The Origins of Beowulf: Prehistory, Composition, and Transmission
34 Irving St. Apt. A-3 Cambridge, MA 02138
Joseph C. Harris, Daniel G. Donoghue
This dissertation revises the literary history of Anglo-Saxon England by tracking the circulation and cessation of the traditions informing Beowulf. I argue that the Beowulf poet drew on knowledge that had a limited lifespan. Scribal errors in the extant manuscript reveal that by the year 1000, two scribes found the content of Beowulf to be remote and its language to be intermittently incomprehensible. The poem's intricate knowledge of heroic legend and monster lore, its preference for digressive over linear narration, and its Anglian-Germanic ethnic perspective enable us to recognize that Beowulf belongs to an early, syncretic milieu that did not persist beyond the ninth century.
British Literature I History of the English Language Introduction to Old English Old English: Biblical Literature
“Cain, Cam, Jutes, Giants, and the Textual Criticism of Beowulf,” Studies in Philology (forthcoming) “Archbishop Wulfstan, West-Saxon Kings, and Anglo-Saxon Ethnic Identity,” English Studies (forthcoming) “Beowulf before Beowulf: Anglo-Saxon Anthroponymy and Heroic Legend,” Review of English Studies 64 (2013): 553-73 “The Dating of Widsið and the Study of Germanic Antiquity,” Neophilologus 97 (2013): 165-83 “Scribal Errors of Proper Names in the Beowulf Manuscript,” Anglo-Saxon England 42 (2013): 249-69 “II Æthelred and the Politics of The Battle of Maldon,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 111 (2012): 451-73 “VII Æthelred and the Genesis of the Beowulf Manuscript,” Philological Quarterly 89 (2010): 119-39
Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Best Honors Thesis in the Humanities (2010)