Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of retellings of Old English Literature, and of Beowulf in particular, captivating a broad readership beyond academic circles. These retellings have captured the interest of both casual readers and scholars alike, who have approached them through various lenses and methodologies. Surprisingly, research within the field of Anglo-Saxonism devoted little attention to the pivotal role played by objects in Beowulf retellings, despite their profound impact on the characterization of the Anglo-Saxon hero[1] and the narrative role they play into the poem. This research project investigates how 20^th and 21^st century authors transpose the treasure, the sword, and the armour in their novelistic retellings of the Old English poem. It acknowledges different trend in the retellings, identifying in particular two distinct attitudes towards the recovery of Old English material: an interest in its pictured primitivistic atmosphere, on the one hand, and an intent of subverting its perceived values, on the other. The central focus lies on understanding the intricate relationship between these items and the hero or the king, and how they contribute to his characterization or to the development of the heroic narrative. Identifying what the Manipulation School has broadly defined as “invariants”—semantic features shared by both the hypotext and the hypertexts—allows us to discern the variations introduced by authors. Through the analysis of invariants and variations, the research explores the common ideological thread underlying these novels and investigates changes in heroic culture that are employed to recast the Anglo-Saxon hero in the 20^th and 21^st century.

Marmora, Giuliano. Il mito di Beowulf. Risonanze antiche e moderne. Rome, 2021. [the Myth of Beowulf. Ancient and Modern Resonances]

Marmora, Giuliano. "'That was an innocent child'. Unearthing the voice of the defeated in S. S. Morrison’s Grendel’s Mother", Risonanze III. La memoria dei testi dal Medioevo a oggi,edited by Carmela Giordano, Ligouri, 2020, pp. 169- 184.

Marmora, Giuliano. "Ofer hronrade: 'al di là del mare, la via delle balene'. Questioni sulla traduzione del Beowulf in prosa italiana". Open Journal of Humanities, vol. 2, 2019, pp. 41-74. [Ofer hronrade:‘al di là del mare, la via delle balene’. On the matter of translating Beowulf into Italian prose]

Presentations

“'Stay with me, my dear. This is man’s business'. The voice of the defeated in Morrison’s Grendel’s Mother."  Risonanze III. La memoria dei testi dal Medioevo a oggi, 23-24/01/2020, Naples, University of Naples "L'Orientale."

[Keynote] "Vae Victis! The scop as the forger of the truth in Beowulf retellings. Graduate Symposium: Beowulf and Beyond. An early medieval poem and its modern adaptation, 20/01/2023, Leiden, Leiden University.

giuliano.marmora@uni-a.de

giuliano.marmora@unitn.it