{"product_id":"9781442655614","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\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","brand":"University of Toronto Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47128159682800,"sku":"9781442655614","price":71.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781442655614_p0.jpg?v=1763808044","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781442655614","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}