and quivering and shifting—an incarnation of instability with one eye flopping on his cheek and the other receding into his skull, and his internal organs flapping in his gullet. His pounding heart makes wild animal noises, sparks fly out of his head, and his hair stands out like the branches of a thorn tree:

His hair curled about his head like branches of red hawthorn used to re-

fence a gap in a hedge. If a noble apple-tree weighed down with fruit had

been shaken about his hair, scarcely one apple would have reached the

ground through it, but an apple would have stayed impaled on each

separate hair because of the fierce bristling of his hair above his head. The

hero's light rose from his forehead, as long and as thick as a hero's fist and

it was as long as his nose, and he was filled with rage as he wielded the

shields and urged on the charioteer and cast sling-stones at the host. As

high, as thick, as strong, as powerful and as long as the mast of a great

ship was the straight stream of dark blood which rose up from the very top

of his head and dissolved into a dark magical mist like the smoke of a

palace when a king comes to be waited on in the evening of a winter's day.

(TBC1 2243-78; O'Rahilly 187)36

Sjoestedt's comment that "The hero is the furious one, possessed of his own tumultuous, blazing energy" (75) hardly does this passage justice. The warrior, at this point the sole

36 Ra chasnig afolt imam c[h]ead imar craibred ndergshiach i mbemaid at[h]alta. Ce ro cratea rigaball fo rigthorad immi iss ed mod da risad ubull dib dochum talman taris acht ro sesed ubull for each oinfinna and re fiithchassadn a ferge atracht da fult liaso. Atracht in Wan laith asa etun comba sithethir remithir airnem n-6claich corbo chomfota frisin sroin coro dechtrastar oc imbirtna sciath, oc brogad ind arad, oc taibleth na slog. Ardithir immorro remithir talcithir tresithir sithidir seolc[h]rand primlui[n]gi mori in buinne diriuch dondfala atracht a firchlethe a chendmullaig hi certairdi, co nderna dubchiaich ndruidechta de amal chiaig do rigbrudin in tan tic ri dia tincur hi fescur lathe gemreta. (2268-78) 51 defender of the social order, himself becomes an embodiment of the chaos endemic to any battlefield—an avatar of the very state of violent liminality that defines any battle in progress. Cii Chulainn is no longer a person at this point, or at least no longer merely a person. Whatever else he may be—a metaphor for the craft of the smith/weapon-maker, or a depiction of a shamanic state of ecstasy (Sayers 2001, 234)—he is also, simply and emphatically, as King says of Achilles, "brutality incarnate" (16).

Some similarities with the description of Achilles' rage are worth noting. Most obvious is the association of fire and light with the hero's frenzy. Like Achilles, Cii

Chulainn is wreathed in fire and smoke emanating from his head. Also like Achilles, his power is enhanced by a martial deity—identified here simply as the war goddess. Like

Achilles as well, though not stated in this passage, he is alone: when he leaps into his scythed chariot, "with its iron points, its thin sharp edges, its hooks and its steel points, with its nails which were on the shafts and thongs and loops and fastenings" (TBC1 2280-

83; O'Rahilly 188)37—a vehicle-cwm-weapon designed to inflict as much chaos on the field as possible and thus compatible with the enraged warrior's state—he is, at least figuratively, on his own. There is no mention of his charioteer Laeg; there is mention only of the number of other weapons that the chariot will hold.38

37 "cona faebraib tanaibid, cona baccanaib ~\ cona birc[h]niadib, cona thairbirib niath, cona ngles aursolcdi, cona thair[n]gib gaithe bitis ar fertsib 1 iallaib i fitbisib i folomnaib don charpat sin" 38 Also interesting are tbe images referring to scenes other than the hero's fury: in the Iliad, a besieged town about to fall, and in the Tain, falling apples, a mended fence, and a king's palace. While the sets of images have little immediate similarity, they are not entirely unlike. The simile in the Iliad, as noted above, prefigures the fall of Troy and is thus appropriate to the hero's state. And though the images in the Tain are at least superficially peaceful, that very peace highlights the violence with which Cii Chulainn is possessed. Moreover, the images of cultivation and husbandry (the apples and the fence), and royalty (the palace), seem to be associated with the third (fecundity) and first (sovereignty) functions respectively. Thus, at the level of imagery, the second-function figure Cu Chulainn overflows the confines of his own ideological niche and encroaches upon the other two functions. As he himself says later in the epic, "Anger destroys the world" ("Conscar bara bith", TBC11.4076; O'Rahilly 235). Revealed here is anger encompassing ih.e world, or at least the thought world. Seen in this light, the superficially peaceful images are no longer so far removed fromth e capture of a city—with its accompanying loss of sovereignty (first function), slaughter of 52

Let us turn once again to Beowulf, a poem quite different in tone from the Iliad and that seems to inhabit an affective universe completely different from that of the Tain.

Unlike these two works, Beowulf contains no elaborate descriptions of the hero's rage.

There is no parallel to the depiction of Achilles' divinely inspired fury, to say nothing of the exuberant violence of Cu Chulainn's warp spasm. However, as Henry notes, "The oldest Germanic epic . .. although shaped to a Christian milieu, manages to retain some undiluted instances of primeval heroic action" (237). There are enough hints and traces to detect the presence of a similar pattern.

For example, the beginning of Beowulf s encounter with Grendel offers several

correspondences.

Com on wanre niht

scridan sceadugenga. Sceotend swaefon,

pa pa^t hornreced healdan scoldon,

ealle buton anum. I>aet was yldum cub,

bzet hie ne moste, ba Metod nolde,

se synscaba39 under sceadu bregdan;—

ac he waeccende wrabum on andan

bad bolgenmod beadwa gebinges. (702-9)

(Came in a dark night a shadow-walker stalking. The warriors slept, those

that should have held the horned hall, all but one. It was known to men

that the sinful injurer could not, when the Measurer did not will it, cast

mm and boys, or, in other words, all potential warriors as was standard in the warfare of the time(secon d function), and the rape and enslavement of women and looting of the city's treasure, the co-opting of its fecundity and wealth, also standard practice (third function). 39 Klaeber emends to s[c\ynscapa. The context of the word does not suggest that an emendation is needed. 53

them under shadow. But Beowulf watched, in hostility toward the fierce

one, awaited enraged the outcome of battle.)

Here one sees that the hero is alone even in the company of his men, by virtue of their being asleep: though they set out together, only he is watchful. Moreover, and more importantly, he is bolgenmod, which Klaeber's glossary gives as simply "enraged" but which Henry focusing on the word's etymology—its relationship to OE (ge-)belgan, the original meaning of which is "to swell"—translates as "in swelling rage" (237). One is reminded of the point in Cu Chulainn's battle with his foster brother Fer Diad, the most difficult of all of his single combats, where the hero "swelled and grew big as a bladder does when inflated" (Ra lin at ~\ infisi amail andil I lies) just before dealing the death blow with the gde bolga (TBC11.3093; O'Rahilly 207). One might also consider, as

Henry does, the light that shines from GrendePs eyes: "him of eagum stod / ligge gelicost leoht unfa?ger" (A hideous light stood out from his eyes, most like a flame, 726-27).

Henry associates both this light and the swollen nature of the hero's anger with the heroic

fury of epic tradition, noting that "The intensity of their battle ardour is conveyed in physical distortion and distension in the one case, and in the light which is emitted from

eyes or forehead" (237), noting as well that the size of the combatants also places them within the context of Indo-European epic heroic struggle (237-38).

Admittedly, the light in this case comes not from the hero but rather from his

opponent. However, the association of light with heroic combat in a not entirely human

situation is still very much present, as it is in the passage that occurs immediately after

Beowulf strikes down Grendel's mother:

[H]eo on flet gecrong, 54

sweord waes swatig, secg weorce gefeh.

Lixte se leoma, leoht inne stod,

efhe swa of hefene hadre scineS

rodores candel. He after recede wlat;

hwearf ba be wealle, waepen hafenade

heard be hiltum Higelaces 6egn

yrre ond anraed (Beowulf 1568-75).

(She fell to the floor. The sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his work.

The light shone, a light arose inside, even as from heaven the sky's candle

shines brightly. He looked through the hall, turned then to the wall, hefted

up his weapon hard by the hilts, Hygelac's thane, angry and single-

minded.)

The image is one of a dead enemy, a warrior at once rejoicing and angry—in the ecstasy of battle, or battle-rage—and a light for which no source is explicitly stated. So where does the light come from? Explanations range from a reference to the light the hero sees on first entering the underwater hall (Klaeber 188) to a "sense of fulfilled joy" (Irving

1968, 123) to an image of God's mercy (Huppe 57) to an image of the sword as a deicidal lightning weapon (M. Puhvel 1979, 26-28), among others. While not rejecting previous suggestions—literature can, after all, function on multiple levels at once—I here suggest that the light in the cave may also be associated with the Indo-European battle-rage as exemplified by Achilles and Cu Chulainn, the luminescent traits of whose own rages have already been noted. For example, all three heroes share a number of attributes, among them a raw destructive force that requires no weapons to manifest itself and that 55 few weapons in Cii Chulainn's case and none in Beowulf s can withstand. Furthermore,

Beowulf himself seems here to be in a state not unlike Achilles' and Cii Chulainn's: ecstatic and angry in his violence, and capable of superhuman destruction. One is also reminded that, in his recounting of this battle to Hrodgar, Beowulf attributes his actual victory to God (1657b-64). Thus, the element of a connection with divinity, present in both the Iliad and the Tain, is also present here, and the comparison of the light to that of

Heaven in no way disqualifies it from also functioning as a beacon of heroic rage. It is not stretching the issue, then, to read the light in the cave as a reflection of the hero's own war-fury, a glow resulting directly from the wild battle-energy unique to him.

We are still faced with the fact that in neither case does the light originate in the hero's person. But the light itself, regardless of its point of origin, may function as a marker that signifies the crossing of a threshold into the liminal state of heroic rage, much as the light element of the "hero on the beach" theme signifies the crossing of a spatial threshold. In fact, many of the elements that comprise this theme are present in the case of the Grendel fight. Though the hero is not on a beach—something to be addressed shortly—he is in the presence of his retainers, and there is an obvious light to which the narrative draws attention. As for the fourth element, the beginning or end of a journey, the hero in this case is not travelling, so the element of a spatial journey cannot logically be present. However, the hero has become bolgenmod: his mental state has definitely

changed. Thus, the lack of a beach—or the lack of any physical limen, as Renoir has

expanded the category (Renoir 1964, 73)—need not trouble us. As Higley has

demonstrated, the poem is concerned largely with thresholds (343); in this case, the hero

stands on the threshold of a spiritual rather than spatial zone, and his entry into it is 56 accompanied by light. As Crowne notes, moreover, the "hero on the beach" theme

"frequently precedes a description of (or reference to) a scene of carnage" (372). The scene that follows—Grendel's bloody consumption of Beowulf s retainer Hondscio (739-

45a) and the tearing off of Grendel's arm (815b-23a)—certainly meets any definition of carnage. Thus, apparent in the light that shines from Grendel's eyes is a theme similar to the "hero on the beach," but one that signifies the crossing of a spiritual rather than a physical threshold, one that stands between sapientia and furor. Perhaps we might call it

"the hero on the edge."

In the battle with Grendel's mother, the case is a little different, yet all five of the

criteria adapted from Crowne are present to some degree. (1) The hero is at a threshold

on one side of which lies sapientia and on the other, furor, the foregoing discussion of the scene has already demonstrated the presence of rage in a hero recognized for his wisdom. (2) Retainers are present. This one is a little tricky as Beowulf s own retainers

are waiting for him back at the surface of Grendel's mother's mere. They are, however,

as close as it is physically possible to be, waiting at the edges of the world to which they

belong. Moreover, given the description of the underwater lair as as a nidsele (hostile

hall, 1513a) and of Beowulf himself as aselegyst (hall visitor, 1545a), one might also see

Grendel as his mother's retainer (Chance 1986, 252). (3) A light, to which the narrative

draws attention, is present. (4) A psychological or spiritual shift is in progress; the hero

enters a liminal state. This journey is the crossing of the threshold from sapientia to furor, to a state of being yrre ond anraid. (5) Carnage is involved. This is a battle;

carnage of some kind would be difficult to avoid, and the killing of Grendel's mother,

accompanied by an explicit reference to the gore on the sword, satisfies the requirement. 57

In the descriptions of Cu Chulainn's and Achilles' rages given above, the same pattern pertains. Both stand on the threshold of rational self-control and violent fury; both

are in the presence of retainers, in Achilles' case the whole Greek army including his

Myrmidons, and in Cu Chulainn's case his charioteer Laeg; both emit spectacular

displays of light; both enter liminal states; and both engage in explicit carnage. The only

significant difference, once the scales of the respective battles are accounted for, is that in

Beowulf s case the light does not shine from his own head; in all other respects, the pattern is identical. The situation in Beowulf can thus be seen as a variation on a shared theme: the light that is often associated with the raging hero need not necessarily

originate with him; its presence on the scene of heroic action is what matters.40

While descriptions of the heroic rage are important, however, more important is

the question of what, exactly, it is. When the hero is on the edge, what pushes him over?

In Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Jonathan Shay

argues that Achilles' rage results from a series of traumas that real soldiers experience

during real wars. A clinical psychiatrist, Shay bases his thesis on his observations of

Vietnam combat veterans whom he has treated for post-traumatic stress disorder resulting

from their combat experiences (a condition hereafter referred to as combat PTSD), and

suggests that a reading of the Iliad provides insight into the experiences of modern

combat soldiers. The first experience that Shay identifies is betrayal, specifically a deep

moral betrayal of the soldier's perception of themis. Regarding the exact translation of

themis, Shay notes the insufficiency of options such as "moral order, convention,

normative expectations, ethics, and commonly understood social values," suggesting that

40 See Chapter Three for a discussion of hero and opponent as components in a single narrative construct defined by heroic action. According to this argument, the presence of the light, not its origin, is important. 58

"The ancient Greek word that Homer used, themis, encompasses all these meanings." He thus uses the term what's right to cover all of the meanings pointed to by the Greek word

(5). He also notes that the contents of what's right vary from culture to culture, but that, more importantly, the deep moral betrayal of themis, regardless of its specific contents, tends to lead to both "violent rage and social withdrawal" (5).

The specific betrayal in Achilles' case is Agamemnon's seizure of his prize of honour, Briseis, in Book 1. This public dishonouring, which Shay equates to "a commander telling a soldier, 'I'll take that Congressional Medal of Honor of yours because I don't have one'" (6), leads directly to Achilles' menis against Agamemnon

(21). The reader who might see Achilles' reaction as silly or childish, as many modern readers do, must remember that Achilles already knows he is going to die: he has already sacrificed his hope of a long life for the fame that he will win at Troy. Agamemnon's gesture strips the sacrifice of meaning and the soldier's life of value. Shay subsequently observes that after his betrayal by Agamemnon, Achilles' social world shrinks to two, himself and Patroclus,41 as evidenced by his wish that all soldiers on both sides should perish, leaving just the pair of them to pull down the walls of Troy (16.115 ff.) (Shay 28).

This shrinking of the social world to just the soldier and his special comrade in arms42 leads to the next in the series of traumas that can result in the outbreak of uncontrolled violence: the comrade's violent death (39-49). Shay cites numerous

examples of combat soldiers having entered berserk states, sometimes for long periods,

41 One might argue that his social world also includes Briseis, whom he claims in Book 9 to love, but this relationship is so much less intense than the one he has with Patroclus that the two are scarcely comparable, especially when one remembers that at the beginning of the epic Briseis is quite clearly a trophy of war. 42 Shay rightly maintains that this relationship is not sexual in the Iliad but rather is borne of the uniquely intense sharing of experience that is common to combat soldiers of every age and culture, and that is in effect closer than the relationship to family (40-41). While later tradition may portray the relationship between these characters as sexual, Homer does not. 59 following the death of such a comrade (40-44). Achilles' reaction to the death of

Patroclus hardly need be described here. What must be mentioned is that "Revenge becomes the sole moral value to a soldier in the berserk state" (30), just as it becomes

Achilles' sole motive in Books 18 to 22.

Shay also observes, based on his experience with the minority of soldiers who return from war alive after having entered the berserk state, that sufferers of combat

PTSD can see themselves as having died at war. This sense of being dead can be triggered by the death of a close comrade, much as Achilles himself sees himself as dead once he learns of Patroclus's demise (Shay 51-53). He also notes that it is common for a surviving soldier to blame himself for his comrade's death as Achilles blames himself for that of Patroclus in Iliad 18.98 ff (Shay 69-72). We might also note Achilles' wish: "let me die at once . . . since it was not my fate to save my dearest comrade from his death"

(autika tethnaien, epei ouk or' emellon hetairoi /kteinomenoi epamynai, Iliad 18.98-99;

Fagles 18.113-15). Shay notes that grieving soldiers often no longer look forward to returning home, just as Achilles, in cutting his hair at Patroclus's funeral (23.140-50), renounces his own homecoming (Shay 51-53).43

An important facet of the warrior's rage is the lack of mercy, in fact a seeming lack of connection to any morality at all, resulting in an utter loss of restraint (Shay 86-

89). As Shay observes, before his berserk rage, Achilles knew respect for the dead and mercy for prisoners (30), but afterward his fury carries him far beyond the bounds of

acceptable behaviour. His rejection of Lycaon's plea for mercy is one example (21.116

ff), and his rejection of Hector's proposal that the winner not violate the loser's corpse

43 This gesture raises the question whether Achilles is acquiescing in the fate laid out by the gods or whether he is actively choosing death. Shay's argument might suggest the latter, and the Iliad makes clear elsewhere that Achilles is not under strict Olympian control. 60

(22.252 ff.) is another. But perhaps the best examples are his taking of twelve prisoners for the purpose of human sacrifice (21.26 ff), his desire to eat Hector's flesh raw

(22.346-47), and his subsequent treatment of Hector's body, of which Mills comments,

"Insomuch as his behaviour offends the moral sensibilities (and I think an ancient Greek audience would be no less offended than a modern one) it is a mark of how far he stands outside of all human community" (79).44 The berserk warrior, then, has lost or forsaken all community. He stands outside, or does not recognize, any moral or ethical restraints upon his capacity for violence.45

As for that violent capacity, it is both "beastlike and godlike" (Shay 75), as the statements of men who have experienced the berserk rage illustrate: '"December 22,

1967, is the day the civilized me became an animal'" (Shay 82); "'I was a fucking animal'" (83); '"I became a fucking animal'" (83, cited at the beginning of the current chapter); "'I felt like a god, this power flowing through me. Anybody could have picked me off there—but I was untouchable'" (84). Beast metaphors are similarly common in the Iliad. Particularly illustrative is Achilles' reply to Hector's proposal, cited above:

"There are no binding oaths between men and lions—wolves and lambs can enjoy no meeting of the minds" (hos ouk esti leousi kai andrasin horkiapista, /crude lykoi te kai arnes homophrona thymon echousin, 22.262-63; Fagles 22.310-11). Here, Achilles is plainly the lion and the wolf while Hector is the man and the lamb.46 As for the hero

44 Or, as Schein has it, "in wishing he could devour Hektor's raw meat he puts himself outside the ways of distinctively human culture, as defined in the poetic tradition of which the Iliad... is a product (152-53). 45 This sense of the berserk warrior being outside all community is further exemplified when Achilles finally re-enters the war in body instead ofjus t in voice: "Homer heightens his standard practice for such scenes by using a dramatic device much like the cinematic trick of abruptly cutting off the sound track: The Greek army vanishes, leaving Achilles alone with the Trojan soldiers that he slaughters" (Shay 86). 46 While animal imagery is common in epic generally and the Iliad in particular, Shay notes an important distinction between mat given by the narrator and that spoken by the combatants: "When veterans and Achilles refer to themselves as animals they are not using conventional metaphors of strength and ferocity. 61 becoming godlike, the connection between Achilles' rage and Athena has already been noted: Athena, working on orders from Zeus, sustains Achilles on nectar and ambrosia when he declines to eat human food (19.347 ff.)—an act that helps to keep him separated from "the process that ultimately defines him as human" (Van Nortwick 1992, 70).47

As indicated in the foregoing summary of Shay's work, the berserk hero both in modern combat and in the Iliad no longer functions within the sphere of human ethics, and he has been brought to this state largely by a deep moral betrayal of his sense of themis and a devastating loss for which he feels both grief and guilt. This pattern is subsequently referred to as Shay's paradigm, and the next several pages are devoted to demonstrating that this paradigm is applicable not just to the Iliad but in some measure to other epic literature as well, specifically to the Tain and Beowulf.A%

Regarding Cii Chulainn, little more need be said about his non-human nature when in the throes of his distortion, except to note that the distorted state itself may reflect the nature of armed combat. As Shay reports, "Danger of death and mutilation is the pervading medium of combat. It is a viscous liquid in which everything looks strangely refracted and moves about in odd ways, a powerful corrosive that breaks down

Unlike Homer's narrator, who uses these as terms of praise, when soldiers speak of themselves this way they are speaking of a loss of human restraint, powerfully symbolized by Achilles' longing to eat Hektor's raw flesh" (83-84). 47 Another episode indicating the raging Achilles' moral state is his sacrifice of the twelve Trojans at Patroclus' funeral (23.175-76). While one may see this scene as yet another example of the berserkhero's bestial nature, Schein observes that, while this episode is the "greatest lapse into savagery in the Iliad" it is "not animalistic but distinctively human in its planned brutality and its perversion of an activity (sacrifice) that is supposed to bring humans closer not to animals but to the gods" (Schein 79). However, considering how readily the gods sacrifice mortals to their own interests and preferences—Hera lightly consents to Zeus destroying three of her favourite cities in return for the razing of Troy {Iliad 4.37 ff.)—Achilles may here be at his most godlike. Like the gods, he is acting purely in his own interests without regard for human values, and like the gods he has both the will and the power to execute his intentions. 48 Epic heroes and modern soldiers of course inhabit entirely different worlds. What is interesting about Shay's paradigm is that it is apparent even across such wide cultural distances. It is also worth noting that Shay himself, in his recognition that the semantic contents of themis, "what's right," vary fromcultur e to culture, goes a long way toward taking these distances into account. 62 many fixed contours of perception and utterly dissolves others" (10). That is, soldiers in combat do not see the world as other people do: to them, the world is no longer a place of stable forms in which perception can be trusted; it is a dynamic chaos in which pain, injury, and death can be expected from any direction at any time. Cii Chulainn's distortion may thus be a bodily reflection of the physical and psychological realities of war: the hero is monstrous because warfare is monstrous; he is not an aberration but is a depiction of this reality stripped of its cultured or civilized illusions.

Regarding the betrayal of themis, no betrayal precisely analogous to

Agamemnon's occurs in the Tain: Conchobar, though not a flawless king, does not co-opt his greatest warrior's prize of honour and does not publicly devalue him. However, the specific value of themis varies among cultures: there are many ways of betraying what's right. One such way is to put a man in a position where he is obliged to kill his own son—a position in which numerous heroes wind up (Miller 88-92),49 and in which Cu

Chulainn finds himself in "The Death of Aife's One Son" (Kinsella 39-45), one of the many shorter tales that precede the Tain in the Ulster Cycle. The narrative situation is simple: Cu Chulainn's only son Connla, whom he begot during his training in arms and whom he has never met, arrives on the Irish coast seeking his father. Though only seven years old, the impetuous boy, unwilling to yield or to give his name, bests the first two warriors who challenge him. The defence of the land, for the boy is plainly a threat, thus

falls to Cii Chulainn. While he is not ordered to do so, and while his wife tries to reason him out of it, he claims he must kill the boy "for the honour of Ulster" ("'as inchaib

49 An example that Klaeber includes in his edition ofBeowulf, presumably for the purposes of cultural context, is the fragmentaryOl d High German Hildebrandslied (Klaeber 290-92). 63

Ulacf", AOA para. 9; Kinsella 44).50 He rejects his wife's restraint, even though she has deduced the boy's identity, much as Achilles' rejects all restraint on his own violence:

"Turn back, hear me!

My restraint is reason

Cuchulainn hear it...."

"Be quiet, wife.

It isn't a woman

that I need now

to hold me back." (AOA para 8-9 Kinsella 43)51

During the ensuing encounter, Connla seems to be getting the better of Cu Chulainn until the latter disembowels him with the gae bolga (AOA; summarized in Kinsella 44). He then "took the boy in his arms and carried him away from the place and brought him and

laid him down before the people of Ulster. 'My son, men of Ulster,' he said. 'Here you

are.' 'Alas! Alas!' said all Ulster" ('"Aso mo macsa diiib, a Ultu, ol se. / 'Fe amai,' ol

Ulaid", AOA ch. 12 ; Kinsella 45).

Cii Chulainn clearly knows that the situation constitutes a violation of themis, and

one cannot imagine that his declaration, '"My son, men of Ulster... Here you are,'" is

spoken without this awareness and without some sense of blame. He is in effect saying,

"Look what you made me do."52 Cii Chulainn's situation here is governed by what Shay

50 Quotations from the Irish are taken from "Aided Oenfir Aife" in Compert Con Culainn and Other Stories, edited by A. G. Van Hamel. Hamei's source is the Yellow Book of Lecan (Leabhar Buidhe Lecain), TCD MS 1318. Aided Oenfir Aife. Quotations and translations are from Hamei's edition in Compert Con Culainn and Other Stories, 1933. 51 "Tinta frim! Cluinte mo cloise! Bad Cii Chulainn claodar!" ... "Coisc, a ben! Ni cose mna admoiniur morgnimaib asa coscur gle." 52 It is worth noting that honour for the ancient Irish was a coercive power as the loss of honour was often feared more than death itself: hence the importance of the taunting of the hero in the Tain proper. Though 64 would call bad "moral luck," a situation in which no positive outcome is possible, and all options lead to moral violation. Such situations are frequent in the background of soldiers who have experienced berserk rages (31-32). One might argue, as Lawrence does in his classic Beowulf and Epic Tradition, that "nothing is more elusive than the shifting processes of popular imagination," that "Rigorous attention to method is . .. especially necessary," and that "the temptation to analyze the picturesque fantasies of the past must be sternly repressed" (1928, 129). On the other hand, one could adopt Shay's position:

"Paradoxically, the reader must respond emotionally to the reality of combat danger in order to make rational sense of the injury inflicted when those in charge violate 'what's right.' If the emotion of terror is completely absent from the reader's experience . .. crucial information about the experience of combat is not getting through" (11, Shay's emphases). The same could be said of the circumstances of Cu Chulainn, who has been put in a position in which he had to kill his only son. Failure to respond emotionally to the hero's situation would constitute a failure to apprehend the scene in any but the most superficial way. And an emotional response to this scene is likely, in most readers, to involve assumptions of "what's right" and a sense that it has been violated.

The case is not as clear in Beowulf, not because it is weaker but because the

Anglo-Saxon epic is very different from the other two works under discussion. Where the

Iliad sings and the Tain shouts, Beowulf speaks, or at times just simply alludes. That said, the non-human or monstrous aspect of Beowulf s character has been noted before now. It

is apparent in the use of the word aglaica, which Klaeber translates both as "wretch,

monster, demon, fiend" and as "hero, warrior," which Bosworth and Toller give as "a

one cannot assume that the ethics of a given narrative align with the ethics of the culture that produced it, such similarities can reasonably be regarded as suggestive. 65 miserable being, wretch, miscreant, monster, fierce combatant," and which the new

Dictionary of Old English gives as "awesome opponent, ferocious fighter."53 As Marion

Huffines observes, however, the word occurs twenty times in Beowulf and generally refers to monsters. She notes two instances of it referring to men: in line 893 where it refers to Sigemund, and in line 2592, where it refers to both Beowulf and the dragon.54

In addition, she remarks that "In other Anglo-Saxon literary monuments, aglceca only refers to the devil or monsters" (71). In other words, the only two human aglcecan in all

of Anglo-Saxon poetry are Sigemund and Beowulf. Noting the association of the root

Iceca with magic—an association that I admit is a little dubious—she also points out that

Grendel, whose glowing eyes and invulnerability to swords carry magical or supernatural

connotations, whose giant stature and animal-like claw are strongly suggestive of the

non-human, and who is depicted as purely evil, is referred to as an aglceca eleven times

(Huffines 73-74). Further, Huffines points out that "Grendel's mother, referred to once as

aglcecwif shares the magical invulnerability with her son," and that "The sea monster

referred to in the Breca episode is also an aglceca" (556) as are the monsters in the mere

(1512), who through the word helrunan (163) are associated with evil and magic

(Huffines 75). She thus establishes that, not only in Anglo-Saxon poetry generally but

also in Beowulf specifically, the word carries strong negative connotations of the

monstrous. Regarding Beowulf and the dragon's joint appellation as aglcecan, Huffines

suggests a "moral decline" on the part of the hero who begins the poem fighting against a

creature who is "purely evil" and ends it by being "morally on the defensive" (80),

53 Both Huffines (below) and Metzger see the ag- element as cognate with OHG egiso, and OE ege and egesa, "terror" (Lapidge 381). 54 Orchard suggests that its instance at 1512 most likely refers to Beowulf as well, rather than the monsters in the mere (Orchard 1995, 33). Perhaps the ambiguity is revealing. 66 suggesting also that Beowulf "is contaminated by monsterlikeness as well as by the monster's poison" (80). Though Huffines associates the moral decline of both Sigemund and Beowulf largely with avarice, the fact remains that by the end of the poem the hero has come to be referred to with a term that carries not only moral but also non-human connotations.55

Andy Orchard makes a similar though more condensed argument regarding the poet's use of words containing the element bolgen, discussed briefly above in the context of heroic rage. As Orchard's work is dense, I quote the relevant passage at length:

The fury experienced by both Beowulf and Grendel is a further factor

which links the combatants; Beowulf waits for GrendePs arrival "furious

at heart" (bolgenmod, line 709), while the door of Heorot collapses at

GrendePs touch "since he was furious" (da (he ge)bolgen wees, line 723);

it might be noted that precisely the same reason is given for Beowulf s

ability to overwhelm GrendePs mother in their first grappling (da he

gebolgen wees, line 1539), and that throughout Beowulf the only figures

who are described as "furious" in this way (gebolgen or bolgenmod) are

Beowulf, in each of his three monster battles (lines 709, 1539, 2401, and

55 The potential weakness in Huffines' argument—her association of aglceca with Iceca—is not necessarily fatal. The contextual association of aglceca with monstrosity lends support to her case regardless of its supposed etymological association with magic. At the risk of seeming whimsical, I would like to suggest an alternate etymology, focusing, as Huffines does, on the -Iceca element, which Metzger sees as linked with OE lacan (to move quickly, Orchard 1995, 33). Bosworth and Toller define the verb Iceccan thus: "to take, grasp, seize, catch, apprehend, capture." Though the cognate noun *lcecca or *lceca (taker, grasper, captor, etc.) is not attested in Old English, its existence is likely given the obvious utility and grammatical acceptability of such a word. Thus, another possibility, in keeping with the nature of trolls who snatch sleeping men in the night, sea monsters who latch on to swimmers, dragons who seize and hold the treasures of the dead, and heroes who fight dragons for a chance to capture the same loot, is, assuming the association of the ag- element with egesa, to translate aglceca as something like "terrible/monstrous captor," with connotations of both theft and greed. This etymology is admittedly speculative. 67

2550), Grendel (line 723), the monsters at the mere (line 1431), the fallen

prince Heremod (line 1713), and the dragon (lines 2220 and 2304).

(Orchard 1995, 32)

Both Huffines and Orchard identify a linguistic pattern by which the hero is associated with the characteristics of his non-human opponents and by which he can be seen to exist, at least partially, on a non-human plain. The case of bolgen is particularly compelling as it also refers to Heremod56 who, as illustrated below, was unable to contain or control his own rage and thus came to a miserable end. The hero's rage itself, then, opens the hero up to participation in the non-human. Much like the humanity of Achilles and Cu

Chulainn, and in perfect keeping with Shay's paradigm, Beowulf s humanity is undermined by the very rage that defines him as the superlative.

Shay's paradigm might also clarify one of the poem's more troubling episodes:

Beowulf s apparent sacrifice of Hondscio during the Grendel episode, in which the

Geatish hero watches his retainer being devoured. As Shay notes, the soldier in a state of fury is no longer concerned for the safety of his comrades but is interested only in engaging the enemy, while simultaneously and paradoxically his comrades are attracted to his company despite the obvious danger that he represents (90-91). While it might be argued that Grendel devours the unfortunate man too quickly for Beowulf to intervene, the language of the scene itself defies such an interpretation:

Ne bast se aglasca yldan bohte,

ac he gefeng hraSe forman side

56 Heremod—and perhaps it is significant that his name means "Warheart"—was, like many of the combat veterans to whom Shay refers, unable to contain or control his fury, and thus unable to exist within the confines of society. A great warrior himself, he serves as a negative example to Beowulf, an "anti- Beowulf in living's words (1968, 149): an example of unbridled rage who destroys not only his enemies, but his society and himself as well—an example of fury that, in Cii Chulainn's words, "destroys the world." 68

slaependne rinc, slat unwearnum,

bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc,

synsnsedum swealh; sonahsfde

unlyfigendes eal gefeormod,

fet ond folma. (739-45)

(Not that the monster thought to delay, but he seized quickly, at the first

opportunity, a sleeping warrior, tore irresistibly, bit joints, drank blood

from veins, swallowed huge morsels. Soon57 had [he] devoured all of the

dead man, feet and hands.)

