I’ve reached the point in the week where I’m arguing with strangers in comment sections about their insistence that Beowulf is a sacred text that cannot be adapted or performed because to perform it as entertainment is cultural appropriation of Scandinavian sacred texts.

Though to be honest, I sometimes sort of enjoy it when dudes with no expertise in Beowulf try to explain Beowulf to me without realizing the sparkly word-dragon they’re poking at.

To be clear: Beowulf isn’t a sacred text disallowed from being spoken. It’s not like...a 3000 line name of god. As well, it most likely came from an oral tradition. So, speaking it is the point. It’s a story. For telling. Full of dragons and battles and mead.

Pretty much if you’re arguing that Beowulf is a Scandinavian sacred text, you’re arguing something deeply questionable, given the likely lineage of the poem, written in Old English, about events that occurred in imaginary timelines centuries prior to it being written down.

I get aggrieved when people try to argue that Beowulf is a text owned by white people and written about heroic whiteness. Fuck that. It’s not only obviously untrue (the notion that the medieval world was all-white is batshittery) it doesn’t even reflect the nature of the poem.

I mean, come argue with me about Beowulf, but I warn you that I’m not only a vigorous Beowulf nerd, one reason I’m obsessed with it, is that I am interested in its performability, and in the things it tells us about the perpetuity of toxic masculinity & state-sanctioned othering.

Note: if you want to read Beowulf again because I just groused here about Beowulf-misinterpretations, read my translation! It’s almost out! https://bookshop.org/books/beowulf-a-new-translation/9780374110031 or listen to it! https://us.macmillan.com/beowulfanewtranslation/jdjackson/9781250232175

The narrator for the @MacmillanAudio version of my Beowulf translation is JD Jackson, who is such an amazing voice actor. And I did the introduction. I’m so excited to hear this poem read aloud!! http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/narrators/jd-jackson/