"Ungelic is us": Queer Old English Elegies
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Elan Justice Pavlinich
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of South Florida
Presider Name
Elan Justice Pavlinich
Paper Title 1
Inhuman Intimacies in Wulf and Eadwacer
Presenter 1 Name
Eliot Rosch-Eifert
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Paper Title 2
Our Islands: Queering the Non-human in Anglo-Saxon Elegies
Presenter 2 Name
Jes Battis
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. of Regina
Paper Title 3
"Heofen Rece Swealg": Pagan Tradition and the Ambiguous Afterlife in Beowulf
Presenter 3 Name
Harley Joyce Campbell
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of South Florida
Paper Title 4
The Queer Art of Anger: Failure, Rage, and Relationships in Old English Elegies
Presenter 4 Name
Marjorie Housley
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Notre Dame
Start Date
12-5-2017 3:30 PM
Session Location
Fetzer 2030
Description
This panel focuses on the instability of meaning in Old English elegies. Because queerness bears nuanced connotations that require individual definition, this session is open to a broad understanding of the term “queer” and how queer theory enhances our understanding of the elegies in Anglo-Saxon culture. Approaches may include, but are not limited to, manuscript history and paleography, generic conventions and their reception, as well as literary innovations within specific texts.
Instability, gaps, and overlaps characterize Old English elegies at lower levels of linguistic and thematic content, and at higher levels of generic conventions that scholars have imposed. Thematically speaking, a queer reading could preserve the complexity of individual desire located within broad natural cycles of ebb and flow, and everlasting spiritual existence. Considering genre, Paul E. Szarmach observes, “if the Exeter Book had not survived, the only elegies extant in the literary corpus of Old English would be two passages in Beowulf known as ‘The Old Man's Lament’ and ‘The Lay of the Last Survivor[;’ and so], because these are contained within Beowulf, it is entirely possible that [Old English elegies] would not even now be recognized as exhibiting their own genre.” Overlapping with other genres, some scholars read elegies as an extension of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, albeit with a more dreary outcome for the speaker who serves an absent lord. Others have noted the formal characteristics that elegies share with wisdom literature and the riddles. In what ways are the expectations of genre violated by particular Old English elegies? In what ways do they challenge generic categories? How does elegy, exposing the cyclical yet ultimately transient nature of creation, disturb linear, straight notions of progression and procreation?
Elan Pavlinich
"Ungelic is us": Queer Old English Elegies
Fetzer 2030
This panel focuses on the instability of meaning in Old English elegies. Because queerness bears nuanced connotations that require individual definition, this session is open to a broad understanding of the term “queer” and how queer theory enhances our understanding of the elegies in Anglo-Saxon culture. Approaches may include, but are not limited to, manuscript history and paleography, generic conventions and their reception, as well as literary innovations within specific texts.
Instability, gaps, and overlaps characterize Old English elegies at lower levels of linguistic and thematic content, and at higher levels of generic conventions that scholars have imposed. Thematically speaking, a queer reading could preserve the complexity of individual desire located within broad natural cycles of ebb and flow, and everlasting spiritual existence. Considering genre, Paul E. Szarmach observes, “if the Exeter Book had not survived, the only elegies extant in the literary corpus of Old English would be two passages in Beowulf known as ‘The Old Man's Lament’ and ‘The Lay of the Last Survivor[;’ and so], because these are contained within Beowulf, it is entirely possible that [Old English elegies] would not even now be recognized as exhibiting their own genre.” Overlapping with other genres, some scholars read elegies as an extension of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, albeit with a more dreary outcome for the speaker who serves an absent lord. Others have noted the formal characteristics that elegies share with wisdom literature and the riddles. In what ways are the expectations of genre violated by particular Old English elegies? In what ways do they challenge generic categories? How does elegy, exposing the cyclical yet ultimately transient nature of creation, disturb linear, straight notions of progression and procreation?
Elan Pavlinich