While the attack may be swift, it is not instantaneous. The passage describes the process by which the unlucky warrior is consumed, and the process takes place, as any process must, over time. And if Grendel has time to bite into joints, suck blood from veins, chomp down on his meal one bite at a time, and apparently pop the last four extremities into his mouth, it is at least conceivable that the waiting hero has time to step in and disrupt the monster's gruesome feast. One possible reason for the delay—a sensible possibility suggested to me by second- and first- year students during classroom discussion—is that Beowulf is waiting and watching, trying to assess the invader's methods of attack. The motive, while practical, is hardly admirable to a modern audience, as my students' reactions have indicated. Moreover, it is likely to have been even less admirable to a contemporary audience to whom the lord/retainer bond was one of the most important bonds, possibly the most important bond, in a warrior's life. If, however,

57 Though Klaeber gives "immediately, at once," Bosworth and Toller give "soon, immediately, directly, at once." The range of meaning of sona thus includes both instantaneous action and action over a short period oftime. 69

Beowulf has moved beyond caring for the well-being or even survival of the men in his company, his actions at least become comprehensible.

Another possibility, suggested by one of my readers,58 is that the apparent slowness of the action described in this scene is "an indicator of the onset of rage," which itself causes Beowulf "to observe the details of Grendel's actions as ifin slow motion."

This suggestion is compatible with Shay's argument insofar as Shay identifies the battlefield as an area in which "everything looks strangely refracted" and in which standard categories of perception break down. Beowulf could, then, be experiencing just such a shift in perception as do actual soldiers engaging in actual combat, a shift

associated, through example drawn from lived experience, with the onset of the warrior's rage.

Returning to the Tain, one finds the other key ingredient in the paradigm, a

devastating loss for which the hero feels both grief and guilt, easier to place. The long

description of Cu Chulainn's distortion, cited above, occurs just after the hero, having

exhausted himself by fighting alone through the entire winter, has slept for three days while the boytroop assumed his post and was subsequently annihilated. While the

boytroop is not a single individual, Cu Chulainn does have an important relationship with

the group: it was the boytroop that first blocked his entrance into the society of Emain

Macha, the boytroop that set off his first warp spasm, and, most importantly, the boytroop with whom he exchanged vows of mutual protection. Thus, in standing watch for Cu

Chulainn, the boytroop is living up to its relationship to the hero; put another way, its

relationship to the hero leads directly to the boytroop's annihilation. Thus, when Cu

Chulainn wakes to learn that the hundred and fifty youths have died manning his post, his

58 Christa Canitz, personal correspondence. 70 reaction is likely akin to the feeling of the "wrongful substitution" or survivor's guilt— the sense that '"It should have been me'" (Shay 71) or '"I should've took the fucking round myself" (69)—common to soldiers whose close comrades are killed in action (69-

72). Given the single-mindedness with which Cu Chulainn has held the border for the past three months, and given that combat at this point is the sole context of his life, any

other reaction is unlikely. That his most spectacular distortion follows immediately upon the slaughter of the boytroop, then, is perfectly in keeping with Shay's paradigm.

But the question whether the elements of betrayal and loss are apparent in

Beowulf s life, in a context suggesting a connection with his furor, still remains. Loss can be amply demonstrated in Beowulf s account of the killing of Daeghrefn in revenge for the latter's slaying of Hygelac. In working himself up to encounter the dragon, Beowulf

tells of the many benefits—treasure, land, and honour—that he had received from

Hygelac, before going on to tell of the vengeance he enacted upon his lord's killer:

"... ic for dugeSum Dasghrefne weard

to handbonan, Huga cempan;—

nalles he pa fraetwe Frescyningfe],

breostweorSunge bringan moste,

ac in campe gecrong cumbles hyrde,

asbeling on elne; ne wses ecg bona,

ac him hildegrap heortan wylmas,

banhus gebraec. Nu sceall billes ecg,

hond ond heard sweord ymb hord wigan." (2501 -9) 71

(... before the war-band, I became hand-bane to Dasghrem, the Hugas'

champion. Not at all could he bring that fine armour, that breast ornament,

to the Frisian king, but he fell in battle, the banner's guardian, a prince in

valour. Not a sword, but a death grip was his bane, broke his bone-house,

the surge of his heart. Now shall the blade's edge, hand and hard sword,

do battle about the hoard.)

Critical response to this episode has varied. Bonjour sees the killing as "just a slight reminder of the particular nature of a man whom he has lifted, in some measure, above the ordinary human plane" (1952, 82). Irving, on the other hand, commenting on

Beowulf s understandable emotional suffering at the death of his uncle and lord, suggests that "Beowulf is able to survive Hygelac's death in a way that old Hrethel cannot survive his son's death, because Beowulf is allowed to act out a heroically proper response to it by taking vengeance" in the unusual form "of squeezing Hygelac's Frankish slayer

Dasghrem to death, an action strange and violent enough to seem some aberrant manifestation of the close embrace of love" (1989, 108-9). Orchard, however, sees the

episode differently, suggesting that "Beowulf fights monsters because only then is he well-matched" and that this essential monstrosity in his nature is carried over into his

encounter with Dagghrefn, whom he crushes to death (1995, 32-33).59 In a later work,

Orchard also points out that "The opening of this section of Beowulf s speech focuses

attention on the mutual give and take which is the hallmark of heroic commerce, stressed

59 In. terms of monstrosity, one is also reminded of the scene in Egilssaga in which Egil, finding his opponent Atli impervious to his sword due to a spell cast by Atli's mother, tosses aside his arms and "By his greater strength,... pushed Atli over backwards, then sprawled over him and bit through his throat" ("kendi pa aflstmunar. ok fell Atli a bak aptr. en Egill greyfSiz at nidr ok beit i sundr i honum barkann," Egil ch. 67: Scudder 128; Einarsson 127; ON from Einarsson's edition). In this instance, the combat is a legal proceeding in which Egil is fighting to regain his wife's wealth, which Atli has wrongfully seized with the blessing of the Norwegian king—a clear violation of themis in a highly legalistic society. The formal setting of the duel serves to highlight the hero's aberrant and unstable behaviour. 72 by no fewer than four terms for giving in three lines (sealde, geald... gifede.. .forgeaf, lines 2490b-2492)," and that "Although Beowulf mentions first of all that he receives

'treasures' (madmas, line 2490a) from Hygelac, he quickly goes on to assert through repetition that what he really gained was a home (Iond... eard, edelwyn, lines 2492b-

2493a)" (2003,231). In other words, Orchard points out Beowulf s emphasis of the benefits of civilization—wealth, home, and lands—benefits that he enjoys through his relationship with Hygelac.

When his lord is killed, Beowulf faces the possibility not only of losing these benefits, but also of suffering an existence outside of civilization, an existence as an

anhaga, a lordless man. Thus, temporarily—until he meets his obligation as a retainer by

avenging his lord—Beowulf is outside of society, and those benefits to which he alludes

are at least potentially slipping from his grasp: he is, socially speaking, in a liminal state.

It is perhaps appropriate that, at this point and this point only, he behaves monstrously

toward a human opponent. He is, like a monster, outside human community, even if only

briefly; we might remember that it is largely his position as an outsider, a mearcstapa

(103) and an angenga (165, 449), that goads Grendel on to his own monstrous predations.

Apparent here is a glimpse of the warrior hero set free from societal restraints. The image

may be savage, but it takes us several steps closer to the wild rampages of Achilles and

Cii Chulainn. Moreover, given the importance that early Germanic peoples placed on the

lord-retainer relationship, Beowulf s loss of his lord—whom he loved deeply, as Irving

has noted, and for whose death he might feel some guilt, having himself failed to keep

Hygelac alive—can be seen as analogous to the soldier's loss of a close companion, to

Achilles' loss of Patroclus, and to Cii Chulainn's loss of the boytroop. That the death of 73 this particular person leads Beowulf to cast aside the civilized mode of combat represented by his oft-mentioned sword and to kill another man in such a monstrous manner, to step or drift, in a sense, outside the community of warriors to which he belongs, is perfectly in keeping with Shay's paradigm.

Regarding the betrayal of themis, I must be more tentative. However, a hint of such guilt may lurk in the events surrounding Beowulf s fight with Grendel's mother. At the beginning of the episode, Beowulf sets out with his men and the Danish retainers in the company of their king. The company watches as the hero dives into the mere, but later Hrodgar and his men go home. While from their perspective there is little use in waiting longer—the mere is awash with blood, and the Danes assume the Geatish warrior to be dead (1591-99)—the matter may look different to Beowulf And here, I am going to indulge in just that sort of imaginative speculation that Lawrence warns us so eloquently to avoid but that Shay sees as essential to understanding the combatant's experience.

From Beowulf s point of view, then, the situation may seem roughly as follows. He, in the company of Danes and Geats, sets out to the place where once again he will risk his

life to save Heorot. While he is deep underwater and engaged in his most difficult battle

so far, the people for whom he is fighting give up on him and return to their hall. When

the hero emerges from the bloodstained water, it is to find the beneficiaries of his risk and

efforts absent. Had he set out alone, there would have been no expectation of anyone

waiting for him. As he does not set out alone, however, it is reasonable to expect that the

people with whom he came should still be waiting when he returned. From Beowulf s

point of view, a sense of having been betrayed would not be out of place. 74

Such evidence as the text affords supports the foregoing suggestion. When

Beowulf re-enters Heorot and drags GrendePs head across the floor, we are told, "I>a waes be feaxe on flet boren / Grendles heafod, bser guman druncon" (Then was Grendel's head borne into the hall by the hair, where men were drinking, 1647-48). The juxtaposition between the carrying of the huge head, a concrete symbol of heroic struggle, and the image of HroSgar and his men sitting around drinking, is striking, and would probably have been equally striking to the hero himself. The text mentions nothing resembling mourning on the part of the Danes and their king; they seem to be indulging in yet

another feast, as though Beowulf had not apparently died trying to save them—as though

his risks and efforts on their behalf were meaningless. Looking at the scene this way, we

are not far from the situation in the Iliad where Agamemnon utterly devalues the honour

and life of his own greatest hero. It is thus not surprising that Beowulf draws the feasting

king's attention to the difficulty of the encounter and to the fact that he would not have

survived had God—unlike the king—not been with him:

"Ic pact unsofte ealdre gedigde,

wigge under waetere, weorc genebde

earfo51ice; aetrihte waes

gu5 getwaefed, nymSe mec God scylde." (1655-58)

("I hardly passed through that with [my] life, warfare under water,

engaged painfully in that work. That battle would have ended right away if

God had not shielded me.")

Beowulf apparently feels the need to remind the wassailing monarch of his own value,

which the king seems to have forgotten. Thus, Beowulf s sense of themis may have been 75 betrayed, not only by the king's abandoning him at the mere but also by his failure to adequately value the life that he believed had been sacrificed in his service. One wonders how many other disposable foreigners HroSgar has gone through up to this point. Shay's paradigm, then, applies to Beowulf as well as to the Iliad and the Tain. The question that such an assertion raises, and one that this study cannot hope to answer, is whether it is by means of moral betrayal that societies actually create these heroic and problematic

characters who are at once so dangerous and so necessary.

Once the furor heroicus has been aroused, however, what is to be done with it?

How, for the benefit of both hero and society, is this energy to be dissipated? It is, after

all, this manifestation of wildness that makes the hero both so useful and so dangerous,

and that to a large degree defines the epic hero as such. Both the Iliad and the Tain

answer this question—the Iliad in Book 24, and the Tain in the "Boyhood Deeds"

section—and in both cases the answer revolves around postliminal rites: the sharing of

grief in the case of Achilles and the systematic cooling of the young warrior's ardour in

the case of Cu Chulainn. Shay's paradigm is also applicable. In fact, his book was written

because so many soldiers, on returning from combat, found themselves prone to fits of an

uncontrollable rage that often cost them family, friends, and jobs. The reason for this

situation, the reason why so many combat veterans find themselves in therapy—or

addicted to drugs—or committing suicide—is that modern society, unlike the societies

depicted in ancient and medieval epic, has little in the way of postliminal rites through

which the returning soldier can be reincorporated into a peaceful civilization (Shay 55-

68). To return to Beowulf, one must ask whether the tale offers any postliminal rites to 76 help bring the raging or potentially raging hero back into the fold of the community. Does

Beowulf, in other words, complete the pattern discussed thus far?

To return once more to the Iliad, a brief consideration of the means by which the raging Achilles is brought back into the context of community will be useful. By the beginning of Book 24, his presiding over the funeral games in the previous book notwithstanding, he is still well outside the spiritual and moral borders of his society. As

King has it, "Homer returns Achilles to the human world in two stages. He returns him socially in Book Twenty-Three, spiritually in Book Twenty-Four" (37).60 The action in

Book 24—what King would refer to as his spiritual reintegration—is crucial at this point.

While Achilles, by presiding over the funeral games and settling disputes between

competitors, is once again acting in community with his fellow Achaeans, by continuing to defile Hector's body, he is still outside his society's ethical world. He is, in effect, still

in a morally or spiritually liminal state. The distance between Achilles and the other human characters in the poem is best summed up by the speech of Apollo who, after upbraiding the other Olympians for allowing him to continue to violate the corpse,

continues,

"But murderous Achilles—you gods, you choose to help Achilles.

That man without a shred of decency in his heart.. .

his temper can never bend and change—like some lion

going his own barbaric way, giving in to his power,

his brute force and his wild pride, as down he swoops

on the flocks of men to seize his savage feast.

60 Similarly, Mills notes that Achilles' reintegration through the funeral games and his encounter with Priam marks the end of his "liminal separation" (80). 77

Achilles has lost all pity. No shame in the man,

shame that does great harm or drives men on to good"

(24.39-45; Fagles 24.46-53, ellipsis in Fagles)61

The word that Fagles translates here as "murderous" is oloos, which Schein gives as

"accursedly destructive," noting that "Only here in the poem is the word used of a person rather than a destructive force of nature or some abstract or personified element of destruction. Apollo's use of the word at this point characterizes Achilles himself as such an impersonal, destructive force" (158). The case with oloos is similar to that of menis; both of them indicate a non-human state to which only Achilles in his rage is susceptible and from which he must return if he is to be reincorporated into human community.62

The reintegration occurs, as often noted, through his exchange with Priam, specifically through their shared grieving: Priam's for Hector and Achilles' for Patroclus.

It is accomplished through Priam's establishment of empathy with his son's killer, and through what Shay refers to as the "communalization of grief (55-68). Priam begins,

"Remember your own father, great godlike Achilles/—as old as I am, past the threshold of deadly old age" (mnesai patros soio theois epieikel' Achilleu, I telikou hos per egon, oho epi geraos oudoi, 24.486-87; Fagles 24.570-71). He goes on to describe the sufferings of Peleus, all the while emphasizing his own sufferings and concluding with

1 aXX' oXow 'Ajykr^C 9eol (3ouXeCT&' eTCocpiqyeiv. & OUT' ap pi\>tq elalv evaiaxfjioi ouxe vorjfjia yvajATCTov evl ax^S-euan, Xewv S' &q aypia olSev, oq x' eTtel ap fxeyaXr) xe pLyj xocl ayvjvopi. xh>fi.(3 e'c^a? eta' kizl [AYJXa |3poTwv tva Soura X

24.590-91). He does, in other words, what his Achaean counterpart Agamemnon failed to do in Book 1: he establishes a relationship with the hero based not upon self-interest and power structures—what he wants from Achilles—but rather upon what he shares with

Achilles.

The effect of Priam's speech is immediate. A few lines later, Achilles replies,

"What brought you down to the ships, all alone,

to face the glance of the man who killed your sons,

so many fine brave boys? You have a heart of iron.

Come, please, sit down in this chair here ...

Let us put our griefs to rest in our own hearts,

rake them up no more, raw as we are, we wretched men

live on to bear such torments—the gods live free of sorrows."

(24.519-26; Fagles 24.606-14, ellipsis in Fagles)63

Here, for the first time since the death of Patroclus, Achilles speaks of himself in the context of his fellow humans. He goes from being "godlike Achilles" (theois epieikel'

Achilleu) at the beginning of Priam's speech, to being simply one among "we wretched

•K&q STXY]? E7U V7JGC? 'A)(0U(OV IX^SfJlEV 010? dcvSpo? e? 6

Cu Chulainn is also brought back into the human community through ritual, following his initiatory combat on the borders of Ulster. As he approaches, the watchman warns that every man will be killed unless the young warrior is intercepted by naked women. Cu Chulainn threatens to kill everyone in the capital unless a man is found to fight him, at which point the women of the court obligingly bare their breasts.

He hid his face. Then the warriors of Emain seized him and cast

him into a tub of cold water. That tub burst about him The second tub into

which he was plunged boiled hands high therefrom. The third tub into

which he went after that he warmed so that its heat and its cold were

properly adjusted for him. Then he came out and the queen, Mugain, put

on him a blue mantle with a silver brooch therein, and a hooded tunic, and

he sat at Conchobor's knee which was his resting-place always after that.

64 Schein points out that "he is re-established as his distinctive self—as the hero with capacities for both philotes and menis he was at the beginning of Book 1," and that "The sympathy he shows Priam is the same sympathy that led him to summon the assembly at 1.54 in an attempt to find an end to the plague" (162). Bespaloff simply notes that Achilles "seems to come to himself and be cured of his frenzy"(33) , and King notes that "When Achilles killed Hektor in Book Twenty-Two, Homer portrayed his victory as a victory over humanity, when Achilles puts Hektor's body on Priam's wagon in Book Twenty-Four, it is a victory of and for humanity" (37). 80

(TBC1 802-21; O'Rahilly 147-48)65

Apparent in Cu Chulainn is an example of the uncontrolled rage that pushes the hero to violence "beyond any ritual or customary control," a violence that imperils not just his

enemies but his own nation and kindred as well (Miller 219), much as the friends and

families of modern combat veterans are often put at risk by the "persistent mobilization

for danger" and the difficulty in establishing "safe, nonviolent attachment to others," that

frequently accompanies combat PTSD (Shay 173-78).66

As for the means by which the young hero's ardour is cooled, some comment is required. The mass baring of breasts has led to a range of interpretations, some related to the idea of Christian modesty and others to notions of public embarrassment or even

simple burlesque. Raymond Cormier, referring to analogous situations in other literatures

and especially the relationship between Enkidu and the temple prostitute in Gilgamesh

(45), argues that "the mentality at work here juxtaposes the savage or uncivilized,

external world of explosive virility . . . with the unadorned, peaceful, feminine fertility or

internalized collaborativeness" and suggests that the scene "appears to enshrine a dark

hint from the dawn of civilization" (46). McCone, on the other hand—and his view seems

to be the most commonly held—simply sees the young Cu Chulainn as being "put to

shame by a display of naked breasts" (15).

65 "Foilgis-[s]eom a gniiis. La sodain atnethat laith gaile Emna ~\ focherdat i ndabaig n-iiarusci. Maitti immi-seom in dabach hisin. In dabach aile dano in ro lad, fiches dornaib de. In tress dabach i ndeochaid iar sudiu, fosngert-side combo chuimsi do a tess 1 a foacht. Dothaet ass iarom "| dobeir ind rigan iar sudiu .i. Mugain, bratt ngorm n-imbi ~\ delg n-argit n-and ~\ lene chulpatach. Ocus suidid fo gliin Chonchobair iarom, 1 ba si sin a lepaid do gres iar sudiu." (814-21) 66 Gray noting that "Cii Chulainn's pre-eminence ... rests squarely in Dumezil's 'second function'," notes also that, in addition to a "monstrous deformation" and an "incandescent rage," one of the qualities that typify this function is "the inability to distinguish friend from foe" (1989/90, 38). Similarly, McKone notes the unreliability of heroes both individually and as a group, suggesting their own urges toward violence often supersede their obligations to the societies they are supposed to serve (McKone, 16). 81

Within the context of postliminal rites, however, lies another interpretation. Cu

Chulainn is returning from an adventure in a liminal zone that is at least nominally matriarchal: the sons of Nechta Scene are identified by their mother's name, not by their father's. While Cii Chulainn consistently opposes warriors associated with matriarchy, specifically those under Medb's control and sometimes the Morrigan herself, here women are used to bring him under control. While the traditional attribution of the effect of this scene to Cii Chulainn's modesty makes sense, one wonders whether it is also related to these women's operating within and on behalf of a patriarchal society. That is, they are women occupying their sanctioned place in a society defined and ruled by men, as opposed to the sons of Nechta Scene, Medb's warriors, or the Morrigan. In a social context (for a detailed discussion of which, see Chapter Two), the women of Emain

Macha are more clearly gendered as women; in the context of alterity (for more details on which, see Chapter Three), they are more fully constructed as members of the human

community than are those women who represent alternative social orders or modes, and who are decidedly other in the context of the tale. Moreover, the women here do not bear weapons, and they expose and make vulnerable those body parts that identify them as

feminine, thus letting him know that he is no longer in the realm of inverted, matriarchal rule: women in Emain Macha are not warriors. The function of this postliminal rite, then, is to jar the enraged young champion into an awareness of the nature of the community

along precisely those lines that differentiate it from the realm in which he has been

adventuring. As for the dunking in the three vats, Dumezil sees in this passage the remnants of a practice in which the warrior is brought to the state of fury, then ritually

calmed on his re-entry into society, noting that while "this transfiguring rage is in itself a 82 good thing," it is "as troublesome as it is precious" because "the child is not its master; on the contrary, it possesses him." The young warrior must be brought under control so that his energy can be harnessed for the protection of his society, and the cooling in the vats represents exactly this kind of harnessing (1969, 135). McCone refers to the whole episode as "an obvious example of what a Dumezilian would call victory of the pacific

'third' function over the martial 'second' function" (15), with the breast-baring women representing the third function. If we add the obvious association of the king with the first function and recognize that Cu Chulainn, in being placed on the king's knee after his bath, is being placed in a position that in early Ireland was "associated with fosterage"

(23), what emerges is a rite of incorporation that effectively brackets or contains the formerly raging and liminal second-function figure between the other two functions.

Beowulf s return to Heorot after slaying Grendel's mother also reveals postliminal rites being used to bring the hero back into the civilized world after his

adventure in a physically and spiritually liminal zone. It is in this context, in fact, that one

can read HroSgar's sermon about Heremod, delivered upon the hero's unexpected re-

entrance into the hall, still flushed with the ecstasy of combat, lugging a monster's bloody head, and at least arguably unpleased at having been abandoned:

Du scealt to frofre weorban

eal langtwidig leodum binum,

hasleSum to helpe. Ne wearS Heremod swa,

eaforum Ecgwelan, Ar-Scyldingum;

ne geweox he him to willan, ac to waslfealle

ond to deadcwalum Deniga leodum; 83

breat bolgenmod beodgeneatas,

eaxlgesteallan, ob baet he ana hwearf,

masre Qeoden mondreamum from. .. (Beowulf'1707-15 )

("You shall become a comfort for a long time to your tribe, a help to

heroes. Not so was Heremod, to the sons of Ecgwela, the Honour-

Scyldings; he waxed not in joy to them, but in slaughterfill and bloody

death to the Danish people; cut down his table-friends in a fury, shoulder-

mates, until he was turned out alone, a great lord, from the joys of men.")

HroSgar tells the hero that he will be a comfort to his people, then tells him about

Heremod who, as Cu Chulainn threatened to do and as Achilles seemed capable of doing,

"cut down his table-friends in a fury" and then ended his days as an exile far from the

"joys of men." Blake argues that Heremod is sent to Hell for his sins, but while the sin that Blake attributes to him is pride, an accreditation he himself admits is "not explicitly

stated" (287), it is more likely that, given Heremod's tendency to lash out at his own

people, his principal sin is rage. Similarly, Goldsmith sees this passage as an exemplum,

exhorting the hero to adopt the Christian virtues to which HroSgar so eloquently gives

voice (113). This exemplum, like Priam's speech to Achilles and the women's baring of

their breasts in Emain Macha, draws the warrior's attention irresistibly toward the values

of the community; it is the vat of cold water into which HroSgar dunks the hero.

As a final note on this motif, one might consider the role Wealhbeow plays in the

hero's reintegration into society. While she is not involved in this episode, she does have

a fair bit to say following Beowulf s defeat of Grendel. She tells him,

"Cen bee mid crasfte, ond byssum cnyhtum wes 84

lara HSe! Ic be baes lean geman. ...

Her is aeghwylc eorl obrum getrywe,

modes milde, mandrihtne hol[d],

begnas syndon gebwasre, beod ealgearo,

druncne dryhtguman dod swa ic bidde." (1219-31)

("Make yourself known with might, and to these boys be kind of counsel.

I will remember to reward you for that.... Here is every earl true to the

others, kind of heart and loyal to his lord. The thanes are faithful, the

people prepared: the men, having drunk, do as I bid.")

Here the queen, following the hero's first fight in Denmark, not only implores gentleness on his part, but explains to him the conduct of the other nobles in the king's court— accepting him into the community of the hall through telling him its rules. This act is similar to the queen's in Emain Macha in giving Cu Chulainn a new set of clothes when he returns from his initiatory adventure. In each case the hero, following his fight, is implored by a woman or women to curb his violence, and is then "dressed"—literally or figuratively—in the forms of civilization: clothes and custom Similarly and perhaps more importantly, in all three epics, the postliminal rites are administered or overseen by people of higher social rank and older than the hero himself—Priam in the Iliad, king and

queen in the Tain, and HroSgar and Wealhbeow in Beowulf-—all of whom, by virtue of royalty, are associated with the first function. Though the elements of "heroic

decompression" are not located together in Beowulf as they are in the Iliad and the Tain

Bo Cuailnge, they are present, and they are situated in both instances after the hero has been fighting and has displayed one or more of the heroic qualities mentioned above. 85

The comparison of Beowulf, Achilles, and Cu Chulainn thus reveals a similar pattern in the heroes' lives. Each has a marginal or liminal origin and thus approaches society as an outsider. Either upon arrival or, in the case of Achilles, near the commencement of the narrative, each is perceived and/or behaves as a threat, demonstrating his destabilizing potential. And each initiates his defence of his society through unarmed combat. Each employs a unique weapon that serves to complete his social identity by setting him apart from other warriors and establishing or reinforcing his connection with a liminal realm. Finally, the heroic wildness reaches its purest form in a rage that shows itself in a display of light that signifies a transition into a liminal state.

This rage—this furor that carries the hero beyond all considerations of community—is not only divinely influenced, but may also be connected to particular categories of the hero's experience, specifically a deep moral betrayal and a devastating loss for which he feels guilt, or at least, in the case of Beowulf, where a sound reason for guilt exists. The hero's rage is dissipated through the offices of social superiors and seniors associated with the first or sovereignty function, establishing the proper functional hierarchy in

Dumezilian terms and, in theory at least, drawing the hero in from his state of spiritual liminality and reincorporating him into the human community. Beowulf s participation in this pattern of heroic furor, not only in its operation but also in its dissipation, places him firmly within the context of Indo-European heroism and identifies him as a representative of Dumezil's second function. 86

Chapter Two:

Gendering the Hero: Beowulf and the Construction of Masculinity

After he had successfully tested a nuclear bomb in November 1952,

creating a fusion explosion about one thousand times more powerful than

the fission bomb that destroyed Hiroshima seven years earlier, Edward

Teller, the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist, wrote the following

three-word telegram to his colleagues: "It's a boy." No one had to point

out to Teller the equation of military might—the capacity for untold

violence—and masculinity. (Kimmel 250)

No one who reads epic literature and the criticism pertaining to it can fail to notice that

the heroes are men. So obvious is this gendering of the hero that scholars long took it for

granted. As recently as 1994, Clare A. Lees was able to comment on the universally

uncritical acceptance of Beowulf s masculinity (129-30). Such an uncritical acceptance is

not surprising, nor is it entirely unjustified when one considers the violent nature of

heroic action: violence both is and historically has been a predominantly masculine

undertaking. As Michael Kimmel states in The Gendered Society, "From early childhood

to old age, violence is the most obdurate, intractable behavioural gender difference"

(243). To be more specific, Goldstein in his wide-ranging historical survey War and

Gender observes that

In war, the fighters are usually all male. Exceptions to this rule are

numerous and quite informative . . . but these exceptions together amount 87

to far fewer than 1 percent of all warriors in history. As interesting as that

fragment of the picture may be—and it is—the uniformity of gender in

war-fighting is still striking. (Goldstein 10)

Insofar as the hero's business is a violent one, then, one should hardly be surprised to find that heroes, those paragons of violence, should tend to be men.

That said, ideas of masculinity, the very idea man, are by no means straightforward. As the wide-ranging essays in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (1994), edited by Clare Lees, Conflicted Identities and Multiple

Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West (1999), edited by Jacqueline Murray, and

Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle

English Texts (2002), edited by Elaine Treharne, illustrate, there was not necessarily a single image or construction of masculinity applicable to all societies, or even all segments of any given society, at all times during the Middle Ages. Every society makes its own men; every society decides what it means to be a man and, conversely and inevitably, what it means not to be a man. Heroes and heroic literature span a

chronologically and geographically wide range of societies, and most heroes are men

doing things understood or assumed to be manly, both of which circumstances provide an

excellent opportunity to investigate just what defines masculinity in those societies that produce heroic literature. Regarding the study of masculinity in Beowulf specifically,

Clare Lees' remark cited above is a fair indication of the status of scholarship on the

poem until recently. Alexandra Hennessey Olsen's chapter on "Gender Roles" in A

Beowulf Handbook, published in 1997, can be taken as typical. It begins with the

sentence, "Scholarly approaches to the depiction of women in Beowulf have changed 88 substantially over the years" (311). The chapter goes on to discuss the various approaches that scholars have taken to the women in the poem since 1895 and does not even hint, until the penultimate paragraph, that men, too, might be gendered beings (323). This comment should not be construed as a criticism of Olsen: she provides an accurate summary of work in the field.

The current chapter, then, addresses the social construction of gender as it relates to the epic hero and to the forces that clash within and around him. This is done largely through a comparison of Beowulf with The Tain Bo Cuailnge and TheAeneid. My remarks on the Aeneid in this and the next chapter are primarily confined to the last six,

or Iliadic, books as these, more than the first six, are concerned with the type of heroic

action that is the subject of the current study. From Beowulf, the episodes discussed are those pertaining to the hero's encounters with Grendel and, especially, GrendePs mother.

From The Tain, those scenes that deal with Cu Chulainn's conflicts with Medb and the

Morrigan are of particular interest, while from TheAeneid, Turnus' possession by Allecto

and his subsequent taunting of the Trojans, and the varying manifestations of Juno's wrath, are discussed. In the Iliad, the gendering strategies are not so obvious, but neither

are they absent, as seen in the case of Hector and Achilles' battle. Other works are

referred to as required, as they pertain to gender construction and its relationship to

heroism. The picture that emerges is one of the hero on the frontier between a society or a world guided by masculine ideals of order, and a realm—be it social or ideological—

misguided or disordered by characters, often but not necessarily women, acting in

opposition to those ideals. Thus, the hero is not merely a man, nor is he just a

representative of manhood: he—and the warrior function to which he belongs—is an 89 agent of his society's masculinity, defining both himself and it in his violent encounters with an other that seeks to disrupt or overrun the order for which he stands.

Since the current discussion involves not just the heroes referred to in Chapter

One but Virgil's figures of Aeneas and Turnus as well, these characters must be integrated into the framework developed thus far. Being the son of the goddess Venus,

Aeneas, is as much an other as are Achilles and Cu Chulainn. While not an outsider in geographic terms compared to his fellow Trojans—he is of the Trojan royal house—he and all of his people are outsiders in relation to the city that it is their destiny to found in

Italy. He is most certainly perceived as, and behaves as, a threat to the Latians into whose royal house it is his destiny to marry, and his presence clearly destabilizes the heretofore peaceful, even idyllic, Italian civilization, leading to war. Though Aeneas, who arrives by water, does not engage in unarmed combat, he does bear unique weaponry that has its

origin in a liminal realm: the shield, armour, and sword forged by Vulcan. Most

importantly, he displays the presence of the hero's luminescent and immoderate rage:

On the head of Aeneas there blazed a tongue of fire, baleful flames poured

from the top of his crest and the golden boss of his shield belched great

streams of fire, like the gloomy, blood-red glow of a comet on a clear

night, or the dismal blaze of Sirius the Dog-star shedding its sinister light

across the sky and bringing thirst and disease to suffering mortals.

(10.270-75; West 219)1

1 Ardet apex capiti cristisque a vertice flamma funditur et vastos umbo vomit aureus ignis; non secus ac liquida si quando nocte cometae sanguinei lugubre rubent aut Sirius ardor, ille sitim morbosque ferens mortalibus aegris, nascitur et laevo contristat lumine caelum. Quotations from Latin are taken from the Oxford Classical Text edited by Sir Roger Mynors, 1969. 90

Though there is no heroic decompression in the Aeneid, this absence can be explained by the fact that the narrative ends with the death of Turnus and gives us no glimpse of the principal hero's psychological development in the wake of his most important combat.

