Everything about Beowulf totally explained
Beowulf is an
Old English heroic
epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of
Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving European manuscript dating to the early 11th century. At 3183 lines, it's notable for its length. Beowulf is sometimes called the
national epic of
England, despite the inaccuracy of that label. The work was originally written in
Anglo-Saxon and pertains to events in
Scandinavia.
In the poem,
Beowulf, a hero of the
Geats, battles three
antagonists:
Grendel, who is attacking the Danish
mead hall called
Heorot and its inhabitants;
Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to
Geatland (modern southern
Sweden) and becoming a king, he fights an unnamed
dragon. He is fatally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he's buried in a
barrow in Geatland by his retainers.
The most common English pronunciation is, but the "ēo" in
Bēowulf was a
diphthong, and a more
authentic pronunciation would be with two syllables and the stress on the first .
The Beowulf manuscript
Provenance
The earliest known owner is the 16th century scholar
Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is named, though its official designation is
Cotton Vitellius A.XV because it was one of
Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the middle of the 17th century. Kevin Kiernan argues that Nowell most likely acquired it through
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley in 1563, when Nowell entered Cecil’s household as a tutor to his ward,
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.), using fiber optic backlighting to further reveal lost letters of the poem.
The poem is known only from a single manuscript, which is estimated to date from close to
AD 1000. Professor Kevin Kiernan has argued from an examination of the manuscript that it was the author's own working copy. He dated the work to the reign of
Canute the Great.. Whoever owned the codex before Nowell remains a mystery. The Beowulf manuscript itself is mentioned in name for the first time in a letter in 1700 between George Hickes, Wanley’s assistant, and Wanley. In the letter to Wanley, Hickes responds to an apparent charge against Smith, made by Wanley, that Smith had failed to mention the Beowulf script when cataloguing Cotton MS. Vitellius A. XV. Hickes replies to Wanley “I can find nothing yet of Beowulph.’ Beowulf isn't thought to be a Christian hero, however. Since the epic of Beowulf is penned to be taking place four centuries before the actual epic was written and Scandinavia wasn't
Christianized until at least the 12th century, the native
Germanic paganism was the prevalent theological system at the time. It is more reasonably thought that the epic was Christianized by Christian monks, who later rewrote it to wider distribution.
Debate over oral tradition
The question of whether
Beowulf was passed down through the
oral tradition prior to its present
manuscript form has been the subject of much debate, and involves more than the mere matter of how it was composed. Rather, given the implications of the theory of
Oral-Formulaic Composition and
Oral tradition, the question concerns how the poem is to be understood, and what sorts of interpretations are legitimate.
Scholarly discussion about
Beowulf in the context of the oral tradition was extremely active throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The debate might be framed starkly as follows: on the one hand, we can hypothesize a poem put together from various tales concerning the hero (the Grendel episode, the Grendel's mother story, and the firedrake narrative). These fragments would be held for many years in tradition, and learned by apprenticeship from one generation of illiterate poets to the next. The poem is composed orally and extemporaneously, and the archive of tradition on which it draws is oral, pagan, Germanic, heroic, and tribal. On the other hand, one might posit a poem which is composed by a literate scribe, who acquired literacy by way of learning Latin (and absorbing Latinate culture and ways of thinking), probably a monk and therefore profoundly Christian in outlook. On this view, the pagan references would be a sort of decorative archaizing. The views are most neatly opposed in the paired articles, "The Christian Coloring of Beowulf" (F. A. Blackburn, PMLA 12 (1897), 210-17) and "The Pagan Coloring of Beowulf" (Larry D. Benson, in Old English Poetry: fifteen essays. R.P. Creed, ed. Providence (Rhode Island): Brown University Press, 1967: 193-213).
M. H. Abrams and
Stephen Greenblatt assert in their introduction to
Beowulf in the
Norton Anthology of English Literature that, "The poet was reviving the heroic language, style, and pagan world of ancient Germanic oral poetry [...] it's now widely believed that
Beowulf is the work of a single poet who was a
Christian and that his poem reflects well-established Christian tradition."
