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Anthropological Horizons Editor: Michael Lambek, University of Toronto This series, begun in 1991, focuses on theoretically informed ethnographic works addressing issues of mind and body, knowledge and power, equality and inequality, the individual and the collective Interdisciplinary in its perspective, the series makes a unique contribution in several other academic disciplines: women's studies, history, philosophy, psychology, political science, and sociology. ‘The Varieties of Sensory Experience ‘A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses Elite by David Howes Arctic Homeland Kinship, Community, and Development in Northwest Greenland ‘Mark Nuttall, Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession Michael Lambek 4 Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town, Pater Gose 5 Paradis Class, Commuters, and Ethnicity in Rural Ontario Stanley R. Barrett 6 The Cultural World in Beowulf John M. Hill John M. Hill THE CULTURAL WORLD IN BEOWULF UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 5 Feud Settlements in Beowulf 25 “The Temporal World in Bewulf 38 The Jural World in Besoulh 65 ‘The Economy of Honour in Beowil 85 The Psychological World in Besoalf 108 Conclusion 242 Notes 353 Work Cited 203 Index 219 eae Acknowledgments ‘Acknowledgments reveal the debts we know and thus our self conscious, authorial identity. Appropriately enough for a book on Beooulf and such topics as gift giving and constructed kinship, the close and extended kindred of influential predecessors, colleagues, and collaborators is large. The scholarship of some predecessors is 0 fundamental that without them this book could not have been conceived. I think here mainly of the great editor, Frederick Klaeber, the historians Frederic Seebohm and DH. Green, the germanicist Vilhelm Gronbech, the literary historian H. Munro Chadwick, and such anthropologists as Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Mar- shall Sahlins, and Marilyn Strathern. I also owe much to a host of literary scholars, whose contributions appear in both the text and notes Robert D. Stevick and Robert O. Payne first guided me through Beowulf and the daunting commentary surrounding it. My debt to them is inestimable. Several generations of students, first at Smith College, and then at the U.S. Naval Academy shared my enthusiasm and sparked scholarly essays underlying sections of this book. But ‘my anthropological interests found a comprehensive voice only after Ross Samson and Pam Graves invited me to a 1988 conference at Glasgow University on New Perspectives in Viking Studies. The ex- posure there to anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians sug- gested startlingly different ways of addressing old problems. While a scholar in residence at Denison University, received helpful advice about British anthropology from Keith Maynard and Susan Didick. Readers for the University of Toronto Press suggested additional an- thropological readings appropriate for the kind of society Beowulf dramatizes, To William McKellin, whose advice helped shape this

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