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THe epic. Definition. A long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, related in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race.
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Definition • A long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, related in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race. • The traditional epics were shaped by a literary artist from historical and legendary materials which had developed in the oral traditions of his nation during a period of expansion and warfare (Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Iliad).
conventions • The hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance, usually the ideal man of his culture. He often has superhuman or divine traits. He has an imposing physical stature and is greater in all ways than the common man. • The setting is vast in scope. It covers great geographical distances, perhaps even visiting the underworld, other worlds, other times.
Conventions • The action consists of deeds of valor or superhuman courage (especially in battle). • Supernatural forces interest themselves in the action and intervene at times. The intervention of the gods is called "machinery.” • The style of writing is elevated, even ceremonial. • The epic often gives expression to the ideals of a nation or race. • Epic language tends to be repetitive.
Epic Hero: • Emerges to right a wrong of a society or people. • Behaves to excess and rises above the ordinary in his excess. • ‘s task is to raise or transform society. • Reminds a people of lost or corrupted values. • Is prepared to die at any moment. • Fights for glory.
Epic hero (cont’d.): • Sees beyond the vision of the present. • Has a relationship with the gods. • Must assume and declare his new identity. • Must be tested. • Must suffer.
The epic: • Recognizes evil. • Restores value to the good and virtuous. • Is about a search for center and wholeness. • Exaggerates realities of life toward the heroic. • Recognizes the power of fate. • Moves toward civilization. • Exaggerates, idealizes, ennobles.
The dark/middle ages • Important dates: • 800-600 B.C. – Celts = early inhabitants of Britain (Britons) • 55 B.C. – Romans conquer Britain • 410 A.D. – Romans left • 449 – Angles, Saxons, and Jutes => Anglo-Saxons/Old English • 597 – reestablishment of Christianity in England • 1066 – Normans invade and conquer the country
The Anglo-Saxon period/ Dark ages • England divided into separate kingdoms • Invasions from Vikings/Norsemen, “Danes” • Military society • Harsh, northern latitudes • After the Romans
Anglo-saxon culture • Germanic tribes brought oral traditions • Heroic ideal • Courage • Valor • Loyalty • Courtesy • Generosity • Awareness of shortness of life • Impersonal fate / response to fate • Fame
Beowulf • Setting: 5th-6th centuries, East Scandinavia/Northern Europe • Composed: 7th-11th centuries • Drawn from ancient Scandinavian and Germanic mythology • Old English • oral-formulaic poetry: chanted or spoken using stock phrases or formulas (enhance poetic expression as well as easy to remember) • Scop: professional poet, memory and historian of the tribe • mead hall: a communal gathering place for feasting and drinking mead, an alcoholic beverage made of water and fermented honey
Beowulf (cont’d.) • Dark background (pride, drunken violence, bloody borders, raids) • Beowulf stronger and wiser than other men, but mortal • hero as protector of his people • theme: no man is secure before fate or knows what awaits him after death • contrasts strength of young warrior to vulnerability fifty years later • Heroic and elegiac traditions • Beowulf as epic celebration + literary elegy • commemorates both hero and culture he represents
themes • Vision of evil in the world • Belief in the power of Fate to rule human destiny • Resignation to the certainty of death
flow • Part one: celebration, energetic young hero, rewards, praise, society wins, good triumphs over evil, peace and order restored • Part two: Geats in dissolution, treasure meaningless, no celebration, Beowulf deserted, circle of society broken, mourns passing of heroic societies
Interpretations • an antiquity, a way of directly reading the age of heroes • fable of the heroism necessary to preserve civilization • reflection of the values and interests of late Anglo-Saxon society
Kenning • What common object do all of the following kennings describe? • Arrow aimerDust terrorAntique printerTickle toolFowl Fashion • What essential quality of the object does each kenning focus on? • Definition: a literary device in which a noun is renamed in a creative way using a compound word or union of two separate words to combine ideas • Ruler as "shepherd of his people," "ring-giver," "shield"
