The Middle Ages as property: Beowulf, translation and the ghosts of nationalism

Abstract

This essay draws on Cheryl Harris’s essay ‘Whiteness as Property’ to explore the ways in which nineteenth-century nationalist thinking haunts medieval studies. Using the Old English poem Beowulf as its central example, the essay examines how, during its early scholarly history, Beowulf was identified as the property of various nations and peoples. It was the subject of claims and counterclaims, but all the litigants agreed that, whomever the poem might belong to, it revealed important properties of their identity. This essay also argues that the structures of thought that define early Beowulf scholarship continue to haunt aspects of twenty-first century political culture in Britain. It demonstrates how the idea of ‘the English’ is often simplified and reified and illustrates how this way of thinking about the nation – as self-identical, coherent, and unified – is often indebted to medievalist thinking which simplifies and reifies medieval culture and history.