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poet his reward but at the same time rebuked the bard for an unsatisfactory composition and consigned the text to the hall fire, saying, ‘By my honestie I swere yf there bee no copie of this extante, none shall there ever bee.’ 9 56 Language, literacy and aspects of identity in early modern Wales The sheer quantity of these late medieval poems, principally praise poems that enhanced the status of patrons by emphasizing their gentility, leadership and generosity, should be noted. Some thousands exist in manuscript and many are of ‘local’ rather than ‘national
's ‘static, heroic masculinity’. All told, this volume thus contends that the intimacies in Beowulf – textual, narrative, characterological, formal, linguistic, cultural, and so forth – escape the intimate, charged confines of an early medieval poem that will probably remain – perhaps paradoxically – anonymous and undated. In addition to addressing ongoing, crucial questions about the interpretation or function of the poem, then, these chapters ultimately give us a Beowulf whose relationship status will always display ‘it's complicated’, but which