warrior (l. 179) and hateful to the Savior (l. 45) and remov-
ing all examples of his direct speech, the poet makes
Holofernes an almost inhuman enemy.
The violent clash between a holy woman and a
demonic opponent would have been a familiar motif to
an Anglo-Saxon audience through popular HAGIOGRA-
PHY, such as those of the virgin martyrs Juliana and
Margaret. Although Judith is not a martyr, her story has
a number of hagiographical elements, including her
prayer for strength just before slaying Holofernes. (In
the poem, she prays to the Trinity; in the Bible, to God.)
Yet Judith also resonates with the conventions of Anglo-
Saxon heroic poetry. The sections of the poem that deal
with the Hebrew army’s preparation for battle and the
confl ict itself (ll. 199–241) have little correspondence
with the biblical source but are typical of Old English
battle narratives. The poem also highlights the suprem-
acy of heroic values: Judith’s courage and faith enable
her victory, while Holofernes is doomed by his antihe-
roic debauchery and failure to lead his warriors well.
The reversal of usual gender roles is necessitated by the
source, but again it fi nds parallels in the lives of numer-
ous female saints. Judith’s status as one of the few active
women protagonists in Old English poetry (along with
Elene and Juliana) has attracted a great deal of interest
from feminist scholars.
Judith has also been studied in relation to its manu-
script companion, BEOWULF. Though the poems differ
in many respects, there are signifi cant parallels between
Beowulf’s confrontation with Grendel and Judith’s
slaying of Holofernes. These similarities—both victors
face their adversaries alone following a feast, and both
display a severed body part as evidence of victory—
have even lent support to a Christian interpretation of
the ostensibly pre-Christian Beowulf.
See also ANGLO-SAXON POETRY.
FURTHER READING
Belanoff, Patricia A. “Judith: Sacred and Secular Heroine.”
In Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor
of Jess B. Bessinger Jr., edited by Helen Damico and John
Leyerle, 247–264. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1993.
Griffi th, Mark. ed. Judith. Exeter, U.K.: University of Exeter
Press, 1997.
Lochrie, Karma. “Gender, Sexual Violence, and the Politics
of War in the Old English Judith.” In Class and Gender in
Early English Literature: Intersections, edited by Britton J.
Harwood and Gillian R. Overing, 1–20. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994.
Orchard, Andy. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of
the Beowulf-Manuscript. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995.
Lori A. WallachJUDITH 233