{"product_id":"the-cultural-world-in-beowulf","title":"The Cultural World in Beowulf","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/em\u003e is one of the most important poems in Old English and the first major poem in European vernacular language. It dramatizes behavior in a complex social world—a martial, aristocratic world that we often distort by imposing on it our own biases and values. In this cross-disciplinary study, John Hill looks at \u003cem\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/em\u003e from a comparative ethnological point of view. He provides a thorough examination of the socio-cultural dimensions of the text and compares the social milieu of \u003cem\u003eBeowulf \u003c\/em\u003eto that of similarly organized cultures. Through examination of historical analogs in northern Europe and France, as well as past and present societies on the Pacific rim in Southeast Asia, a complex and extended society is uncovered and an astonishingly different \u003cem\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/em\u003e is illuminated.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe study is divided into five major essays: on ethnology and social drama, the temporal world, the legal world, the economy of honour, and the psychological world. Hill presents a realm where genealogies incorporate social and political statements: in this world gift giving has subtle and manipulative dimensions, both violent and peaceful exchange form a political economy, acts of revenge can be baleful or have jural force, and kinship is as much a constructible fact as a natural one. Family and kinship relations, revenge themes, heroic poetry, myth, legality, and political discussions all bring the importance of the social institutions in \u003cem\u003eBeowulf \u003c\/em\u003eto the foreground, allowing for a fuller understanding of the poems and its implications for Anglo-Saxon society. \u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"By John M. Hill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43575556407478,"sku":"9780802074386","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9780802074386_97e0d3cd-a7db-40e2-8f87-d31e83ee63ea.jpg?v=1727459727","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/the-cultural-world-in-beowulf","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}