Peter S. Baker. Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Stu- dies 20. Cambridge: Brewer, 2013, x + 279 pp., 4 figures, 1 table, £ 60.00. A source of pleasure and pain in Beowulf scholarship is the fact that so much disagreement attends both literary interpretation and historical contextualiza- tion. Peter Baker’s new monograph is a heroic and successful attempt to grapple with longstanding questions pertaining to the representation of violence and its social dimensions in Beowulf. Particular strengths of this study are its systema- tic approach to violence in the poem, its combined anthropological and histori- cist orientation, and its myriad citations of illuminating passages from works of early Germanic (and occasionally Romance) poetry and historiography. Baker’s bibliography is highly eclectic, containing such disparate thinkers as Fred C. Robinson, Marcel Mauss, William Ian Miller, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Patrick Wormald. Baker does not align his study with a particular theoretical paradigm, but instead makes localized use of any scholarship that helps to shed light on Beowulf. He announces in his preface that he endeavors to study early medieval ideas about violence on their own terms, however unpalatable these terms may be to modern sensibilities. In Chapter One (“Introduction”), Baker rejects the school of critical thought that reads Beowulf as a pacifist or anti-heroic poem and argues that this interpre- tation is both anachronistic and unsupported by the text. Baker here lays the groundwork for his subsequent readings and establishes the terms of his study: violence is a social transaction, a socially-sanctioned method of settling disputes and creating peace; honor is a commodity that is exchanged during violent en- counters, acquired by the performance of socially-approved violent acts, and manifested through the material objects that remind others of those acts. In Chapter Two (“Loot and the Economy of Honor”), Baker continues to articulate the framework of his study, focusing here on the significance of material wealth in the poem. He observes that we should refer to most of the wealth in Beowulf as loot, since the poet is not interested in wealth for wealth’s sake. The treasure most frequently mentioned in Beowulf and other heroic poems is treasure that was looted from corpses, and this is no accident: such treasure is significant not as an indication of wealth, but of honor, since it serves as a reminder of deeds accomplished. To bear the sword of a slain foe is to alert others to the transfer of honor. The old Heathobard exhorts his younger kinsman to attack one of Frea- waru’s Danish retainers because he sees the Dane bearing a sword that might have been looted from the corpse of his father. In Beowulf, loot is a visible remin- der of past actions and debts owed, not an instrument of commercial exchange. Chapter Three (“Unferth’s Gift”) attempts to make sense of Unferth’s beha- vior by interpreting it within the framework of the Economy of Honor. In Baker’s DOI 10.1515/anglia-2013-0070  Anglia 2013, 131 (4): 646 – 648 Authenticated | neidorf@fas.harvard.edu author's copy Download Date | 12/5/13 9:51 AM