Beowulf Unlocked (eBook)

Michael D.C. Drout is Professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, USA. He is the author of How Tradition Works and Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Yvette Kisor is Professor of Literature at Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA. Her essays on medieval literature, particularly Anglo-Saxon, include publications in Anglo-Saxon England, The Chaucer Review, and ANQ. Leah Smith is an independent scholar, as well as a public artist and art educator, working in Providence, RI, USA. She was a member of the Wheaton Lexomics Research Group from 2011-2014. Allison Dennett is an independent scholar and childcare provider, working in Portsmouth, NH, USA. She was a member of the Wheaton Lexomics Research Group in 2013. Natasha Piirainen is an independent scholar and a project associate working for an education non-profit in Portland, Maine, USA. She was a Mars Fellow, a Gertrude Adams Professional Development Fellow, and a member of the Wheaton Lexomics Research Group in 2013.

Table of Contents



List of Tables

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

2 Lexomic Methods

 2.1 Hierarchical Agglomerative Cluster Analysis

 2.2 Interpreting Dendrogram Geometries

3 Text Preparation of Beowulf

 3.1 Text Preparation: Orthography  3.2 Text Preparation: Edition and Text

4 Cluster Analysis of Beowulf

 4.1 Identifying Segment Boundaries: Screening

 4.2 Identifying Segment Boundaries in the A-Scribe Text  4.2.1 Finding Robust Geometries Using Shifting

  4.2.2 Hinting Segment Boundaries

  4.2.3 Finding Robust Geometries Using Blending

  4.2.4 Segment Boundaries for the A-Scribe Dendrogram

  4.2.5 Analysis of the A-Scribe Dendrogram

 4.3 Identifying Segment Boundaries in the B-Scribe Text

  4.3.1 Screening the B-Scribe Text

  4.3.2 Identifying Segments in the B-Scribe Text

 4.4 Analysis of the A-Scribe and B-Scribe Texts Together

  4.4.1 Segment J  4.4.2 Blending and Deleting to Determine In-Clade Relationships

 4.5 Synthesis of Cluster Analysis of Beowulf

5 Interpretation of the Cluster Analysis 5.1 Groupings of Segments

 5.2 High-Level Similarities and Differences

 5.3 Interwoven Discourses

5.4 Sources

  5.4.1 Unferth and Breca

  5.4.2 Finnsburg and Danish History  5.4.3 The Fights with Grendel and Grendel’s Mother

 5.5 Structure

  5.5.1 Two- and Three-Part Structures

  5.5.2 Alternate Structures

 5.6 Implications for Authorship Hypotheses

 5.7 Implications for Dating

6 Conclusions Drawn from Cluster Analysis

Bibliography

Index