Abstract
The article aims to complement recent readings of the saintly hero's venture into the wilderness in Guthlac A focusing on his appropriation and (re)ordering of that space which brings it from the sphere of the hostile and unknown to that of the pleasant and familiar. The analysis of the poem’s general vision of the world and society as well as the verbal contests in which Guthlac and the devils negotiate the right of possession to the site shows that the proposed dichotomy is complicated by the introduction of the related but not parallel opposition between homeland and exile, and the way it is used by the narrator, the protagonist and his tempters to define the saint’s status.