However, many scholars, including D.K. Crowne, have proposed the idea that the poem was passed down from reciter to reciter under the theory of
Oral-Formulaic Composition, which hypothesizes that epic poems were (at least to some extent) improvised by whomever was reciting them. In his landmark work,
The Singer of Tales,
Albert Lord refers to the work of
Francis P. Magoun and others, saying “the documentation is complete, thorough and accurate. This exhaustive analysis is in itself sufficient to prove that Beowulf was composed orally.”
Examination of
Beowulf and other
Anglo-Saxon poetry for evidence of oral-formulaic composition has met with mixed response. While "themes" (inherited narrative subunits for representing familiar classes of event, such as the "arming the hero", or the particularly well-studied "hero on the beach" theme) do exist across Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic works, some scholars conclude that Anglo-Saxon poetry is a mix of oral-formulaic and literate patterns, arguing that the poems both were composed on a word-by-word basis and followed larger formulae and patterns.
Larry Benson argued that the interpretation of
Beowulf as an entirely formulaic work diminishes the ability of the reader to analyze the poem in a unified manner, and with due attention to the poet’s creativity. Instead, he proposed that other pieces of Germanic literature contain "kernels of tradition" from which
Beowulf borrows and expands upon. A few years later, Ann Watts published a book in which she argued against the imperfect application of traditional, Homeric, oral-formulaic theory to Anglo-Saxon poetry. She also argued that the two traditions are not comparable and shouldn't be regarded as such. that while comparative work was both necessary and valid, it must be conducted with a view to the particularities of a given tradition; Foley argued with a view to developments of oral traditional theory that don't assume, or depend upon, finally unverifiable assumptions about composition, and that discard the oral/literate dichotomy focused on composition in favor of a more fluid continuum of traditionality and textuality. Finally, in the view of Ursula Schaefer, the question of whether the poem was “oral” or “literate” becomes something of a red herring. In this model, the poem is created, and is interpretable, within both noetic horizons. Schaefer’s concept of “vocality” offers neither a compromise nor a synthesis of the views which see the poem as on the one hand Germanic, pagan, and oral and on the other Latin-derived, Christian, and literate, but (in the words of Monika Otter
(External Link
)) “…a 'tertium quid', a modality that participates in both oral and literate culture yet also has a logic and aesthetic of its own.”
Dialect
In the poem mix the
West Saxon and
Anglian dialects of Old English, though they're predominantly West Saxon, as are other Old English poems copied at the time.
There is a bewildering array of linguistic forms in the Beowulf manuscript. It is this fact that leads some scholars to believe that Beowulf has endured a long and complicated transmission through all the main dialect areas
Story
The main
protagonist, whose name is
Beowulf, a hero of the
Geats, comes to the aid of
Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose great hall,
Heorot is plagued by the monster
Grendel. Beowulf kills both Grendel and
Grendel's mother, the latter with the help of a magical sword,
Hrunting.
Later in his life, Beowulf is himself king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a
dragon whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound. He attacked the dragon with his
thegns, but they didn't succeed. Beowulf decided to follow the dragon into its lair, at
Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative
Wiglaf dared join him. Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded. He is buried in a
barrow by the sea.
As an epic
Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poet who composed Beowulf, while objective in telling the tale, nonetheless utilizes a certain style to maintain excitement and adventure within the story. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages are spoken of, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repayed, and deeds of valour.
Historical background
The events described in the poem take place in the late
5th century and during the century after the
Anglo-Saxons had begun migration and settlement in England, and before it had ended, a time when the Saxons were either newly arrived or in close contact with their fellow
Germanic kinsmen in
Scandinavia and
Northern Germany. The poem could have been transmitted in England by people of
Geatish origins. It has been suggested that
Beowulf was first composed in the
7th century at
Rendlesham in
East Anglia, as
Sutton Hoo also shows close connections with Scandinavia, and also that the East Anglian royal dynasty, the
Wuffings, were descendants of the
Geatish
Wulfings. Others have associated this poem with the court of King
Alfred, or with the court of King
Canute. but this doesn't only concern people (for example,
Healfdene,
Hroðgar,
Halga,
Hroðulf,
Eadgils and
Ohthere), but also
clans (for example,
Scyldings,
Scylfings and
Wulfings) and some of the events (for example, the
Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern). The Scandinavian sources are notably
Ynglinga saga,
Gesta Danorum,
Hrólfr Kraki's saga and the Latin summary of the lost
Skjöldunga saga. As far as Sweden is concerned, the dating of the events in the poem has been confirmed by archaeological excavations of the
barrows indicated by
Snorri Sturluson and by Swedish tradition as the graves of
Ohthere (dated to c. 530) and his son
Eadgils (dated to c. 575) in
Uppland,
Sweden. In Denmark, recent archaeological excavations at
Lejre, where Scandinavian tradition located the seat of the Scyldings, for example,
Heorot, have revealed that a hall was built in the mid-6th century, exactly the time period of
Beowulf. Three halls, each about 50 metres long, were found during the excavation. Like the
Finnsburg Fragment and several shorter surviving poems,
Beowulf has consequently been used as a source of information about Scandinavian personalities such as
Eadgils and
Hygelac, and about continental Germanic personalities such as
Offa, king of the continental
Angles.
Nineteenth-century archeological evidence may confirm elements of the
Beowulf story.
Eadgils was buried at
Uppsala, according to
Snorri Sturluson. When Eadgils' mound (to the left in the photo) was excavated in 1874, the finds supported
Beowulf and the sagas. They showed that a powerful man was buried in a large barrow, c 575, on a bear skin with two dogs and rich grave offerings. These remains include a
Frankish sword adorned with gold and garnets and a
tafl game with Roman pawns of ivory. He was dressed in a costly suit made of Frankish cloth with golden threads, and he wore a belt with a costly buckle. There were four cameos from the Middle East which were probably part of a casket. This would have been a burial fitting a king who was famous for his wealth in Old Norse sources.
Ongenþeow's barrow (to the right in the photo) hasn't been excavated. Chance stated that, "this view of the structure as two-part has generally prevailed since its inception in
J. R. R. Tolkien's in
Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936)." He returns to Heorot, where Hroðgar gives Beowulf many gifts, including the sword
Nægling, his family's heirloom.
Third battle: The dragon
Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes king of his own people. One day, late in Beowulf's life, a slave steals a golden cup from the lair of an unnamed
dragon (sometimes referred to as Sua) at
Earnaness. When the dragon sees that the cup has been stolen, it leaves its cave in a rage, burning up everything in sight. Beowulf and his warriors come to fight the dragon, but only one of the warriors, a brave young man named
Wiglaf, stays to help Beowulf, because the rest are too afraid. Beowulf kills the dragon with Wiglaf's help, but Beowulf dies from the wounds he's received.
After he's
cremated, Beowulf is buried in Geatland on a cliff overlooking the sea, where sailors are able to see his
barrow. The dragon's treasure is buried with him, rather than distributed to his people, as was Beowulf's wish, because of the curse associated with the hoard, and also accordance with Germanic and Scandanavian burial practices.
Structured by funerals
It is widely accepted that there are three funerals in
Beowulf. These funerals help to outline changes in the poem’s story as well as the audiences’ views on earthly possessions, battle and glory. The funerals are also paired with the three battles described above. .
Scyld Scefing (lines 1- 52)
The first funeral in the poem is of
Scyld Scefing (translated in some versions as "Shield Shiefson") the king of the Danes. The first fitt helps the poet illustrate the settings of the poem by introducing Hrothgar’s lineage. The funeral leads to the introduction of the hero,
Beowulf and his confrontation with the first monster,
Grendel. This passage begins by describing
Scyld’s glory as a “scourge of many tribes, a wrecker of mead-benches.”