Old english terms • Wergild: a reparational payment usually demanded of a person guilty of homicide or other wrongful death; “man price” • Wyrd: fate; how past actions continually affect and condition the future/how the future affects the past; interconnected nature of all actions; “the way things are” • Bede’s sparrow, metaphor for life
Other features • Caesura: a break or strong pause, usually near the middle of a verse • Appositive/Appositive phrase (Epithet): nouns or pronouns with modifiers that identify, explain, or rename other nouns or pronouns to provide important information about the characters and setting • Overstatement / Understatement • Alliteration • Figurative Language • Digressions
comitatus • association of warriors that provides the major bonding element in society • Germanic friendship structure • Bond between a Germanic warrior and his Lord, ensuring that neither leaves the field of battle before the other • Generosity Loyalty • Interdependence
Christian/Pagan Duality • Literacy/Christianity
Christian/Pagan Duality • "We have seen that the primitive material of Beowulf was derived from pagan folk-tale chronicle, and legend, and slowly welded into new unities. It remained for the Old English poet to complete this process of fusion by the conversion, or transmutation, of this material from pagan to Christian. The epic emerges at last as a Christian poem. This mutation, moreover, is not merely a matter of altered phrases, or of interpolated references to the Christian faith, but is a deeply pervasive infusion of Christian spirit coloring thought and judgment, governing motive and action, a continuous and active agent in the process of transformation.” Charles Kennedy
Sutton Hoo • link
Comitatus • Beowulf paid the price of death for that precious hoard; and each of the foes had found the end of this fleeting life. Befell erelong that the laggards in war the wood had left, trothbreakers, cowards, ten together, fearing before to flourish a spear in the sore distress of their sovran lord. Now in their shame their shields they carried, armor of fight, where the old man lay; and they gazed on Wiglaf. Wearied he sat at his sovran's shoulder, shieldsman good, to wake him with water. Nowise it availed. Though well he wished it, in world no more could he barrier life for that leader-of-battles nor baffle the will of all-wielding God. Doom of the Lord was law o'er the deeds of every man, as it is to-day. Grim was the answer, easy to get, from the youth for those that had yielded to fear!
Wiglafspake, the son of Weohstan, -- mournful he looked on those men unloved: -- "Who sooth will speak, can say indeed that the ruler who gave you golden rings and the harness of war in which ye stand -- for he at ale-bench often-times bestowed on hall-folk helm and breastplate, lord to liegemen, the likeliest gear which near of far he could find to give, -- threw away and wasted these weeds of battle, on men who failed when the foemen came! Not at all could the king of his comrades-in-arms venture to vaunt, though the Victory-Wielder, God, gave him grace that he got revenge sole with his sword in stress and need. To rescue his life, 'twas little that I could serve him in struggle; yet shift I made (hopeless it seemed) to help my kinsman. Its strength ever waned, when with weapon I struck that fatal foe, and the fire less strongly flowed from its head. -- Too few the heroes in throe of contest that thronged to our king! Now gift of treasure and girding of sword, joy of the house and home-delight shall fail your folk; his freehold-land every clansman within your kin shall lose and leave, when lords highborn hear afar of that flight of yours, a fameless deed. Yea, death is better for liegemen all than a life of shame!"
The last lines • THEN fashioned for him the folk of Geatsfirm on the earth a funeral-pile,and hung it with helmets and harness of warand breastplates bright, as the boon he asked;and they laid amid it the mighty chieftain,heroes mourning their master dear.Then on the hill that hugest of balefiresthe warriors wakened. Wood-smoke roseblack over blaze, and blent was the roarof flame with weeping (the wind was still),till the fire had broken the frame of bones,hot at the heart. In heavy moodtheir misery moaned they, their master's death.Wailing her woe, the widow old,her hair upbound, for Beowulf's deathsung in her sorrow, and said full oftshe dreaded the doleful days to come,deaths enow, and doom of battle,and shame. -- The smoke by the sky was devoured.
The folk of the Weders fashioned thereon the headland a barrow broad and high,by ocean-farers far descried:in ten days' time their toil had raised it,the battle-brave's beacon. Round brands of the pyrea wall they built, the worthiest everthat wit could prompt in their wisest men.They placed in the barrow that precious booty,the rounds and the rings they had reft erewhile,hardy heroes, from hoard in cave, --trusting the ground with treasure of earls,gold in the earth, where ever it liesuseless to men as of yore it was.