The pattern is similar for Turnus. Though not the child of an Olympian deity, he is a descendent of the river god Inachus (7.372) and in fact, much as Achilles, Cu

Chulainn, and Beowulf, bears an interesting affinity for the chaotic element of water. It is via water that he escapes from the Trojan encampment at the end of Book Nine in full armour, it is by luring him onto a ship that Juno saves him at the end of Book Ten

(10.633 ff.), and it is his water nymph sister Juturna who consistently saves and frustrates him through much of Book Twelve and who will be left to mourn him. He is also, as the leader of a neighbouring people, an outsider relative to the Latians into whose royal house he hopes to marry, and he, too, functions as a destabilizing force once roused to rage by Allecto in Book Seven. His rage is definitively associated with light and fire, resulting as it does from the torch that Allecto plants in his breast (7.456 ff.) and manifesting itself in luminescent displays throughout much of the subsequent war. For example, he "blazed with anger" (ignescunt irae) during a night assault (9.66). He is also the first to hurl fire into the Trojan encampment (9.536), and later we are told that "sparks flew from his whole face and his piercing eyes flashed fire" ("Totoque ardentis ab ore / scintillae absistunt, oculis micat acribus ignis", 12.101-102; West 267). One might also recall the frequent animal imagery with which both he and Aeneas are described, or the intimate relationship between hero and antagonist, a relationship to be discussed below.

To return to gender, the first question that needs to be examined is not gender-

construction but rather the understanding—contemporary, medieval, and ancient—of

Translations are taken fromWest' s revised Penguin text. 91 biological sex. Thomas Laqueur suggests that, from the period of the ancient Greeks up to the Enlightenment, a "one-sex" model prevailed in western thinking: "Sexuality as a singular and all-important human attribute with a specific object—the opposite sex—is the product of the late eighteenth century" (13). In Laqueur's model, men and women were perceived not as biological opposites but as existing on a continuum based upon a single standard: the man. He refers to the period under discussion as "a world where at least two genders correspond to but one sex, where the boundaries between male and female are of degree and not of kind, and where the reproductive organs are but one sign among many of the body's place in a cosmic and cultural order that transcends biology"

(25). Laqueur draws largely upon the medical writings of the classical world and traces the influence of those writings up through the Middle Ages and beyond. He dwells at length upon the ancient and medieval perception of the female genitals not as a set of

organs distinct from their male counterparts but rather as analogous, internal organs—the vagina as an internal penis,2 for example, that, through a deficiency in "heat," fails to become externalized (25-26)—and his sources range from Hippocrates to Aristotle to

Galen of Pergamumto Isidore of Seville.3

Laqueur also draws attention to the ways in which male and female anatomies were discussed, such as the use of the word "testes" to refer to both testicles and ovaries,

and the belief that both male and female "testes" produced sperm. He suggests that such a

2 "All the parts, then, that men have, women have too, the difference between them lying in only one thing, ... namely, that in women the parts are within [the body], whereas in men they are outside..." (Galen 14.6; II, 296). Quotations fromGale n are taken fromMargare t Tallmadge's translation. 3 Galen states his case clearly: "The female is less perfect than the male for one, principal reason—because she is colder; for if among animals the warm one is the more active, a colder animal would be less perfect than a warmer" (14.6; II, 296). And later: "Now just as mankind is the most perfect of all animals, so within mankind the man is more perfect than the woman, and the reason for his perfection is his excess of heat, for heat is Nature's primary instrument" (14.6; II, 299). One wonders whether this heat may be reflected in the hero's luminescence. 92 discursive practice was based upon the a priori assumption that there is no essential sexual difference between men and women.4 Biology, in other words, is a symbolic representation of a universal order that exists outside the realm of the physical.5

So if sex alone does not determine gender, the obvious question is, "What else is involved?" For Laqueur, one of the answers is "power," which manifests itself biologically as physical strength. For example, he notes the Hippocratic belief that male children originate from a dominance of strong sperm while female children originate from a dominance of weak sperm, and that both men and women could produce both strong and weak sperm (39-40).6 In other words, it was believed that a woman, through an abundance of strong sperm, could engender a male child, while a man, through an abundance of weak sperm, could engender a female child. In yet other other words, physical strength, one of the traits most closely associated with masculinity, was not seen as the exclusive possession of biological males, while weakness, a trait closely associated with femininity, did not exclusively reside in biological females.

Working under Laqueur's influence, Carol Clover suggests that power, rather than biological sex, was the dominant variable in determining gender in early northern Europe.

4 "[W]hen the [Greek and Roman] experts in the field sat down to write about the basis of sexual difference, they saw no need to develop a precise vocabulary of genital anatomy because if the female was a less hot, less perfect, and hence less potent version of the canonical [male] body, then distinct organic, much less genital landmarks mattered far less than the metaphysical hierarchies they illustrated Anatomy in the context of sexual difference was a representational strategy that illuminated a more stable extracorporeal reality. There existed many genders, but only one adaptable sex" (Laqueur 34-35). 5 "What we would take to be ideologically charged social constructions of gender—that males are active and females passive, males contribute the form and females the matter to generation—were for Aristotle indubitable facts, 'natural' truths. What we would take as the basic facts of sexual difference, on the other hand—that males have a penis and females a vagina, males have testicles and females ovaries, females have a womb and males do not, males produce one kind of germinal product, females another, that women menstruate and men do not—were for Aristotle contingent and philosophically not very interesting observations about particular species under certain conditions." (Laqueur 28-29) 6 The anonymous author, who suggests that "both the man and the woman have male and female sperm," with the male as the stronger and the female as the weaker ("Seed" 1.7; Chadwick and Mann 321), disagrees with Aristotle, who denies that the female contributes sperm to generation (1.20.727b34-728a3), 93

Drawing on both literary and legal sources from the Old Norse corpus, Clover suggests that

to the extent that we can speak of a social binary, a set of two categories

into which all persons were divided, the fault line runs not between males

and females per se, but between able-bodied men (and the exceptional

woman) on the one hand and, on the other, a kind of rainbow coalition of

everyone else (most women, children, slaves, and the old, disabled, or

otherwise disenfranchised men). (1993, 380)

She goes on to suggest that "this is the binary, the one that cuts the most deeply and the

one that matters: between strong and weak, powerful and powerless or disempowered,

swordworthy and unswordworthy, honoured and unhonoured or dishonoured, winners

and losers" and that "Insofar as these categories, though not biological, have a sexual

look to them. . . they may as well be called genders" (1993, 380). In Clover's view, then—counterintuitive though it is—the presence or absence of power, rather than the

configuration of one's genitalia, functions largely as a gender criterion in medieval

Scandinavia.

Clover's argument is compelling. She notes, for example, that ON hvatr can mean both "bold, active, vigorous" and "male," and that blaudr can mean both "weak" and

"female" in reference to animals and has the insulting connotations of MnE "bitch" and

"coward" when applied to people (364). She also notes that the Old Icelandic legal text

Baugatal ("ring count") specifies circumstances—essentially the absence of any suitable

male kindred—in which an unwed woman can both collect and be obliged to pay wergild

and holds instead that the male "implants sentient Soul, either acting by itself directly or by means of semen" (2.5.741b8-9). 94 sent sonr, "like a son" (369). In an earlier article, "Maiden Warriors and other Sons"

(1986), Clover also addresses the issue of women acting like sons. In her discussion of

Hervarar saga okHeidreks, Clover explains Hervor's adoption of male dress and behaviour in terms of her role as a "functional son" (1986, 39). In short, Hervor is the only child—in fact the only surviving kin—of Angantyr, who bequeaths to her, during a conversation inside his grave mound, the male qualities of afl (physical strength, force, violence) and eljun (energy, endurance), which she in turn passes on to her son HeiSrekr.

The paternal legacy of both goods and characteristics, Clover suggests, is so important that it must be passed on to future generations of men even if, for one generation, the only possible vehicle of transmission is a woman who becomes, for the purposes of inheritance, "functionally male." Or, as she has it in her later article, "Better a son who is your daughter than no son at all" (1993, 370). In other words, in the absence of male kindred, a woman can become the bearer of manhood for future generations; male inheritance and male character traits take primacy over female anatomy, and a biological female can be socially constructed as masculine.7

Clover also notes circumstances in which biological males could be portrayed as

socially female, specifically in the practice of sexually based insults known as nid. She refers specifically to the term skaud hernumin, which can be translated as "battle-taken

sheath," noting that ON skaud means both "the female genital and the fold of skin into which a horse's penis retracts" (376) and that hernumin "suggests the sort of victimization to which a prisoner of war was subject" (376). When one considers her

7 One may be reminded, here, of the distinction Kristeva draws between the semiotic and symbolic, in which the semiotic is essentially the raw material of signification, which the symbolic mediates and constrains (1984,24, 27-30). Though the current study does not adopt a psychoanalitic framework, it is worth noting that the masculine in the system just outlined, with its focus on cultural elements such as 95 earlier observations that, in sex, "the role of the penetrator is regarded as not only masculine but boastworthy regardless of the sex of the object" (374-75), and that, if a man gendered masculine (i.e. not a slave, prisoner, disabled person, etc.) were accused of being sexually penetrated by another man, the accused had the right to kill the accuser

(374), her unstated meaning becomes clear: a skaud hernumin is a man who, as a result of weakness, is worthy of being sexually penetrated, and treated—and dominated—as an object of intercourse. It is thus possible for an anatomical man to become a social woman, and the axis of transformation is power; a defeated man was one whose social identity could be constructed as weak and therefore feminine.

An interesting result of the possible upward and downward mobility of the gender ladder is the need for men to constantly exert their masculinity if they wish to continue to be perceived as men. Clover suggests that gender in such a world is based on "winnable

and losable attributes" (1993, 379) and that those attributes are won and lost in the

demonstration of one's power or powerlessness.8 The effect can be considered as a sort of macho overdrive in which masculinity is constantly on trial and stands in need of

constant display. Gender then, for the purposes of this chapter, is understood in terms of

Laqueur's one-sex model, in which the male body is the canonical body, with the female

body defined by its lack of masculine attributes rather than its possession of feminine

attributes. Moreover, gender is also understood not as a fixed attribute but rather as an

ongoing competition in which masculinity goes to the winner, but only for as long as

victory can be maintained. The relevant binary in such a case is not male/female,

inheritance, has much in common with the symbolic in its association with patriarchal law, while the actual body of the heroine—her physical being before interpretation—comes close to the function of the semiotic. 8 Similarly, Vern L. Bullough suggests that "the 'superiority of the male' has to be demonstrated continually or else it will be lost" (34), while R.W. Connel, in Masculinities, notes that "the constitution of 96 masculine/feminine, or man/woman, but rather male/not-male, masculine/not-masculine, or man/not-man. While woman is one possible occupant of the category not-man, it is not the only such occupant, nor is it a necessary one.9

Two questions arise: is the powerful/powerless binary relevant to Indo-European heroism generally, and is it applicable to Anglo-Saxon heroism, and to Beowulf, specifically? In answer to the first question, we turn our attention to The Tain, the Aeneid, and the Iliad.

Examples of gendering through power occur in two of Cu Chulainn's single combats: those against Loch and Fer Diad respectively. Prior to the encounter with Loch, three things have happened. One of the Irish war goddesses, the Morrigan, has threatened to come against Cu Chulainn in the forms of an eel, a she-wolf, and a heifer; Loch has refused to fight with Cii Chulainn on account of the hero's youth; and Loch's brother

Long has died fighting in his stead (TBC1 1845-73). Afterward, Cu Chulainn, taunted for his lack of a beard, creates the illusion of one by smearing his face with blackberry juice

(TBC1 1899-1903),10 which illusion satisfies Loch's apparent criterion for manhood.11

During the ensuing fight, the Morrigan attacks as promised, tripping Cii Chulainn up in masculinity through bodily performance means that gender is vulnerable when performance cannot be sustained—for instance, as a result of physical disability" (54). 91 should note that the model just described is not the only possible model, and that its application here need not be understood as extending beyond the thematic range of the current study—heroes and heroism—a range that is itself defined largely by the capacity and willingness to engage in violent action, or in other words to display one's power in the most obvious of physical contexts. I might also note that the model just outlined comes very close to Judith Butler's contention, put forward in Gender Trouble, that gender is a social performance (6 ff.) rather than a biological category. Laqueur's book was published in the same year as Butler's, and Clover relies largely on Laqueur. Laqueur and Clover base their arguments upon classical and medieval sources, and medieval sources, respectively. The lines of thought are thus largely parallel. 10 That both Loch and Fer Diad have been bribed by promises of Medb's daughter Finnabair will be discussed later in this chapter when the discussion of gender is expanded to encompass the social order for and against which our heroes fight. 11 Again, if one is inclined to think here of Kristeva, one may read the blackberry juice as an instance of the symbolic, forcing a masculine interpretation upon the semiotic that in this case is the hero's body that had 97 ways that Loch could not have done, and providing the latter with an opportunity to press his attack by leaping atop the struggling hero. Cii Chulainn rouses himself to action only upon being mocked by the satirist Bricriu. After injuring the Morrigan in each of her guises, Cii Chulainn recites the following verses before returning his attention to his male opponent:

"I am here all alone, guarding the flocks. I neither hold them back

nor let them go. In the cold hours I stand alone to oppose many

peoples.

Let some one tell Conchobar that it is time for him to come to my

aid. The sons of Magu have carried off their cows and shared them

out amongst them.

One man alone may be defended but a single log will not catch

fire. If there were two or three, then their firebrands would blaze

up.

My enemies have almost overcome me, so many single combats

have I fought. I cannot now wage battle against splendid warriors

as I stand here alone." (TBC1 2007-22; O'Rahilly 180-81)12

He then overcomes Loch by thrusting the gde bolga up his anus (TBC1 1976-2029).

been previously seen in its pre-inscribed form as, if not feminine, non-masculine in the terminology adopted here. 12 "M'oenuran dam ar etib / sech nis n-etaim nis leicim / atii ar trathaib liaraib / m'oenuran ar iltuathaib. Aprad nech fri Conchobar / cia domissed nibo rom / rucsat Meic Magach a mbu / conda randsat etarru. Ro bii cosnom im oenchend / acht nad lassa nach 6enc[h]rand / dia mbetis a do no a tri / lasfaitis a n- athinni. Bee narom nitsat in fir / ar imad comlaind oenfir / ni rubaim nith n-erred n-an / immar atii m'oenuran. 98

Later, Fer Diad, also attired in hornskin, is overcome through the same combined tactics of taunting of the hero (this time by Cu Chulainn's charioteer Laeg) followed by renewed aggression and a weapon-thrust from below (TBC1 3082-3100).

The most conspicuous feature of each encounter is the defeat through anal penetration, which Ann Dooley sees as "the greatest debasement of the male gendered heroic person, the idea of the death of the hero as an enactment of a type of sexual assault which feminizes the defeated male" (127). A clearer demonstration of the association of power with masculinity and powerlessness with femininity—the social construction of

gender—could hardly be imagined. Nor would such a demonstration be at odds with the historical record. Goldstein, in his discussion of the ubiquitous soldiers' practice of

feminizing the enemy, observes that

a . . . method of feminizing enemy soldiers in the ancient world was anal

rape, with the victor in the dominant/active position and the vanquished in

the subordinate/passive one. ... Homosexual rape was used in various

Middle Eastern and Greek societies to assert dominance relationship (as it

is today in, e.g., U.S. prisons), and the practice was more common in war

than in domestic society. (359)13

In fact, one is immediately reminded of the Old Norse term skaud hernumin: the

symbolism of both the Old Norse expression and the two Irish combat scenes is identical.

In both contexts heroism—as expressed through victory in combat—is an explicitly

13 American offences against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib and elsewhere come to mind, as does Catullus, who begins his sixteenth poem, a scathingly insulting attack against Aurelius and Furius, "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" ("I will penetrate you anally and orally"). Quotations from Catullus are taken from Goold's edition. 99 gendered performance or public enactment,14 with the victor performing masculine dominance and the victim, feminized and submissive, being performed or acted upon.

This dynamic is similar to the one that Chance (1986) suggests for the encounter between

Beowulf and Grendel's mother, an encounter discussed in detail below.

Though less obvious than in the Tain, the imagery of feminine gendering through defeat is nonetheless present in the Iliad, most obvious perhaps in the encounter between

Achilles and Hector in Book 22. While the dominant metaphor in this encounter is that of the hunt, with Achilles functioning as a hawk to Hector's dove, and as a hound to his fawn (22.136 ff), the scene itself is prefaced by a brief soliloquy spoken by Hector as he ponders his options, alone before the walls and facing his mortal enemy. Hector's comments reveal the expectation that Achilles will show him no mercy, but will cut him

down, stripped of his defences, "naked" (gymnon, 22.124), "like a woman" (hos te gynaika, 22.125) "when he emerges from his armour" (epei k'apo teuchea duo, 22.125).

There will be no "sweet talking" (oarizemenai, 22.127) like a boy and girl hiding behind

a rock (22.126-29). In this brief, erotically charged speech in which even his armour becomes feminized as clothes from which the naked body emerges before a sexual

encounter, Hector clearly places himself, imaginatively, in a position analogous to those

of Loch and Fer Diad in the Tain: he sees himself as being potentially dominated by his

opponent, and that domination is cast in a metaphor of sexual violation underscored by

the following reference to adolescent courtship games. In the end, Hector rejects this

possibility to take his chances in combat—to see who, in fact, will end up dominant.

1 Butler asserts that "there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is perfonnatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results" (25), in other words that it is through the act, not the actor, that gender is negotiated. 100

The public enactment of heroism and masculinity is apparent elsewhere in the cited passages. The taunting by Bricriu in the Loch episode and by Laeg the charioteer in the Fer Diad episode both invoke the public or social nature of heroism and, insofar as heroism is a gendered act, the social or public nature of gender as well. In both cases, it is not merely the awareness that he is doing poorly that spurs Cu Chulainn on; it is the awareness that he is seen to be doing poorly, or in other words the awareness of the potential for shame—a potential realized in the taunting of the on-lookers. As Goldstein remarks, "Shame is the glue that holds the man-making process together. Males who fail tests of manhood are publicly shamed, are humiliated, and become negative examples for others.... Shame centrally punishes failure in masculine war roles in particular" (269).

Masculinity, then, is not just enacted, but is also watched, and the awareness of that watching is integral to the act, both as it is performed and as it is perceived.

As Dooley observes, however, the encounter between Cu Chulainn and Loch is not merely a fight between two male opponents; the Morrigan also plays a key role (127).

In fact, the Morrigan herself presents a greater challenge than any of Cu Chulainn's previous adversaries. It is the goddess, and not his human enemy, who causes the hero to fall; Loch merely takes advantage of the opening that the Morrigan has given him. It thus seems odd that, in the lament that he chants before finishing Loch off, Cu Chulainn makes no mention of any specifically female opposition. The lament concludes, "My enemies have almost overcome me, so many single combats have I fought. I cannot now wage battle against splendid warriors as I stand here alone." Significantly, it is after his conflict with the Morrigan that Cii Chulainn first shows signs of fatigue. His lament focuses on his encounters with other men—his single combats against "warriors"—while 101 making no reference to the one combat that actually gave him some difficulty: the attack of the shape-shifting goddess. One may wonder whether the field of heroic combat is being constructed as masculine despite the actual events narrated in the tale—whether the feminine, while present in action, is being excluded15 from the hero's own discourse—or in other words, whether heroism is being made to seem like a straightforward masculine endeavour when in fact other, unspoken forces are at work.

So what might these other, unspoken forces be? One might note, to begin, that while Cii Chulainn's single combats to this point have been fairly standard, if impressive, exercises in warriorhood, his conflict with the Morrigan is clearly different in kind, since it turns on the theme of shape-shifting, a trait that, as Sjoestedt points out, "is an important feature of many Irish goddesses, while the gods present only some feeble traces of it" (47). In that sense, when one takes Cu Chulainn's warp spasm into account, both he and the Morrigan experience physical distortions. This is not to say that the shape- shifting of one is precisely equivalent to the deformation of the other; the Morrigan is clearly in control and takes on the shapes of recognizable creatures while Cu Chulainn, during his distortion, resembles a person thrown briefly into a blender and then irradiated to the point of luminescence. The fact remains, however, that the form of each is demonstrably unstable. Moreover, it is in his distorted or disordered form that Cu

Chulainn is most dangerous while he himself seems most vulnerable to the Morrigan when she is in non-human shape. The physical instability of each, therefore, is constructed by the text as being related to his or her destructive capacity. Yet Cu

Chulainn seems hesitant to admit the kinship, creating instead a fiction in which his

15 Or perhaps abjected, "radically excluded" (Kristeva 1982, 2) as something that "disturbs identity, system, order" and "does not respect borders, positions, rules" (4). 102 battles occur in the context of stable, male, fully human bodies encountering each other in straight-forward displays of physical prowess. His lament, as noted above, refers to

"single" combats exclusively, while in fact he is contending with both Loch and the

Morrigan at the same time. The element of instability—disorder—is thus eliminated at the level of discourse by the hero's exclusion of his shape-shifting female opponent from his song of grief.16

And yet the Morrigan will not be excluded, as her ongoing relationship with the hero and her later presence at his death indicate. As Rosalind Clark observes in her study of Irish goddesses, Cii Chulainn and the Morrigan share a close relationship, the former acting as the pawn of the latter, who is goddess of those aspects of human nature—"war, death, and destruction"—in which he specializes: "He is the Morrigan's destruction- machine, a kind of Old-Irish atom bomb. Where the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together, and where Cii Chulainn is, it is natural that the crow-goddess should hover near him" (45). If she will not be excluded, then, how exactly does she function?

She is, as Clark observes, a goddess of war, and yet there are many ways in which a deity may be connected with warfare; the Greek Ares and Athena, for example, while both overtly martial, are not at all the same in character. So what kind of war goddess is the

Morrigan? One possible answer to this question lies in the first passage in which she is mentioned:

While the army was going over Mag mBreg Allecto came for a while, that

is, the Morrigan, in the form of a bird which perched on the pillar-stone in

Temair Ciiailnge and said to the bull: 'Does the restless Black Bull know

16 Beowulf attempts a similar rhetorical manoeuvre in his recountings of his encounter with Grendel's mother, as discussed at length below. 103

(it) without destructive falsehood? ... I have a secret that the Black Bull

will know if he graze(?)... on the green grass . .. Fierce is the raven, men

are dead, a sorrowful saying . .. every day the death of a great tribe . ...'

Then the bull went with fifty heifers to Sliab Cuillinn, and his herdsman,

Forgaimen, followed him. The bull threw off the thrice fifty boys who

used to play on his back and killed two thirds of them And before he went

he pawed the earth in Tir Margeni in Ciiailnge.

(TBC1 954-66; O'Rahilly 152)17

Here the redactor, clearly familiar with Classical literature and probably familiar with the

Aeneid, identifies the Morrigan with the fury Allecto—that same Allecto who disorders the mind of the Rutulian prince Turnus, driving him to his manic and ultimately self- destructive rage, as discussed shortly. Following this association, the goddess speaks an enigmatic but clearly violent prophecy upon which the bull—the object of Medb and

Ailill's invasion of Ulster—kills a hundred boys who had been accustomed to amusing themselves on it. The goddess's association with disorder here is difficult to miss. The giant bull, which to this point has been sufficiently even-tempered to be a sort of walking jungle-gym, flies into a violent and undirected rage that kills most of the boys who had to that point played in safety upon his back. That the bull's rage stems from the Morrigan's prophecy is clear, and that the Morrigan does not have at least a vague notion of the

17 Cein batar didiu in tsloig oc tochim Maige Breg, forrumai Allechtu colleic, noch is i in Morrigan son i ndeilb eiiin co mboi forsin chorthi hi Temair Cuailngi "i asbert frisin tarb: In fitiri n dub dusaim can eirc n-echdaig dal desnad fiacht fiach nad eol ceurtid namaib ar tuaith Brega bith i ndainib tathum run rofiastar dub dia n-isa mai muin tonna fer forglass for laich lilestai aed ag asa mag meldait sloig scoith nia boidb bogaimnech feochair fiach firmair m rad n-ingir cluiph Cualngi coigde dia bas mormacni iar feic muintire do ecaib. Luid in tarb iarom -\ coeca samasca imbi co mboi hi Sleib Chulind, 1 luid a Machaill ina diaid, Forgemen a ainm. Focheird de na tri coecta mac no bitis oc cluchiu fair do gres, 1 marbais da trian a macraide ~\ concechlaid burach hi Tir Marcceni hi Cualngi re techt. 104 likely results of her words is improbable: she is, after all, a goddess. It is apparent, then, that the slaughter of the boys was the object—or rather an object—of her actions.

Moreover, given that the death of a hundred boys is unlikely to have much strategic value, it is also clear that this particular slaughter does not have a military function. (In fact, as far as she can be said to take sides at all, the Morrigan actually favours Ulster in the end.) Thus, the most likely conclusion—a conclusion borne out by her conduct elsewhere in the epic and widely attested in the critical literature—is that the Morrigan's chief interest lies in the slaughter itself. So in answer to the question "what kind of war goddess is the Morrigan?" the reply must be that she is a goddess who delights in the

death that warfare produces and who has little or no interest in questions of justice and injustice, right and wrong, or innocence and guilt—a goddess, in other words, who

delights in the carnage of violent conflict (Bowen 29) without regard to any outside morality. She is, like the fury Allecto, a creature of disordering rage. In fact, disordering war goddesses are common in the Tain, as seen, for example, in the following passage, which occurs shortly before the epic's climactic battle: "But as for the men of Ireland,

Badb and Be Neit and Nemain shrieked above them that night in Gairech and Irgairech so that a hundred of their warriors died of terror. That was not the most peaceful night for

them" (TBC1 3942-44; O'Rahilly 231).18 All goddesses associated with war in the Tain

serve disordering functions.

In this context, one might consider the passage from the Tain in which the hero

issues his deadly war cry (TBC1 2079-88), discussed in Chapter One—a scene,

incidentally, that occurs just shortly after Cii Chulainn's fight with Loch. In this passage,

18 Imthiis immorro fer nErind, cotagart Badb ~\ Be Neit ~\ Nemain forru ind aidchi sin for Gairig 1 Irgairich conidapad cet loech dib ar uathbas. Nirbo hisin adaig ba samam doib. 105

Cu Chulainn's war shout—one of the many feats that he mastered during his training under the mysterious female Scathach—is so fearsome that it draws a response not just from the natural world but from the supernatural world as well. The spirits of the woods shout in response, and the war goddess Nemain, a goddess associated with panic and whose name means "frenzy," makes an appearance, seemingly invoked by his voice once the sight of the opposing army has inspired his rage, and causes a hundred people to die in a scene of utter confusion. The question of agency here is an interesting one. While the text clearly states that the hundred deaths are caused by Nemain, it is equally clear about her arriving in response to Cu Chulainn's shout. Thus the hero's war shout, far from being a mere announcement of his presence and intention, is a harnessing of a power—an

explicitly disordering power—that is unambiguously associated with a female deity. The

disorder associated with the hero's rage, therefore, has at least one solid link with the

feminine despite his own portrayal of his function as a purely masculine one. Again, the

tension between the reality of the hero's function and his verbal construction of it is

apparent, and it is a clearly gendered tension.

The element of disorder is interesting here. Aside from the powerful/powerless

binary discussed above, another binary—order/disorder—is relevant to the discussion of

gender and the hero, particularly when one considers not just the hero himself but also the

societies for and against which he fights. In her discussion of gendered binaries in

Gender in History, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks notes the widespread tendency for societies

to view as masculine those elements that they value or respect while relegating those

elements they hold in lower regard to the status of the feminine.19 According to Wiesner-

19 "The nature/culture dichotomy is often related to one of order/disorder, though the way these correspond may be different, with nature sometimes representing order and sometimes disorder. This linkage is itself 106

Hanks's survey of gendering practices in cultures widely dispersed both geographically and chronologically, order, generally seen as positive, has a strong tendency to be gendered masculine while disorder, generally seen as negative, has a strong tendency to be gendered feminine—that feminine gendering incorporating not only women but certain men as well. This is not to say that all men who show disordered behaviour are by definition feminine; it is simply to suggest that the opposition of order and disorder can be read with profit in a gendered light and that some of the tensions arising fromth e order/disorder binary can be read as gendered tensions, especially when the societies to which those texts pertain are defined by a patriarchal social order.

Sjoestedt's reading of Irish war goddesses is compatible with such a dichotomy.

She observes that the goddesses associated with war tend not to bear weapons while those gods with strong martial associations are not merely armed but gloriously armed.20 In

Sjoestedt's reading, the goddesses of war are associated with the non-social aspects of violence while the gods are associated with its social aspects; the goddesses, in other words, are aligned with the chaos of battle while the gods are aligned with the human attempt to impose order upon it through the construction of arms and the development of

gendered: when nature is conceptualized as orderly... it is generally linked to male superiority, when it is regarded as disorderly and capricious, it is linked to women. The order/disorder dichotomy is sometimes expressed in psychic terms, as an opposition between the rational and the emotional or passionate, with men generally representing the rational and women the emotional.... [T]his gender dichotomy was often qualified by class and racial hierarchies which limited the capacity for reason to one type of man, with certain types of men, like women, seen as closer to nature and less rational" (Wiesner-Hanks 97). 20 "[W]herever the Morrigan [Sjoestedt's italics] appearfs] in warfare it is by some mystical influence, or by sorcery, or in some animal guise. These war goddesses are not warriors.... Indeed, they have no weapons. It is noteworthy that the two descriptions in the sagas of the equipment of the Badb and of the Morrigan mention chariot, horse and clothing, but no weapons, whereas in the case of warriors, the description of weapons is one of the favourite commonplaces. The goddesses in whom the destructive and inhuman powers of slaughter are personified contrast in this respect with gods who preside over warfare as a human activity, an art and a profession.... Thus, for production and destruction, in peace as in war, a double principle is in balance, the female governing the natural event, the male governing the social event" (Sjoestedt 46-47). 107 the skills necessary in employing them. Nature and the feminine are associated with disorder while society and the masculine are associated with order.21

One such god, whose ordering behaviour is clearly opposed to the disordering conduct of the Morrigan, is Lug, Cu Chulainn's divine father. At one point not long after his encounter with the war goddess, Cu Chulainn and his charioteer Laeg espy a man approaching them in a chariot. Laeg describes him as follows:

"A man fair and tall, with a great head of curly yellow hair. He has a green

mantle wrapped about him and a brooch of white silver in the mantle over

his breast. Next to his white skin he wears a tunic of royal satin with red-

gold insertion reaching to his knees. He carries a black shield with a hard

boss of white-bronze. In his hand a five-pointed spear and next to it a

forked javelin. Wonderful is the play and sport and diversion that he

makes (with these weapons). But none accosts him and he accosts none as

if no one could see him" (TBC1 2092-98; O'Rahilly 183)22

The man, who identifies himself as Lug, goes on to inform Cu Chulainn of his identity, praise his conduct, heal his wounds, and stand watch for him while the young hero sleeps for the first time in about three months (TBC1 2108-44; O'Rahilly 183-84). As Sjoestedt observes, great attention is paid to the description of the god's weapons, which not only

are tools of violence but serve also as indicators of civilization and culture, and objects of

21 The case with Athena and Ares is a little different in that Ares is by far the more savage of the two and is thus similar to the Irish war goddesses in at least one respect. But Athena does have masculine associations of her own, having been born directly from the ordering brain of Father Zeus. She is also virginal, i.e., has never been the object of sexual domination, hi fact, she has a great deal in common both with the sword maidens of interest to Clover and with the Old English Judith, discussed below. 22 "Fer cain mor and dano. Berrad lethan laiss. Folt casbude fair. Brat uanide i forcipol immi. Cassan gelairgit isin brot liassa bruinne. Lene de srol rig fo dergindliud do dergor i custul fri gelcnes co glunib do. Dubsciath co calathbuali findrunifair . Sleg coicrind ina laim. Foga fogablaigi inna farad, hignad em reb "i abairt 1 adabair dogni, achtni saig nech fair l ni saig-seom for nech feib nachas faiced nech he." 108 play, weapons themselves being inseparable from the skill set that produces them. Lug's conduct, moreover, is precisely opposite to that of the Morrigan. He takes Cii Chulainn's part against his enemies while she takes his enemy's part against him. Lug, additionally, takes the young hero's place by functioning as a warrior while the Morrigan undermines that very function through her transformations. It is Lug, finally, who heals—or in other words re-orders—the hero's body of the damage it has sustained. At the divine level, then, the goddess Morrigan stands at one end of a gendered order/disorder continuum while the god Lug stands at the other end.23 And the hero himself is the location of their conflict—the hero's will determines which is to be acknowledged and which denied.

To return to Cu Chulainn and his construction of his combats as a series of purely masculine contests, one might again ask what the unspoken forces that are clearly at work in his conflicts might be. What, in excluding the Morrigan from the discourse of his complaint, is Cu Chulainn actually leaving out? For one thing, he is excluding a female opponent. For another, he is excluding reference to a being who not only thrives on disorder but goes to some effort to cause it as well. One might remember, for instance, that the Morrigan does not fight Cii Chulainn himself but simply interferes when he is fighting someone else, essentially disordering the very act of masculine competition upon which his identity as a warrior—like the identities of most warriors at most periods in history (Goldstein 10)—is based. Finally, he is excluding reference to the one conflict he has had, since first facing down Medb's army, in which the very stability of the physical

23 It may be reasonable, here, to once again note the possible interplay between the semiotic and the symbolic. Weapons and armour, whatever else they do, constrain violence into certain channels, limiting and thus ordering the ways in which any violent impulse can be articulated into action. Insofar as Lug is associated with these items while the various goddesses are associated with their absence, his presence implies a symbolic ordering, a cultural or civilized overlay, of the essentially amorphous and potentially all-consuming semiotic of violence with which the Morrigan, for instance, is associated. This line of thought is picked up in Chapter Three, in the discussion of the hero's relationship with his armaments (fh. 109 world he inhabits has been undermined. In other words, while his complaint itself places the young hero in a context of a stable world in which he engages in a series of demanding but structurally stable contests against physically stable opponents, it is in fact that very instability which the Morrigan manifests that is the source of his greatest difficulty. And it is exactly that instability—a disordering presence explicitly associated with the feminine—that the hero excludes from his complaint and thus from his own definition of the nature of his conflicts and of himself as the focus of those conflicts. And yet, no one in the Tain is more unstable—more disordered and disordering—than Cii

Chulainn. It is, moreover, exactly after all of these various layers of stability or order have been threatened by the goddess that Cii Chulainn reacts by killing Loch through an

act of anal penetration, thus asserting or re-asserting his identity as masculine victor after

it has been most seriously challenged. In both words and deeds, then, Cii Chulainn

constructs his heroic identity as purely masculine when the order upon which that identity

is based has been brought into question: in words, he depicts his context as a masculine

context, and in deeds, he feminizes his defeated opponent. Yet the words themselves are misleading, covering an unease related to a gendered order/disorder binary. One might wonder whether the deed is hiding a similar unease—whether, as Dooley suggests, "male

terror of the devouring female is ... a fundamental aspect of the language of heroic

misogyny in that it seems to be associated with deep anxiety about the instability of male

gendering and identity" (127).

