Legally Speaking: The Finn Episode and Alfred’s Law Code

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• 作者：Justin G. Park
• 关键词：Beowulf ; Oath ; King Alfred ; Law ; Finn Episode
• 刊名：Neophilologus
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：101
• 期：1
• 页码：119-127
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Historical Linguistics; Comparative Linguistics; Philology; Comparative Literature; Syntax;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1572-8668
• 卷排序：101

文摘

This paper focuses on an intersection of law and poetry: the Finn Episode in Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon law codes, especially Alfred’s law code. This paper will first examine shared words and phrases, the lexical parallels, between Anglo-Saxon law codes and the Finn Episode in order to contextualize the events leading up to the making of the oaths and Hengest subsequently breaking the oath within legal tradition. The legal contextualization undergirds and supports a connection between the events described in the episode and the situation imagined in Alfred’s law code 1 and 1.1, where Alfred stipulates the importance of the oath and when it is permissible to break the oath. Ultimately, this paper will show that Beowulf and Alfred’s law code both imagine a subject who must self-legislate where conflicts between oath and duty are concerned.