The role of the men's hall in the development of the Anglo-Saxon superego.

This paper is a historical study of ritual space--a bit of psychoanalytic anthropology applied to a particular case, the evolution of the men's hall among the early Anglo-Saxons. I focus particularly on the ritual functions of poetry in the hall, the same poetry which is our major evidence regarding the hall, especially the epic Beowulf. I define the hall as a cultural institution, and redefine the native poetic tradition in relation to the hall's varied ritual life, with which the poetry is so occupied. Though my argument is focused on the hall, it includes a framework of theoretical concerns. Early Anglo-Saxon culture is of anthropological interest chiefly because of its rapid and dramatic emergence from Germanic tribal prehistory into a leading role in the civilization of Christian Europe. The conquest of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their conversion soon afterward, is a case history of the transformations of a tribal society suddenly introduced to the special forces of civilization and the higher religions that control them. The Anglo-Saxons are fascinating in this regard because of the fortuitous developments that prepared for this transformation and made it so successful.