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 © Rodger Ian Wilkie, 2007 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-49827-9 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-49827-9 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada ii 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.