This question might be approached through a brief examination of the societies

for and against which Cii Chulainn fights, particularly at the levels of social organization

and gender construction. The most obvious difference between the two societies is in the

38 ff.). 110 rulers themselves: Conchobar the king of Ulster, and Medb the queen of Connacht. That

Conchobar is associated with the principle of order is illustrated by a passage from the

"Boyhood Deeds" section of the Tain, as reported by Fergus, in which the young Cu

Chulainn first approaches and is incorporated into the society of Emain Macha. After advancing on the court and being challenged by the boytroop, and flying into his distortion as discussed in Chapter One, he leaps up to where Conchobar and Fergus are playing chess, and introduces himself as the king's sister's son. He then complains about the boys' treatment of him and is granted the king's protection, at which point he attacks the boys again until he finally makes a formal agreement to protect them (TBC1 406-55).

This passage has already been discussed in terms of the hero approaching as a disruptive

or potentially disruptive force. What has not been discussed, however, is the rule of

Conchobar compared to the misrule of Medb. This misrule is indicated by an exchange between the queen herself, her husband Ailill, and their ally Fergus macRoich, in which

Medb, upon surveying her army and seeing the superiority of the Gailioin to her own

soldiers, proposes having the former killed, to which Ailill replies, '"I shall not deny that

is a woman's counsel'" ("'Ni chelamas banchomairle'," TBC1 163; O'Rahilly 129);

Fergus simply dismisses her plans as foolish (TBC1 147-65). That Medb in this passage

represents a principle of misrule or disorder is clear. The Gailioin are the best warriors in her camp, and her proposed solution to the threat that she perceives in them—a threat that

only exists because she, unlike Conchobar, cannot see a way to harness or control the

potential of the warriors around her—is to have them killed. Ailill identifies her

suggestion as "a woman's counsel" (banchomairle), thus gendering good rule and

misrule. In fact, what Medb suggests is an undermining of the very stability or order upon Ill which any confederacy such as hers is based. Her suggestion is irrational, and she shows herself, unlike Conchobar of Ulster, to be unconcerned with social bonds—the giving, taking, and keeping of oaths, and the trust implicit in such a process—upon which a well- ordered civilization might reasonably be constructed.24

Medb's inadequacies as a ruler and their relationship with her gender have often been noted, both in the epic and out of it. Following her army's defeat at the hands of Cii

Chulainn and the Ulstermen, for example, Fergus comments, '"That is what usually happens . .. to a herd of horses led by a mare. Their substance is taken and carried off and guarded as they follow a women [mnd]26 who has misled them'" (TBC1 4123-24;

O'Rahilly 237).27 Similarly, Bowen observes that in historical Irish society there was no place for women to exercise authority—no queenship to complement the office of kingship—and that to such a society Medb must have appeared "a wilful woman of dangerously subversive tendencies" (Bowen 31). And it is exactly thus that the tale as we have it portrays her. Her dangerously subversive tendencies are exemplified elsewhere in the epic as well, particularly in her methods of convincing warrior after warrior to go up against Cii Chulainn in single combat: the combined offer of her daughter Finnabair and

The question of masculine and feminine social orders also arises in Beowulf, though in ways perhaps less obvious than those displayed in the Tain and in iheAeneid. Of particular interest in the context is the gendered nature of the vengeance ethic, as discussed below. 25 Once again, Egilssaga comes to mind, specifically the figureo f Queen Gunnhild, wife of King Eirik of Norway. Gunnhild dislikes Egil, advises Eirik to take many actions against him, and taunts him for his apparent tolerance of Egil's assertion of his rights (Egil ch. 57; Scudder 98). When Egil is finally outlawed in Norway, a decision that must be rendered by the king (ch. 58), Egil composes a poem vilifying Gunnhild in recognition of the true source of the ruling, and when Egil later visits Eirik's court-in-exile in York in an attempt to regain favour (ch. 60), it is Gunnhild who wants him to be taken away and shamefully executed. 26 The plural form occurs in the Irish. 27 '"Is besad ... do each graig remitet lair, rogata, rotbrata, rotfeither a moin hi toin mna misrairleastair.'" Interesting and problematic here are the facts that horse herds do tend to follow mares, and that a medieval Irish audience would undoubtedly have been aware of this tendency (a comment made by Ann Dooley during a lecture in 1991; no documentation). Is Fergus's clearly negative comment ironic? Does it suggest that the rulers of the day tended to be like Medb in their acquisitiveness? Does it draw a similarity or a distinction between horses and humans? 112 her own "intimate friendship" (TBC1 2600-1; O'Rahilly 196), and her plying of warrior after warrior with strong drink—the use of sex and alcohol to disorder their wits to the point where they are willing to march off to certain death.28 It is thus Medb's nature and practice to function as a disordering influence both at the level of individual warriors and at the level of society as a whole. And it is on the frontier that Ulster shares with a society thus governed or mis-governed that the hero finds himself, constructs his identity, and defends his own patriarchally ordered society against the threat of the encroaching feminine. Thus, the hero himself is the location of the conflict between the masculine and the feminine. Cu Chulainn's choice to exclude the feminine from his discourse represents his choice—his act of will—in this conflict: though he engages both the masculine and the feminine, it is only the masculine that he will acknowledge. His construction of himself and his endeavours as masculine, and his accompanying denial of the feminine, create a gendered fiction about the nature of heroism and the warrior function to which it belongs. The hero is not merely a "male gendered heroic person" as Dooley puts it (127); he is a person who defines and defends his society's masculinity, often at some cost to the truth—a circumstance that obtains in both the Aeneid and Beowulf.

The Aeneid reveals similar patterns of gender construction. Heroism as an expression of power is verbally constructed as a masculine endeavour; enemies are feminized both verbally and physically; and the social and divine orders between which the hero stands can be understood in terms of a gendered order/disorder binary. The following several pages focus on a selection of warriors from the Aeneid, but the primary

In the matter of strong drink, Bowen notes that "the name Medb, formed from the same Indo-European root that gives the word 'mead' in many languages, including English, can mean either 'the drunken one' or 'she who intoxicates'" (Bowen 21). 113 focus is on Turnus. A selection of divinities including Jupiter, Juno, and especially

Allecto, is also discussed in terms of the relationship they have to heroism and gender.

Book Nine of the Aeneid offers one of the clearest examples of the gendering of the warrior's role. In this book, Turnus' brother-in-law Remulus taunts the besieged

Trojans under the command of Ascanius as they hunker down in the face of a Rutulian attack. He belittles them for hiding behind their fortifications, suggesting that they should be ashamed (pudet) for doing so, thus doubly suggesting a failure in their masculinity.

Remulus then mocks them with a reference to their claiming Italian women as the spoils of war, at once affirming the passive role of women in warfare and the (apparent) inability of the Trojans to perform the active role of claiming them. He then goes on, after a slighting remark at the expense of the previously victorious Greeks, to describe in very clear terms the masculinity of the Rutulian people: their endurance, their hunting ability, and the dominance they enforce over a variety of objects such as the horses that they tame, the earth that they crumble, and the town walls that they shake. Then, after asserting their ability to continue performing as men into old age, he refers to the plunder that they seize, thus affirming, at least rhetorically, their ability to dominate not just animals and stone, but other peoples as well. Finally, satisfied that he has educated the young Ascanius in the definitions of ideal manhood, he concludes by once again insulting the Trojans' masculinity, this time accusing them of passivity (sloth) and indolence

(dancing) as opposed to Rutulian activity and labour, and living soft lives rather than hardening themselves through work and war. He finishes with the taunt that "the tambourines are calling you and the boxwood fifes of the Berecyntian Mother of Mount

Ida" ("tympana vos buxusque vocat Berecyntia Matris / Idaeae" (9.619-20; West 204) 114 and the admonition to "Leave weapons to the men. Make way for the iron of our swords"

("sinite arma viris et cedite ferro," 9.619-620; West 204), referring to them implicitly as women, having effectively defined them as such already. That this passage is a clear instance of masculine performance on the one hand and feminizing of the enemy on the other barely need be stated: the images and accusations speak for themselves.

Appropriately, Ascanius himself does not speak, but responds to the taunt—and to the potential shaming—by shooting Remulus with his bow. Afterward, Apollo praises the young prince:

"You have become a man, young lulus, and we salute you! This is the way

that leads to the stars. You are born of the gods and will live to be the

father of gods. Justice demands that all the wars that Fate will bring will

come to an end under the offspring of Assaracus. Troy is not large enough

for you." (9.641-44; West 205)31

Much like Cu Chulainn in the passages from the Tain discussed above, Ascanius responds to the verbal impugning of his masculinity by demonstrating it in action in the

Another possibility is that the Rutulians are implying that the Trojans are not yet men, that they are still boys, but such an implication would still situate the latter in the non-masculine category not-men of which, as mentioned above, women are just one possible component. I am reminded (though such a reflection can only offer the most circumstantial of evidence) of athletic competitions in South Korea, for example, long­ distance races, in which adult men compete in the men's category while the women's category is composed of women, girls, and boys of up to high school age. 30 It may be interesting to note that male worshippers of the goddess Cybele castrated themselves. Catullus' poem 63, on the character Attis who, arriving on her island, "cut off the weights / of his groin with a sharp flint" ("devulsit ill acuto / sibi pondera silice," 5, Goold's ed. and Cornish's trans.) and is thereafter referred to with feminine pronouns (Goold 250), suggesting, much in accordance with Laqueur, that the feminine is to be understood not as consisting of positive attributes in itself but rather as consisting of the absence of masculine attributes. The Berecyntian Mother of Mount Ida of Aeneid 9.619-20 is Cybele, and thus Remulus is referring to the rite described in Catullus' poem. 31 "Macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra, dis genite et geniture deos. hire omnia bella gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident, nee te Troia capit." 115 ultimate act of dominance: killing his opponent.32 Remulus' taunt, then, is a performance of public masculinity in which the Rutulian genders his people as masculine and the

Trojans as feminine. Ascanius, having had his own masculinity undermined with words, has little choice but to respond with deeds, in an equally public performance, rescuing his own masculinity in a display of arms witnessed by both people and gods. That it is Trojan action rather than Rutulian boast that decides the matter, moreover, undermines the highly gendered content of Remulus' speech: he has described his people as men of action, has in a sense defined manhood as action, and yet has died as a man of words,

overcome by the actions—and thus, according to his definition, by the manhood—of his

enemies.

In Book X, and particularly in his combat with Pallas, Turnus himself takes the

gendering issue in hand. The following passage occurs just before his fatal spear-cast through Pallas' shield: "Then Turnus took long aim at Pallas with his steel-pointed hardwood spear and threw it saying: 'Now see whether mine is any better at piercing'"

("hie Turnus ferro praefixum robur acuto / in Pallanta diu librans iacit atque ita fatur: /

'Aspice, num mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum,'" 10.479-81; West 225). While

sometimes a weapon is just a weapon, such is not the case here. In fact, Turnus clearly

genders himself as masculine and Pallas as feminine, and the vehicle of this gendering is the spear—a spear that is "better at piercing" (mage . . . penetrabile) than the one that has just failed to sufficiently penetrate him. The description of the weapon itself is clearly

phallic, with attention paid to both the shaft and the head, as well as to the direction in

which it is pointed: at the object of Turnus' intended domination. Moreover, by telling

32 Though it may be possible to read the penetration of Remulus' body by the arrow in a gendered light, I will not do so here. Sometimes a weapon is just a weapon, and this particular weapon does not go in or near 116

Pallas to "see" (aspice) he is drawing attention to the publicly enacted facet of this particular contest in masculinity. Turnus knows, just as Remulus and Ascanius know, that masculinity is a social act—not only an act, but also a contest. In his assertion that his spear is "better at piercing," Turnus is essentially saying, "Mine is harder than yours."

He is also drawing attention to the relationship of power and masculinity, thus drawing us back to the subject of the powerful/powerless binary posited by Clover for

Germanic society. By portraying himself and his weapon as powerful, he is also portraying Pallas as powerless to prevent himself from being penetrated, and his power, via the phallic spear, is presented in strongly gendered terms. Furthermore, the actual kill

lends itself to being read in the light of gender construction as a power contest:

With a shuddering blow it beat through the middle of the shield, through

all the plates (terga) of iron and of bronze and all the ox-hides that

covered it, and unchecked by the breastplate, it bored through that mighty

breast. In desperation Pallas tore the warm blade out of the wound, and

blood and life came out together after it, both by the same channel.

(10.482-87; West 225)33

Were the kill not described at all, it would still have been a gendered act as a result of

Turnus' remarks about the power of his spear. The act is described, though, and the

gendering process that begins just prior to the attacker's boast is carried through to the

description of the victim's death. That even the non-organic layers of Pallas' shield are

any orifices, entering and exiting through (he Rutulian's temples. 33 at clipeum, tot ferri terga, tot aeris, quern pellis totiens obeat circumdata tauri, uibranti cuspis medium transuerberat ictu loricaeque moras et pectus perforat ingens. ille rapit calidum frustra de vurnere telum: una eademque uia sanguis animusque sequuntur. 117 described in organic terms—while West gives "plates of steel and bronze," Virgil's word terga could just as easily be rendered as "skins"—is quite suggestive in the light of the phallic imagery of Turnus' spear. The suggestion, if the analogy is carried through, is of the penetration of the hymen—this excursion is Pallas's first military campaign—in which case the "passage" (via) by which "blood and life" (sanguis animusque) come out of Pallas becomes a parody of the vagina. The defeated Pallas has just been feminized by the victorious Turnus in a manner precisely analogous to that by which Cu Chulainn feminizes both Loch and Fer Diad: a figurative rape.34

But how does Turnus come to behave in such a "manly" fashion? In fact, the construction of Turnus' heroic masculinity is at least as problematic as that of Cii

Chulainn's. When the fury Allecto, disguised as a priestess of Juno and acting under

Juno's orders, first approaches him in an attempt to convince him to take up arms against the Trojans, Turnus' reply, made under the assumption that he is speaking to an old woman with less than perfect prophetic skills, is cool:

"The report has not failed to reach my ears. I know a fleet has sailed into

the waters of the Thybris. Do not invent these fears for me. Royal Juno has

not entirely forgotten us. It is old age and decay that cause you all this

futile agitation and distress and make you barren of truth, taking a

prophetess among warring kings and making a fool of her with false fears.

34 Pallas's name contributes to his feminine gendering, reflecting as it does one of the attributions of Athena (Spence 158). Regarding Athena, Spence comments, "in iheAeneid, she is shown ... to represent Jupiter's feminine aspect, appearing as a wrathful Dim in the wake of the compromise with Juno (159). Spence associates Aeneas's/uror in his killing of Turnus upon sight of Pallas's baldric with this same wrathful feminine aspect, suggesting that the ending "encapsulates and demonstrates precisely what the poem has been trying to show all along: those things that seem so opposed, so incompatible, are completely intertwined" (159). She suggests that "the killing of Turnus, in this way. .. asserts that furor has a necessary place in pietas" (160). The femininity thus suggested by Pallas may then be something that Aeneas himself internalises by the end of the poem. 118

Your duty is to guard the statues of the gods and their temples. Leave

peace and war to men. War is the business of men."

(7.436-44; West 153)35

While Sara Mack's observation that we know next to nothing about Turnus until he is

"infected"—I prefer to think of it as "possessed"—by the fury is certainly true, her comment that he "laughs and tells her in effect to go mind her knitting" (Mack 144) is dismissive. In fact, his reply is revealing in a number of respects. The most obvious, in terms of gender construction, is the fairly predictable assertion that it is men who will and should make policy on war and peace, invoking the not unusual assumption that war is a masculine endeavour. That he should speak so complacently, referring to the supposed prophetess's suggestions as "futile agitation" (curis nequiquam), only reinforces how deeply the masculine construction of warfare is ingrained in his mind. Moreover, Turnus' tone throughout this speech is, if a touch arrogant, most definitely rational. He is not hiding from conflict and is clearly, as can be seen from both his words and his tone, unafraid. He is speaking, in other words, despite Lyne's assertion that the gods "play on

emotions already present" (Lyne 66, emphasis in original), as a responsible leader of a nation, whose role it is to consider any situation carefully before committing himself and his people to a possibly ruinous course of action. His behaviour is appropriate to a

member of a civilized society.

35 "classis inuectas Thybridis undam non, ut rere, meas eflugit nuntius auris; ne tantos mihi finge metus. nee regia Iuno immemor est nostri. sed te uicta situ uerique effeta senectus, o mater, curis nequiquam exercet, et arma regum inter falsa uatem formidine ludit. cura tibi diuum effigies et templa tueri; bella uiri pacemque gerent queis bella gerenda." 119

Having failed to reason Turnus into war, Allecto then attempts a more hands-on approach, proclaiming her supernatural identity (7.454) and tossing a black-flaming torch into Turnus' chest where it awakens a great terror (pavor, 7.458) at which point "In a frenzy of rage he roared for his armour. The lust for battle [lit, "love of the sword"] raged within him, the criminal madness of war and, above all, anger" ("Arma amens fremit

. . . / saevit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli, / ira super," 7.460-62; West 154). Turnus, compared to a cauldron seething over a fire, finally orders the offensive (7.463-71). One

of the most striking contrasts between this and the previous passage concerns the emotion

attributed to Turnus. Whereas in the former instance he admonishes the disguised fury not to imagine that he is afraid, the first emotion attributed to him in the latter passage is

"terror." It is only after this terror is awakened in him—only after his courage, one of the

essential virtues of the hero, is swept aside by a female deity acting on the orders of

another female deity—that he flies into his spectacular rage, all despite his earlier

complacency regarding the masculine nature of warfare. There is, then, in Turnus'

version of heroism, a sense of disorder that is explicitly associated with the feminine,

though once again, as we saw with Cii Chulainn, the feminine is excluded or abjected

from his self-portrait at the level of discourse. His gendered interpretation of heroism is

not only constructed; it is selectively constructed.

While an association of women with disorder does not necessarily imply a causal

relationship—and while heroes disordered by the feminine are by no means heroes "in

drag," as my advisor suggested during one lunch-time conversation—the sheer number of

women and female deities associated with disorder argues in favour of a strong

36 That Virgil's Allecto is clearly a literary personification with only a tenuous connection to her Greek antecedent need not pose a serious problem for the current argument; had Virgil made her up fromwhol e 120 correspondence. Van Nortwick comments upon the ubiquitous association, in the poem, of males with order and females with disorder (129). Mack, moreover, observes that

In Book 5 the women (750, M 988) were left behind in Sicily along with the

less enterprising men, in an episode that furnishes good ammunition for a

gendered reading of the Aeneid: passionate irrational females (who just tried

to incinerate the Trojan fleet, after all) must be left behind or sacrificed to

masculine imperial destiny. (136)

These same women, incidentally, had just had their passions inflamed through the machinations of Juno, against whose enmity the "masculine imperial destiny" of the

Trojans, decreed by Jupiter, must struggle to establish itself. As for the war that takes up most of Books 7 through 12, it is, as Mack observes, "Juno's handiwork" and results, by the end of the poem, in "irredeemable loss" in which "Nearly every character we care about is killed and Roman history seems compromised beyond repair" (142). Moreover, it is Juno herself who throws open the gates of war when King Latinus is unwilling to do so (7.618-25). As for Allecto, the engine that drives Juno's juggernaut of disorder, she is

"discord personified" and is so adept at cultivating strife that "Juno does not need to bribe

[her], as she bribed Aeolus; she does not even need to tell her what to do" (Mack 143).

She and the Morrigan, as the redactor of the Tain recognized, are kindred feminine spirits who both thrive on and embody the disorder and destruction best realized through war.

Finally, Mack also draws attention to the continual narrative presence of Circe "the monster-maker" (137) who, though she never makes an appearance in the action, is

frequently alluded to and is thus never far from the reader's mind. From the beginning of

Book 7(10 ff.) in which are described the cries of the men whom she has transformed cloth, her associations with disorder and rage would still be clear. 121 into beasts,37 to the horses that Latinus sends to Aeneas—horses that Circe bred "on the sly" (Mack 137) from the horses of the sun—this most disordering of all Homeric deities is inextricably bound up with the narrative that leads up to the outbreak of the war (Mack

138). She stands "for the violent passion ox furor which turns human beings into savage beasts, and which is about to erupt when Aeneas lands in the superficially peaceful

Latium" (Gale 180) and thus "prefigures Allecto as a symbol of violent emotions which threaten to overcome reason and reduce man to the level of the beasts" (Gale 181). Thus, the war and its associated disorder—its disruption of an otherwise peaceful and orderly integration of two peoples into one—is mediated not only directly by Juno and Allecto but also indirectly by Circe. The cultivation of disorder in the Aeneid is, without a doubt, the work of female deities.38

To return to Turnus, however—like Cu Chulainn but to a less obvious degree, his transformation has both psychological and physical facets. The physical aspect of

Turnus' transformation is conveyed not through an actual metamorphosis as in the case of the Irish hero, but rather through the imagery associated with him while he is in his state of fury: insanity, wrath, and most graphically a cauldron boiling over a fire. Virgil's use of the boiling cauldron as a metaphor for Turnus' rage is telling for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it "suggests external interference" (Lyne 69), illustrating that the warrior himself is actually the passive recipient of the rage that has been forced upon him by Allecto, who is clearly to be understood as the fire beneath the

cauldron. The boiling liquid in the cauldron, moreover, is in clear opposition to the "cold

37 The beasts themselves—lions, wolves, and bears—have far more violent connotations than the pigs of the analogous scene in the Odyssey (Gale 180). 38 Conspicuous in her absence in the foregoing discussion is Dido. Her associations with (he irrational and disordered—her influence on Aeneas in distracting him from his divinely appointed task in favour of 122 sweat" that "broke out all over him and soaked his body" as a result of the fear the fury inspires. Between the cold sweat on his body and the boiling water in his description,

Turnus is trapped between opposing states—cold and hot—terrified and battle-hungry.

Through his physical description, then, both physically and metaphorically transformed,

Turnus becomes an incarnation of unreason or disorder. While he is not, like Cii

Chulainn, turned physically inside out (TBC1 2245-78), his hitherto rational character is

effectively inverted through the imagery used to describe him.

Where the imagery of transformation most clearly shows itself in association with

Turnus' rage, however, is in the description of his armour, specifically his shield:

On the towering top of his triple-plumed helmet there stood a Chimera

breathing from its throat a fire like Etna's, and the fiercer and bloodier the

battle, the more savagely she roared and belched the deadly flames. The

blazon on his polished shield showed a mighty theme, a golden figure of

Io, raising her horned head, with rough hair on her hide, already changed

into a heifer. (7.785-90; West 163)39

Io is depicted precisely at the moment of transformation from human to beast, and her

transformation is brought about by Juno's Greek counterpart Hera in her jealousy over

the attention her husband Zeus had been paying to the unfortunate mortal. She is a

"defenceless woman transformed into an animal through the desires and jealousies of the

gods" (Gale 176). After her transformation, moreover, Io is continually plagued by a

domestic happiness, for example, and her descent into mad passion and suicide upon his departure, both argue in favour of her fitting into the pattern under discussion. 39 cui triplici crinita iuba galea alta Qiimaeram sustinet Aetnaeos efflantem faucibus ignis; tarn magis ilia tremens et tristibus effera flammis quam magis effuso crudescunt sanguine pugnae. at leuem clipeum sublatis cornibus Io 123 gadfly sent by the offended goddess specifically for the purpose of tormenting her.

Again, as Gale points out, "The gadfly, as Hera's agent, has obvious parallels with

Allecto, who is sent by Juno to instil furor in Turnus. On this level, Turnus is portrayed as a helpless victim of divine persecution" (177). Thus, while on the one hand Turnus in his furor is an impressive and aggressive warrior, and an active leader of men, he is simultaneously, on the other hand, the passive vehicle of a goddess's aggression, and the iconography with which this relationship is most closely associated is the iconography of his own female ancestor. As Io was transformed by Hera and her agent into a mad cow,

Turnus is transformed by Juno and her agent into a raging maniac, and the very rage that possesses him is, as Putnam has observed, associated explicitly with Juno herself from the very opening of the poem: "In the first eleven lines of the epic we hear twice of her rage, once of her ferocity, and once of her anguish" (1995, 28). In both cases the

transformation represents a loss of both humanity and reason, and in both cases it is

imposed from outside by female deities. Moreover, the association of Turnus with Io

clearly places him in the passive/feminine position—what Clover would refer to as the

powerless position—despite the martial exploits that follow upon his possession. The

disordering of Turnus into the figure of the classic Homeric/Indo-European hero is thus

paradoxical: only through the disordering offices of the feminine does he reach this

particular pinnacle of an endeavour that he himself emphatically constructs as masculine.

A similar association of disorder with the feminine is apparent in the Iliad. In

Iliad 22, for example, in response to Hector's request that Achilles and he agree not to

despoil each other's bodies, Achilles rejects Hector's civilized proposal by expressing the

wish that he could cannibalize his opponent's remains: "Would to god my rage, my fury

auro insignibat, iam saetis obsita, iam bos. 124 would drive me now / to hack your flesh away and eat you raw" ("ai garpos auton me menos kai ihutnos anece I dm' apotamnomenon krea edmenai," 22.346-47; Fagles

22.408-9). Schein notes that the only other references to cannibalism in the poem are made by Zeus in his accusation that Hera wants to eat the Trojans raw (4.34-36) and by

Hecuba in expressing her desire to devour Achilles' own vital organs (24.212-13). Schein also mentions the association, in ancient Greek thought, of cannibalism with uncivilized

and even inhuman behaviour, noting that Hesiod in Works and Days draws a distinction between humans, who possess justice, and wild beasts, who eat each other, and suggests that "in rejecting agreements and oaths" in favour of such plainly bestial desires Achilles

"puts himself outside the ways of distinctively human culture, as defined in the poetic tradition of which the Iliad... is a product" (Schein 152-53). Interestingly, the other two

characters associated with cannibalism in the Iliad are both female. Such aberrant

behaviour, then, is not only associated with uncivilized or disordered behaviour; it is also

associated both with destructive passion and, in the context of the poem, with the

feminine. That is, Achilles' own reference to cannibalism is bracketed by similar

references either made by or pertaining to female characters. This pattern suggests a

relationship between men and rationality and culture on the one hand, and women and

irrationality on the other, thus implying that the disordering aspect of Achilles' rage has

feminine associations.

The question remains as to whether the theoretical framework outlined above

bears any relevance to Anglo-Saxon culture, and in answering that question, the Old

English Judith fragment serves as a test case. In this poem, which is preserved not only in

the same manuscript as Beowulf 'but also in the same scribal hand as the second half of 125 the epic (Timmer 1), a different situation obtains: the hero is a woman while her opponent/victim is the male Holofernes.40

In this context, Hugh Magennis observes that the apparent masculinity of the warrior-heroine is much less emphatic than that of her male counterparts in Anglo-Saxon literature (16-18). He notes, particularly, that "Judith's role of military leader consists of encouraging the men of Bethulia before battle (lines 186-99) but not actually leading them into battle" (16). In this sense, he agrees with Lucas that "the poet is ... careful to adopt a Germanic model for his heroine so that although her characterization is thin, she seems to grow out of a conformity with ideal female behaviour in a heroic society"

(Lucas 17). Magennis goes on to note, however, that Judith is also "more than a passive instrument in the poem, for she also shows resolution, courage and clear thinking at the time of crisis, and she has to carry out the violent deed [of killing Holofernes] with her

own hands" (18). Magennis also cites Belanoff s observation of the linguistic similarities

common to descriptions of both Beowulf and Judith: "Like Beowulf, Judith is ellenrof

(famed for courage), collenferd (bold of spirit), and modig (brave), and, like Beowulf, possesses bleed (glory, fame, renown). Mdele (noble), leof (beloved), and gleedmod

(gladhearted, cheerful) are also words that connect the protagonists" (Belanoff 253). In

short, the text of Judith constructs its heroine within the masculine context of Anglo-

Saxon heroism, both linguistically and in terms of the main character's engagement in

violent action. In Clover's terms, Judith genders herself as powerful and therefore masculine. The downplaying of Judith's biblical role as a seductress (Lucas 17) may

40 Judith is, of course, an explicitly religious poem and as such may have been influenced by a patristic tradition in which Christianity tended to be gendered masculine. In her discussion of Elene, for example, Lyonarons cites both Jerome and Ambrose in support of this view (Lyonarons 1997, no page numbers). For further discussion, see the commentary on Elene, below. For the moment it will suffice to acknowledge that 126 suggest that, in an Anglo-Saxon context just as in Scandinavia, heroic action is incompatible with being a sex object as the latter suggests a position of subordination.

The hero(ine) cannot be both powerful and powerless at once; the gendering of Judith as powerful requires the downplaying of her biological sex.

Judith is, of course, described in other than just martial terms, and is even portrayed as an object of explicitly carnal desire. Her physical descriptions, however, tend to be accompanied by descriptions of a more spiritual or psychological bent, as though the poet were introducing her potential sexuality simply for the purpose of showing us the road not taken. When Holofernes has Judith brought to his room, for example, the event is described thus: "Het 6a niSa geblonden / pa eadigan maeg6 ofstum fetigan / to his bedreste, beagum gehlaeste, / hringum gehrodene" ("Befuddled with iniquity he then bade that blessed maiden to be fetched with haste to his bedroom, decked out with treasures, just dripping with rings", 34b-37a). While on the one hand, Judith is decked out in jewels as though she herself were a prize object—a thing to be acquired— she is also, at the spiritual end of the spectrum, an eadige mcegd. Such juxtapositions are in fact typical of the poet's presentation of his heroine: the adjectives that describe

Judith's physical appearance generally follow adjectives that refer to her less tangible

qualities. That she is an ides celfscinu (14a) is preceded by the information that she is gleaw on gedonce (13b); that she is torht (43 a) follows upon her description as ferhdgleaw (41a); that she is beorht (58b) comes after her description as snotor (55a) and

halig (56b); and her depiction as blachleor (128a) occurs only after the assertion that she

is both snotor (125a) and snude (125b). Syntactically speaking, her physical qualities—

themselves predominantly associated with a light that, given her depiction as a virgin

not just people and societies, but also religions, can be subject to gendering through discourse. (eadigan mcegd, torhtan mcegd; 35a, 43a), carries strong connotations of purity—follow upon her spiritual attributes. As for the possibility that her virginity be violated, that she be shamefully penetrated by her enemy—"I>a weard se brema on mode / bliSe burga ealdor, bohte 5a beorhtan idese / mid widle ond mid womme besmitan" ("Then the famous prince of the fortress became blithe in mind, thought to pollute that bright lady with defilement and with sin," 57b-59a)—that is, as I have said, a narrative option presented only to be rejected. Her femininity, while apparent, is not made manifest through action, while her masculinity is: potentially a sex object, the unviolated Judith instead becomes a sword-maiden.41

More telling, however, is the case of Judith's victim: Holofemes. Shortly before he is killed, the Assyrian king is referred to in the following terms:

Gewat 6a se deofulcunda,

galferhS gumena Sreate,

bealofull his beddes neosan, basr he sceolde his blasd forleosan

sedre binnan anre nihte. Hasfde 6a his ende gebidenne

on eor6an unswasslicne, swylcne he asr a^fter worhte,

bearlmod 5eoden gumena, benden he on 6ysse worulde

wunode under wolcna hrofe. Gefeol 6a wine swa druncen

se rica on his reste middan, swa he nyste rasda nanne

on gewitlocan. Wiggend stopon

ut of 6am inne ofstum miclum,

wera(s) winsade, be 6one wasrlogan,

41 Judith's case is similar to Camilla's in HieAeneid. Camilla, too, is both a warrior and a virgin (7.803-17), and arguably for similar reasons. 128

ladne leodhatan, lasddon to bedde

nehstansiSe. (61b-73a)

(The diabolical [one] then departed, wanton [with a] troop of men, the

baleful [one] to visit his bed, where he would have to lose his glory

forthwith within one night. [The] mighty lord of men had then attained his

cruel end on earth, such as he had been heading for, while he in this world

dwelt under the sky's roof. The mighty [one] fell then in the middle of his

couch so drunk with wine that he knew of no wisdom in his mind.

Warriors stepped out of that chamber in great haste, wine-sated men, who

led the troth-breaker, loathsome tyrant, to bed for the last time.)

