Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T. A. Shippey (review)

Andrew Wawn's preface (pp. xiii-xvii) introduces the volume as a collection of essays in fields of special interest to Tom Shippey. As Wawn observes, Shippey's academic work highlights the indispensable contributions of linguistics and philology to the infrastructure of medieval studies (pp. xiv-xv). The atypical coherence of this festschrift can be attributed in part to the coherence of the honoree's interests and to his skill in explaining why they have mattered, why they matter now, and why they ought to matter.

Part 1, "Nations and Nationalism," explores the influence of comparative linguistics and folklore studies on construction of modern European states. Political uses of folklore are well illustrated by the essay on Ossian, a supposedly ancient epic written by James Macpherson that created a Scottish highland identity (Stefan Thomas Hall, pp. 3–26). Macpherson fabricated Ossian, Hall thinks, because models based on Greek and Roman epic were the only viable carriers of cultural prestige and no epics of genuine antiquity could be found in Celtic Scotland (p. 23). Paradoxically, the heated debate surrounding this fraud did much to establish Celtic studies as an academic subject. Martin Arnold analyzes the role of Old Norse texts in construction of a Danish national identity (pp. 27–52). Here too the desire for a local Homer motivated the study of early literature. Scandinavian scholars appropriated methodologies pioneered by the Grimm brothers, but strongly opposed use of Scandinavian evidence for reconstruction of a pan-Germanic culture centered on Germany (p. 37). John Hill (pp. 53–69) considers what nineteenth-century British audiences wanted from Beowulf and how their quite various desires influenced editors and translators. Benjamin Thorpe advertised the poem as a historical document that sharpened understanding of England through analysis of its Germanic roots (pp. 62–63). A contrary trend, represented by Thomas Arnold, argued for the poet as a Christian culture-hero whose literary genius helped bring England out of barbarism (pp. 63–65). Although far less sophisticated, this view of the poem resembles J. R. R. Tolkien's. For William Morris, the poem was a fine example of craftsmanship providing a theory of courage for militant socialists (p. 67). The essay by Keith Battarbee explores Eastern European romanticism in Finland (pp. 71–96). As with Ossian, Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala was configured as an epic in the nineteenth century; but most of the Kalevala is authentic folklore that Lönnrot presented immediately for inspection (p. 86). In Finland, romantic nationalism coincides with emergence of Finnish and its speakers from subordinate social status. A comparable phase of English literary history would be the era of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Compression of national development into such a small period of time proves remarkably instructive and exhibits some curious features, for example adoption by Finnish insurance companies of names from the national mythology (pp. 94–96). In the final essay of Part 1, Hans Frede Nielsen weighs a nineteenth-century theory that the Danish Jutland dialect was strongly affiliated with English, a West Germanic language. Jacob Grimm used this theory to support Germany's expansionist agenda, arguing that the Danish peninsula was German territory invaded by Scandinavians (p. 103). Nielsen goes on to refute the theory with up-to-date linguistic methods.

Part 2, "Philology and Philologists," begins with a study of elves as represented in Old Norse and Old English texts (Terry Gunnell, pp. 111–30). These representations seem to draw on distinct belief systems from different eras (p. 129). The evidence tells against Jacob Grimm's theory of a unified religion embodying a German essence, but Gunnell praises the Grimm brothers for an analysis of folkloric variation that can help us correct their nationalistic overstatements (p. 130). Beowulf comes to the fore again with an essay by Robert D. Fulk explaining text-critical principles of the newly revised Klaeber edition (pp...