Place Symbolism and Land Politics in Beowulf

Elden, S.

doi:10.1177/1474474009340087

Place Symbolism and Land Politics in Beowulf

Elden, S.

Authors

S. Elden

Abstract

This article provides a reading of the Old English poem Beowulf, with a focus on its symbolic and political geographies. The key question is the role of place or site in the poem in general terms, and the more specific issue of land. The article first analyses three significant sites in the narrative — the locations of the battles between Beowulf and Grendel, Grendel’s mother and the dragon. Each of these places — the hall, the mere, and the burial-mound — are shot through with powerful emotive, elemental, symbolic and material geographies. Analysis then moves to the politics of land, a resource which is gifted, distributed, disputed and fought over. While part of a larger project which seeks to look at the conceptual and historical relation between land, terrain and territory, this article offers a more modest focused study of a single text from a particular period.

Citation

Elden, S. (2009). Place Symbolism and Land Politics in Beowulf. cultural geographies, 16(4), 447-463. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474009340087

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Oct 1, 2009
Deposit Date	May 19, 2010
Publicly Available Date	May 20, 2010
Journal	Cultural Geographies
Print ISSN	1474-4740
Electronic ISSN	1477-0881
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	16
Issue	4
Pages	447-463
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474009340087
Keywords	Elements, Land, Old English literature, Place.

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Copyright Statement
The final definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal Cultural Geographies, 16/4 2009
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