In this passage, Holofernes is depicted as soon to lose his bleed (glory), a characteristic that we are later told that Judith herself possesses (122) and that, as Belanoff has observed, Beowulf possesses as well. Insofar as glory can be understood as a function of power—and in the contexts in which it is used in both Judith and Beowulf, it can be understood exactly as such—Holofernes can be seen on the verge of losing one of the qualities that separate a warrior from lesser people, and doing so in a state in which, as we later see, he is powerless even to control his own body. In fact, he is reduced to such a state of powerlessness that he not only retains neither wisdom nor the ability to sit upright but must also be led by others to his bed. The image of Holofernes collapsing on his couch and then being taken to his bed by other men does nothing to support the powerful, masculine image that the leader of a comitotus would ideally want to maintain.

The narrative emasculation of Holofernes continues in the passage that depicts his death at the hands of the heroine Judith. 129

Genam 5a bone hasSenan mannan faeste be feaxe sinum, teah hyne folmum wi5 hyre weard bysmerlice, ond bone bealufullan listum alede, la5ne mannan, swa heo Saes unlasdan eadost mihte wel gewealdan. Sloh 6a wundenlocc bone feondsceadan fagum mece heteboncolne, bast heo healfiie forcearf bone sweoran him, bast he on swiman lasg

druncen ond dolhwund. Nass 6a dead gyt,

ealles orsawle: sloh 5a eornoste

ides ellenrof (o)bre side

bone has6enan hund, baet him bast heafod wand

for5 on 6a flore. (98b-111a)

(Then [she] seized the heathen man firmly by his hair, drew him with

hands toward herself shamefully, and laid the baleful [one] cunningly,

loathed man, so that she most easily might well control that miserable

[one]. [She of the] braided locks then struck the hostile enemy with a

shining sword, so that she half carved through the neck of him, so that he

lay in a swoon, drunk and wounded. Then [he] was not dead yet, entirely

lifeless: the courageous lady then struck the heathen hound in earnest, one

more time, so that his head rolled forth on the floor.) 130

Magennis sees Judith's looking for the easiest (eadost) way to go about the task of killing

Holofemes as being slightly unheroic (17), but when the passage is read in the context of power and powerlessness, quite another interpretation comes to light. Judith, having dragged the drunken lord around the room shamefully by the hair, is trying to see how she "unlaedan eaSost mihte wel gewealdan" ("most easily might well control the miserable [one]"). The key word here is gewealdan (control). Judith is not merely killing

Holofernes; she is controlling him: she is demonstrating her power over him and is doing so most easily. Moreover, the word bysmerlice (disgracefully, 100) has sexual

connotations, suggesting an ironic turn-about from Holofernes' own desires and belying the potential for domination implicit in Judith's own feminine but virginal description. As

Chance observes, "bysmerlice,... as a verb (bysmerian), elsewhere suggests the act of

'defiling' (intercourse)" (1986, 260). Here, then, is another example of the victor, in this

case a woman, feminizing the object of her conquest. In other words, the language of the poem shows a man in a powerless position being defeated by a woman in a powerful position.

Clearly, in this case, the absence or presence of power is more important than

biological sex in the gendering of the hero(ine): a woman can engage in the traditionally

male business of killing other people violently, so long as she can demonstrate that she

has the power to do so. Such power, moreover, overrides her more traditionally female

traits, as witnessed by the downplaying, in the Anglo-Saxon version of the story, of

Judith's role as a seductress. This downplaying, in turn, becomes important when one

recalls Clover's observation that, in Old Norse culture, it was the role of the sexual

penetrator that was boastworthy, regardless of the sex of the object, while being 131 penetrated, on the other hand, was synonymous with being dominated. In the context of such a value system, it would be a contradiction in terms for a seductress to also behave as a hero, and it is exactly that contradiction that the Judith-poet avoids by focusing on the heroine's martial exploits while leaving the suggestion of sexual penetration, implied by the more traditionally feminine elements of her description, to hover in the listener's or reader's mind as the other of two possible choices. Clover's powerful/powerless binary, then, is demonstrably not confined to the Old Norse context in which she introduces it, but is relevant to Anglo-Saxon culture as well. To rephrase Clover's observation, "Better a hero who is a woman than no hero at all." The Anglo-Saxon hero's masculinity is engendered by power, and power is not limited to biological males.

The other two Old English narrative poems with strong female protagonists are

Cynewulf s Elene and Juliana. Though both are saints' lives, and thus conform to

different conventions than does Judith, a few general points of reference are worth noting. Juliana does play an active role in her tale, though her activity is not physical; she

is physically quite passive though verbally and spiritually active, and as such is

compatible with Tacitus' well-known depiction of Germanic women as playing strong

verbal roles in their culture (Tacitus. Germania. 8). In other words, her gendering is not

ambiguous; in fact, it is fairly conventional. The case of Elene is a little more interesting.

While Elene herself plays no role in the compelling battle scene at the beginning of the

poem, and while as the mother of the emperor she is obviously not a virgin, she is

referred to as both gudcwen ('warlike queen' or more literally 'war-queen,' 254a) and

sigecwen ('victorious queen' or more literally 'victory-queen,' 260a), and she is also

credited with leading an impressive body of men: "Ne hyrde ic si5 ne ser I on egstreame 132 idese lasdan, / on merestete maegen feg[e]rre" ("I have not heard, far or near, of a lady leading over the ocean stream, over the sea-road, a fairer following," 240a-42). She is also, like Beowulf and Judith, collenferhde (247a), and she is certainly credited with considerable clout in her treatment of Judas prior to his conversion: "he wass on basre cwene gewealdum" ("he was in that woman's power," 610b). Such demonstrations of power terminate, however, upon Judas' adoption of Christianity, suggesting an intersection of gender and religion, with Christianity being gendered masculine and

Judaism feminine, a gendering supported by Jerome ("If [a woman] wishes to serve

Christ more than the world, she will cease to be a woman and will be called a man," "Sin

autem Christo magis voluerit servire quam saeculo, mulier esse cessebit, et dicetur vir")

and by Ambrose ("whoever does not believe is a woman," "quae non credit, mulier est")

(Lyonarons 1997).42 A similar gendering pattern might, as mentioned above, be

extrapolated for the Hebrew Judith and the Assyrian Holofemes, but I do not know how

freely one should apply comments intended for a post-Incarnation community to a

narrative set in a pre-Incarnation world. Moreover, unlike Judith, Elene exerts no lethal

force and does not engage in heroic action as that term is understood in the context of this

study.

Beowulf displays similar patterns: heroic masculinity is enacted through images of

penetration, and is constructed not only within the text but also by the hero himself at the

level of discourse. Chance (1986) has already noted the erotic overtones of the following

passage, for example, which narrates the climax of the conflict between Beowulf and

Grendel's mother:

42 Lyonarons cites the following references: Jerome, Commentariorum in Epistolam adEphesios libri Hi, in Migne, PL 26:567; and Ambrose, Expositionis in Evangelium secundum Lucam libri x, in Migne, PL 133

He gefeng ba fetelhilt, freca Scyldinga

hreoh ond heorogrim, hringmael gebrsegd

aldres orwena, yrringa sloh,

bast hire wi5 halse heard grapode,

banhringas brasc; bil eal Surhwod

fa3gne flEeschoman; heo on flet gecrong,

sweord waes swatig, secg weorce gefeh. (1563-69)

[He seized that ringed hilt, warrior of the Scyldings rough and battle-grim,

drew the ring-marked sword despairing of life, struck out in rage, so that

he grappled hard with her neck, broke bone-rings; the blade carved

through all of that death-doomed flesh-covering; she fell to the floor, the

sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his work.]

While, as noted above in the discussion of the Aeneid, sometimes a weapon is just a

weapon, the case here is otherwise. Coupled with Grendel's mother's earlier failed

attempt to penetrate Beowulf with her own weapon, literally to commit ingang (entrance,

in-going) upon him43 with her seax (sword), this scene illustrates gender-construction not just as a contest but also as a penetration contest as each combatant struggles through

eddies of erotically charged language to come out on top.44

Also present in Beowulf is a dynamic in which a powerful female character is

linguistically and metaphorically constructed as masculine as long as she is able to retain

her power. Chance, observing the use of masculine words in reference to Grendel's

15:1938. 43 "Him on eaxle lseg / breostnet broden; baet gebearh feore, / wi5 ord ond wi5 ecge ingang forstod" ("On his shoulder lay a woven mail-shirt that protected his life, against point and against edge withstood entrance," 1547b-49). 134 mother, remarks that the Beowulf poet "uses a masculine pronoun in referring to her ... and he applies epithets to her that are usually applied to male figures" (1986, 251-52).

These pronouns and epithets are summarized in Table 1. The question of antecedents is also relevant here. The antecedent of the masculine sepe at 1260 is the feminine modor, while both instances of he (1392, 1394) refer to magan (1391), from mage, which

Klaeber identifies as a weak feminine noun. The choice of pronouns is thus not dictated by grammar. What is interesting about the masculine words that refer to Grendel's mother is not just that they are applied, but also where they are applied. In the actual

episode revolving around Grendel's mother's battle with Beowulf, the masculine

pronouns are applied exclusively before the hero reaches the bottom of the mere, the last

one, sepe, occurring just as she seizes him at the end of his descent. This pattern suggests

that Grendel's mother is linguistically constructed as masculine for as long, and only for

as long, as she represents a threat to Heorot. The moment she comes into contact with the

hero who will overpower her, all pronominal ambiguity disappears; she thus retains her

linguistic masculinity only as long as her power over the world of men remains

unthreatened.

Table 1. Masculine pronouns and epithets used to refer to Grendel's mother (based on Chance 1986)

a. pronouns Line Masc. Pronoun Fern. Alternative 1260 sepe he who seope she who 1392 he he heo she 1394 he he heo she 1497 sepe he who seope she who

b. epithets Line Epithet Translation 1339 mihtig manscada destroyer 1379 sinnigne secg warrior 2136 gryrelicne grundhyrde [male] guardian

Chance (1986) discusses the erotic overtones of this passage at length. Rosemary Huisman's "The Three Tellings of Beowulf s Fight with Grendel's

Mother" is revealing in the current context. Discussing the grammatical structures employed in the three versions of the story told in the text—the initial narration and

Beowulf s retellings of it to Hro5gar and Hygelac respectively—she observes that "these three discourses, two of which are explicit tellings, by a character to characters, remind us that all stories are 'told'. .. constructed with a particular ideological bias that is located in a socially constructed view of events and people's roles in them which in turn are endorsed and reinforced in the telling" (218). While the article is not concerned with gender, Huisman's observations are applicable to the text's construction of masculinity.

Looking at "the system of Transitivity [sic] in the clause, choices displaying, for example, who does what to whom in what circumstances" (218), Huisman notes that "in the lines 1501-12a, the story is told, primarily, directly by the narrator in material/action processes: grap [gripped], gefeng [seized], (1.1501), brcec [broke] (1. 1511), ehton

[pursued] (1. 1512)." She also notes that, though the action of the passage is definitely heroic and the hero himself is referred to appropriately as "gudrinc, 'battle-warrior' (1.

1501)," the hero himself is, grammatically speaking, largely passive:

He is the Goal of those action processes which are transitive, not the

Actor. Not only do Grendel's mother and other monsters attack him, in

addition his armour protects him. Though both Grendel's mother and

Beowulf are described as "unable," in terms of we mihte (11. 1504, 1508),

Grendel's mother cannot overcome the strength of the armour with her

acts of hostility, whereas Beowulf cannot even initiate acts of hostility. 136

And this profound inability is placed in the context of no he pees modig

wees, "no matter how brave he was"45 (1. 1508b). (Huisman 220)

While lexically identified as the hero, then, Beowulf is, at least during the earlier part of the encounter, not doing the action—a situation that is not maintained throughout the narration (Huisman 222), and that is not carried through to the hero's own retellings of the event.

In the subsequent tellings, Beowulf portrays action as originating with himself or, in the version he gives to Hro&gar, with God; he does not portray himself as being acted upon by Grendel's mother. The possible exception to this claim occurs in his telling of the tale to Hygelac, when he says, "I>aer unc hwile waes hand gema?ne" (lit.: "There for a while was a hand common to us," 2137), thus at least placing them on an equal footing, but this assertion is quickly followed by the reassuring statement that "ic heafde becearf / in 6am gudsele Grendeles modor / eacnum ecgum" ("I cut off the head of Grendel's mother with [that] mighty sword in the war-hall," 2138b-40a). His statement of equal action with Grendel's mother is thus followed immediately by an active verbal construction in which the hero portrays himself as the actor. In other words, in his own reconstructions of the event, Beowulf renders his opponent less active while attributing the initiative to himself, or to God. Grendel's mother, in any case, goes from being an active aggressor in the first version to a passive object of violence in the subsequent versions. Beowulf, through constructing himself as active, constructs himself as powerful and therefore masculine, glossing over the elements of the encounter in which he himself was acted upon, while simultaneously feminizing his opponent by rendering her passive.

45 Huisman's translation of this line may be a little off: "he was not that brave" may be more accurate. But the difference does not undermine her argument. 137

The feminizing—or perhaps de-masculinizing46—of the hero's defeated opponent through discourse is also reflected in the poet's use of masculine nouns and pronouns observed by Chance. As noted, in the initial telling, the masculine pronouns that refer to her occur only as long as her power remains unchallenged, after which she becomes grammatically feminine. The only clear exception to this pattern occurs in line 2136, in

Beowulf s retelling to Hygelac, where she is, as Chance notes, a gryrelic grundhyrde

(horrible [male] guardian of the deep). A mere three lines later, however, after she has been killed—once she has ceased to be a threat—she is referred with the unambiguously feminine term Grendeles modor (2139b). Thus, not only at the level of active verb construction, but at the level of grammatical gender, Beowulf s female opponent is ambiguously gendered only for as long as she retains sufficient power to pose a challenge, after which she is both passive and feminine.

One possible challenge to this interpretation arises from the lines "Ofsaet pa bone selegyst, ond hyre seax geteah / brad [ond] brunecg; wolde hire beam wrecan" (1545-46).

The problematic word is ofscet, the preterite of ofsittan, which many editors render as "sit upon" (Robinson 2), an understanding that leads to translations such as "She sat down on the hall-guest then and drew her knife—large and with gleaming blade; she wanted to

avenge her son" (1). The image of anyone sitting on the hero in battle is not only undignified; it calls into question the masculine gendering of Beowulf by placing him in a position not out of keeping with the Old Norse expression skaud hernumin. But as

461 find it interesting that the word "feminizing" is included in the MS Word dictionary while its logical counterpart "masculinizing" is not. The unstated assumption seems to be that the masculine is the standard from which the feminine is made to deviate. Both 'Teminize" and ''masculinize" occur in the OED. Thus the bias, if there is one, occurs not at the level of language itself but rather at the level of implementation and probably suggests something about the understanding of gender in the computer software industry—a subject that I might be tempted to take up should anyone ever discover a manuscript in which an Indo- European hero takes on the CEO of a software multinational: Pa beslog Beowulf heafde Bill Geates. 138

Robinson observes, "sit upon" is not the best translation of ofsittan. Surveying all 36 uses of the verb in the Old English corpus, he determines that there is not one instance in which the sense "sit upon" applies (2-6), proposes "set upon" as preferable (6),4 and concludes that "the supposed breach of dignity in the poet's conception of the hero's encounter with GrendeFs dam is a lexical illusion handed down from editor to editor and lexicographer to lexicographer over the years" (7). Grendel's mother does not sit on

Beowulf—she simply attacks him—and all discussion of the gendered or erotic nature of her sitting upon him is moot.

But perhaps the most serious criticism that can be brought against the current

argument is the discontinuity between biological and grammatical gender, ^//"(wife, woman), for example, is neuter despite its biologically female referent, and the

compound wifman (woman) is masculine, taking its grammatical gender from the second word element as is standard in Old English. Grammatically speaking, then, regardless of

referent, grundhyrde cannot help but be masculine: the simplex hyrde, with which it

concludes, is a masculine noun. One can thus argue that the formal concerns of poetry are

more relevant than gender to this word choice, and as this is the only occurrence of the

word in the poem, such an argument may seem reasonable.

An examination of all of the uses of the simplex hyrde, however, reveals a

different picture. The word is used thirteen times in the singular, and, as illustrated in

Table 2, in all of these occurrences, the word is not only grammatically masculine; it

refers, in each instance in which its referent is animate, to male characters. The word as it

47 While acknowledging that the simplex -sittan means "sit," Robinson notes that the addition of a prefix can substantially alter the meaning of the component to which it is attached (3). He then provides a long list of instances in which the word ofsittan in its various forms is best translated as "beset" (3), "besiege" (3), "oppress" (4), "press down" (4-5), "possess" in the demonic sense (4-5), and "set upon" (6). 139 is used in the poem, then, is masculine not only in grammatical gender but also in the biological sense: it refers to masculine entities. The possible exception to this assessment occurs in 1666, in huses hyrdas (house's guardians), referring to the monsters in

Grendel's mother's hall. The full line reads, "Ofsloh 5a aet basre saxce, pa me sael ageald,

/ huses hyrdas" (I killed then in that conflict, when opportunity was given me, the house's guardians, 1665-66). In this line, at least one of the referents—Grendel's mother—is female, but the others are possibly the nicras (water-monsters) of line 1427, and these are grammatically masculine and of indeterminate biological gender. A more likely possibility given the actual progress of the battle in the hall is that the other hyrde is the dead Grendel, whose head Beowulf cuts off. In either case, the only occurrence of the simplex hyrde where its referent is clearly and exclusively female is in the compound grundhyrde in 2136, by which point the word's usage in the text has established its masculine associations beyond the realm of mere grammatical gender. Thus, the pattern identified above, in which Grendel's mother's gender remains grammatically ambiguous

only as long as she herself retains sufficient power to pose a threat to the hero and the hall, is effectively encapsulated in lines 2136-39, in which she is grammatically and lexically masculine while alive and fighting but grammatically and lexically feminine

once dead and defeated. Beowulf, then, constructs his actions and his heroic identity as masculine through both an exclusion of the actions of females from his discourse and the

feminization of his opponent. His masculinity is constituted largely through the denial

and repression of the feminine—even, one might argue, through its systematic exclusion

or abjection. Thus, Grendel's mother is a skaud hernumin, the runner-up in the definitive masculinity contest. Such masculinity as she might have possessed is stripped from her 140 by the victorious hero, illustrating Clover's understanding of masculinity as a "winnable

and losable attribute" (1993, 379) and the applicability of her theory outside of the Old

Norse corpus, and perhaps to the Indo-European epic hero generally.

Table 2. Occurrences of simplex hyrde (grammatically masc.) in Beowulf (based on Klaeber's edition)

Line Phrase / Translation Referent Bio. Compound Gender

Sg., in phrase 610 folces hyrde people's guardian HroSgar masc. 750 fyrena hyrde sins' guardian Grendel masc. 931 Wuldres hyrde heaven's guardian God masc. 1742 sawele hyrde soul's guardian (inanimate) none 1832 folces hyrde people's guardian Hygelac masc. 1849 folces hyrde people's guardian Hygelac masc. 2027 rices hyrde kingdom's guardian Hroogar masc. 2245 hringa hyrde rings' guardian Last Survivor masc. 2304 Beorges hyrde barrow's guardian Dragon masc. 2505 Cumbles hyrde banner's guardian Dasghrefne masc. 2644 folces hyrde people's guardian Beowulf masc. 2981 folces hyrde people's guardian Ongenbeow masc. 3080 rices hyrde kingdom's guardian Beowulf masc.

PL, in phrase 1666 huses hydras house's guardians Grendel's Mother fern, and and Grendel masc.

Sg., in comp. 2136 Grundhyrde guardian of the deep Grendel's mother fern

Yet it is not just the gendering of the hero that is at issue; also at issue is the

gendering of the social orders for and against which he fights. The order for which

Beowulf fights is the order of the men's hall, which James Earl sees as juxtaposed in

Anglo-Saxon society to the world of the huts (107-24). The former, he sees as exclusively

masculine while he sees the latter as predominantly feminine, and he understands the

difference between them as resting upon the distinction between two bases of social

organization: oaths between men in the case of the hall and blood ties in the case of the

huts (109). He also notes that "The terms most used to denote ... kindreds in Old English

are mceg and mcegd, which not coincidentally are homonymous if not identical with the 141 words for 'woman'" (108), thus suggesting a linguistic link between the ideas of women and kinship. Earl also sees the hall/hut dichotomy as a culture/nature dichotomy, with authority in the hall based on oaths (culture) while authority in the huts is based, as noted, on blood (nature, 117). He associates the blood feud with the ethos of the huts as it is based on kinship (123-24). To illustrate the point, he draws attention to the difference between GrendePs spiteful predations and the vengeful attack of his mother (123-24).

Earl associates Beowulf unambiguously with "the world of men" (124), an association that is logical considering that the hero has no blood ties in Denmark and that, when he defends the hall against both Grendel and his mother, the battles are preceded by the swearing of oaths. He concludes that "Grendel's avenging mother, then—his mceg, his woman/kindred—represents among other things the threat that women and ancient claims of kindred pose to the civilizing work of men" (124). Civilization, then, is centred on the hall and the oaths that bind its occupants while the more primitive ties that motivate the blood feud are associated with women and disorder, and the values of the huts.48 Earl is aware that, while men of arms spend a lot of time in the hall from which most but not all women are excluded, they do tend to go home to their huts after a hard day of drinking and swearing. Women are "excluded from the comitatus and its oaths" (Earl 117), however, and it is this group and those promises that define the society of which the hall is the chief symbol.49 Thus, the social order represented by the hall is masculine while the

I am not arguing here that men who undertake blood feuds are acting as feminine individuals, any more than I am suggesting that the sons of Nechta Scene (see Chapter One) are acting as feminine individuals in guarding the borders of their mother's realm against Cii Chulainn. I am suggesting, rather, that the social orders enacted by male characters can be read as gendered constructs. 49 Earl's argument is in keeping with a wider pattern of identifying civilization with masculine values and nature with feminine values (Weisner-Hanks 97), the constructed relationships of the hall representing civilization and the blood relationships of the huts representing nature. 142 social order represented by the huts is feminine regardless of the sex of the people

enacting those orders.

Similarly if a retainer fails to defend his lord in battle, as Beowulf s retainers fail to defend him against the dragon, then he has failed as a man not just in the obvious sense

of having displayed cowardice but also in the more subtle and arguably more important

sense of having betrayed the very principles upon which his social order is based and

upon which its continuation depends: the swearing and keeping of oaths between men. In

this sense, it is perhaps significant that one of the last voices in the poem is that of the old

woman lamenting the impending ruin of her society following the hero-king's fall and the

failure of his retainers to stand by him (3150-55a). The institutional masculinity of her

society has failed, and she is the voice of a people on the verge of being defeated and

therefore feminized by rampaging Swedes. Her society's days of dominance are done.

To return to Grendel's mother, though, it may be objected that she does not live in

a hut; her dwelling is clearly referred to as a hall (nidsele, 1515; [gudjsele, 2139). It may

also be objected that she acts heroically. Kiernan proposes such an interpretation, noting

that "Whereas [Beowulf] and Grendel had fought as fellow-aglcecan, trying to rip each

other apart, she and Beowulf fight as fellow-warriors, both scoring their best points with

conventional weapons" (20). In other words, Grendel's mother fights in a more civilized

manner than does her son, and this is certainly true despite the oft-discussed reference to

her as ides aglcecwif Qady monster-woman, 1259a). Kiernan's main point, however, is

that Grendel's mother is heroic precisely because she pursues the blood feud, a mode of

conduct admired in medieval Germanic society (24-25). Kiernan is not the only critic to

have come to this favourable interpretation. Keith Taylor suggests that Grendel's mother 143 follows the spirit of Beowulf s own maxim: '"Selre bid seghwsem / baet he his freond wrece, bonne he fela murne'" (1384b-1385) ('"Better is the man [sic] who avenges his friend than he who mourns much,'" Taylor's translation, 21).

Both Kiernan and Taylor approach Grendel's mother's actions as though her sex were unimportant—as though, in other words, her identity as heroic depended more upon her actions than upon her body. In other words, they analyse her conduct from a purely functional point of view, leaving biology more or less out of the picture. And such an

approach may well be correct. We have seen in the case of Judith, for example, that women in Anglo-Saxon poetry could be portrayed as heroic.

That Kiernan's and Taylor's analyses of Grendel's mother's motive are accurate

is beyond question; the text tells us as much: "wolde hire beam wrecan" ("she wanted to

avenge her son," 1546b). In fact, HroSgar himself recognizes her reasoning: '"wolde hyre maeg wrecan'" ('"she wanted to avenge her kinsman'," 1339b). When one compares

Kiernan's and Taylor's arguments with Earl's, however, one finds that the former fit

neatly into the latter. While it is true that Grendel's mother's motive is the widely

acknowledged and accepted motive of the blood feud, and while her pursuit of the feud as

a woman does not necessarily render her monstrous as Chance, for example, would have

it (1986, 257)—we might remember Clover's discussion of functional males at this point

as Grendel has no male kin who might take up the feud in his mother's stead—it is also

true that the social order she represents is actually opposed to the order represented by the

men's hall that Beowulf himself is defending. So, while we may grant that Grendel's

mother is or at least may be acting in a manner consistent with an accepted and even

approved mode of conduct, we must also grant that the social order she represents—the 144

order of kindred relations—is, within the context of the poem, understood to be inferior to and ideally dominated by the masculine order of the hall with its oaths and obligations that extend far beyond the private world of the family vendetta. Thus, though Grendel's mother does not live in a hut, her ethos is still opposed to that of the hall and is, by

exclusion from its masculine outlook, non-masculine by default. One is reminded of

Turnus who, though constructing his own identity as masculine, represents a social order

that is dominated by feminine symbols and is ultimately directed by a female deity. Both,

regardless of sex, may be heroic personages in themselves, but they, and the orders for

which they stand, must be assimilated by the forces of patriarchy. And the hero—in fact,

the warrior function of which the hero is a representative—is the engine of assimilation.

The hero's masculinity cannot be taken for granted. Laqueur's one-sex model of

the human being and Clover's powerful/powerless binary situate gender within a context

of competition, with masculinity going to the winner and femininity going to the loser.

The loser, in other words, is feminized through the assertion of power. The model of

competition is especially relevant to the case of epic heroes as they are, simply put, the

ultimate competitors in the societies that they represent. The hero's masculinity, then, is

constantly on trial, constantly in need of display, and constantly in need of defining itself

against or differentiating itself from the feminine, to which it is opposed and by the

domination of which it is secured. The hero's masculinity, moreover, is not merely a

private attribute but also a public performance, both physical and verbal, as seen in both

Beowulf s confrontation with Grendel's mother and his subsequent retellings of the

contest.50 A gendered order/disorder binary as defined by Wiesner-Hanks, in which order

50 Butler notes, "As in other ritual social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and a reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially 145 tends to be seen as masculine while disorder tends to be seen as feminine, is also relevant to heroic literature in so far as the heroes who emerge victorious, such as Cu Chulainn,

Aeneas, and Beowulf, tend to represent social or divine orders that are conspicuous in their masculine symbolism while those who lose, such as Turnus, tend to represent social or divine orders that are equally conspicuous in their feminine symbolism and that are characterized by a tendency toward chaos or disorder. Thus, the hero is not only constructed as masculine, himself; he also stands on the frontier between two worlds, of which one is gendered masculine and the other feminine. The hero, then—both in body within the context of events and as a figure within the context of narrative—is the frontier on which the contest of gender is played out. He is the location of the conflict between the masculine and the feminine. And he is heroic precisely because he is able, through both deeds and words, through both inclusion and exclusion, to construct a resolution to that conflict that favours the masculine. Within the context of epic, then, the warrior hero is the manhood of his society, and that manhood stands or falls, succeeds or fails, through him.

established; and it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation" (140, Butler's emphasis). 146

Chapter Three:

Hero as Other, Hero as Monster, Hero as Cyborg

"when fences come down

it is no longer possible to pass from one side to another

incarnate labouring longing" (Cronin 13)

The present chapter picks up one of the threads left hanging by Chapter One: the figure of the hero as an other. The word "other" requires some explanation. While a Ml theoretical account of the subject of alterity is beyond the scope and purpose not only of this chapter but also of this study, other, in the current context, is understood as a relative term describing any character, creature, or other object of language that is not indigenous to the social or cultural group that provides the socio-political context of the narrative. In other words, from the point of view of the Danes in Beowulf, an other is anyone not

Danish, and from the point of view of the Geats, an other is anyone not Geatish. The other, in this sense, is Julia Kiisteva's foreigner as described in Strangers to Ourselves: a person who comes from another country, who is different from the norm by virtue of culture and parentage; a person who may make a contribution to his or her adopted society, but who will never be absolutely of'tha t society (1988, 1-40). The other is also that against which any social group chooses to define itself: that which lies or originates beyond a border that is as real as it is arbitrary. To take an example from postcolonial theory, in Orientalism Edward Said writes of Western perceptions of the Orient in the following terms: The Orient is not merely adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of

Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its

civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest

and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped

to define Europe (or the West) as its contrary image, idea, personality,

experience. (1)

An other then, in Said's usage, is what a society—or a particular group within a society—constructs in order to define and understand itself. That such a usage is relevant to a discussion of an epic hero is apparent from the nature of the hero's opponents. The monsters of Beowulf, for example, can be read as inversions of the social ideal: the aggressor from outside society defining appropriate values and behaviour through a demonstration of their opposites (Duncan 113). Conversely, Freedman observes that the power structure resulting in the development of orientalism in the west was not in place during the Middle Ages. Thus, while others were certainly constructed, they were not constructed in the same way as Said's Oriental other. Specifically, "The medieval Other differs from that of the modern period described by Said in that neither the westward course of history, nor occidental technological superiority, nor a global empire were as yet conceived of, let alone confidently maintained" (Freedman 3-4). Thus, while medieval others were certainly constructed, they were not necessarily constructed according to one of the dominant lines of thought favoured by current postcolonial theory. They still, however, constitute an image or body of images against or through which pre-modern cultures negotiated their conceptions of themselves. The other, in other words, is what Dumezil's second function exists to oppose—to eradicate, conquer, 148 or assimilate. Conversely, the second function is what the other exists or is constructed to provoke.1

That the hero often possesses characteristics that align him with the other, or, as

W. T. H. Jackson puts it, that epic heroes tend to be exiles in some sense (5), is no new observation. While Beowulf himself is not an exile, his father, Ecgbeow, is. Thus, as the

son of an exile, Beowulf is in fact estranged from his own people, the Waegmundings, to whom he refers as his kindred while speaking with Wiglaf, a fellow Waegmunding, after his fight with the dragon (Beowulf 2814). In this sense, even as king, Beowulf is still an

outsider and still, if his own words can be trusted, sees himself as such. Moreover, if

nothing else, the possession of the heroic rage outlined in Chapter One is enough to place

the hero generally, and Beowulf specifically, well within the realm of alterity. As Miller

observes, "the social utility of the hero is always shadowed by his other side: the asocial,

individualized, untamed, combative, and destructive" (84). Heroes, in other words, are

dangerous to have around; they cannot be counted on to play by society's rules. And here

we arrive at, or return to, the central problem of the hero, and of the representative of

Dumezil's second function—that is, the warrior function, concerned primarily with the

exercise of force: while the hero fights for his society against the other, he has a great

deal in common with that against which he fights, to the extent that he himself can be

seen as existing outside of that society. The hero, then, functions as a nexus where the

fluid border between Us and Them is temporarily and problematically negotiated. The

current chapter picks up on the theme of alterity and explores three of the many ways in

1 Medieval warriors, of course—like warriors of other ages—did not just fightmonster s and people of other nations, i.e., others as defined above. There was and is the possibility, discussed at length in Chapter One, of their turning their energy and violence against the very people for whom they fight. To say, then, that the second fimctionexist s to oppose the other, and that the other exists for the second function to oppose, is not to say that either of these constructs engages solely with the other one. which that theme pertains to the narrative construct of the epic hero. Specifically, it discusses the hero's relationship with an opponent who can be thought of as a second self or intimate other, it explores the role of the hero himself as a monstrous figure, and it offers a reading of the epic hero in light of the postmodern and posthuman figure of the cyborg. What emerges is a picture of the hero not only as monstrous in himself—an image that already has a substantial critical history—but also as a specific kind of monster, namely, a cyborg.

To begin, I would like to develop the idea of the opponent as the hero's intimate other or, in Van Nortwick's terminology, his second self? a term he borrows from C. F.

Keppler's 1972 study The Literature of the Second Self, in which this figure is described as "the intruder from the background of shadows" who "always tends to remain half- shadowed" and is "much more likely to have knowledge of his foreground counterpart than the latter of him" but whose full knowledge is "always left in comparative obscurity" (Keppler 3). As VanNortwick summarizes, the second self is non-identical with but complementary to the hero, possessing something that the hero himself lacks.

Van Nortwick also notes an "instant, strange, and inexplicable affinity between the two selves" accompanied by an intensity of feeling foregrounded in the case of the hero and backgrounded in the case of the second self, and observes that "the encounter with the second self is always potentially therapeutic" (1992, 6, my emphasis). Keppler, moreover, points out that the second self is "the self that has been left behind, or overlooked, or unrealized, or otherwise excluded from the first self s self-conception; he is the self that must be come to terms with" (11). The encounter between the hero and the

2 This idea is not confined to Van Nortwick. As Miller observes, "The hero fights his own—even himself, in a sense. The hero's opponent may wear or declare some differentia identified with the Other, or even of evil, hut usually he is simply the hero's mirror image" (323). 150 second self is thus on the one hand, an encounter between Self and Other, Us and Them; on the other, it is an illustration that the Other is intimately bound up with the Self, that

Them is bound up with Us. What is important is not necessarily that the hero, through this encounter, become more human or more monstrous, more or less other, but simply that he become more—that a previously unrealized facet of his character be revealed to the listener or reader, and perhaps to the hero himself.

