Transmitting fantasies: Sexist glossing, scholarly desires, and translating the heroic woman in medieval Germanic literature

Abstract

This article proposes that in the field of medieval Germanic literary studies, popular twentieth-century translations operated in a uniformly sexist fashion when addressing female figures in the heroic mode. Examples of such translations, glossing choices and critical commentaries are investigated for the case of Beowulf and the Poetic Edda. This leads to a critical analysis of the cultural values of the translators themselves, suggesting that sexist glossing reflects scholarly desires to reduce gender ambiguity in the service of patriarchal and imperialist cultural agendas. Implications for current criticism include the possibility of recognizing both the critical legacy of the sexist project and the interpretive potential created by the ambiguities in the original texts.

Keywords:

• medieval Germanic literature
• women in heroic literature
• translation and sexism
• Anglo-Saxonism
• Eddic poetry
• Nibelung cycle