{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020625, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00125, 'mean_word_length': 5.181467181467181, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
New Light on the Illumination of Grendel's Mere

Beowulf is an intertexual poem, and our understanding and appreciation of it depends to a great extent upon our engagement with texts beyond its physical boundaries in Cotton Vittelius A.xv. As Joseph Harris has asserted, an important part of the process by which we come to terms with Beowulf is the identification and interpretation of intertexts from its potentially limitless tradition—the “vast network of discourses behind the poem and ultimately constituting it.”1 Conventionally, these intertexts have been labelled as either “sources” or “analogues” of the poem, although this terminology is vexed.2 Lacking direct access to the traditions that were available to the poet, a modern audience must construct for itself, on the basis of other texts presently available, a new network of discourses to take the place of the lost network of traditional narratives out of which Beowulf weaves its narrative. Identifying and accounting for the resonances we perceive between Beowulf and its intertexts, wherever we find them, therefore remains an important task for critics. In this article, I will suggest that an intertext that casts a new light on the episode of Beowulf’s descent into Grendel’s mere can be found in Old Norse–Icelandic skaldic poetry, and I shall demonstrate how incorporating this intertext into our reading of the episode might enrich our interpretation of the poem as a whole. Before Beowulf descends into the mere to fight Grendel’s mother, Hrothgar provides the hero with information about the nature of the monsters’ home: