BeoWulf
When? Where? Who?
• We may say that Beowulf was composed
somewhere in England between about 521 AD
and1026 AD
• We do not know for sure where in England the
poem was composed.
• Nor do we know if the poem was composed by a
single author, or whether it is the result of the
merging together of ballads by different authors,
nor whether the poem was significantly altered
subsequent to its first written form.
Why?
• The poem's purpose is also unclear arguments have been made for a naturalistic
mythic allegory, a Christian allegory, a criticism
of heroic culture, a mourning for the loss of
heroic culture, a Germanic 'Old Testament', an
allegory concerning contemporary politics in
one or other of the Saxon kingdoms - just to
mention a few.
Fate vs. Free Will
• Over the whole poem broods the thought of
Wyrd – the three sisters of fate. Gruesome
and bloodthirsty.
CLOTHO AND LACHESIS AND ATROPOS
• THERE WERE MEN FIGHTING IN WAR LIKE
HARNESSES…AND BEHND THEM THE DUSKY
FATES, GNASHING THEIR WHITE FANGS,
GLOWERING. GRIM, BLOODY AND
UNAPPROACHABLE, STRUGGLED FOR THOSE
WHO WERE FALLING.
From Hesiod
• FOR THEY ALL WERE LONGING TO DRINK
DARK BLOOD. SO SOON AS THEY CAUGHT A
MAN OVERTHROWN OR FALLING NEWLY
WOUNDED, ONE OF THEM WOULD CLASP HER
GREAT CLAWS ABOUT HIM. AND HIS SOUL
WOULD GO DOWN TO HADES.
• AND WHEN THEY HAD SATISFIED THEIR SOULS
WITH HUMAN BLOOD, THEY WOULD CAST
THAT ONE BEHIND THEM, AND RUSH BACK
INTO THE TUMULT AND FRAY.
• CLOTHO AND LACHESIS WERE OVER THEM
AND ATROPOS LESS TALL THAN THEY, A
GODDESSS OF NO GREAT FRAME, YET
SUPERIOR TO THE OTHERS AND THE ELDEST
OF THEM…AND THEY ALL MADE A FIERCE
FIGHT OVER ONE POOR WRETCH, GLARING
EVILY AT ONE OTHER WITH FURIOUS EYES
AND FIGHTING EQUALLY WITH CLAWS AND
HANDS.
• The atmosphere is grey and misty like the
marsh home of Grendel.
• The grey gloom is a reflection of the mood
these folk had on life.
• Tragedy was always near.
Yet….
• Fate must be fought against, whatever the odds.
Brave before all else is this Beowulf, with the
bravery of a young, strong, unsoftened people,
the physical courage which not only meets an
enemy unshrinkingly, but seeks him out to fight
with him alone and weaponless.
• This is the very rapture and madness of bravery,
the apotheosis of daring.
• The love of praise and the desire for glory breathing
through every utterance in the poem, are not the
evidence of a vaulting ambition which seeks its goal
through crooked ways, but rather the unrestrained
outbreak of the longing for appreciated activity and
power.
• Beowulf does not seek to conceal his desire for praise.
• He boasts of his exploits with a child's simplicity of
enjoyment. His age is too far from civilization to have
attained the virtue of modesty and the vice of
hypocrisy.
Grendel Came from Cain and Abel
Loyalty is Everything
• The spirit of loyalty that has already grown, in Beowulf's
time, into a racial institution, is strongly impressed upon
the poem.
• The duty of the thegn to his lord, a service resting upon
sentiment as well as upon necessity, is performed heartily.
• Woman is seen in various relations, occupying always a
position of dignity, and inspiring those feelings of respect,
that sense of her inviolability, which is the great honor of
the Teutonic race; but the tenderer feeling that nourished
feudalism into chivalry is quite beyond the pale of
Beowulf's experience.
Christian or Pagan?
• In spite of the interpolations by a later Christian editor, the
poem is pagan and of the essence of paganism.
• The old fragment touching the Passing of Scyld hints at the
mystery of birth and death; but aside from this there is no
looking beyond that after-mystery, no dwelling upon the
possibilities of the hereafter.
• The whole work is an embodiment of the idea of
practicality.
• Beowulf died, not to establish a principle, but to secure the
golden hoard of the fire-drake, and therefore the funeral
dirge of this hero knells him out of the memory of men.
• The history of Beowulf is the pathos of paganism and of the
material.
The text itself…
• Alliteration!
• Kenning: this is from the Old Norse verb
“kenna” which means to know or recognize.
It is a device for introducing descriptive color
or for suggesting associations without
distracting attention from the essential
statement.
• Basically, a kenning is a compact metaphor.
• In its more complex form it is a riddle.
Google – Beowulf text
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www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/beowulf
Everypoet.com
Etext.virginia.edu
Sparknotes - but the TEXT not the summaries.
• We have 20 books – so 11 computer savvy
people should volunteer to read it on line.
Literature Groups
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#1 John, Kerry, Gage, Brittany
#2 Amanda S., Samantha, Ilana, Connor
#3 Zain, Anna, Sharon, Jenna
#4 Emily, Alicia, Jooneil, Amanda A.
#5 Leahra, Scott, Reagan, Cindi
#6 David, Jasmine, Natasha, Bobbi
#7 Caitlin, Tyler, Kayla, Arriya
#8 Jennifer, Ali, Josh, Jamal