Spatial Violence of the “Halls” in Old English and Old Norse Poetry


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Authors

  • Ms. Sreeja Chowdhury Undergraduate Student of English Honours Presidency University, Kolkata, India,Presidency University image/svg+xml

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53032/tcl.2024.9.4.01

Keywords:

Violence, Heterotopia, Trans-Culturalism, Hall

Abstract

In the recent years, the scholarship of Urban Space has primarily focussed on the postmodernist discourse, but this essay, by connecting the Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse culture, takes up the subject of early mediaeval literature and the narrative of violence in urban spatial discourse. A leitmotif that keeps on figuring in Old English and Old Norse poetry is that of the ‘hall’ - a transcultural conjunctive space for transaction or exchange of both material goods such as fighting men, treasure and the like, and the non-material items such as martial honour, power, comradeship and the like. Though such a space easily seems to be a dispositif heterotopia, this essay explores how its (non-crisis) heterotopic motif, with the true manifestation of the ‘hetero’- an encapsulation of the ‘diversity of an emplacement of a cityscape’, is ruptured by an unmasking of violence that is ironically disrupting this trans-culturalism yet uniting the heteroglossic discourses by dominating this space. The space of Gunnarr and Högni’s hall and Heorot are both equally stained with the blood of the unjustly slaughtered victims: the murder of Gunnarr and Högni by Atli in the former case, and the murder Hrothgar’s men by Grendel’s mother in the latter case. Murder and bloodlust, the polarised ‘evil’ or ‘othered’ character(s) not only unite the literary space of these two tales but also unite the cultural space of the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons, through the metaphor of the ‘hall’. This is reinforced by the fact that the disruptive force of revenge in both cases takes place ‘outside’ the halls, ‘the area of unity’: in the former case, Guðrún does not burn Atli in the hall but kills him outside and buries him, and in the latter case, in the ‘den’ where Beowulf ventures to battle and kill the monster. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore how the othered discourse of violence actually assumes the central role and problematizes the narrative of dispositif heterotopia through the spatial metaphor of ‘hall’, a miniature cityscape, by acting as a both uniting and disrupting force.

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Author Biography

Ms. Sreeja Chowdhury, Undergraduate Student of English Honours Presidency University, Kolkata, India,Presidency University

Ms. Sreeja Chowdhury, a student of English Language and Literature at Presidency University, Kolkata, is at the beginning of a career in publishing. Her research interests range from Early Medieval history to Renaissance literature. She has published articles on posthumanism examining the post-human world through Lacanian lens, Early-Medieval English Literary Space, Early English Emotional and Moral Literary Crises, India on Renaissance and has also presented her views in various conferences. She has been awarded a generous grant from two foundations, namely Lynne Grundy Memorial Trust and The Bibliographical Society of UK to fund her research project which she plans to bring out with a publication from Leeds Medieval Studies. She is also granted access to the International Historical Institute, London to continue her research in London using their library and other archival resources available.

References

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Published

2024-08-31

How to Cite

Ms. Sreeja Chowdhury. “Spatial Violence of the ‘Halls’ in Old English and Old Norse Poetry”. The Creative Launcher, vol. 9, no. 4, Aug. 2024, pp. 1-13, doi:10.53032/tcl.2024.9.4.01.

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