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Unferth’s Ambiguity and the Trivialization of Germanic Legend

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Abstract

The characterization of Unferth is a longstanding problem in Beowulf criticism. The mixture of negative and positive qualities the poet attributes to this character has generated a wide range of conflicting and unsatisfactory interpretations. The present article offers a new solution to the Unferth problem by proposing that his contradictory characterization results from the Beowulf poet’s denigration of a hero who had been represented more favorably in antecedent tradition.

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Notes

  1. The analogues to Beowulf are conveniently assembled in Garmonsway and Simpson (1968). There are good reasons to believe that some characters who are not attested in the analogues existed in legendary tradition prior to the composition of Beowulf; see Neidorf (2013a) and Shippey (2014).

  2. For an overview of the history of scholarship on Unferth, see Bjork (1997: 205–208).

  3. A different subset of Unferth studies aims to shed light on his characterization through comparative study of his flyting with Beowulf and his apparent function at Hrothgar’s court; for criticism in this vein, see Harris (1979), Clover (1980), Enright (1998), and Sayers (2009).

  4. Prominent efforts to relate supposed etymologies of Unferth’s name to his characterization include Bloomfield (1949–1951), Robinson (1970), and Greenfield (1972: 101–107). Many other scholars have assented to their views or modified them slightly. Recent philological research, however, has raised serious doubts as to whether any of the names in Beowulf offer genuine clues to characterization; see Fulk (2007) and Jurasinski (2007).

  5. On the distinction between productive and unproductive elements in the Old English onomasticon, see Neidorf (2013a).

  6. There are, for instance, four men named Hunfrið in the Durham Liber Vitae (see Neidorf 2013a: 571). On the attestation of the hūn element in Old English personal names and the correspondent absence of the ūn element, see Fulk (1987: 120–121).

  7. A wide range of philological considerations establish a strong probability that Beowulf was first composed and committed to parchment close to the year 700; see Fulk (1992), Lapidge (2000), Cronan (2004), Neidorf (2014), Neidorf and Pascual (2014). For a summary of recent scholarship on this topic, see Neidorf (2016).

  8. As Fulk argued: “the recognition that Ūnferð reflects a real Germanic name rather than a symbolic literary coinage should serve to reaffirm the conservatism of the poet’s treatment of the legendary material from which he constructed Beowulf. The name Ūnferð then reveals not a free invention of character and incident, but faithfulness to genuine tradition, even to the extent of retaining a name-element, Ūn-, that was foreign to England” (1987: 126).

  9. The text of Beowulf is cited throughout from Fulk et al. (2008); translations of Beowulf are cited throughout from Fulk (2010).

  10. For a conspectus of interpretations, see Fulk et al. (2008: 177).

  11. Robinson, for instance, argues that Unferth exhibits “a most unheroic, Falstaffian attitude toward heroic deeds” (1984: 129). Interpretations of Unferth as a court jester (Eliason 1963) or a licensed fool (Donovan 2009) necessarily adopt a similar position.

  12. Brodeur perceptively observes that the poet “never fails to show his distaste for Unferth…[he] maintains his dislike of Unferth stubbornly; whenever he expresses his opinion of the man, he does so with marked acerbity” (1959: 149, 151). Baird similarly remarks, “the poet is at times clearly hostile to him…[and] condemns him through Beowulf to the fires of hell” (1970: 4). Wieland also discerns the poet’s negativity: “even after Beowulf generously seems to have forgiven Unferth for his troublemaking, the poet in a rather petty way keeps reviling him for his audacity to have doubted the hero” (2011: 35).

  13. The theme of fratricide in Beowulf is discussed in Hardy (1969) and Nagy (1995). For the poet’s ideas about kinship in general, see Bremmer (1980); on brotherhood in particular, see Kightley (2016).

  14. For a concise and discriminating introduction to Germanic legend, see Andersson (1987: 3–16); earlier general studies of enduring value include those of Ker (1908), Chadwick (1912), and Heusler (1943).

  15. Clark (1990: 65) and Wieland (2011: 40) plausibly conjecture that Unferth needed to choose between loyalty to his lord, Hrothgar, and loyalty to his family members on the battlefield; because Unferth remained loyal to his lord in this conflict, he retained (or perhaps even earned) his position of honor at Hrothgar’s court.

  16. For overviews of the scholarship on this poem, see Kershaw (1922: 142–147); and Tolkien (1955–1956, 1960: xxi–xxviii).

  17. The text and translation are cited from the edition of Kershaw (1922: 160–161).

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Acknowledgements

I thank George Clark and Tom Shippey for reading this article in draft and sharing with me their stimulating and erudite thoughts on various matters related to Unferth and Germanic legend.

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  1. Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Leonard Neidorf

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Neidorf, L. Unferth’s Ambiguity and the Trivialization of Germanic Legend. Neophilologus 101, 439–454 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-017-9523-y

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