Light Without Heat
Beowulf ’s Epistemological Morning
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8865157 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chad Schrock (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2015-12-15 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | English Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0013838x.2015.1090738 |
| OpenAlex | W2218995593 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 20 |
Whereas previous scholarship has identified morning and dawn as metonyms for misery in Anglo-Saxon culture, mornings in Beowulf carry positive valence as well as negative. What unites this symbol or image cluster is not a particular emotional texture but an epistemological concern. Mornings in Beowulf are times when knowledge manifests. Outside the knower, the light of morning provides a literal, exterior, passive and in some cases punctiliar image of how knowing works. It is a natural force, at first akin to Grendel—perverting the natural, like him; hostile to human civilization, like him. But morning is on Beowulf's side and through him returns agency to the Danes. They are able to act again when morning reveals what Beowulf has done. The final movement of the poem shows morning's reversion to implacable hostility, the Geats’ reversion to the helpless knowledge of despair. Beowulf figures as the Christian revelatory morning star but, tragically, it is not he, not yet
Art · Literature · Morning · Natural (archaeology · Poetry · Scholarship · Medicine · Medieval Literature and History · History · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |