An introduction
What is Beowulf?
• A 3,000 line Anglo-Saxon epic
• A poem dating from the first half of the
8th century
• A poem surviving in only one 10th
century manuscript copy
• A poem that tells the story of a great
monster-slayer named Beowulf
What is Anglo-Saxon?
A Germanic language
with several dialects
Primarily
Germanic
culture
Independent
kingdoms
Were the Anglo-Saxons always
in England?
• No! They invaded England in the 5th century. The
original inhabitants were Christian Celts whom the
Germanic invaders pushed ultimately into the
mountains of Wales.
• The Germanic invaders were pagans and belonged
to three related tribes – the Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes.
• The Germanic invaders were also pre-literate; they
did not read or write but they possessed a rich oral
tradition.
How did the epic Beowulf
get written down then?
Christianity
The Dream of
Pope Gregory (590-604)
Gregory dreamed of converting all nonChristians.
The pagan Germanic tribes living in
England occupied an area which was
formally a colony of imperial Rome.
For Gregory, the Anglo-Saxons and
other Germanic tribes became a
symbol of his papacy’s success.
The Mission of a
Benedictine Monk
• Pope Gregory sent Augustine as a
missionary to King Ethelbert of Kent, a
kingdom in south-eastern England
• Simultaneously, the Irish church sent
missionaries to the northern kingdoms
• In 75 years, most of the inhabitants
were nominally Christian
What was a major cultural consequence
of Christianity?
Literacy
Literacy and Manuscripts
• Christianity is a based on reading a sacred
text which requires at least one person be
able to read aloud
• The only persons who could read and/or
write during the Anglo-Saxon period from
450 to1066 were monks, nuns, and a few
members of the nobility.
• Only in monasteries were texts written.
What has Ingeld (Beowulf) to do
with Christ?
So asked Alcuin in 797. He reasoned
that the monastery of Lindisfarne was
sacked by pagan Norsemen because
the monks listened to pagan heroic
poetry over dinner.
But who was Ingeld?
• He was a prince of the Heathobards
and he married the Danish princess
Freawaru in order to reconcile two
feuding kingdoms. The peaceweaving
of marriage failed tragically.
• In the epic Beowulf, the poet tells of
Ingeld.
And so? Get to the point!
• The poem Beowulf or at least basic
parts of the poem were well known
and popular in both the court and the
church;
• The poem Beowulf was preserved by
monks who wrote it down;
• The poem Beowulf straddles two
worlds of Christian and pagan, Jesus
Christ and hero, humility and pride.
The Beowulf Epic
• Set in a pre-Christian, pagan world
• One reference in poem to an actual
historical event that occurred in 520,
when Beowulf’s lord Hygelac was
killed in a raid
• All the characters are pagan
• All the characters adhere to a
Germanic honor code which requires
undying loyalty to one lord
• The monsters
exemplify in their
behaviors what the
Germanic cultures
feared and abhorred
most – disloyalty,
outlawry, cowardice,
malice, and greed
• Set not in England,
but in Denmark and
southern Sweden
• The characters are
the ancestors of the
Anglo-Saxon
audience of the
poem
But the Beowulf epic also
• Was written by a Christian monk who
honored his pagan ancestors and felt
ambivalent about their damnation
• Was written with many of the
characteristics of oral poetry such as
repeated phrases (formulas), motifs,
episodes (scenes), and themes
How to read Beowulf?
Watch for balanced oppositions
1. Good king vs bad king
2. Hero vs monster
3. Hero vs coward
4. Good woman vs bad woman
5. God vs Satan, Cain, or monster
6. Hall vs wilderness
Stylistic Peculiarities of Beowulf
1. Kenning: a compound of two words in
place of a single world
example: whale-road for “sea”
2. Litotes: grim irony or understatment
example: battle-play for “fighting”
3. Appositives: series of phrases describing a
single entity or event
example: Holy creator, mankind’s
Guardian, eternal Lord for “God”
What are the pleasures of reading
this ancient poem?
• The primal confrontation between a
hero and monsters
• The definition of the human by what is
not human
• The exploration of competing
hierarchies of affection (do you love
your lord more or fame more or wife
more)?
And why really?
Your answer is your own.
Sources
Map of England and picture of falling angels
from: “The Linguistic and Literary Contexts
of Beowulf: Illustrations,” The Norton
Anthology of English Literature : Norton
Topics Online at
http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/middleages/t
opic_4/illustrations.htm. September 7,
2004.
Sound file from “Readings from Beowulf” from
Old English at the University of Virginia at
http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/Beowulf.Re
adings/Grendel.html. September 7, 2004.
Secondary Works Consulted
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation.
Seamus Heaney. New York and
London: W.W. Norton & Company.
2000.