In his discussion of the second self motif in the Iliad, Van Nortwick identifies two second selves for the hero Achilles, namely Patroclus (1992,49-60, 74-75) and Hector

(1992, 64-74), drawing particular attention to the fact that all three, at one point or another, possess Achilles' armour and are thus symbolically linked (1992, 64). As the current discussion revolves around heroic opponents, I confine myself to the relationship between Achilles and Hector. The two are, as has often been noted, similar in several ways, not least of which is the course of action that commits both heroes to destruction.3

While Achilles is trapped by his anger (Van Nortwick 1992, 66), Hector is trapped by his sense of responsibility (Redfield 119), and, forced to choose between the obligations he owes his family and the admittedly more pressing obligations he owes his city {Iliad

6.407 ff), is ensnared in a contradiction: to be true to one object of loyalty is necessarily to betray the other. In fact, the snare is a double one as the safety of his family depends upon his defending the city: in order to save them, he must leave them. While his situation is not identical to that of Achilles, whose divine or daemonic nature sets him outside the human fold as opposed to Hector, who is "quintessentially social and human"

3 As Schein explains, "Just as Achilles is trapped within the contradictions of a heroism he qualitatively transcends but to which he has no alternative, so Hektor, as the defender of the city, cannot escape the consequences of a heroic way of life that necessarily involves both his own destruction and the abandonment and destruction of the family he loves more than his city and more than all the world" (177). 151

(Schein 180-81), both are trapped by the values—personal honour and social obligation respectively—that lead them into heroic violence and ultimately into death. Again, as

Schein observes, "Both heroes can only suffer and inflict sufferings on others, trapped in the contradictions of the heroism by which they live" (179). Achilles and Hector's common ground is not just that they are warriors but that, given their positions, warriors

are all they can be; the values they espouse will not let them be anything else. All they

can do is damage.

Thus, the hero and his opponent, while intensely opposed to one another, are also

intensely similar. This similarity—this closeness—is not merely symbolic but discursive

as well; it is defined not just by their situations but also by the verbal exchanges that pass

between them.4 Speech between opponents, in other words, is both a recognition and a

construction of a shared relationship. By engaging in what Parks refers to as verbal

duelling they are acknowledging each other as opponents in a context and contest that,

while potentially violent, is also both constructed and civilized. For example, when

Hector in his mortal duel with Achilles (Iliad 22.252 ff.) proposes that the winner not

despoil the loser's body, he is attempting both to invoke a civilized structure for the duel

and to place controls on the violence that is about to erupt. That Achilles rejects those

controls is, as often observed, a measure of how far outside the human or civilized realm

his rage has taken him. Moreover, that Hector, of all people, proposes them in the first

place—Hector the second self, the human or humane aspect of Achilles that is currently

alienated from his divinely bestial nature—illustrates exactly what it is that Achilles must

4 Hector and Achilles speak both more often and with more individuality than do the rest of the characters in the epic (Schein 179, citing S. E. Bassett, The Poetry of Homer, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1938, 78). Ward Parks notes that "heroic adversaries are subtly bound into interdependency, that their verbal and martial hostilities are, in covert ways, joint ventures" (1990, viii), and that verbal duelling between opponents is an expression of commonality and a way of potentially mitigating violence (1990, 2-22). 152 ultimately gain fromth e ensuing encounter, and what in fact he does gain in the end through the negotiations surrounding Hector's body in the heroic decompression episode in the epic's final book (see Chapter One).

As he does for Achilles, Van Nortwick also posits two second selves for Aeneas:

Dido (1992, 103-23) and Turnus (1992, 151-61). As in the discussion of the Iliad, the discussion of the Aeneid is concerned with the hero's relationship with his agonistic opponent. Aeneas and Turnus are linked, as pointed out in Chapter Two, by the imagery of fire, a pattern of imagery that ties both to the Indo-European hero in the general sense and, as Van Nortwick notes, to Achilles specifically (1992, 152), who "serves as a model for both Aeneas and Turnus right up to the end of the AeneidT (1980, 303).5 Turnus, then, represents exactly that kind of heroism that Aeneas must transcend. Whether he does or does not transcend it is matter of some debate.6 Fortunately, it is not the purpose of this study to resolve the ambiguity of Aeneas' conduct—an ambiguity satisfying in itself— but simply to note that, whether Aeneas does or does not transcend the social and moral world of Turnus, it is through his relationship with Turnus that he reaches whatever end

5 Van Nortwick highlights the many places at which Aeneas and Turnus show Achillean traits, both in their behaviour and in the imagery used to describe them, and suggests that "if both Aeneas and Turnus reflect in some way the Homeric Achilles, then it is possible to see an element of self-destructiveness in Aeneas' victory which would be consistent with Vergil's Homeric model" (1980, 313) and that "in killing Turnus Aeneas maybe said to be putting to rest in Turnus and in himself that anachronistic Achillean heroism which is to be replaced bypietas, me corner-stone of the new civilization of Rome" (1980, 313-14). 6 Putnam, on the one hand, suggests that in killing Turnus—in deciding not to spare the humble after warring down the proud as Anchises' ghost advises him—Aeneas gives rein to just that mode of heroism that "relies on ... an individualistic, often blind, use of force" (1984,154). On the other hand, Galinsky argues that, while Achilles in killing Hector is motivated by an uncivilizing and inhuman rage, Aeneas in killing Turnus is motivated by a justified, socially constructive anger (341). Similarly, focusing on Virgil's diction, Di Cesare notes that in the line "inque uicem nunc Turnus agit, nunc Troius heros" ("now Turnus, now the Trojan hero takes his turn" at slaughter, XII, 502), "Aeneas and Turnus are juxtaposed, commingled, almost identified with each other" (219-20). They are thus a complementary pair—the constructed self and constructed other of Roman heroism. Di Cesare also suggests that "through his trials, [Aeneas] has been hardened to an abstract kind ofjustic e and executive activity, has indeed become detached fromhuma n frailty.Thus,.. . he can carry out the necessary act of killing Turnus... as the act appropriate to the Chief of State. This is the corporate Aeneas, sharply contrasted to the individualist hero" (237-38). 153 he reaches by the end of the poem. Be it something as positive as a wise head of state or something as negative as just another unbalanced warrior, any definition of Aeneas that we reach by the epic's conclusion must be constructed relative to Turnus, his second self and intimate other.

Like Achilles and Aeneas, Cu Chulainn bears a close and interesting relationship to his principal martial opponent, in this case Fer Diad (TBC1 2568-3153), a relationship not unlike that of the first self to the second self. Fer Diad is one of three foster brothers whom Cii Chulainn encounters—the others being Fer Baeth (TBC1 1738-1806) and Loch

(TBC1 1874-2037)—all of whom were trained with him under his Otherworld tutor

Scathach. As Wong observes, "each incident focuses on one or more of the tensions which arise when the obligation of personal honor is set against the affection of common fosterage" (119).7 The similarity between the combatants in all three of these encounters is not merely in their fostering. Regarding Fer Baeth's decision to fight him, for example,

Cu Chulainn draws attention to their physical parity, saying to Lugaid, "I shall not survive this encounter. We two are of equal age, of equal swiftness and of equal weight.

Leave me now so that we may meet, and tell him that it is unworthy of his valour [nifir laechdachta] that he should come against me. Ask him to come and meet me and speak to me tonight" (TBC1 1765-68; O'Rahilly 174).8 While Wong comments that Cii

Chulainn's statement "seems less a moral decision than a cowardly attempt to avoid his first serious opponent" (122), it can also be read as an acknowledgement or awareness of

7 While the Fer Diad episode seems to have been interpolated around the eleventh century, Veille points out that the material comprising the episode "seems to be traditional within the Ulster Cycle" (218). We can therefore discuss the relationship between the two characters as an established element of the Ulster tradition rather than as a relatively late innovation. 8 "Nicon beo-sa i mbethaid di sudiu. Da chomais sind, da chomsolam, da chutrummae, co comairsem. A Lugaid, celebor dam. Apair friss dano ni fir laechdachta do tuidecht ar mo chend-sa. Apair fris taet ar mo chend-sa innocht dom acallaim." 154 the betrayal of themis, much as Cii Chulainn's combat with his son, as discussed in

Chapter One. It can be read, as well, in the light of Parks' observation that speech between combatants can be used as a means of controlling the violence that might

otherwise ensue. While Cii Chulainn's indirect appeal to Fer Baeth is not exactly verbal

duelling, for example, it is clearly an attempt to redefine the situation within the context

of language rather than playing it out unthinkingly in the context of wordless violence.

This attempt at dialogue displays Cii Chulainn's desire to avoid the painful conflict of

personal and social loyalties.

Fer Baeth, on the other hand, seems to suffer few pangs over the conflict. His

reply to Medb's initial request—offered over strong drink in the seductive company of

her daughter Finnabair—is fairly direct: '"I do not wish to go,' said Fer Baeth. 'Cii

Chulainn is my foster brother and bound to me by solemn covenant. Nevertheless I shall

go and oppose him tomorrow and cut off his head'" ('"Ni haccobor lem,' or Fer Baeth.

'Comalta 1 fer bithchotaig dam Cii Chulaind. Ragat-sa ar apa ara chend i mbarach co

topachtur a chend de,'" TBC1 1757-59; O'Rahilly 174). Accordingly, he rejects Cii

Chulainn's attempt to avoid fighting, resolving the conflict by the simple if superficial

expedient of renouncing their bond, at which point Cii Chulainn responds with

characteristic violence: "Then Cii Chulainn threw [a] holly shoot after Fer Baeth and it

struck the depression at the back of his neck and went out through his mouth, and he fell

on his back in the glen" ("Focheird Cii Chulaind in sleig n-iarom i ndegaid Fir Baith co

n-erremadair ath a da chiilad co ndeochaid for a beolo sair co torchair tara aiss issa

nglend," TBC1 1780-1782; O'Rahilly 175). That Cii Chulainn's anger in this passage

results from a violation of themis on Fer Baeth's part is clear. More interesting, perhaps, 155 is the mode of the first foster brother's death: a holly stake that emerges from his mouth

"so that the point of the weapon passes near the tongue and lips which have spoken his own treachery" (Wong 122). The relationship between language and violence is explicit:

Cii Chulainn's attempt to mitigate the violence of the situation, in Parks' terminology, has failed; language is thus immediately and symbolically replaced by bloodshed. Fer

Baeth's formal denial of their kinship constructs the situation in which violence must occur, and thus, by renouncing their relationship, he speaks his own death.

Similarly, that Cii Chulainn goes into his most elaborate distortion shortly after his encounter with his foster brother Loch (TBC1 2245-78) can also be read in the light of themis betrayed—an indication, perhaps, that in fighting his foster brother Cii Chulainn has come into conflict with something more personal than a mere physical opponent.9 But it is after his encounter with Fer Diad—actually, just before Fer Diad finally succumbs to his wounds—that Cii Chulainn utters some of his most heartfelt regrets in a poetic conversation with his third and closest foster brother. Fer Diad begins by praising Cii

Chulainn for this lethal spear-toss (3101-5), and then Cii Chulainn praises the dying Fer

Diad for his strength, friendship, nobility and physical beauty (3106-33), concluding with the stanzas

"All was play and pleasure until I met with Fer Diad in the ford.

Alas for the noble champion laid low there at the ford.

All was play and sport until I met with Fer Diad at the ford. I thought that

beloved Fer Diad would live after me for ever."

(TBC1 3134-42; O'Rahilly 207-8)10

9 Cu Chulainn's encounter with Loch is discussed in detail in Chapter Two. 10 "Cluithe each, caine each / co Fer Diad isind ath / dursan uaitne oir / forfuirmedh for ath. 156

In illustrating the conflict between personal and social obligations, this episode, too, is similar to Cii Chulainn's killing of Connla. It is also reminiscent of the conflict in Hector in Book Six of the Iliad, in which the Trojan hero must decide between loyalty to his family and to his feelings for them, and loyalty to the larger social unit and to his own honour, which itself is a reflection of his relationship with that unit.11 More important at the moment, however, are the obvious love that the two combatants share even in their mortal struggle, and Cii Chulainn's expectation that Fer Diad would live after him. One might remember Keppler's assertion of the strong feeling often shared by first and second selves.

Like Achilles and Hector, and like Aeneas and Turnus, Cii Chulainn and Fer Diad are similar but not identical, and there is much about the latter that can shed light on the character of the former. The two are described as being equal in all regards except one: whereas Cii Chulainn has mastery of the gde bolga, Fer Diad is described as having an impenetrable hornskin (TBC1 2747-48), much like his predecessor Loch. He is thus a defensive counterpart to his offensively superior foster brother; they are symbolically balanced, a complementary pair. Moreover Fer Diad is persuaded to fight through

Finnabair's seduction and Medb's trickery (Wong 132-34). His decision to fight Cii

Chulainn to avenge a non-existent insult is then reinterpreted or rather reconstructed by

Medb in terms of natural blood loyalty (TBC1 2583-2619).12 In other words, through his interaction with Medb, Fer Diad's social context is redefined to the point that betrayal is

Cluichi each, caine each / co Fer Diad isind ath / indar limsa Fer dil Diad / is am diaid no biad co brath." 11 These situations may also reflect the hall/hut dichotomy discussed in the previous chapter in that the heroic choice in every case involves setting a social relationship above a personal one—setting political obligation above private feeling. 12 One may again be reminded of the hall/huts dichotomy as Medb's arguments are based entirely upon personal loyalty, explicitly blood loyalty, rather than on political principle or sworn oaths. 157 able to parade itself as faithfulness. Unlike Cii Chulainn, who simply fights from a knowledge of his own heroic identity and destiny, Fer Diad engages in dialogue— negotiations—with his social superior. In this regard as in others, for example the positive behaviour of Cii Chulainn's charioteer and the negative behaviour of Fer Diad's

(Wong 137), the two are opposed. The episode thus reveals an unease regarding dialogue where heroes are concerned: it is not, after all, their preferred medium of expression. Fer

Diad's mistake, which results in a clear betrayal of themis against him on the part of

Medb, is his willingness to talk—to place himself in a situation where verbal persuasion is at least a theoretical possibility. Cii Chulainn, on the other hand, while he often

exchanges words with his opponents, invariably settles things physically and never puts himself in a situation where a social superior might argue or trick him out of a course of

action that he has decided to pursue. Thus, while speech between combatants can often

limit violence or at least define the context in which it occurs—can render it, to a degree,

civilized—a willingness to engage in dialogue with a «o«-heroic interlocutor such as a

political leader suggests a willingness to compromise one's stance. Speech between warriors is one thing; speech between warriors and politicians is something else again.

Paradoxically, however, as dialogue is a defining element of society, to close oneself off

from it is to become, in essence, antisocial or even sociopathic. Fer Diad's fatal mistake,

then, is his acknowledgement that his overall social context extends beyond the

battlefield.

In the final conversation—almost a duet—that he shares with Fer Diad, Cu

Chulainn bridges this paradox in a way that was impossible in his conflict with Fer Baeth.

While the latter renounces his relationship with Cii Chulainn, the former does no such 158 thing; thus, when they encounter each other in the ford, it is with their social bond at least theoretically intact; he kills one whom he loves without destroying the love itself. Though he has killed his counterpart, their society of two remains unbroken because their bond is not denied. His killing of Fer Diad allows Cu Chulainn to experience a depth of sympathy with the rest of humanity that he rarely displays elsewhere, without compromising his

(antisocial context as a man of pure action; it allows him to appreciate the emotional reality of violence and of his role as an avatar of violence. He, like Achilles and Aeneas,

comes to the fullest realization of himself through his encounter with his intimate other.

As for Beowulf, the case is at least superficially different in that his principal

opponents are monsters while those of Achilles, Aeneas, and Cu Chulainn are human.

The difference, however, is no more than superficial, as the many oft-noted parallels

between Beowulf and his monsters indicate (see, for example, Dragland 608-9; Orchard

1995, 29-32). Both Beowulf and Grendel are described as being unusually large: "'Nasfre

ic maran geseah / eorla ofer eorpan, Sonne is eower sum'" ('"I never saw a bigger earl

over the earth than is one of you,'" 247b-48) in the case of Beowulf; "nasfne he wass mara

bonne asnig man o5er" ("except that he was bigger than any other man," 1353) in the case

of Grendel. Similarly, both are exceptionally strong, each being described as having the

strength of thirty men. Beowulf has "britiges / manna masgencraeft on his mundgripe"

("thirty men's might in his handgrip," 379b-80), while Grendel "on rasste genam / prigtig

begna" ("from their resting place snatched thirty thanes," 122b-23a). More important,

perhaps, is the emotional state of each, exemplified through the use of words containing

the element bolgen (enraged; lit., swollen) as alluded to in Chapter One. Finally, there is

the preference that each displays for unarmed combat over combat with weapons. As for 159

Beowulf s relationship with Grendel's mother, we might remember that each is motivated by vengeance, and that each is described as defending a hall. Regarding the dragon, which according to Tolkien personifies "the evil side of heroic life" (23), there is the fact that each is fighting for possession of a treasure. Moreover, both the dragon and Beowulf are described as stearcheort (stout-hearted, 2288 and 2552 respectively), the difference being whether the story is told from the dragon's or from Beowulf s point of view

(Orchard 1995, 29-30). That is, when the story is told from Beowulf s point of view, he is stearcheort, but when the point of view is the dragon's, it is stearcheort. And regarding all three monsters and Beowulf himself, there is, as noted above, the poet's use of the word aglceca, a word also used to refer to Satan in Christ and Satan 160a (Niles 1983,

12) and clearly associated with monstrosity or terror. In every case, then, the hero is coming up against not just an opponent but an opponent with whom he has much in common and who reflects one or more facets of his own character.

The difference between Beowulf s opponents and the other heroic antagonists mentioned so far—the difference between monsters on the one hand and human enemies on the other—may still be plaguing some readers. One particular result of this difference, namely, that the possibility of community that is so evident between Cu Chulainn and Fer

Diad, for example, is not possible between Beowulf and his enemies, needs to be addressed. The most important difference here actually seems not to be the possession of human as opposed to inhuman form, but rather the possession or lack of the capacity for speech: none of Beowulf s opponents are reordberend (speech-bearers).13 Thus, even though Achilles and Hector betray no fellow-feeling, the possibility of community, even

13 Though this word does not occur in Beowulf, it is used in Daniel (123), Andreas (419), Dream of the Rood (3, 89), Christ (278, 381,1024,1368), and Elene (1282) to refer to human beings; the association of speech with humanity in Anglo-Saxon thought is thus fairly clear. 160 if only a community of antagonism, exists between them, as exemplified by Hector's

attempt to negotiate with his soon-to-be killer. Between Beowulf and Grendel, on the

other hand, there can be no negotiation but only a parody of human community as seen in the sigeleas sang (victoryless song, 787) that Grendel sings upon having his arm torn off.

Where Beowulf and his opponents diverge at the level of species and speech, however, they intersect at the level of vocabulary, as illustrated by the frequent lexical overlap in their respective descriptions, as discussed above. In other words, the agonistic function of

the hero's enemy is, in itself, more important than the humanity, or lack thereof, of any

individual opponent, and the non-humanity of Beowulf s enemies does not contradict

their proposed functions as second selves for the protagonist.

This opposition of antagonistic but intimately similar characters can be seen as

one between order and chaos. For example, Tolkien notes that the monsters in northern

mythology are the enemies of gods and humans and as such are on the side of darkness

and disorder (27), a point of view compatible with Mircia Eliade's understanding of order

and chaos as they pertain to monsters.14 Eliade's understanding of chaos is interesting in

that it associates disorder with both the monstrous and the Other, situating civilization on

the side of order and the gods. In fact, though he does not mention Beowulf, Eliade

accurately summarizes Grendel's attack on the symbolic centre of Heorot, covering both

his motive of anger sparked by the song of creation (Beowulf 86 ff.) and the subsequent

deterioration of Danish society; he effectively defines the other as a force of Chaos.

14 "Since 'our world' is a cosmos, any attack from without threatens to turn it into chaos. And as 'our world' was founded by imitating the paradigmatic work of the gods, the cosmogony, so the enemies who attack it are assimilated to the enemies of the gods, the demons, and especially the archdemon, the primordial dragon conquered by the gods at the beginning of time. An attack on 'our world' is equivalent to an act of revenge by the mythical dragon, who rebels against the work of the gods, the cosmos, and straggles to annihilate it" (Eliade 47-48). 161

Similarly, Dragland observes that "it is difficult to talk about polarization in Beowulf because "Each unit of the opposition partakes of some of the qualities of its 'opposite,'

and there is no crystal clear-cut distinction to be made between chaos and civilization,

except by the characters themselves" (614-15). Oetgen also sees the monsters of Beowulf

as personifications or representations of Chaos and recognizes that Chaos will have the

victory in time (135). Specifically, he sees Grendel as "a symbol of disorder" disturbed

by the joys he hears resounding hludne in healle (loud in the hall, 89a), and by the

hearpan sweg (harp's music, 89b), both of which are "images of concord" (137). Oetgen

suggests that both Grendel and his mother represent forces of Chaos that are essentially

external and intrusive (141-43), noting that ^Eschere is specifically associated with order

as he is a "trusted counsellor (runwita) and a bearer of wisdom (rcedbora)" (144). Thus,

in fighting Grendel's mother in her lair, Beowulf is fighting Chaos on its own ground

(Oetgen 144). The dragon can also be read as a representative of external Chaos (Oetgen

147). Eliade, for instance, sees the dragon of myth as "the paradigmatic figure of the

marine monster, of the primordial snake, symbol of the cosmic waters, of darkness, night,

and death—in short, the amorphous and virtual, of everything that has not yet acquired a

'form'," and asserts the importance of defeating and dismembering the dragon "so that

the cosmos may come to birth" (48). And here, one might remember—bearing in mind

that Eliade is concerned with mythic dragons and, as noted, does not mention Beowulf—

that Beowulf s dragon fight takes place near the sea and that the dragon's body is rolled

into (and perhaps returned to) the ocean while Beowulf s at least symbolically, in the

form of smoke, ascends to the sky. In other words, while Beowulf and, for instance,

Grendel both exhibit monstrous tendencies, they are differentiated largely through their relation to the Order/Chaos binary, with Beowulf standing actively and eloquently— though paradoxically given the disordering nature of heroic rage—on the side of order.

The precise relationship of the Order/Chaos binary with the Internal/External (i.e.,

Us/Them) binary proposed by Oetgen is, however, a little simplistic in the context of

Beowulf, as is the resulting vision of the hero Beowulf as the restorer of order to society

(Oetgen 139). For instance, it does not take into account that Heremod brought his own

chaos with him, that HroSulf may well be plotting treachery down the road, or that

Heorot will definitely end in flames. As for the supposed external nature of the dragon's brand of chaos, one might remember that the dragon is provoked by a "human crime" and

that in this sense the chaos resulting from the dragon's attack is caused by a member of

the society that the dragon so spectacularly afflicts (Oetgen 148). The person in question

is running from a master who beat him, or in other words from some lord who displayed

qualities similar to those of the foul-tempered Heremod; the actual chaos enacted by the

dragon thus originates in the upper echelons of Geatish society. It is therefore more

accurate to say that the chaos represented by the dragon is not so much external as

externalized: it is constructed as external despite the evidence of events, much as

Beowulf s masculinity, as we saw in the previous chapter, is so constructed. Similarly,

Niles overstates his case in his assertion that "Where Beowulf and Grendel differ is in

their disposition rather than their power, and in this respect they are like day and night"

(1983, 20). One might remember, for instance, that Beowulf s temperament is actually

rather close to Grendel's; both are described as "enraged," and both are quite clearly

aglcecan. What may be more accurate is to take a cue from Niles in his assertion that

"Rather than see Grendel as an antihero, one can regard Beowulf as a kind of 163

'antimonster'" (1983, 21-22), and that it is the monsters that, as far as the story is concerned, call Beowulf into being (1983, 22). In other words, Beowulf reacts to the monsters: he depends on them for his heroic identity. Viewed in this light, the

Hero/Monster binary becomes not so much an opposition of two characters as a narrative field in which the motif of heroic action is constructed: a single unit or system of violence consisting of a hero-half and a monster-half, and incorporating a strong element of Chaos that is not confined to either half exclusively but that, instead, permeates the whole.15

Such a reading is consistent with Joyce Lyonarons' discussion of the mythic and epic hero and monster as mutually constituting figures. Lyonarons identifies an Indo-

European verb, *^hen- (kill serpent), which defines the Indo-European mythic hero as a dragon-slayer (1996, 2-3), suggesting that "if the killing of a dragon constitutes the

definition of the hero par excellence, then the dragon is also defined, by implication, as the ultimate adversary" and that, more interestingly, the verb is bi-directional in that it not

only constitutes the hero as the slayer of the dragon but the dragon as that which the hero

slays, thus suggesting "a covert similarity between subject and object, hero and monster, that the myth's overt language denies" (1996, 3).16 In terms of who ends up being the hero, and who the monster, the matter is surprisingly simple; the issue is settled by the

violence that defines their encounter, with heroism going to the winner much as

15 Again, we are confronted with the humanity of the heroic opponents in the other epics, but again I will argue that the differences are more apparent than substantial. That heroes and opponents meet in liminal or border zones is already established. That they share many important traits is also clear, as is the fact that heroes can only constitute themselves as heroes in the context of a violent conflict that necessitates a formidable foe. In this sense, heroes and their opponents are both components in a system of (often mutual) definition. Conversely, the non-monstrosity of the human opponents themselves is by no means a given. 16 The word, given as *g*°en in Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (2.115), is given as "kill; destroy, pursue (enemy); break, strike; battle; kill serpent." The word is thus not as limited in its meaning as Lyonarons suggests, but the association with a serpent, to the exclusion of other non-human opponents, is still suggestive and does lend some support to her argument. Interestingly, Severynse gives *^hen as the etymological root of OE bana (slayer) and ON gunnar (war), among other words (25). 164 masculinity, as illustrated in the last chapter, goes to the winner of the gendering contest that also manifests itself in heroic combat. In both cases, combat is the arena in which

important social definitions are negotiated. Lyonarons posits this violence as the

"negative correlative of dialogue" because "it silences and then replaces dialogic

interaction, [and] it occurs when engagement between one potentially speaking subject

and another becomes instead a confrontation between a monologic subject and a silenced

object" (1996, 3); in other words, once the Other has been constructed as monstrous,

violence against it tends to be both "blind and deaf (Cohen 2000b, 89). It is thus through

his conflicts with the monsters—monsters who happen to reflect facets of his own

character—that Beowulf is able to emerge as a hero. They are his intimate others to the

extent that each in his or her turn unites with him through the medium of violence to form

an agonistic configuration in which a heroic identity can be constructed. In this regard,

they are not so different from Hector, Turnus, or Fer Diad. In every case, the hero's

identity as a hero depends upon his relationship with an opponent who also functions as a

second self; in every case, then, the hero is fighting some aspect of himself while at the

same time fighting his most persistent and threatening other(s).

The hero himself, of course, is threatening: that he is often monstrous is

demonstrated in Chapter One. In the next few pages, I explore the idea of the hero's

monstrosity in the theoretical context of borders and hybridity and, finally, in the related

context of Jeffrey Cohen's seven theses on monsters. To say that the hero is a figure of

the border is of course no new thing; the place of heroic action tends, as seen above, to be

a liminal space or border zone: a zone that separates the Us of the narrative from its

Them, the Same from the Other. And, as Miller suggests, the hero's drive to venture into 165 liminal spaces with the resulting encounter with human, animal, or supernatural alterity is an essential feature of his biography. One can even assert that "The place of the hero on the border is thus almost a cliche: liminality is all but a given" (Miller 147-48). The hero, though, rather than being a figure who merely inhabits a border zone, is in fact a kind of border zone unto himself. He does not just encounter the other, and often an intimate other, in a border region; he and the border, much like the hero and his intimate other, are mutually constituting. The hero is the border, or at least a border, and his existence as such can best be understood through an exploration of his hybrid or monstrous nature.

The discussion of hybridity in this chapter relies primarily on the writing of postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha. As is the case with many postcolonial critics, Bhabha is concerned with the construction and dissemination of power through narrative, and specifically with the construction of difference—the construction of the other—through discourse in the context of power relations, primarily in the context of European and

American political and economic colonialism, and as such may not seem immediately relevant to the current study. Like the colonial narratives that so often concern Bhabha and other postcolonial critics, however, epic narrative is explicitly concerned with power—its construction and deployment—and nowhere is that concern with power more apparent than in the depiction of heroic action and those who engage in it, specifically the often monstrous heroes and their often heroic opponents.

As for the idea of the hybrid, Bhabha sees it as a disturbing and, as the word suggests, impure figure that, through its mixed and often grotesque nature, challenges the dominant group's notion of itself (1985/86, 155). The "hybrid" as described by Bhabha occupies a boundary between the authoritative subject position of the colonizer and the 166 dominated object position of the colonized, displaying elements of both (1985/86, 154-

57). It is at once Self and Other, Us and Them; it is both and neither. Its position as such—its recognizable unrecognizability—"terrorizes authority with its ruse of recognition, its mimicry, its mockery" (1985/86, 157). As a result of its mixed nature, the hybrid challenges and undermines the stability of all absolute distinctions (1985/86, 158).

Of course, any figure described as having a mixed or changeable nature is likely to be predicated, a priori, on an assumption of stability or, as Bhabha has it, "fixity."17

The social centre—the centre of colonial power in Bhabha's thinking—characterizes

itself by a notion of stability against which the hybrid is portrayed as unstable and impure—essentially inferior. Given that "The objective of colonial discourse is to

construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in

order to justify conquest" (1992, 70), the instability of the hybrid is a direct ideological

threat to this fiction of fixity and the idea of purity that underlies it. The hybrid, in

essence, fuzzes the border, undermining the clear understanding of Self and Other upon which the discourse of power depends (1992, 67). Thus, while colonial discourse portrays

the colonized as both visibly other and completely knowable within the context of its own

power structures (1992, 70-71), the hybrid, through its defiance of fixed categories of

being and therefore knowledge, challenges that knowability.

The ideal space of the hybrid is of course the border—the liminal region where

the fixed meets the unstable, where the pure meets the impure, where Us bumps up

against Them. Bhabha refers to this region as "beyond," but his notion of "beyond" is not

17 "An important feature of colonial discourse is its dependence on the concept of 'fixity' in the ideological construction of otherness. Fixity, as the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference in the discourse of colonialism, is a paradoxical mode of representation: it connotes rigidity and an unchanging order as well as disorder, degeneracy and daemonic repetition" (Bhabha 1992, 66). 167 limited to space: "to dwell 'in the beyond' is also ... to be part of a revisionary time"

(1994, 7). Such a time offers a narrative space in which social binaries can be questioned, an "'in-between' temporality" in which the borders between stable categories upon which the dominant group relies, can be revealed as less than stable (1994, 13).

So what could any of this PoCo gobbledygook possibly have to do with epic literature? For one thing, with its habit of being set in the distant past, epic literature also offers a narrative time in which the borders between apparently stable categories can be challenged or fuzzed. It is, for example, in geardagum that Beowulf meets his monsters and engages in his many boundary struggles. The other epics with which we are concerned are also set centuries before the poet or compositor's historical present; those days are qualitatively different from these days. The heroic age—a liminal time intervening somewhere between the most distant and often mythical past, and the historic present—has, in every case, ended.18 Granted, the explicit purpose of setting a narrative in the distant heroic past need not be to challenge socially constructed binaries, but the instability of boundaries of all kinds is a part of epic literature. Moreover, the conflicts that revolve around these borders are always power conflicts, and the strategies involved in settling them are always strategies of domination.19 Boundaries in epic are permeable, and stability in epic is challenged, often by the hero himself.

Regarding hybrids, one's attention naturally drifts to heroic opponents. Grendel, for example, is a creature of "mixed nature" (Williams 1982, 44), being both human and

18 One might even argue that both Beowulf and iheAeneid chronicle the end of the heroic age, but such an argument lies outside the sphere of this study. 19 As Jackson notes, "Epic themes spring fromturmoil , and one of the characteristics of turmoil is the intrusion of the outsider into a settled, established culture, an outsider who often proves more powerful than the ruler to whose court he comes and who must be placated or, if necessary, suppressed, if he is not to dominate the court into which he intrudes" (4). 168 monstrous by virtue of his descent from Cain—a description equally applicable to

GrendePs mother. Fer Diad also bears traces of the monstrous: his description as "the

hornskinned man" (Conganchnesach, TBC11.2571) carries hints not only of the

monstrous but possibly of the draconic as well. As for Turnus, Hardie associates him with

the giants, noting that he "towers over his troops" (118-19), and suggesting that "The

final victory [of Aeneas over Turnus] recapitulates the decisive victory of Jupiter over the

Giants" (148). Hardie goes on to suggest that "The use of Gigantomachy ... is an

obvious and widespread image for the successful defeat of a nation's enemies" (150), and

then identifies the specific enemies in this case as the Gauls, who were known to be an

unusually tall (150).20 In other words, though he is not obviously monstrous like Grendel

and his mother, or possibly like Fer Diad, Turnus carries connotations of monstrosity and

alterity through his associations both with mythical others in the form of giants and with

political others in the form of Gauls; he, too, is a creature of mixed, or hybrid, nature.

