Andrew James Johnston: Beowulf global: Konstruktionen historisch-kultureller Verflechtungen im altenglishen Epos (Mediävistische Perspektiven, 11). Zürich: Chronos, 2022. Pp. 72. Kart. € 15.00.

• S. C. Thomson

Professor Johnston’s work has long focused on reading textual moments in multidisciplinary ways and unpacking dense networks of intermediality and meaning-making. This publication of a lecture delivered in Zürich is a welcome addition to previous discussions of the Old English poem Beowulf, and it introduces some of the text’s interests and ways of making meaning in a clear, richly readable way. As Johnston has done in other work, here he pays close attention to the hilt that the eponymous hero brings back from the underwater lair of Grendel’s Mother, the second being he defeats. This hilt is from an immense and ancient sword, the blade of which melts in the blood of the creatures Beowulf uses it to decapitate. Golden and decorated, it is inscribed with characters telling the story of the Christian God’s defeat of the giants in the Flood (leaving only subaqueous creatures alive to defy him).