Beowulf and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England (review)

142 Reviews 'although' clause for them. W e refer, today, to Skeat and Furnivall, and not to Halliwell and Wright. This, to m y mind, does not alter the fact that these scholars were extremely important in the formation of the discipline. In her preface Damico writes about the understandable omission of some major scholars, and says that they get discussed in other essays. This is true— Tolkien is discussed in Derek Brewer's essay on C.S. Lewis, John Kemble in Philip Pulsiano's account of Thorpe—and it seems fair: Lewis was far more productive (in medieval studies) than Tolkien, Thorpe more than Kemble (though was he more influential?). However, this claim for usefulness beyond the actual biographies is undermined by the major shortcoming that the index is not complete. Richard Morris, a prolific editor for the Early English Text Society and writer of popular texts on Middle English language, is mentioned on pp. 130,131,142, and 149, yet his name is not in the index. Madden is discussed in several places, but the index omitsreferencesto him on pp. 78, 79, and 81. (It should also be noted that the reason the correspondent 'K. N.' in the Gentleman's Magazine cites 'much the same objections [to Thorpe's work] as voiced by Madden' (p. 81) is that K.N. was Madden.) There are other omissions, suggesting that despite the claim to general usefulness in the volume, it constructs two tiers of scholars here and is less concerned with the second rank. There is increasing interest in the past of medieval studies at present, and Damico's series is a major contribution in this area. But w e still need to think about a history of error. David Matthews Department of English University of Newcastle Davis, Craig R., Beowulf and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England ( Bates Lord Studies in Oral Tradition 17)), N e w York and London, Garland, 1996; board; pp. xvii, 237; R.R.P. US$53,00. The initial clue as to the thrust of this volume is that it is No. 17 i Albert Bates Lord Studies in Oral Tradition, the sequence edited by John Miles Foley. Thus it is to be considered as falling in the categories of mythology, folklore and comparative literature, as well as legend, in addition to being in the Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. As the 'Preface' (p. ix) indicates, the writer had hoped to add to traditional and philological methods of analysis many newer ones—oral-formulaic, psychoanalytic and structurally comparative. A n even more interesting proposed theme was to explore the passing of Germanic tradition in Britain, and yet the remarkable vigour and survival of the Welsh, CambroLatin and French tradition of Arthur. Yet in the end the focus was, rather, Reviews 143 on the fate of Germanic legend in England, as is clear from the enormous bibliography, comprising some fifth of the whole printed text. Another large idea which emerged is an anthropological one—as valid for such Old Norse literature as Snorri Sturluson's Heimshingla as it is for Old English poetry—namely an 'institutional nexus ... troubled and transitional' lying between tribal forms of social organisation as comitatus and those of incipient national kingship. Thus Davis regards the venerable kindred solidarity as 'regressive' and resistant to intertribal monarchy. At this level the critic has much to say about Snorri's stance as a sort of sophisticated parallel to the artistic purposes of the Beowulf-poet. Supportive of these general views are the early chapters concerned with such themes as: myth become legend; the evolution of paganism in Britain, particularly as revealed by the poetry; the fairly obvious process of 'cultural assimilation' in the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies; and 'continental' material remembered and/or preserved in England. These matters are explored more closely in the account, in Chapter Four, of a preserved and 'fabricated' (p. 66) heroic age, this being explored through Widsip, the Hildebrandslied, the Fight at Finnsburh, Waldere and Dear. In this analysis m u c h early twentiethcentury scholarship from the University of Cambridge is brought into play— the ideas of Dickens, Phillpotts and Whitelock, in particular. Again and again...