Thus, even the hero's apparently human opponents show a strong tendency to be not

quite purely human, or in other words to be hybrids—monstrous others that threaten or

challenge the purity of the group for which the hero fights: the losers, and not just the

obvious monsters as discussed above, are constructed as monstrous and thus deserving of

defeat and domination. They challenge the notions of fixity upon which any stable

categorization depends; they are sources of a sometimes subtle discomfort that, were it

allowed to continue to exist, might threaten the political and ideological dominion, and

perhaps the very identity, of the dominant group.21

20 Hardie also notes other parallels between Turnus and the Gauls: greed for gold (150), and the Fury that flies in Turnus' face in the form of an owl much like the crow that fliesi n the face of the Gaulish champion opposing Valerius Corvinus in Livy 7.26 (150-51). 21 Not every hero-opponent pair behaves the same way, of course. The Achilles-Hector pair presents itself 169

As suggested above, it is useful to think of the hero and his opponent not just as

characters opposed to each other but also as a single narrative unit defined by heroic

action. Such a view suggests an intimate relationship between the two, and such a relationship has in fact long been recognized. That the hero becomes, in some degree, monstrous in doing what he does that makes him a hero, is also not a new observation.22

As Vaught observes, the hero and the monster already have much in common in that they

are both solitary figures (130) and thus exist outside of the society represented and

defined by the hall, or other centre of civilization. Thus, "to save society, the potential hero must leave the necessarily restrictive bounds of society and confront... the

destructive force directly. He must, paradoxically, become like monsters, alienated from

society..." (131). He must fulfill his function outside the social centre both

geographically and spiritually—must both occupy a liminal space and become a liminal

figure. This is why, as Vaught observes, the Grendel fight in the hall is followed by the

fight with Grendel's mother in the mere (131). A border or liminal zone is necessary for

the hero to constitute himself as such; the place of the hero, and of heroic action—of the

hero/opponent pair—is outside the domain of the civilized.

And yet a border is not merely a physical space; characters themselves can be or

represent borders—thresholds. Grendel can be seen as a "threshold figure"; he appears on

as a probable exception. In (his pair, the victor Achilles is clearly the more monstrous of the two. There may, however, be a touch of the monstrous about Hector as well, as illustrated in Book Six where Astyanax, upon seeing his father reach for him in fall armour, bursts out crying and only recognizes Hector when his helmet—a visible marker of his warrior identity—is removed (VI.466 ff). In any case, one should not expect every narrative in a given genre to correspond in every respect to any given pattern. A study such as this one is concerned not with imposing patterns where they do not exist but rather with discovering and contemplating narrative tendencies. 22 As Dragland notes, "The Beowulf-poet seems to say, through his association of man and monster, that there are good reasons for the kind of dissolution that occurs at the end of the poem, that they may be traced to a darkness in the human mind, and that Beowulf himself contains mis shadow, as much as he also exemplifies heroism" (617). Or as Niles has it, "once the direction of his will is set, he turns himself into a being who is nearly as monstrous as the creatures he sets himself to fight"(1983 , 22); and again, "By the time of his final fight, Beowulf himself has become like the dragon" (1983,27). 170 the literal threshold of Heorot and "visibly manifests his function as a power guarding the hero's passage or blocking his mission to the Otherworld," offering Beowulf the opportunity to "[prove] his credentials ... as a person qualified to pursue the monstrous to its source" (Niles 1983, 29). The dragon can also be considered a threshold figure as it guards not a physical threshold but is, rather, the last obstacle between Beowulf and "the successful completion of his passage" (Niles 1983, 30), namely, the achievement of a heroic death in battle. One might remember in this context, of course, that Beowulf, too, can be seen as a threshold figure. The threshold on which Grendel appears is the threshold that Beowulf guards. He later crosses a threshold guarded by GrendePs mother, and then confronts the dragon on the threshold of its own lair. Insofar as his monsters are associated with thresholds, then, so is Beowulf. The hero and the monster do not just confront each other on the threshold; they also define the threshold—the border—by the very fact of their confrontation.23 That said, one might expect much that is written about monsters to apply equally, or nearly equally, to heroes.

In "Unthinking the Monster," Michael Uebel suggests that "imagining otherness necessarily involves constructing the borderlands, the boundary spaces, that contain—in the double sense, to enclose and to include—what is antithetical to the self," and that

"These limit regions are characterized by two intersecting paradoxes." He gives the paradoxes as follows: 1) alterity is "never radical" because the boundaries of self and other are mutually defining, and 2) a boundary has a "double status as both marker of separation and line of commonality" (265). As border or boundary figures, then, it is not surprising that heroes and monsters should have so much in common—that their

23 Similar comments might be made regarding Aeneas and Turnus, and especially regarding Achilles and Hector, who confront each other in a no-man's land that in itself functions as a threshold between Troy and the Greek camp, as discussed in Chapter One. 171 characters should intersect, that they should both, for example, be aglcecan, that they should be characterized by destabilizing rages that themselves, in a very physical sense, threaten the integrity of numerous borders.24 They are embodiments of the border itself— of its dangers and potentials, and of the instability that defines it.

It is this kinship with each other and with the border itself that makes these figures—heroes and monsters alike—the sources of such discomfort.25 Because monsters occupy "the gap between exclusive zones' integrity," they reveal the fragility of the borders of such binaries as "other and same, nature and culture, exteriority and interiority" (Uebel 266). In this regard they are similar to Bhabha's hybrids. Similarly,

Lyonarons suggests that the paradoxes outlined by Uebel "destroy the illusion of the

Other as incorporating a truly binary opposition" and that "once the differences are looked at as variants within a single classificatory system rather than as polar opposites, the designations of Self and Other break down, instigating a 'category crisis,' that is, a disintegration of culturally constructed identity" (2002, 170). Lyonarons also suggests that the horror with which we view monsters "is rooted in our certain knowledge that human beings can and do act 'monstrously,' that the boundary between human and monster is always blurred, the distinction between categories always culturally constructed and never absolute" (2002, 181-82). Or, as Cohen has it, "The monster is best understood as an ambient difference, a breaker of category, and a resistant Other known only through process and movement" (1996a, x). Monsters, in other words, reveal

24 Cii Chulainn's rages even threaten and sometimes violate the integrity of that most intimate of all borders, his own skin. In fact, much heroic conflict revolves around hero and opponent attempting to penetrate or otherwise violate this very border on each other. "Monsters... are to be treated not exclusively as the others of the defining group or self, but also as boundary phenomena, anomalous hybrids that constantly make and unmake the boundaries separating interiority from exteriority, historical world from fictional Otherworld, meaning fromnonsense . Because they blur categorical distinctions with their heterogeneity and mobility, monsters are especially symbolic of displaced, hence threatening, matter" (Uebel 266). 172 themselves not just in body but in action as well. They make us aware of the instability of

our own categories and social structures, of our institutions and the identities that are

constructed through them. They show that the borders not just between here and there but

also between Us and Them are far from absolute, and that any sense of security based

upon such borders must remain tentative at best, and always open to negotiation. As for the nature of that negotiation, this is where the hero comes in; heroic action is precisely

the negotiation of the nature of the border—an establishment, through the medium of

violence, of an imaginary line that separates Us from Them The border, similarly, as a

location defined by instability, is itself a place of monsters—those troubling hybrids of

the Other and the familiar (Cohen 2000a, 4-5)—and the difference between hero and

monster is merely one of perspective. The hero is the monster who fights for Us.

In a theoretical context not far removed from the postcolonial approach, the close

relationship between monsters and heroes can perhaps be most clearly illustrated by

Cohen's seven theses regarding monsters, proposed in the preface to his book Monster

Theory (1996b). The theses are as follows:

1. "The Monster's Body is a Cultural Body"26 that "literally incorporates fear,

desire, anxiety, and fantasy . . . giving [it] life and an uncanny independence" (4).

2. "The Monster Always Escapes" (4). As Cohen observes, "the monster's body is

both corporal and incorporeal; its threat is its propensity to shift" (5).

3. "The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis" (6). It is a "disturbing hybrid"

that, "because of its ontological liminality . . . notoriously appears at times of

crisis as a kind of third term that problematizes the clash of extremes" (6).27 A

26 The capitalization of the seven theses occurs in the original. 27 Williams suggests a similar function for the monster in medieval thought as a "third term" mat resolved, 173

monster is thus neither entirely Us nor entirely Them: it "resists any classification

built on hierarchy or a merely binary opposition" (6).

4. "The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference" (7). It is "difference made flesh

... an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond" (7). The violent overcoming of

the monster becomes a self-justifying act of domination (11).

5. "The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible" (12). It "prevents mobility

(intellectual, geographic, or sexual)"; to attempt such mobility "is to risk attack by

some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself (12).

6. "Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire" (16). The monster's body is the

socially permissible focus of fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion—

fantasies that become monstrous themselves only when the monster threatens the

agreed-upon boundaries of "category and culture" (17).

7. "The Monster Stands at the Threshold . . . of Becoming" (20).28 In their ongoing

return, monsters bring a knowledge that could not have been gained by remaining

within the bounds of the known or accepted. Monsters "ask us to reevaluate our

cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference,

our tolerance toward its expression" (20).

When considered in terms of heroic bodies, the first thesis suggests the hero's physical transformations, such as that undergone by Cu Chulainn as discussed in Chapter

One. It also suggests anxieties underlying heroic decompression—anxieties centring on stability, control, and the hero's very tenuous grasp on these qualities, in short, his tendency to maintain his "uncanny independence" at the expense of the society he through imagery, relationships between terms that from a logical perspective were mutually contradictory, monsters thus gave access to a transcendent aspect of divine truth (1996, 34). 28 The ellipsis occurs in the original. ostensibly protects. Achilles, for instance, operates far outside the boundaries of Greek society, more of a monster than any other character in the epic, yet he reaches the height of his heroism simultaneously with his descent into the depths of monstrosity. Looked at as a conglomeration of a given culture's desire for power and security, and the fear of what that power might do should it slip out of the culture's control, the hero's body fits the first thesis perfectly. It is big and strong—Beowulf s body has the strength of thirty men, but is monstrous in its very strength, as exemplified by his killing of Dasghrefn— and it is marked as different not just by size and strength but also, often, by the luminescent aspect of the hero's rage.

The second thesis is problematic. Cohen is not writing of epic monsters, but about modern incarnations of alterity. Epic heroes most definitely do die (usually just once), and their monstrous opponents tend to die first. On the other hand, this thesis, when applied not to individuals but to classes of character, may be relevant. Slain monsters tend to return or to be replaced: individual monsters may die, but the underlying monstrosity continues to surface: nicors, Grendel, GrendePs mother, the dragon—it never seems to end. Similarly, though individual heroes may die, the heroic, like the monstrous, resurfaces. Though Beowulf perishes, Wiglaf survives him, while Achilles, as the greatest warrior since Heracles, is already an echo of heroes and heroism past. Cu

Chulainn's death is avenged by his friend and fellow hero Conall Cernach (Tymoczko

66), and his example inspired many who fought in the Easter Rebellion, as evidenced by the statue of the dying Irish hero in the main post office in Dublin. More important is the notion that the hero survives precisely through his physical demise—an achievement of immortality through the fame best assured by a heroic life followed by a heroic death. 175

Thus, though monsters and heroes may die as individuals, their presence can always be felt. And the one can always conjure the other. The hero is dead; long live the hero.

The third thesis, with its emphasis on "category crisis," is easier to place. The hero, described by Miller as a tertium quid (Miller, 296 ff.), occupies the same narrative space between apparent binaries as does the monster; hence, his frequent appearance in liminal locations—on the threshold of Heorot or in the merehall, at the mouth of the

dragon's mound, in the ford, or in the no man's land between the Trojan encampment and the Latian walls—while confronting monstrous opponents. The nature of the resultant binary is decided through the working out or defining of the monster/hero space, a space

that exists primarily for the negotiation of dominance relationships. Chaotic figures

themselves, heroes and monsters, through their violent conflict, define the social order at

a time when the boundaries between inside and outside are threatened. Together they

constitute a limen between this world and that, however "this" and "that" may be defined.

All they must decide between them is whether the door opens in or out.

The fourth thesis recalls the hero's foreign, often non-human origins. The

assignment of labels to these unstable figures is in any case arbitrary, their natures and

positions within any binary system flexible, a circumstance that in itself "threatens to

destroy not just individual members of a society, but the very cultural apparatus through

which individuality is constituted and allowed" (12). In this regard, the hero is an even

greater danger than the monster. Monsters are supposed to threaten society; heroes are

supposed to defend it. Yet, as seen in Chapter One, they often constitute threats, display

facets of the non-human, and carry out their functions on society's borders, either

geographic or metaphoric. That he is often semi-divine in origin, as are Cu Chulainn, 176

Aeneas, and Achilles, also anchors him to the realm of difference, as do his often human but nonetheless politically exogenic origins as in the case of Beowulf. That the monster threatens to crash the gates of difference while the hero guards them—or that the monster guards its own threshold against the gate-crashing hero—is merely a matter of perspective. Their hero is our monster; our hero is their monster.

In terms of the fifth thesis, it scarcely need be stated that heroes police the same metaphoric border, guarding against deviation, be it the chaos embodied by man-eating monsters as in Beowulf, matriarchy as in the Tain, or an outmoded social organization as in the Aeneid. Likewise, insofar as they act outside the "official geography" they also tend to become monstrous. Cu Chulainn is unrecognizable in his fury, Achilles wishes he could indulge in cannibalism, Beowulf becomes an aglceca who kills a fellow human with his bare hands. Thus, the hero is both a warder and a warning—a monition, as the etymology of monster29 suggests—not just to his enemies but also to his own people.

In terms of the desire central to the sixth thesis, one might consider Beowulf and

Dseghrefn as opposed to Beowulf and the monsters. His killing of the latter is acceptable, but his killing of the former tends toward the monstrous because the opponent is human; the action is essentially the same, but a boundary has been crossed. The chief difference between hero and monster in this context is that the hero, as long as his desire remains directed outward at the Other, is to be approved of while the monster, because its desire is so often directed inward at Us, is to be feared. The hero becomes a monster, as Cii

29 The Second Edition of the OED (1989) cites the Latin monstrum ("monster, something marvelous; orig. a divine portent or warning, f. root of monere to warn") as the word's etymological root. Its connection to moneo, monere makes clear at an etymological level the monitory function of monsters. This etymology is suggested earlier hy Isidore of Seville, who also comments that such a creature '"does not arise contrary to nature, but contrary to what nature is understood to he'" (Etymologiae 11.3.1-2, in Williams 1996,13), an understanding that places the monster within the realm of the natural and provides it with the function of demonstrating facets of the divine will that might otherwise remain unknown (Williams 1996, 13). 177

Chulainn does in his initiatory adventure, merely by changing the direction in which he faces; he is only a hero as long as he continues to look away. Thus, the difference between hero and monster may be even less significant than perspective; it may be something as trifling as his own physical orientation—the direction of his gaze. Heroic decompression keeps the hero from becoming a monster, dissipating energy before he can direct his gaze, and his desire for violent confrontation, too close to home as for example Heremod tended to do,30 and as Cu Chulainn threatens to do.

In terms of the seventh thesis, heroes certainly challenge our assumptions about the boundaries we construct to define ourselves; they show those boundaries to be constructed, and make us recognise not just ourselves in them, but also them in ourselves.

The hero also returns bearing knowledge, for example, the inscribed sword-hilt that

Beowulf brings back from the mere {Beowulf1677 ff)—a hilt that shows the history of the giants who in turn descend from the very human Cain. This artefact depicts humanity's innate monstrosity and the knowledge that all sword-work is ultimately fratricide, a knowledge that goes a long way toward explaining why Beowulf at his most heroic is also Beowulf at his most monstrous. There is also Cu Chulainn's admonition that "anger destroys the world" ("Conscar bara bith," TBC11.4076), its meaning not so different from that of the sword-hilt, and Achilles' knowledge of his own mortality arrived at not through the faith that is enough for most mortals but through his experience at the limits of his own nature, and his observation to Priam, as the two share their grief in Achilles' tent, that "the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men / live on to bear such torments—the gods live free of sorrow" ("Ms gar epeklosanto theoi deiloisi

30 The Eotenum among whom he ended his days (902b-904a) may have been Jutes or may have been giants: the word is ambiguous, and as the poem deals with both monsters and historical peoples, context offers no clear interpretation. 178 brotoisi /zoein achnymenois: autoi de V akedees eisi," 24.525-26; Fagles 24.613-14). All three realizations blur the border between Us and Them; each expresses the realization of a common humanity at odds with the very binaries underlying heroic action and the social context that makes such action not only possible but necessary—that demands that men be made into monsters and turned loose upon the world. Such a realization can only be found outside society's boundary, in the space of conflict with the Other.

So the hero is a monster, rendered benevolent by killing other people instead of

Us. Yet exactly what kind of monster is he? He is a border figure who in his own person embodies the tensions resulting from the unstable boundary between Inside and Outside.

There is, however, another border that the hero straddles or embodies, a boundary at least as problematic as that between conflicting peoples: the boundary between the born and the made, between the organic and the technological. It is to the hero's position on/as this border that the final—and I believe most interesting—section of this chapter is devoted.31

A minor figure in the Tain, in fact a minor figure in the entire Ulster cycle, serves as both introduction and template. Cethern Mac Fintain appears in only four tales (Hillers

103), and in all but this one is little more than a name rounding out lists of names. In the

Tain, Cethern makes an impressive charge into the Irish ranks but is severely wounded, emerging from the battle with his body obviously and graphically disassembled, "his entrails lying about his feet" ("cona inathar ima chosa dochum", TBC11.3173; O'Rahilly

209). He is inspected by several physicians, all of whom pronounce him mortally wounded and all of whom receive fatal blows for their trouble from the understandably cranky warrior (TBC1 3176-3201). Finally, the physician Fingin presents him with the

31 The following discussion is the most speculative part of this study. It is also potentially the most useful as it offers a new critical lens through which to view the perennially compelling figure of the epic hero. 179

choice "either to lie sick for a year and then survive, or straightaway to have sufficient

strength for three days and three nights to attack his enemies" (TBC1 3296-98; O'Rahilly

213).32 That Cethern chooses the latter is no surprise; his quintessentially heroic decision

is similar to those of Achilles and Cu Chulainn: to opt for a short heroic life, in preference to a long life of obscurity. The means of enacting his choice, however,

demand discussion. Cethern is first given a mash of cow marrow, and then sleeps for a

full day and night. The following day, his own broken and missing ribs are replaced with

the ribs of his chariot frame. His wife gives him his weapons, and finally he "attacked the

host then with the framework of his chariot bound to his belly" ("fosnopair in slog iarom

1 a chreit a c[h]arpait i nn-imnaidm fria thairr" (TBC1 3300-14; O'Rahilly 213). Sayers'

observations that Cethern's mash of cow bones "recalls the Celtic cauldron of

rejuvenation and plenty" and that "This absorption of animate power is followed by the

assumption of inanimate yet highly symbolic strength" in the binding of the chariot frame

to himself "as a gigantic substitute for armour" (1985/86, 32) are certainly apt, as is his

suggestion that the episode "contain[s] the motif of self-sacrifice in addition to the other

parallels of transference, interchange, and reconstitution" (1985/86, 32). As he is

prepared for battle, Cethern is mechanically dehumanized—wilfully sacrificing his

humanity—first by his absorption of the animal marrow, and then by the insertion of

artificial ribs: components of a machine of war. He is transformed into an

animal/man/weapon, made physically one with his chariot; horses, vehicle, and man

become a single locus or focal point of heroic action. Moreover, even discounting the fact

"mrfhar eo cend mbliadna 1 beathu do iarom fa nert tri la 1 tri n-aidchi fo chetoir do imbert fora naimdib." 180 that he is killed the first day he rejoins the fight, his three-day expiration date defines him

as disposable, or in other words as valuable only in his immediate heroic context.

One might, then, consider Cethern as a commentary on the type of heroism

exemplified by Cii Chulainn and other epic heroes, as a refraction of the epic hero as seen

through a prism. His killing of the physicians illustrates society's tenuous control over the

hero and his difficulty in existing within an ordered civilization: he cannot engage in

dialogue, but only in violence. Moreover, his commitment to heroism literally

dehumanizes him, reconfiguring horse, chariot, and man into one purely

functional/destructive unit and illustrating the nature of heroic action: the value of the

man exists purely in his capacity to destroy. In this sense, the impossible restructuring of

Cethern's body can be read as a stripping of illusion, a revelation of the hero as a figure

occupying the border between the human and the non-human—his nature as not just born

but made, as not just man but also machine and therefore tool. In Cethern, then, we see

the complicity of society in the construction and othering of the hero. In Cii Chulainn's

case, the king did not know that the boy was choosing a short life in return for fame;

Cethern is literally reconfigured to be short-lived but deadly, and the reconfiguring is

carried out not by himself but by members of his own society, specifically by those with

the technical knowledge to get the job done. In fact, Cethern is a cyborg, a designation he

may well share with the heroes of many other epics including Beowulf.

To claim that the epic hero is a cyborg may seem extravagant, yet perhaps it will

seem a little less so following a brief discussion of some writing on these fascinating

posthuman hybrids. The term itself, a compound of "cybernetic organism," was coined in

1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, in a paper suggesting possible technological 181 modifications to humans to make them more capable of functioning in space. Clynes and

Kline define cyborgs as "self-regulating man-machine systems" (30), a simple and workable definition that has much to recommend it. More recently and a little more

abstractly, influential cyborg theorist Donna Haraway has defined this creature as "the

figure born of the interface of automaton and autonomy" that exists "when two kinds of boundaries are simultaneously problematic: 1) that between animals (or other organisms)

and humans, and 2) that between self-controlled, self-governing machines (automatons)

and organisms, especially humans (models of autonomy)" (1989, 139). More recently

still, David Hess in his discussion of the "low tech cyborg" has defined the cyborg as

"any identity between machine and human or any conflation of the machine/human

boundary" (373). What these definitions have in common is the idea of the interface

between the organic and the technological, and their configuration into a single system. It

is this configuration, then, that operates as the quintessential defining factor of the

cyborg. That this factor is operative in the figure of Cethern is undeniable—his body is

merged with the body of the chariot, the "machine/human boundary" utterly conflated

and the resulting "man-machine system" rendered autonomous within the parameters of

its design, namely, combat. Yet Cethern's example alone is hardly enough to make the

case for the cyborgization of the epic hero as a whole. In order to make that case

effectively, two major objections must be overcome: the possible charge of anachronism

on my part, and the fact that none of the major characters under discussion undergoes an

organic/technological hybridization as extreme or intimate as that undergone by Cethern.

The question of anachronism will be addressed first. As noted above, the term

cyborg is fairly new, a circumstance suggesting that the figure is likely to be viewed 182 through the lens of recent technology. And in fact, seen through that lens the figure is more common than one might expect. According to Chris Hables Gray, Steven Mentor, and Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, many cyborgs already live among us: "Anyone with an artificial organ, limb or supplement (like a pacemaker), anyone reprogrammed to resist disease (immunized) or drugged to think/behave/feel better (psychopharmacology) is technically a cyborg" (Gray et al. 2-3). Such a wide range of possible recipients of the label cyborg invites consideration of possibilities from other periods—periods perhaps lacking in the particular scientific and science-fictional discourses in which cyborgs were first conceptualized, yet periods in which the relationship between people and technology had already begun to produce otherwise impossible forms.

As I have said, Clynes and Kline were looking to the future rather than the past.

However, though the term cyborg itself is not old, the ideas underlying it are. Forest Pyle, for example, notes that our concern with artificial or artificially enhanced beings goes back as far as Frankenstein (124), an opinion neither uncommon nor unjustified given that Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel written in English, and science fiction has always been concerned with the relationship between humans and technology.

Jennifer Gonzalez takes us back a little further, to the dawn of the industrial age, in her discussion of L 'Horlogere, an anonymous eighteenth-century French engraving depicting a woman and a machine merged to form "a single entity" (541). But it is rare that a discussion of cyborgs ventures into the period before the Enlightenment, and cyborg figures from the pre-industrial period are uncommon. One exception is Niiadu in the Irish mythological tale Cath Maige Tuired—Nuadu whose hand, having been cut off in battle, is replaced by a silver one installed by the physician Dian Cecht (CMT28-30; Gray 25). 183

Another is Icarus who, on donning wings forged by his craftsman father Daedalus, ventures briefly into the realm of cyborghood—functions briefly as a "self-regulating man-machine system," much as a scuba diver descending into the depths—before plunging to a very organic demise. In all of these cases, human and technology, the biological and the mechanical, the born and the made, merge, with the technology mediating the human's participation in a sphere or activity from which he would otherwise be excluded. The question of anachronism is therefore not relevant: if cyborgian interfaces between the biological and the technological can be demonstrated in the case of epic heroes, then we must conclude that the relationship does in fact exist and that epic heroes can be understood as cyborgs33 or that at least, to state the case more mildly, the figure of the cyborg can provide insight into the figure of the epic hero.

The more difficult issue to address is the simple truth that, of all the characters in the four epics under discussion, only one undergoes a complete integration with the technology of the time. How, then, might one reasonably claim that epic heroes in general are cyborgs, and that Beowulf specifically is a cyborg of sorts—or more moderately, that the metaphor of the cyborg offers a valuable lens through which to view the epic hero? As the figure of Cethern makes clear, the obvious point of organic/technological interface where the warrior hero is concerned, is the tools of his trade: weapons and armour. Not only does the hero's relationship with his armaments constitute him, at least metaphorically, as a cyborg, but the tales in which he appears also constitute him, through their portrayal of that relationship, as a being apart from his

33 Gray et al. might disagree, noting that we are aware of relationships that our ancestors could not conceptualise—that our awareness of our relationship with technology makes us, or many of us, cyborgs (6). However, in insisting on our awareness of relationships alien to our ancestors' conceptual frameworks, Gray and his colleagues ignore the fact that we in modern timesma y never think about the integration of technology into our own bodies. Awareness of the concept cyborg is not a precondition for cyborghood. 184

fellow humans. Though the concept "cyborg" may not have existed, it does translate into the thought world of ancient and medieval epic texts: Anna virumque scribo, and the

arms of which I write transform the man who dons them.

Chapter One addresses the hero's relationship with his weapons: the fact that his weapons tend to be unique, such as the god-forged armour of Achilles and, we might add,

Aeneas; the giant-forged sword of Beowulf; and Cii Chulainn's enigmatic gde bolga.

That chapter also notes the importance of the ubiquitous arming scene, a scene that

functions as a pre-liminal ritual (see above, pages 17 ff). It is already established, then,

that in the formalized donning of arms and armour the hero undergoes a change of state:

he is no longer exactly the man he was, and the process of arming and the armaments

themselves account for and largely define the alteration. Put differently, the hero has been

qualitatively modified, his destructive capacities augmented by the technology of

destruction. Such an intimate augmentation by means of weapons—in donning armour

the hero is literally inside the technology—may be different from the cyborgs of science

fiction, or of contemporary military research, in degree, but not in kind: this is as intimate

a relationship between the born and the made as is generally possible in the thought

worlds depicted in ancient and medieval epic.

One possible objection to the foregoing claim is that, unlike Cethern, Beowulf and

company not only can remove their technological augmentations but also can and

sometimes do function quite well without them, as Beowulf does against Grendel, as Cii

Chulainn does against Fraech, and as Achilles does against whoever stands between him

and the body of Patroclus. To address this objection, I must delve a little deeper into

cyborg theory. 185

Not all cyborgs are alike. Gray, Mentor, and Figueroa-Sarriera, referring to real and potential cyborgs, identify four categories: restorative, normalizing, reconfiguring, and enhancing. The firsttw o do not concern us as they are primarily intended to restore lost functions, limbs, organs, and appearances (Gray et at 3)—although Niiadu would have found the first category interesting. On the other hand, cyborgs of the third category, the reconfiguring cyborgs, are "posthuman creatures equal to but different from humans, like what one is now when one is interacting with other creatures in cyberspace or, in the future, the type of modifications proto-humans will undergo to live in space or under the sea" (3). It is to this category that one can assign Cethern, whose body has been modified far beyond normality to function in a hostile environment—the battlefield—to the extent that he is only ambiguously human in the conventional sense.34 This leaves the fourth category, the enhancing cyborgs, which Gray et at identify as "the aim of most military and industrial research." The purpose of this type of cyborg is to improve human performance through what might be termed intimate technological involvement, "from factories controlled by a handful of 'worker-pilots' and infantrymen in mind-controlled exoskeletons to the dream many computer scientists have—downloading their consciousness into immortal computers" (3). Most epic heroes, having donned their armaments in a pre-liminal ritual, fit into this category, as people whose abilities have been enhanced through the medium of technology and whose identities as heroes depend at least in part on their relationships with that equipment—a dependence supported by the

34 One hesitates to assign Cethern to the restorative or normalizing categories because his modifications, though perhaps restoring his function in terms of combat-readiness, have undermined many other possible functions: he has been reconfigured so that the only context in which he is fully functional is battle. (One might imagine him attempting to father children, but this is not that kind of book.) 186 sheer ubiquity of epic arming scenes and the close relationships that heroes often bear to their hardware.35

As noted above, though, Gray and his colleagues are primarily concerned with real or potentially real cyborgs. Coming at the cyborg from the angle of popular culture, a body of discourses in which it has been a common figure since before the term itself was coined, Mark Oehlert proposes three types of comic-book cyborg: the simple controller, the bio-tech integrator, and the genetic cyborg (112). As might be expected, the last two do not concern this study as the technology upon which each is based was not available to the conceptual worlds in which ancient and medieval epics were composed. In the case of the first, however, that absence is not so clear. A simple controller is a cyborg resulting from the augmentation of a human with artificial parts. The parts may be internal as with the hero Wolverine, whose skeleton has been augmented with metal and who has been given retractable metal claws, or they may be external or even detachable as with Iron

Man, whose iron suit with its modular attachments provides him with superhuman abilities while also protecting his defective heart (Oehlert 114-15). In such cyborgs, human and non-human parts are discrete, and the human part is in sometimes tenuous control; the non-human augments the human and is subordinate to it, while still constituting an essential component of the overall identity or self of the (hu)man-machine system.

Once the reader gets past a possible reluctance to include figures such as

Wolverine and Iron Man in the same category as epic heroes, some interesting parallels become apparent between Oehlert's simple controller cyborg and the heroes under

35 One might make similar comments about modern soldiers, or even, as one of my readers has suggested, about "various professionals who become what their accoutrements suggest." This concern, one of the central concerns of recent post-human thinking, is addressed below. discussion. That both Wolverine and Cethern have technologically augmented skeletons, and that those apparently inextricable artificial augmentations are integral to their abilities to function, are obvious examples. Regarding our primary heroes, on the other hand, Iron Man might provide a more relevant model. That his iron suit functions as armour may be too obvious to mention, but the role of that armour in the construction of a cyborg self is not. In both epic and pop culture cases the hero's body is, as noted above, contained within the technology, which in itself forms a boundary between the character's living flesh and the world in which he moves and fights. Moreover, in each case the armaments are unique to the character, and thus linked to his own uniqueness.

And in every case the donning of the armour marks a change of state, indicated by the preliminal arming rite in the epics (including Beowulf prior to the hero's descent into the mere: 1448-64, as discussed in Chapter One), and by the change of names in the case of the comic-book hero: Iron Man, when not suited up, is known as Tony Stark. The character's identity is thus mediated by his relationship with the technology he employs.

One possible objection to the depiction of epic heroes as cyborgs is that they do not, as noted above, always use their armour and weapons, while Iron Man cannot function as Iron Man without his iron suit. It is not necessary, however, for the hero's relationship with his augmentations to be permanent as, for example, Wolverine's is.

Gray et al. are quite clear that the human-technology interface need not be everlasting for the resulting system to be classified as a cyborg. They identify a fifth category that cuts across the boundaries of the four mentioned above: the intermittent cyborgs, people who merge with technology in intimate but temporary relationships, such as a dialysis patient, or a pilot wired into a cockpit (4). The defining factor is not that the organic/technological interface be permanent, but simply that it exist, and that the resultant system be qualitatively different from its constituent parts, and autonomous within the parameters of its construction. Alternately, we might employ N. Katherine

Hayles' category of the metaphoric cyborg, a category she sees as "including the computer keyboarder joined in a cybernetic circuit with the screen, the neurosurgeon guided by fiber optic microscopy during an operation" (322), or in other words anyone who temporarily links with technology to engage in an activity that would otherwise be difficult or impossible, as Beowulf, for example, elects to use weapons and armour against the dragon, an opponent he could not have taken on barehanded, and as Cii

Chulainn uses the gde bolga to overcome opponents who might otherwise get the better

of him. Thus, taking all of the foregoing categorizations into account, one might classify the epic hero as an intermittent or metaphoric cyborg of either the enhancing or simple

controller type.

The danger here, as my supervisor has pointed out, is that in defining so many human-machine combinations as cyborgs I run the risk of "diluting the concept to

insignificance." The labelling of a broad range of identities past, present, and future as

cyborgs is not so much a dilution of the concept cyborg, however, as it is a

reconsideration of the category human. In this section, and in future research, I am

interested in the contribution of technological elements to the warrior hero's identity, with the understanding that these elements are not merely things used by a self but rather

are modular components of a self. That the epic hero's "tools and markers of his grim

trade" virtually always appear at some point in the heroic narrative (Miller 206) strongly

suggests that these items play a constitutive role in the hero's identity. 189

Underlying this role is the question of how technology contributes to identity generally. One may ask, as one of my readers has, "Do I become a cyborg when I put bits of cookie dough in the oven and wait for them to come out cooked—something I would not be able to do without programming the oven first (or without any oven at all)?"

