Masculinity and Conversion in Old English Guthlac A

• Authors: Olesiejko Jacek
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

The article turns to Judith Butler’s writings on abjection to elucidate the Christian subjectivity that emerges from the Old English poetic life of Guthlac of Crowland, known as Guthlac A. The abject is defi ned as the other within the subject who is in the process of conversion from secular values and the Germanic past. Guthlac’s conversion from his secular and ancestral values informs a notion of masculinity nascent in his subjectivity, masculinity that results from the abjection of ancestral secular identity by transposing it onto the demonic other, the destruction of which transforms and sanitizes ancestral landscape.

Keywords

EN

masculinity; abjection; Christian subjectivity; interpretation

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2017
• Issue: 26/1
• Pages: 5-21

Contributors

author

Olesiejko Jacek

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

References

• Beowulf. 2008. Ed. Robert D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Bhattacharji, Santha. 2005. “Guthlac A and Guthlac B: Changing metaphors.” Anchorites, Wombs and Tombes: Intersections of Gender and Enclosure in the Middle Ages. Ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Mary Hughes-Edwards. Cardiff : University of Wales Press. 41‒53.
• Butler, Judith, Clark, Stephanie. 2011. “A more permanent homeland: land tenure in Guthlac A.” Anglo-Saxon England 40: 75‒102.
• Christ and Satan. 1931. The Junius Manuscript. Ed. George Phillip Krapp. New York: Columbia University Press.