Critical Introduction

The illustrations to the Beowulf Manuscript's version of the Wonders of the East are strange, difficult images. They do not always make immediate sense, and though closely related to the text, they rarely seem to illustrate it in any straightforward way. Instead, text and image differ in provocative ways that invite our contemplation and speculation. Among the more puzzling monsters in the Wonders is the Donestre, a creature that appears in no other known text. The top image on this folio (the term used for a page in a medieval manuscript) is the balsam tree, which produces precious oil. The bottom image is the fearsome, psychic, lying, homophagic (person-eating) Donestre. He stands beside a female victim, and the foot he proudly holds aloft is hers: her left foot is clearly cut off at the ankle. She is therefore immobilized and stares out at us in wide-eyed terror. The blood-red background to the scene intensifies the sense of violence and horror. Despite the generally human features and his male sex (he is emphatically male, which adds an additional sense of threat to the female victim), the Donestre's head is bestial, if ambiguously so. This figure, like many in the manuscript, is somewhat awkward, with legs that seem to emerge from his chest, without a lower torso between. The figure is therefore both like and unlike a human.

In general, medieval monsters are assumed to be male, so for example, the Donestre is not identified as a male Donestre, but merely as a Donestre, and therefore it is assumed to be male. On folio 105v of the Beowulf Manuscript, though, the two monstrous people are explicitly identified as female. The upper image presents a hunter, which was an exclusively male occupation. This female hunter, then, is based on the notion of inversions of expectations. The figure is woman—as is clear from her ankle-length dress and flowing hair—but bears a long beard. To intensify the sense of the “world turned upside-down,” a common medieval description of deviation from expected rolls, this “huntress” uses cats rather than dogs to track animals.