tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post114471637109450772..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Fantasies of the AboriginalCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1144966803723448602006-04-13T18:20:00.000-04:002006-04-13T18:20:00.000-04:00Thanks so much for your response. Not being an An...Thanks so much for your response. Not being an Anglo-Saxonist and not having work on the period in any concentrated scholarly way, I get a little fuzzy about the particulars. (And I'm definitely guitly of projecting a "cleanness of separation" onto the period.) And having not read anything Guthlacian (yes, I just made up that word)in some time, all I could remember was that scene in general and the fact that he was formerly a Mercian warrior. I'd completely forgotten that line about the demons and "the sibilant British tongue." Am I right that the poems edit out some of those details?<BR/><BR/>And thanks for the citations -- yours and Siewers' work both. Now I want to add Guthlac to my syllabus next time I do the saints' lives section of my general medieval lit. course.Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1144856084606169462006-04-12T11:34:00.001-04:002006-04-12T11:34:00.001-04:00Oh yes, and "Guthlac A" and "Guthlac B" are brilli...Oh yes, and "Guthlac A" and "Guthlac B" are brilliant names for pets. Or children.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1144856046166826822006-04-12T11:34:00.000-04:002006-04-12T11:34:00.000-04:00How could we have Stonehenge on the syllabus and N...How could we have Stonehenge on the syllabus and NOT discuss Spinal Tap, authors of the best little song ever written about that monument? (Not that the competition is especially severe).<BR/><BR/>As you guessed, Dr. V., the reason I put the Guthlac materials on the syllabus was to provoke postcolonial reading. It's interesting to note that Guthlac won his pre-monastic military honors in war against the Britons. Held hostage among thesed enemies (or dwelling in exile as their ally?), he even learns their language. Surely these battles involved Mercian expansion into lands held by British-speaking peoples (or more likely, a mix of British speaking and immigrant "Anglo-Saxon" -- I do think we scholars have a tendency to project a cleanness of separation upon the period that likely didn't obtain). The fight for the mound that preoccupies Felix and the author of the OE Guthlac poem(s) surely refigures Mercian conquest -- why else would the demons who are the mound's aborigines speak to Guthlac in "the sibilant British tongue"?<BR/><BR/>I've written a little on this in Medieval Identity Machines. Alf Siewers does a much better job in "Landscapes of Conversion: Guthlac's Mound and Grendel's Mere as Expressions of Anglo-Saxon Nation-Building."Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1144723226769826552006-04-10T22:40:00.000-04:002006-04-10T22:40:00.000-04:00Oh, and of course you must dicuss This is Spinal T...Oh, and of course you must dicuss <I>This is Spinal Tap</I>, right? Kidding! (Sort of.)Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1144723125713337192006-04-10T22:38:00.000-04:002006-04-10T22:38:00.000-04:00Can I come take your class, please?I'm interested ...Can I come take your class, please?<BR/><BR/>I'm interested in your reading of the Life of Guthlac. The OE poems are freshest in my mind (and btw, someone somewhere needs to have two similar pets named Guthlac A and Guthlac B) but I always thought that Guthlac's battling the demons for his little hill in the fens was obviously a colonization. But the question is: a colonization of whom? Of East Anglians by Mercians? Of remaining Britons by Anglo-Saxons (that late??)? Or am I being too literally historicist? Is it just, as you suggest in the formation of this class, an imagined aboriginal? My problem is that when I discuss it in a class, I get to that battle and say something along the lines of "hey look - colonization" but then can't get to the "so what?" except to talk about Christianity in general being a force of colonization. (And maybe that's all there is to the "so what?" question.) Or maybe I'm just thick. But I'd love to hear your thoughts.Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.com