This society was strongly defined in terms of
kinship; if someone was killed, it was the duty of surviving
kin to exact revenge either with their own lives or through
weregild, a payment of reparation. In addition Greenfield argues, the foot is used for the opposite effect, only appearing four times in the poem. It is used in conjunction with
Unferth (a man described by Beowulf as weak, traitorous, and cowardly). Greenfield notes that Unferth is described as “at the king’s feet” (line 499). Unferth is also a member of the foot troops, who, throughout the story, do nothing and “generally serve as backdrops for more heroic action.”
At the same time, Richard North (Professor of English, University College London) argues that the
Beowulf poet interpreted "
Danish myths in
Christian form" (as the poem would have served as a form of entertainment for a Christian audience), and states: "As yet we're no closer to finding out why the first audience of
Beowulf liked to hear stories about people routinely classified as damned. This question is pressing, given [...] that
Anglo-Saxons saw the
Danes as '
heathens' rather than as foreigners."
Grendel's mother and
Grendel are described as descendants of
Cain, a fact which some scholars link to
The Cain Tradition.
Allen Cabaniss argues that there are several similarities between
Beowulf and the
Bible. First he argues, for similarities between Beowulf and
Jesus: both are brave and selfless in overcoming the evils that oppose them, and both are kings that die to save their people. Secondly, he argues for a similarity between part of
The Book of Revelation (“shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Revelation 21:8) and the home of Grendel and Grendel's mother. Third, he compares the words of Jesus in the
Gospel of Luke (when he pardons those who call for his crucifixion) to the portion of the poem when (before plunging into the perilous lake) Beowulf forgives his enemy, Unferth.
Translations
In 1805
Sharon Turner translated selected verses into English. This was followed in 1814 by
John Josias Conybeare who published an edition "in English paraphrase and Latin verse translation." ]]
Artistic depictions of Beowulf
Beowulf has been adapted a number of times for other novels, theater, and cinema, including the 2005 film
Beowulf and Grendel and the 2007 animated film
Beowulf directed by
Robert Zemeckis.
Bibliography
Dictionaries
- Cameron, Angus, et al. Dictionary of Old English (Microfiche). Toronto: Published for the Dictionary of Old English Project Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986/1994.
Editions
Hypertext editions:
Breeden, David. The Adventures of Beowulf: an Adaptation from the Old English.
Klaeber, Frederick, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. Third ed. Boston: Heath, 1950.
Lancashire, Ian (for the Department of English, University of Toronto). Beowulf: Representative Poetry Online.
McMaster University. Beowulf in hypertext.
Northern Virginia Community College. Comparison of various English translations.
Ringler, Dick (University of Wisconsin). Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery.
Slade, Benjamin. Beowulf on Steorarume (Beowulf in Cyberspace).
University of Virginia. Audio reading of Beowulf in Old English.
Modern English translations:
Alexander, Michael. Beowulf : A Verse Translation. Penguin Classics;. Rev. ed. London: New York, 2003.
Anderson, Sarah M., Alan Sullivan, and Timothy Murphy. Beowulf. A Longman Cultural Edition;. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin; Mitchell, Bruce. Beowulf: A New Translation. London: Macmillan, 1968
Donaldson, E. Talbot, and Nicholas Howe. Beowulf : A Prose Translation : Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. A Norton Critical Edition. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2002.
Garmonsway, George Norman, et al. Beowulf and Its Analogues. (Revised 1980). ed. London: Dent, 1980.
Gummere, Frances. 'Beowulf'. St Petersburg, Florida:Red and Black Publishers, 2007. ISBN 978-0-979-1813-1-3.
Heaney, Seamus Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. ISBN 0-393-32097-9
Lehmann, Ruth. Beowulf : An Imitative Translation. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988.
R. M. Liuzza. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2000.
Osborn, Marijane. Annotated List of Beowulf Translations.
