Beowulf

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Beowulf

• Many dimensions
• Heroic narrative
• Folklore
• Incorporates
• Creation hymn
• Gnomic verse
• Heroic beats
• Sources
• Oral
• Bible

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• Problems
• Old English takes some time to understand
• Written in half lines not iambic pentameter
  (dominant verse pattern since 13th century)
• ex-. Grendel gongan Gades yrr baer
• God cursed Grendel Came greedily loping

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• Use of Apposition- a construction in which
  separate words have the same reference- creates
  synonyms and many of these words are hard to
  translate
• Use of kennings and epithets create the same
  problem
• Conjunctions rarely used so the syntax of
  sentence is lost

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• But, Anglo-Saxon audiences were able to
  understand how the poet manipulated conventions
  and it is wrong to assume that a society that
  appears primitive to ours is primitive in every
  way.

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Apposition

• Ealdre berafod bereft of life
• Beabue gebaeded afflicted by aggression
• Both connote evil
• So dragons death was justified because its
  violence was evil
• One rhetorical advantage of apposition is its
  open-endedness for the aggression in this case
  can be Grendels or Beowulfs

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• Today, the repetition of words and phrases with
  the same referent, even the kind of elegant
  variation once favored by so many Victorian
  writers is actively discouraged. A
• A student paper that included passages like the
  killer, the terrible earth-dragon, deprived of
  life, afflicted by evil aggression would be
  savaged in red ink by Miss Briggs

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Kennings

• Sword remnants of hammers (homera lofe)
• Since highly compressed it can be expanded to
  what remains after the blacksmiths hammers have
  finished their work sword.
• Beowulfs name bee-wolf, where the wolf or foe
  of the bee is the honey-seeking bear
• GodLord of life the Glorious Almighty

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• Manuscript of poem now in the British library in
  London
• Over 60 translations of the poem
• Poem is written in England but the events are set
  in Scandinavia

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Basic Plot

• Prince Beowulf (from Southern Sweden- Geats
  pronounced Ye-ats) comes to help Hrothgar, king
  in the land of the Danes rid the country of a
  terrible man- eating monster, Grendel. From this
  expedition, he returns in triumph and rules for
  50 years as king of his homeland. Beowulf must
  confront it. Grendels mother. He manages to slay
  the dragon but loses his own life in the battle.
  He enters the legends of his people as a warrior
  of great renown.

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• Scholars treated this poem as history and
  folklore (date?) until 1936 J.R.R. Tolkiens
  Beowulf The Monster and the Critics treated
  the poem as a work of literature.

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• Readers get caught between a shield wall of
  opaque references and a word-hoard that is old
  and strange, and feel a certain shock of new. In
  between is what W.B. Yeats calls a
  phantasmagoria.
• Seamus Heaney

Poem as art-
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The Exeter Book

• Pages bound together between boards made of
  birch- from the German word for which we call the
  word book.
• Given to the Exeter Cathedral in 975 by the first
  Bishop of Exeter, Leofric, who died in 1072.
  Probably was written by a single scribe.
• Contains The Seafarer The Wanderer The
  Wifes Lament and Old English Riddles, among
  other poems

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• Survived because the Exeter Cathedral library
  resided in a building that escaped the dangers of
  the fire, civil war, and two world wars. Even so,
  it was ravaged by time.
• Collected during the time of Alfred the Great-
  loved literature and learning.

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The Seafarer

• Believed to be written somewhere between
  450-1100.
• Provides an accurate portrait of the sense of
  stoic endurance, suffering, loneliness, and
  spiritual yearning characteristic of Old English
  poetry
• Divisible into two sections- elegaic and didactic

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• First Section
• Painfully personal description of the suffering
  and mysterious attractions of life at sea
• Second section
• The speaker makes an abrupt shift to moral
  speculation about the fleeting nature of fame,
  fortune, and life itself, ending with an
  explicitly Christian view of God as wrathful and
  powerful.
• The speaker urges the audience to forget earthly
  accomplishments and anticipate Gods judgment in
  the afterlife

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• The poem addresses both pagan and Christian ideas
  about overcoming this sense of suffering and
  loneliness
• Pagan- being buried with treasure and winning in
  battle
• Christian- Fearing Gods judgment
• Allegory- life as a journey and the metaphor of
  life at sea

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Welcome to the Sutton Hoo Room
Burial site of a 7th century Anglo-Saxon king,
found near Woodbridge, in Suffolk.
Sutton Hoo is an estate near Woodbridge, Suffolk,
England, that is the site of an early grave of an
Anglo-Saxon king. According to Encyclopedia
Britannica, "The burial, one of the richest
Germanic burials found in Europe, contained a
ship fully equipped for the afterlife (but with
no body) and threw light on the wealth and
contacts of early Anglo-Saxon kings its
discovery, in 1939, was unusual because ship
burial was rare in England" (Brtannica). In the
burial site there were 41 items of solid gold,
now held in the British Museum. The ship also
contained 37 coins, three unstruck coin blanks,
and two small ingots, all of gold. According to
the Voyage to the Other World, "The gold coins
and jewelry, the silver utensils, preserved in
the sand, of an exceptionally large ship, as well
as other valuable items, were intended to
accompany a powerful individual on his final
journey" (Schoenfeld 15). The Sutton Hoo ship
further displays both master craftsmanship and
major technical innovations such as a fixed
steering position and shorter and narrower planks
for more flexibility. Sutton Hoo played an
important role in the recording of Beowulf.
According to the Voyage to the other World,
"Beowulf and Sutton Hoo are related in the rather
simple way, that the description of Heorot in
Beowulfmay fit some early Anglo-Saxon buildings
for which evidence still survives elsewhere in
England" (Creed 67).
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Priceless objects found in the Sutton Hoo burial
ship
Iron Helmet
Shield Mount
Anglo Saxon Necklace
Reconstructed Helmet
Boar Crest
Anglo Saxon Ring
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• Ubi Sunt- taken from a Latin phrase
• Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt meaning Where
  are those who were before us?
• Common them in poems
• Used as a motif in The Wanderer Beowulf
  Anglo-Saxon poetry expressed a considerable
  feeling of doom and sadness symptomatic of a
  ubi sunt yearning

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• May have come out of the fact that by conquering
  Roman Britain they were faced with massive stone
  works that seemed to come from lost era

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• The Wanderer specifically when it starts out -
  reminiscent of Tolkien from The Two Towers
• Comitatus Germanic friendship structure that
  compelled kings to rule in consultation with
  their warriors
• Bond existing between the lord and his warriors
  direct source of the practice of feudalism

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• Love according to the Romans and coming from
  them would have been
• Country lord, general, etc
• Friends platonic relationships
• spouse

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• Had a profound effect on women. A man would leave
  his wife to be with his lord
• Women were considered possessions
• The Wifes Lament