Several responses are possible, the most obvious being "No." But this answer sidesteps the question of identity, assuming a stable you just as the initial question assumes a stable

/, while the possible instability of these categories lies at the heart of much cyborg

discourse.36 This study thus questions the role of technology in constructing a heroic

identity, as one might easily question the identities of modern soldiers in relation to the technologies they employ, or even modern professionals and their wardrobes. One could

even ask such questions in the context of cooks, ovens, and the enactment of the identity

cookie-maker. Insofar as the technology contributes to the identity in question, the

identity is a cyborg identity and the self in question is not necessarily confined to the

organic module of that identity. The human element is a piece in a collage of identities

that shift according to context and components; the existence of a stable / and .yow cannot

be assumed a priori and may well be a psychologically and socially necessary fiction, a

convenience or illusion of discourse, or even little more than a convention.

As for the role of equipment in the construction of Beowulf s identity, I have

already referred to part of the arming scene set prior to his descent into the mere, and the

function of this scene as a preliminal ritual; the passage from 1448 onward is discussed in

some detail in Chapter One. Interesting as well, however, is the initial description of the

armour itself:

36 Sandy Stone, for instance, defines a prosthesis as "an extension of my will, of my instrumentality" (394) and asks, in the context of watching Stephen Hawking give a public presentation, "Where does he stop? Where are his edges?" (395). 190

Gyrede hine Beowulf

eorlgewasdum, nalles for ealdre mearn;

scolde herebyrne hondum gebroden,

sid ond searofah sund cunnian,

seo 6e bancofan beorgan cube,

baet him hildegrap hrebre ne mihte,

eorres inwitfeng aldre gescebSan. (1441b-47)

(Beowulf geared himself up with armour, by no means feared for his life.

The battle-shirt, woven by hand, broad and ornate, had to test the water,

that which knew how to protect his body so that a hostile grasp could not

harm his breast, or malicious grasp of anger harm his life.)

In this passage, Beowulf s armour clearly has an identity of its own. A knowing, acting entity, it must {scolde11) make a trial of the depths, and it knows (cupe) how to protect the body it encloses. One might also remember that Beowulf s helmet "meregrundas mengan scolde" ("had to stir up the lake-bottom," 1449), again an indication of obligation, something that can only be laid upon an agent possessing some measure of autonomy.

Beowulf s equipment, then, is grammatically active and thus not merely a collection of passive tools. To an extent, as has been observed, it is personified. Such personification of the warrior's hardware is not unique to this passage: Unferb's sword Hrunting, for instance, is described almost as though it were a character itself (Irving 1968, 118-19;

37 While sculan is often attached to an inanimate object, the word does carry a sense of obligation as indicated in Klaeber's glossary (must, ought, is to). Bosworth and Toller provide a range of options, the first of which it "to owe." Under the second option, "shall, must, ought," they provide several possible connotations ranging from "a duty, moral obligation" to simple "probability." The overall impression of these disparate connotations, however, strongly favours the sense of obligation indicated by the first option, "owe," and the use of cupe in this passage supports such an interpretation. 191

Enright 320) ,38 And while personification may be a common literary technique, its

employment in the hero's arming scene is worth some thought in that it suggests that the

arms and the man exist not in a one-way relationship in which the latter simply uses the

former, but rather that there is, even if only metaphorically, some mutuality in their bond.

While the hero definitely uses the armour—he dons it for a specific purpose—the armour responds by protecting him much as the members of a comitatus were expected to protect their lord.39 If the armour functions metaphorically as a war-band, or even as a single

member thereof, then the identity forged by the warrior himself and the armour that he

wears must be seen as a composite identity whose capacity, as the poem makes clear,

surpasses those of either element individually: Beowulf s banloca requires the protection

that the herebyrne can offer, while the herebyrne itself can provide no offensive capacity,

Beowulf s specialty. And if one component in this new identity is technological while the

other is human, the identity is, at least metaphorically, a cyborg.

So the hero is a cyborg—or can be approached via the metaphor of the cyborg.

But what do cyborgs do, culturally speaking, that might be relevant to ancient and

medieval epic? One possibility is that they give us a glimpse into the link between

warfare and the technology of war—and the tensions implicit in that connection—in the

thought worlds presented by these tales. Its configuration as both organic and

technological provides an excellent vehicle for exploring the reciprocal relationships

38 Enright argues for a close connection not only between Unferb and Hrunting but also between Wiglaf and his sword, suggesting that the behaviour of the latter in each case reflects the character of the former (318-20). 39 In the context of swords and warriors, Enright draws an interesting analogy regarding the oath on a sword at the lord's lap in the hall. He suggests that the oath itself is a "supernatural binding force" that links them both to the sword much as metal rods are worked into a sword in progress on a forge, and that the lord's lap actually serves as the forge upon which this relationship is constructed. He suggests as well that the whetstone scepter from Sutton Hoo is "a suitable emblem for the ruler of an East Anglian warband" (322). 192 between people and their machines (Bell 5). For instance, the link between the hero and the smith, alluded to in Chapter One, may be relevant here as the smith—divine or

otherwise—is inevitably linked with technology. One might remember that Cu Chulainn

during his distortion can be likened to metal on the smith's forge (Sayers 2001, 241-42),

and that Achilles, Aeneas, and Beowulf all bear weapons and/or armour associated with

divine smiths. Epic does draw attention to the relationship between heroic action and

weapons technology, acknowledging the intimate role that such technology plays in

constructing a heroic identity. In addition to the wild, uncivilized, and often non-human

energy depicted in the hero's rage, then, one must consider his link to what might be

termed the epitome of culture: the act of crafting formless metal into something that is

not just a tool, which would be human enough, but into something that is also an aesthetic

object. Where the hero's rage represents the disordered or disordering facet of his

character, his weaponry, with its associations with craft or technology (Miller 209),

represents culture and thus order, placing the hero himself on a border in which the two

opposing states are not only coexistent but also symbiotic—the rage giving volition and

direction to the technology, which in turn enhances the effectiveness and reach of the

rage.40 This can be thought of as a cyborg state: the body, interfaced with state-of-the-art

weapons technology, becomes more effective in its given task than it could otherwise be,

while the technology itself limits and more importantly defines the function and thus the

social role of the hero's body.41

40 Here again, as mentioned above in Chapter Two (fh. 23), one might see the hero's body as the semiotic while the technology that limits or defines his violence serves the symbolic function, ordering or civilizing that which, in itself, is essentially formless. 41 One difficulty with this proposal presents itself: the weapons technology the hero wields is not, nor does it necessarily become, a part of his body: Beowulf s armour does not adhere to his skin (though Fer Fiad' s does), nor does his sword, when he uses one, protrude from his hand. Given the definitions of cyborg proposed above, though, and given as well the definitions assumed in much contemporary cyborg research, 193

The hero's body is thus what Macauley and Gordo-Lopez would refer to as a

"technophilic body"42: a hybrid of biology and technology that, much like the union of a hand in a cyberglove in a virtual reality machine (Macauley and Gordo-Lopez 436), is configured for the sole purpose of participating in a space that is constructed and understood largely through the technology itself. The technology thus creates a reality and enables the person to participate in the reality so created, acting as a limen of sorts—- a threshold that the "purely" biological body must cross. One might look at battle in the same way. While weapons do not create violence, they define its parameters fairly effectively; one does not fight the same way with a sword as one fights barehanded, or with a flamethrower, or with a computer consol far behind the apparent lines of combat.

In each case, the technology of violence defines the violence engaged in; it defines the nature and character of the battle and of the space in which the battle occurs. Thus, the interface between the fighter and his armaments—be it a hero and a god-forged blade, or

a glorified desk clerk and the latest military software—constructs him as a figure who can participate in the violence that the armaments themselves largely define.

Of course, the hero does not generally make his own equipment, so insofar as that

equipment contributes to the construction of his cyborg self one is left with the question

of agency: when the hero acts, what exactly is it that is acting? Put differently, to what

such a physical melding is not necessary. What is necessary is that the organic-technological interface augment the identity of its components through augmenting or extending their functionality. Though weapons tend to break on Beowulf, for example, the case with his armour is otherwise: he is, as discussed here (190-91) and in Chapter Two (135-36), the passive recipient of its protection during his descent into the mere. That is, his defensive technology is not just a passive tool: according to the grammar of the poem, it actively contributes to his function. 42 The term 'technophilic body" is problematic in that it suggests that the body loves technology while its definition does not include the element of love but rather is concerned solely with function. One wonders whether the technophiles in question are Macauley and Gordo-Lopez themselves. But the idea of a body being functionally altered through its intimate fit with technology, however uncomfortably the label itself may fit the concept, is useful. 194

extent, if any, is the hero's society implicated in his actions? Gonzalez poses a similar

question: "If a cyborg is 'the figure born out of the interface of automaton and

autonomy,' then to what degree can this cyborg be read as a servant and toy, and to what

degree an autonomous social agent" (542)? Similarly, Downey, Dumit, and Williams

note that "The autonomy of individuals has already been called into question by post-

structuralist and post-humanist critiques," and that "science and technology impact

society through the fashioning of selves rather than as external forces" (343). In other words, technology is not merely a tool of the individual but rather a constitutive element

of a hybrid self and, as such, may undermine the agency of the human element in the self

so constituted. So the question arises: who or what is killing when the hero kills? Is it the

man himself, the blacksmith who made his arms,43 or the social system of which the hero

(or the blacksmith) is a component? The mode of heroic discourse is generally violence,

after all, in which context the hero articulates himself with weapons, often highly

personal or personalized weapons. As Stone observes, "the medium of connection defines

the meaning of community" (397), and the "medium of connection" in the context of

heroic action—in what we might call the community of violence—tends to be weapons

technology. Thus the weapons, and to an extent the designers and makers of the weapons,

and the whole culture in which those weapons were developed and are produced, are

implicated in the construction of an epic-heroic cyborg self.

The case of epic heroes is further complicated by the divine manufacture of many

of their armaments: Achilles' and Aeneas' shields, for example, and Beowulf s mail-

43 In Beowulf s arming scene, the poet makes an explicit reference to the smid who made the helmet (1452a). The relationship between the hero, his weapons technology, and the maker of that technology is thus implicitly acknowledged in the poem—less emphatically perhaps than in the other epics under discussion, but acknowledged nonetheless. 195 shirt. The problem, however, is relatively minor when one considers the difference in outlooks between the societies depicted in these epics44 and our contemporary Western society. We, or at least most of us, do not believe in smith-gods—and one might argue that neither Virgil nor the Beowulf-poet believed in their literal existence either.

Whatever else they may be, these figures are personifications of human endeavours— endeavours that help to differentiate the civilized from the uncivilized, the ordered from the chaotic. Similarly, one might remember that the hero's rage, though innate, often has super- or extra-human connections as well; as we saw in Chapter One, what Shay, working within the idiom modern Western society, describes as an effect of an all-too- human combat-PTSD, epic poets identified as a more-than-human warrior fury. So with the tools of war: to us, they have purely human connotations while to many past societies they connoted the divine. However, the societies depicted in epic tend to experience a far more direct divine influence in human affairs than is palatable to us moderns and post- moderns while the role of computers and computer-driven systems has become, in popular culture at least, virtually mystical: that is, the perceptions of the role of the divine in human affairs are different. The difference between the divinely forged arms of many epic heroes and the high-tech wonders of our own age, then, is largely one of metaphor; the underlying principles are the same: the gods' technology is simply the best that can be had, and therefore the most appropriate for the augmentation of the hero. That said, it must also be remembered that the hero's arms are not entirely divine in origin, but in fact also have some important human and social implications.

And, one might add, the societies that produced them, even though much about these societies must remain unknown, for reasons of the paucity of records and the indeterminacy of the works' origins. The cyborg is often, of course, defined by the purpose behind its construction: it is a made thing constructed for a specific use—a tool—and an autonomous entity with its own real but limited range of effect—an agent. One can consider Cethern in this light as he is (re)made for a specific task, and in fact is constructed not just as a tool but as a disposable tool. Within the parameters of his (re)construction, however, he has free exercise of his will. We can take this one step further and suggest that any hero, when he goes through the traditional epic arming scene, is constructing himself or being constructed as a tool of supreme violence within which context his will is not only free but also often irresistible. He is donning the technology of violence and is thus becoming an instrument of violence in the hands of the society or lord for which or whom he fights.45

Yet it is not just the arming scene, to which I have often referred, that so constructs him, and it is most emphatically not just his divine weapons that are significant. The hero also tends to bear armaments with specific social connotations.

Beowulf s corselet, for example, was a gift from his grandfather Hre8el {Beowulf '455), and he receives other gifts of military hardware from Hro6gar following his victory over

Grendel (1020-41). Similarly, Cu Chulainn receives his first weapons from the king

(TBC1 621-52). Achilles bears the spear that was once borne by his father, a king in his own right (Iliad 16.139 ff). The hero's weapons, in other words, are not culturally neutral; they link the hero to other people, often social superiors who occupy DumeziPs sovereignty function. They may be marks of honour, as in the case of gifts, or marks of lineage, as in the case of inheritance, but in either circumstance they serve a symbolic

45 One may again be reminded of Enright's observations on the iconography of the Sutton Hoo whetstone, and the implied function of the lord's warriors as weapons that he sharpens and wields. 197 binding function, linking the hero to the society from which the gift or inheritance comes.

Similarly, insofar as weapons help to constitute the hero's identity—his cyborg self— they link the society in which they originate to the uses to which the hero puts them. His violence is, at least in part, their violence; insomuch as they provide tools for his violence, they are complicit in it and therefore agents of it. Thus, what viewing the hero as a cyborg allows us to do is to appreciate the involvement of the society that helps to

construct him, in the actions for which he is constructed. Though the hero may seem to be the ultimate individual, a free agent who transgresses or threatens to transgress the boundaries that society constructs for its own definition and protection, society itself is

implicated in those transgressions. His violence is, to the extent that they contribute to the

construction of his identity, their violence, and thus their unease with him is an unease with certain possibly unacknowledged facets of themselves.

Another advantage to viewing the hero through the metaphor of the cyborg is the

insight such a view allows us into the tensions present in the society for which the hero

fights. Specifically, it allows us to glimpse what, in the hero's society, might be perceived

as the limits of the human. As Gonzalez observes,

The image of the cyborg has historically recurred at moments of radical

social and cultural change. From bestial monstrosities, to unlikely

montages of body and machine parts, to electronic implants, imaginary

representations of cyborgs take over when traditional bodies fail. In other

words, when the current ontological model of human being does not fit a

new paradigm, a hybrid model of existence is required to encompass a 198

new, complex and contradictory lived experience. The cyborg body thus

becomes the historical record of changes in human perception. (542-43)

Gonzalez is interested in the images of cyborgs produced since the dawn of the industrial age, during which machines came to dominate human life and thought in a manner previously unknown. Yet the tensions underlying the conflict between Us and Them in epic literature also embody such a potential moment of "social and cultural change," and the body of the hero most certainly takes over "when traditional bodies fail." The hero arises in response to a threat to the existing social order, and the traditional human body does not fit the paradigm of heroic action; it is incapable of performing at the level required for the preservation of the society under threat. Thus, insofar as "a new social space requires a new social being" (Gonzalez 545), and insofar as a combat zone can be considered a "new social space," existing outside the apparently stable social centre and working to rules often antithetical to those of the social centre, the epic hero is exactly the kind of new social being required by the new social space. "In other words, the cyborg body marks the boundaries of that which is the underlying but unrecognized structure of a given historical consciousness. It turns the inside out" (Gonzalez 454). Thus, the often inhuman and dehumanizing violence that lies at the heart of the hero's rage, his unique and wild energy, is reflected by his technological attachments, configured as they are for often superhuman violence: the taking on of an entire army, or the slaying of a dragon, for example. His heroism is, paradoxically, both integral to his character and, in a real physical sense, modular—prosthetic. In either case, it is not entirely or purely human.

It is with this problematization of the boundaries of the human that I conclude. As

Pyle observes, "when we make cyborgs ... we make and, on occasion, unmake our 199 conceptions of ourselves" (125). He goes on to suggest that the construction of cyborgs

"means the unmaking of the human through the anxious recognition that both were assembled in the first place" (132). The constructedness of the category human is foregrounded by the construction of cyborgs that, in themselves, challenge the definition of the human by making us aware that there is a definition—a linguistic and ideological construct. And if humanity itself is a constructed concept, an occupant of one side of an arbitrary border, as the figure of the cyborg demonstrates, then all notions of purity, hybridity, and fixity are revealed as arbitrary as well: the idea of category itself becomes unstable.46 Seen through the critical lenses of the cyborg, and the hero/monster binary, and the combatant locked in conflict with his intimate other, the epic hero forces us toward a similar realization: What the hero fights is often what the hero is, and what the hero is, is what his society has constructed him, in some cases literally built him, to be.

He occupies a border between the Self and the Other largely by embodying that border himself. As Haraway observes, "Cyborgs are about particular sorts of breached boundaries that confuse a specific historical people's stories about what counts as distinct categories crucial to that culture's natural-technical evolutionary narratives" (1995, xvi).

They make us uncertain about where We end and where the Other begins, be the Other defined in terms of peoples and their enemies, the human and the monstrous, or even the born and the made. Heroes, it would seem, are both born and made, both human and monster, both Us and Them. They confront the Other largely by embodying it, and they

46 "What makes the term [hybrid] controversial... is that it appears to assume by definition the existence of a non-hybrid state—a pure state, a pure species, a pure race—with which it is contrasted. It is this notion of purity that must, in fact, be problematized. For if any progress is to be made in the politics of human or cyborg existence, heterogeneity must be taken as a given. It is therefore necessary to imagine a world of composite elements without the notion of purity. This, it seems, is the only useful way to employ the concept of the hybrid: as a combination of elements that, while not in themselves 'pure' nonetheless have characteristics that distinguish them fromth e other elements with which they are combined.... [I]t must be recognized that the world is comprised of hybrid encounters that refuse origin" (Gonzalez 547). 200 become Other themselves so that the people they protect do not have to confront or recognize their own alterity: so that the arbitrary categories upon which their society's stability is based can remain intact. As Geraldine Heng observes, a nation defines what it is by defining what it is not (149). The cyborg hero is the location and mechanism of that definition. 201

Conclusion and Reflections:

Of Wild Men, Manly Men, Monsters, and Cyborgs

'"None of you understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked

in here with me'"

—Rorschach (Moore and Gibbons VI13).

By now, the reader may have been struck by the apparent heterogeneity of critical

approaches that this study has employed. Comparative mythology bumps up against psychology, which rubs elbows with gender theory, which in turn shakes hands with

postcolonial theory, monster theory, and cyborg theory. In short, the reader may well

have felt more tossed and blown about than Paolo and Francesca in the vestibule of

Hell—hardly the feeling one might want on approaching a work of literary criticism. But,

though there have certainly been many critical approaches, there have also been

important common threads. While it has not been the focus of every chapter, Dumezil's

understanding of the hero as a second-function figure underlies the discussion—a fact

likely to be problematic as Dumezil's theories have never met with universal acceptance

even within his own field of comparative Indo-European mythology. They do, however,

provide an interesting and useful starting point for the study of any epic hero, and it is

exactly this starting point that Dumezil provides for Beowulf.

Hence, Chapter One, and the suggestion that Beowulf partakes of the Indo-

European hero's wild and defining rage. Beowulf—articulate, level-headed Beowulf—

has a nasty temper locked up under his word-hoard. It turns out that he has more than just 202 a thinly disguised rage in common with such spectacular hotheads as Achilles and Cu

Chulainn: he has the overall pattern not just of the heroic life in broad strokes but of the kindling and cooling of his not-quite-human, more-than-human fury as well. Beowulf is, in other words, a hero in the Indo-European, second-function sense. But what does this conclusion suggest? The second and third chapters constitute my attempt to answer this question.

Chapter Two addresses the subject of gender—its role in the construction of heroism, and its role as well in our understanding of the hero's relationship with his society. That heroes tend to be men is no surprise: anyone who has glanced at heroic literature could make such an observation. But why are heroes men—or why are heroes generally not women? What has the hero's manliness, his masculinity, to do with his function as a hero? What does it even mean when one says that heroes are masculine?

What makes them—what constructs them as—men? The obvious answer to this last question is the poem itself. But how does the poem function as an agent of the construction of masculinity? One answer, an answer supported both by Laqueur's one- sex model of humanity and by the narrative patterns not only of narrators but also of heroes themselves, is the association of dominance behaviour, and particularly sexual

dominance behaviour, with masculinity—the implied analogy of combat and rape.

Another, less obvious answer is the exclusion of the non-masculine from the discourse of heroic action as it pertains to the hero—the refusal of Cu Chulainn to refer to his combat with the Morrigan in his list of hardships, and Beowulf s portrayal of GrendePs mother

as essentially passive and himself as essentially active, in his recounting of their

confrontation to Hygelac. As for why heroes are men, or why they are depicted as 203 masculine even when they happen to be women, the answer is straightforward: the enemy, the hostile other, the opponent to be dominated, is depicted as feminine even when male. In fact, the opposition between the hero's society and that of his enemies can often be seen as an opposition between the masculine and the non-masculine, with the hero himself manning the frontier, at once the guardian and the definitive exemplar of his society's masculinity even, as we have seen, in the face of his own narrative context.

So much is simply a review of the ideas discussed in Chapter Two, but what does any of it have to do with the Dumezilian backdrop of the project? Dumezil seemed to assume, along with the majority of scholars until fairly recently, that the second, or warrior, function was essentially masculine. The current study offers a means of exploring the construction of heroic masculinity, and the possibly of interrogating the underlying assumptions of violence and masculinity at the heart of the second function.

One may ask, for instance, whether epic heroes not included in this study also consciously construct themselves as masculine and active and their opponents as feminine and passive even if the action in which they engage does not, strictly speaking, support such a construction. That is, do other heroes also provide examples not just of how to be men, but also of how to be seen as men? Do they, like Beowulf, construct an unambiguously gendered borderline out of an otherwise ambiguous border zone? Should future research produce affirmative answers to these questions, as I suspect it will, then one might fairly conclude that the second function itself is the ideological agency through which a society's masculinity is both constructed and confirmed.

It is with the question of borderlines and border zones that Chapter Three is largely concerned. Aside from the masculine/feminine border, just how many borders 204

does the hero straddle? What is his relationship to the opponents he encounters there, and to the place itself? What, if anything, does the border signify? It is, as is often recognized, the line or zone of division between not only two places but also and perhaps more importantly two groups, one of which is either a clear or implied Us from the narrative point of view, and the other, a clear or implied Them. It is the zone of definition, in other words, between Us and Them—the place where the self'meets, and by virtue of

opposition is seen not to be, the other. It is also the place where the hero confronts his

opponents: opponents who themselves may function as second selves or intimate others

for the hero, bringing to the conflict some facet of himself that he must confront and with which he must often come to terms. One may think here of Achilles and Hector, Aeneas

and Turnus, or Cu Chulainn and Fer Diad. One may think, as well, of the various

aglcecan whom Beowulf confronts and with whom he is often lexically identified.

The hero/monster binary—or hero/'aglceca binary—is particularly problematic in

that monsters and heroes have so very much in common. Both are outsiders, both often

wild and unpredictable, both often savage well beyond any civilized or civilizing

constraint. One might even say that the often-monstrous hero is heroic not necessarily

because he is different in kind from his often-monstrous (but often-nonetheless-heroic)

opponent, but rather because he engages in the struggle and directs his heroic-but-

monstrous rage away from his (adopted) society. That is, he is heroic to Us by virtue of

being a monster to Them: he is our monster. The fragility of his identity as hero rather

than monster is illustrated in the havoc or potential havoc that results when he turns his

enraged face back toward those whom he is supposed to defend. The hero can thus be

seen as one half of a composite but unstable hero/monster narrative entity that enacts, 205 through contest and combat, the geography of the border itself: the opposition that the border defines in space is played out through the medium of heroic action.

If the hero is a kind of monster, though, what kind of monster is he? A consideration of his relationship with his weapons and armour—what might be termed the technology of violence—in the light of the relatively new but expanding discourse on the figure of the cyborg provides one possible answer: the hero is a cyborg, and the heroic identity is, at least metaphorically, a cyborg identity. While on the one hand, for example, the hero's identity as a hero is constituted through his possession of the rage unique to him—a trait organic to his character and thus unrelated to any form of artifice—on the other hand the narratives in which he appears invariably include passages in which his equipment is enumerated and described, including, for instance, the arming

of Beowulf beside GrendePs mother's mere. The arming scene is so much a part of heroic literature that one must at least wonder at the relationship between the arms and the man: the narrative pattern itself seems to construct the hero from the raw materials of

flesh and metal. His identity is thus not exclusively human or even human-divine; it is

also human-machine or even human-tool. The validity of this potentially unsettling

construction is supported by another narrative element, common itself though perhaps not

as ubiquitous as the arming scene: the weapon-gifting scene. Conchobar provides Cu

Chulainn with weapons and a chariot; HroSgar gives Beowulf armour and a saddle. True, the giving and receiving of weapons was a standard element of heroic society, but its

result—one might even say its intended result—was the construction of flesh-and-metal

entities that, when called upon, would turn their full force outward against their societies'

enemies in an expression of violence unachievable by flesh alone. Both the narrative 206 patterns, then, and the societies depicted in the narratives, construct the heroic identity as a biological-technological system: a cyborg.

So what do these conclusions imply for future study? One possibility, hinted at above, is an investigation of the agency of society itself in heroic action. If society literally builds its heroes, it must assume some responsibility for their actions—a responsibility underscored by the pride with which those actions are often recounted not just in ancient and medieval epic but also in more contemporary contexts such as popular

culture or even the history classroom. One might also consider the relationship of the hero's innate otherness with the process of weapon-gifting. It would seem, for instance, that the gifting process itself is a means of converting one of Them into one of Us—

literally enclosing an alien body in the forms and values of the homeland in question. It would seem, as well, that the fusion of the born with the made is a means of bringing the wild energy of the hero into the context of civilization—of constructing as civilized that which is essentially uncivil.

But such reconciliation, as far as it exists at all, must be problematic: the hero's

character, with or without technological components, always encompasses an element

that is opposed to a peaceful, ordered realm. He will always embody at least the potential

for transgression, contradiction, confusion: he is frustratingly and transcendently messy.

In fact, one of my chief concerns with this study is that I may, in the necessary process of

categorization and analysis, have presented heroes as being far more tidy than they are.

To claim, for example, that the hero is at once a force for order and an embodiment of

disorder, especially when I have also claimed that the order/disorder binary is a gendered

binary, may seem to be a logical contradiction; in fact, it is. The image of the hero as the 207 manhood of his society, on the one hand, and as an Other, on the other hand, is similarly laced with contradiction when one considers that Others often tend to be feminized. And the cyborgization of the hero is also problematic as, in his function as a tool in the hands of his society, the hero is essentially passive, is acted upon and even used, in a way that undermines his emphatic and often self-constructed masculinity. But the contradictions are themselves productive, suggesting a tension within the hero himself or possibly within the culture that produced him—an awareness, perhaps, of the problematic nature of categories and the permeability of the boundaries between them What emerges from this mesh of contradictions is an image of the hero as a paradox, the hero-monster as human-machine/masculine-feminine/us-them: a necessary illogical conflation of opposites that have the essence of each other at their cores. The hero on the edge is the edge: he is the embodiment of contradictions and tensions at the heart of his society's conception of itself.

Beowulf, then, is an Indo-European second-function hero. The implications for comparative study are obvious. The hero generally, and Beowulf specifically, can be discussed from a comparative standpoint in the context not only of gender theory, but also of postcolonial theory, monster theory, and even cyborg theory. What, on the other hand, are the implications for DumeziPs model? How is the tripartite model itself affected by its hybridization with the heterogeneous collection of theories to which I have so freely spliced it? Two suggestions come to mind. The first, suggested above, is that the entire second function could profitably be reconsidered in the light of contemporary gender theory, not merely in terms of the relationships between male and female characters, a relationship that Dumezil himself discusses, but more importantly in terms 208 of the masculine construction of the second function itself. The second suggestion is that the second function as a whole be reconsidered in the light of the hero's relationship to the technology of his trade. What role, for instance, do the second-function figure's arms play in constructing his identity? Is this role consistent even when the second-function figure in question is a god: Indra, for example, or Mars? And on a related note, what relationship does the smith—divine or mortal—play in the construction of this function? I suspect rather strongly that the smith himself plays a binding role, linking the second function to the other two, but such speculation lies outside the scope of Beowulf studies.

Beowulf "is not an essay; it does not contain a single argument laid out in rational propositions. It is a work of imaginative literature; as such, it cannot—or should not—be viewed exclusively through the lens of a single theoretical perspective. Conclusions

drawn via such a method are likely to have more to say about the theories on which they

are based than about the works to which those theories are applied. The most fruitful method of approach to the poem—the method most likely to enhance not only future understanding but also present appreciation—must embrace, as the poem itself embraces, mutually contradictory points of view. It is possible, in other words, for heroes such as

Beowulf to be both uncivilized and civilized, Them and Us, born and made, radically

individual and socially constructed—and it is good that they should be so. Ingeld and

Christ may be arm-wrestling with one hand, but they are drinking each other's health with the other. 209

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EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE

Lecturer: St. Thomas University, Dept. of English Language and Literature July 2002 - present • have taught Engl 2006, Intro, to the Study of Lit.; Engl 3396, Anglo-Saxon Lang, and Lit.; Engl 3306, Chaucer and his Age; AQEN 1006, Intro, to Lit. (Aquinas Programme); Engl. 1006, Intro, to Lit.; HUM 1003, Intro, to University Studies; ESL 1013: English for Academic Purposes I; GRID 1006, Heroes and Villains • engage in interdiscplinary and team teaching, and curriculum development • have recently agreed to be second reader on English honours thesis titled "The Transgression of Space in Malory's Le Morte Darthur" (advisor: Dr. Andrea Schutz)

Assistant Coordinator, Retention Services Aug 2005 - present University of New Brunswick, College of Extended Learning • tutor students individually on writing and study skills • conduct seminars on writing and study skills

Writing Tutor / Online Training Developer 2005 (January - April) University of New Brunswick, College of Extended Learning 2002 (March - May) • tutor students individually on writing and study skills • developed material for a program designed to help students improve their literacy online (2002)

English Language Instructor: Suwon University, ESL Department 1998 - 2002 Suwon, South Korea • taught English as a second language to university students • designed syllabi for a large department

Instructor: University of New Brunswick, Department of English 1997 (Jan. - Apr.) ENGL 1104: Fundamentals of Clear Writing • taught writing skills ranging from the construction of sentences to the composition of essays

Writing Tutor / Workshop and Seminar Instructor: UNB: Department of Extension (now College of Extended Learning) 1995 - 1997 • tutored students on-their writing skills, placing emphasis on grammar and composition • conducted seminars and workshops on writing and study skills

Copy Editor and Research Assistant: UNB: Faculty of Administration 1995 - 1997 • copyedited material for academic and scientific publication

Copy Editor: Studies in Canadian Literature 1994 -1996 • copyedited papers for publication in an academic journal.

Research Assistant/ Teaching Assistant: UNB: Department of English 1992 -1994 • conducted research and taught writing and composition skills EDUCATION

Ph.D. candidate in Old English: University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, 1993-96,2002-2007 Comprehensive Exams: Canadian Literature, Poetry, Old English

M.A. in English: Creative Writing: University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, 1991-93

Honours Equivalency in English: University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, 1990-91

B.A. in English (General): University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, 1984-88

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

"Gendering Judith: Masculinity through Word and Deed in the Anglo-Saxon Judith Fragment." 42nd Iternational Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich.: 9-10 13 May, 2007 (pending)

"Re-Capitating the Body Politic: The Overthrow of Tyrants in Havelok the Dane." 41st International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich.: 4-7 May, 2006 (presented Sunday, May 7)

"Gendering the Hero: Beowulf and the Construction of Masculinity." 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich.: 6-9 May, 2004 (presented Friday, May 7)

"Beowulf, CuChulainn, and the Wildness of the Hero: A Shared Motif in Beowulf and the Tain Bo Cwa//wge."38th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich.: 8-11 May, 2003 (presented Friday, May 9)

PUBLICATIONS review: "Review: Two Translations of Beowulf." The Nashwaak ReviewlA. Winter 2005 fiction: "Angel Watching." Alternate Realities 20. Jan - Feb 2001, www.a1ternaterealitieszine.com review of the novel Briefly a Candle, by Vernon Mooers. The Nashwaak Review 8. Summer 2000 fiction: "Boneland Quartet." The Cormorant. Winter 1995 poetry: "Improvisations on Blood," "Pissed in the Ruins." NewMuse of Contempt. Winter 1995 poetry: "ronald." Tickle Ace 23. Spring 1994

ACADEMIC AWARDS

University of New Brunswick Doctoral Assistantship: September, 1993 - August, 1996: $9200 per year; competitive award

University of New Brunswick Master's Assistantship: January, 1992 - April, 1993: $8500 per year; competitive award

Desmond Pacey Scholarship: 1992: $500; awarded to the top student in the Arts Faculty enrolled in a Canadian Studies course