Raffel, Burton. Beowulf. New York: Signet Classic, 1999.
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2007. ISBN 978-0-87220-893-3
Swanton, Michael (ed.). Beowulf (Manchester Medieval Studies). Manchester: University, 1997.
Szobody, Michelle L. & Justin Gerard (Illustrator) Beowulf, Book I: Grendel the Ghastly. Greenville, SC: Portland Studios, 2007. ISBN-13 9780979718304
Breeden, David. [Thisrendition] isn't a literal translation but rather tells the story in an engrossing way, appropriate for comparison in a classroom study.
Old English and modern English:
I. Chickering, Howell D. Beowulf: a dual-language edition.New York: Anchor books ed., 1977,1989 ISBN 0-385-06213-3
Heaney, Seamus Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. ISBN 0-393-32097-9
Old English with glossaries:
Alexander, Michael. Beowulf: A Glossed Text. Second ed. Penguin: London, 2000.
Jack, George. Beowulf : A Student Edition. Oxford University Press: New York, 1997.
Klaeber, Frederick, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. Third ed. Boston: Heath, 1950.
Mitchell, Bruce, et al. Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts. Oxford, UK: Malden Ma., 1998.
Porter, John. Beowulf: text and translation. Anglo-Saxon Books, 1991.
Rebsamen, Frederick R. Beowulf : A Verse Translation. 1st ed. New York, NY: Icon Editions, 1991.
Wrenn, C.L., ed. Beowulf with the Finnesburg Fragment. 3rd ed. London: Harrap, 1973.
Audio:
Ringler, Dick & Norman Gilliland. Beowulf: The Complete Story—A Drama. Madison, WI: NEMO Productions, 2006. ISBN ISBN 0-9715093-2-8
P. Baker. Readings from Beowulf. In Old English.
Film:
Beowulf, 2007. Directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winston, Angelina Jolie and John Malkovic.
Scholarship
M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages (Vol 1), Beowulf. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. 29-32.
Alfano, Christine. "The Issue of Feminine Monstrosity: A Re-evaluation of Grendel's Mother." Comitatus 23 (1992): 1-16.
Battaglia, Frank. "The Germanic Earth Goddess in Beowulf." Mankind Quarterly 31.4 (Summer 1991): 415-46.
Chadwick, Nora K. "The Monsters and Beowulf." The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of Their History. Ed. Peter ed Clemoes. London: Bowes & Bowes, 1959. 171-203.
Chance, Jane. "The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother." New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Eds. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. 248-61.
Creed, Robert P. Reconstructing the Rhythm of Beowulf.
Damico, Helen. Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Drout, Michael. Beowulf and the Critics.
Gillam, Doreen M. "The Use of the Term 'Aeglaeca' in Beowulf at Lines 893 and 2592." Studia Germanica Gandensia 3 (1961): 145-69.
Grigsby, John. Beowulf & Grendel: The Truth Behind England's Oldest Legend. Watkins Publishing. London, 2005. (2006 reprint edition distributed by Sterling Publishing).
The Heroic Age, Issue 5. "Anthropological and Cultural Approaches to Beowulf." Summer/Autumn 2001.
Horner, Shari. The Discourse of Enclosure: Representing Women in Old English Literature. New York: SUNY Press, 2001.
Nicholson, Lewis E. (Ed.). An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. (1963), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-00006-9
North, Richard. Origins of Beowulf: From Vergil to Wiglaf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to Beowulf. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003.
---. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Stanley, E.G. "Did Beowulf Commit 'Feaxfeng' against Grendel's Mother." Notes and Queries 23 (1976): 339-40.
Tolkien, J.R.R.. (1983). London: George Allen & Unwin. ISBN 0-0480-9019-0
Trask, Richard M. "Preface to the Poems: Beowulf and Judith: Epic Companions." Beowulf and Judith : Two Heroes. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. 11-14.Further Information
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