Rezensionen AAA Band 38 (2013) Heft 1 76 Matthias Eitelmann, Beowulfes Beorh. Das altenglische Heldenepos als kultureller Gedächtnisspeicher. (Anglistische Forschungen 410). Heidelberg: Winter, 2010. Andrew James Johnston In Beowulfes Beorh, a doctoral dissertation written in a fairly readable variety of German academic prose, Matthias Eitelmann analyses Beowulf as a literary artefact engaged not merely in transmitting but actually in creating and establishing cultural memory. Within this specific context, it is the author’s ultimate aim to prove the text’s ‘originality’. One might ask whether, given the poem’s uniqueness in Anglo-Saxon literature and the hyper-canonical status it has achieved, it is really necessary to prove its originality, but Eitelmann is certainly correct in seeking to come to a more thorough understanding of that originality. According to Eitelmann, Beowulf is the product of a transitional historical phase in which orally transmitted texts of pagan origin were committed to writing and thus preserved as a part of the Christian Middle Ages’ cultural memory. Eitelmann sees Beowulf as especially typical of this cultural situation and hence champions a kulturwissenschaftlichen approach to the epic. His concept of Kulturwissenschaft is a specifically German one, as developed in German literary studies, and must not be confused with what would be called a ‘cultural studies’ perspective in the English-speaking world. Eitelmann argues that we should read the text not only within a particular discursive context but also analyze it in terms of the audience it catered for and the cultural work it was expected to do. But for all his emphasis on the text as a cultural artefact, Eitelmann also insists on the epic’s literariness (41), not least because it is in a text’s literariness that we may find its particular counterdiscursive potential. The author’s discussion of these issues is both lucid and precise and shows him to be a learned and intelligent scholar. When he moves on to describe the link between culture and memory things begin, however, to look more problematic: Eitelmann consciously conflates culture and memory to a degree that renders the terms synonymous (46). Eitelmann’s actual interpretation of the epic proceeds in three steps. First he considers Beowulf in terms of its orality/ aurality and embeds this discussion within a larger literary context of intertextuality which he sees as particularly relevant within his own concept of literature as cultural memory. Eitelmann strategically expands the notion of intertextuality so that it covers motifs from myth, legend and folktale. He goes on to scrutinize the extent to which Beowulf selects time-honoured motifs from the oral tradition - i.e. from supposedly popular (volkstümliche) myths and legends - and combines them in original ways. According to Eitelmann, it is through this process of selection and re-combination of traditional elements that the poem realizes its capacity for innovation and originality in terms acceptable to an early medieval audience. Moreover, Eitelmann claims that his way of reading the poem constitutes a specifically literaturästhetische procedure, one that pays attention Rezensionen AAA Band 38 (2013) Heft 1 77 to the text’s formal qualities and respects its literariness. The final step of Eitelmann’s analysis attempts to integrate the different levels just described in order to sketch what one might call the poem’s individual functional profile, namely the role it was meant to play within the literary system it originated in. Eitelmann’s monograph betrays a lively mind with a keen interest in methodological issues. The study contains many praiseworthy observations which for reasons of time and space I cannot discuss in detail. A few examples will, therefore, have to suffice. The things Eitelmann has to say, for instance, about the fictionalizing tendencies in feigned orality, ideas he derives from Ursula Schaefer amongst others, are very important and deserve to reach a wider, i.e. English-speaking, scholarly audience. Similarly, Eitelmann’s views on the counter-discursive potential of literature must be commended for their conceptual clarity. And in his sensitive analysis of the different narrative perspectives employed in the description of Grendel’s approach to Heorot we witness a competent close reader at work. At the same time there are a number of issues in this book which are bound to raise objections. Once again I shall present only a few important examples. The monograph’s opening chapter provides a lot of information on Beowulf’s transmission and early reception in the nineteenth century that does not really contribute to answering the questions Eitelmann raises - and as his study progresses, the author more than once succumbs to seduction by unnecessary antiquarian detail. More importantly, Eitelmann’s application of the concept of intertextuality to traditional narrative motifs, interesting as the notion certainly is, ultimately does not seem to yield any kind of deeper critical insight than the ones generally offered by the motif histories provided in traditional folklore studies. Nor does an analysis of the way that the Beowulfpoet selected and combined traditional motifs seem even remotely to exhaust the poem’s aesthetic complexities. Precisely because of Eitelmann’s earlier insistence on the importance of a text’s literariness, would one have wished him to take a more inclusive look at the text’s aesthetic structures. After all, one would expect Beowulf’s originality (“origineller Eigenanteil”, 165) to become manifest not merely in the poem’s choice of narrative material but rather in the way that material is rendered. Eitelmann is right in pointing out the importance of Tolkien’s famous British Academy lecture for all subsequent generations of Beowulf-readers, but I am not sure whether Tolkien’s beautiful metaphor of the tower providing a view out over the sea really refers only to a text’s ability to describe the cultural status quo (“den Jetzt-Zustand besser überblicken zu können”, 166). On the contrary, Tolkien’s complex allegory seems to suggest something very different, namely a poem’s ability to let us look beyond the status quo, to gaze towards the horizon, i.e. into the potentially unlimited spaces of imagination and perhaps even transcendence offered by poetry. Eitelmann rightly makes much of Tolkien’s contribution to Beowulf-studies but oddly ignores what is arguably Tolkien’s lasting stroke of genius, his brilliant analysis of the poem’s undeniably Christian viewpoint and what this means for the poem’s sophisticated perspective on history. Hence we witness Rezensionen AAA Band 38 (2013) Heft 1 78 Eitelmann trying to pick apart the anachronistic “Song of Creation” in an attempt to distinguish an original pagan level later covered with a Christian gloss. In Tolkien’s eyes, this would probably look like yet another instance of pushing over the tower instead of gazing out to sea. Any scholar who sets himself the task of saying something meaningful about Beowulf as a whole incurs great risks, if only in bibliographical terms. There is a vast secondary literature to wade through to which a single scholar can hardly do justice anymore. Thus it is no surprise that Eitelmann’s impressive bibliography is marked by a number of unfortunate omissions. Neither do we find Roberta Frank’s recent Speculum-article on dating Beowulf (2007), nor is there any reference to her brilliant essay on the myth of the Anglo- Saxon oral poet (1993). Both texts might have helped Eitelmann to evade some of the positivist pitfalls he so rightly criticizes himself. And a look at John M. Hill’s (1995) The Cultural World in ‘Beowulf’ might have been helpful in some instances, too. But given the enormous problems lying by the wayside for any scholar trying to come to grips with Beowulf’s larger issues - and Eitelmann seems to be addressing them all - one must admit that Eitelmann has acquitted himself in an altogether creditable fashion. His book is a courageous attempt to bring sophisticated literary theory back to Beowulf studies and to open up Beowulf studies to some of the fascinating things that have been happening in German medieval studies during the last three decades, things that are consistently being ignored in the English-speaking world. Eitelmann is blessed both with an eye for detail and an interest in general issues. And even though it is frequently hard to accept his sweeping claims and his intricate structures of argument, it is rarely difficult to take him seriously and it is often easy to find him interesting. References Frank, Roberta (1993). “The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75. 11-36. Frank, Roberta (2007). “A Scandal in Toronto: The Dating of ‘Beowulf’ a Quarter- Century On.” Speculum 82. 843-864. Hill, John M. (1995). The Cultural World in ‘Beowulf’. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Andrew James Johnston Freie Universität Berlin