POSTMODERN BEOWULF A CRITICAL CASEBOOK [Paperback]

This work includes twenty-four essays including a preface, introduction, afterword, and sections containing seminal methodological pieces by such giants as Edward Said and Michel Foucault, as well as contemporary applications toBeowulfand other Old English and Germanic texts focusing on historicism, psychoanalysis, gender, textuality, and post-colonialism.

“Most of us are not looking to find adventure inBeowulf, much less the meaning of life. What we are looking for at this moment is the sort of knowledge that might proceed from a radical defamiliarization of this far-too-familiar text, setting it free from centuries of encrusted ideologies. In the case ofBeowulf, I think, such a radical defamiliarization will reveal a radical strangeness in the poem. Freed from its roles in all our grand narratives,Beowulfstands apart, an unexpected singularity. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, weird.”James W. Earl, Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon

Eileen Joyis a professor in the Department of English and Literature at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Joy has a PhD in English from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an MFA and BA in creative writing and English from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Mary K. Ramseyis Assistant Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University.