Hana Videen, King’s College London
Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists
Brock University, St Catherines, Ontario, 24-26 May, 2014
TOEBI helped fund my trip to St Catherines, Ontario, for the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists (CSM). On May 25 I presented a paper based on a chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Borders without Boundaries: what it means to be stained in Beowulf’. This was presented alongside another paper on Beowulf by Brett Roscoe of King’s University College, Edmonton, and chaired by the president of CSM, John Osborne (Carleton University). My paper analyzes the ways in which the word fah is used in Old English poetry, highlighting the differences in the ways this word is glossed by modern translators. In a story that focuses on the implications of achieving everlasting fame — a lasting mark — the Beowulf-poet considers different ways of leaving a ‘mark’ or ‘stain’.