Fearing My Neighbor: The Intimate Other in Beowulf and the Old English Judith

Combining theories of subject formation from Freud, Lacan, and Deleuze, and Guattari, this essay argues that the Anglo-Saxon heroic self is produced through an intimate association with the enemies he or she is meant to destroy. The hero, in both Beowulf and the Old English Judith, is a figure who is physically and psychically aligned with the monstrous. Beowulf is linked to Grendel through their mutual associations with foreign lands, as well as through their actual battles—fights that demand close physical contact. Judith is linked to Holofernes through similar bloody encounters, but also through the location of the fight itself—within a space of intimacy, the bed-chamber. The essay further argues that such intimate alliances transform the hero into a figure who cannot be reincorporated into the group for which he or she has fought.