Beowulf

1. Beowulf

2. Origins of the English Language • How did the English language start? • What were the first works of literature in English? • Keep in mind that The Odyssey was written around 700 B.C.

3. Britain 50-450 A.D. • At this time Britain –small part of the Roman Empire for nearly four hundred years. • The Roman Empire was Christian; its universal language was Latin--the spoken Latin which in the next five centuries would develop into French, Italian, Spanish, and the other "Romance" languages. • In Roman Britain, as far as we can tell, people spoke both Latin and Briton--the "Celtic" language (related to modern Welsh, Breton, and Irish and Scots Gaelic) which the Britons had been speaking before being conquered by Rome. Polytheistic to monotheistic.

4. Anglo-Saxon Conquest • 450 A.D., a group of barbarian warriors crossed the English Channel and invaded Roman Britain. These invaders were members of various tribes--Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians. Known as the Anglo-Saxon invasion. • The Anglo-Saxons were pagan: they worshipped a collection of gods that included the war god Tiu; Woden, the clever one-eyed leader of the gods; thunder-hammering Thor; and Freya, the seductive love-goddess. (Four of the modern days of our week are named after these gods: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.) • Their language was part of a group we now call "Germanic," related to modern German, Dutch, and Danish.

5. Anglo-Saxon Conquest • The Germanic tribes = fond of warfare. It was noble for a warrior to fight fiercely and die in battle. Complicated feuds: if someone from another tribe killed your kinsman, you were morally obligated to get revenge on someone from the killer's tribe; they were then obligated to get revenge on you, and so forth. • “Mead halls," drinking and listening to poets sing stories of famous heroes fighting and killing each other. • The poets "sang" these stories in poetry because the Anglo-Saxons were illiterate. Poetry is easier to remember than prose + attractive rhythm.

6. Anglo-Saxon Conquest • It took them about a hundred years to gain control of what we now call "England." ("England" is "Angle-land," named after the Angles, and "English" is "Anglish"--the language the Angles spoke.) • Wales and Cornwall remained Celtic and unconquered, as did Scotland, which had never been part of Roman Britain, either. (Neither the Romans nor the Anglo-Saxons conquered Ireland, the large island to the west.) • In the areas conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, Christianity disappeared, as did any trace of the Latin or British languages. Society was, roughly, divided between "earls" (or nobles) and "churls" (free workers).

7. Christianity in England • 597 - Pope Gregory the Great sends a group of missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Within about a century all England had become Christian. • Christianity - more hopeful than the old pagan religion • The monks and missionaries - brought books and ideas - teach the Anglo-Saxons to read and write.

8. Old English Poetry • Few books were written; most of those were written in Latin, for religious purposes. What are the earliest works written in Old English? Four books of Old English poetry exist today. • Stories from the Old Testament turned into Old English poetry • Christian poems based on themes from the New Testament or lives of saints. • An anthology of different short poems • The fourth contains Beowulf. Badly burned in 1731; today it is carefully preserved in the British Museum, in London

9. Beowulf • First page of the Beowulf manuscript • How Old English sounds: • http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/Beowulf.Readings/Prologue.html

10. Old English Poetry • Our ignorance about Beowulf. • Was it a traditional heroic story, written down by a monk and then recopied by other monks who added a thin veneer of Christian moralizing to a basically pagan tale? • Was it written by a scholar trying to create something like the great Latin epic, the Aeneid?

11. Introduction “The poem called Beowulf was composed sometime between the middle of the seventh and the end of the tenth century of the first millennium, in the language that is today called Anglo-Saxon or Old English. It is a heroic narrative, more than three thousand lines long, concerning the deeds of a Scandinavian prince, also called Beowulf, and it stands as one of the foundation works of poetry in English.” - Seamus Heaney (translator, poet)

12. Background on Beowulf • 3182 lines • Chief literary monument of the Old English Period • Author unknown - - likely composed in 8th century, by monk putting down oral tradition, with a mixture of Christian tenets (unique combo of Germanic pagan heroism + early Christian teaching/world-view) • first printed in the 19th century

13. Background on Beowulf • Setting: not in England, but in earlier period in Scandinavia (though it has been transformed into a uniquely English text) • in the heroic age of Germanic peoples (5th and 6th centuries) • hence, celebrates a past centuries old, glorified by oral traditions

14. Beowulf and Poetic Beginnings • Use of Contrast (man-filled Heorot vs. lonely Grendel stalking among corpses) • Early use of Symbolism (Beowulf hangs Grendel’s arm on wall: symbol of victory) • Hyperbole (struggle so fierce even the mighty Heorot is threatened)

15. Beowulf and Poetic Beginnings • Kennings - a compact metaphor that functions as a name or epithet…a riddle in miniature. • Oar-steed = ship • Storm of swords = battle • Fire-drake = dragon • Ring-river = moat • Whale-path = • Mead-hall = • Alliteration • Caesura: a pause in a line of poetry.

16. Important Terms • Primary Epic: an epic is a poem that records and celebrates the heroic achievements of an individual or individuals. A primary epic is an epic poem that comes from an oral tradition. • Scop: an Old English term for poet. In Anglo-Saxon culture, the scop had the important job of singing about the accomplishments of his patron and his people. • Heroic Ideal: Anglo-Saxon culture was governed by the ideals of bravery, loyalty and generosity. The king or lord surrounded himself with a band of retainers, who are rewarded with the spoils of their victories. As E. Talbot Donaldson writes, “the retainers are obligated to fight for their lord to the death, and if he is slain, to avenge him or die in the attempt. Blood vengeance is regarded as a sacred duty, and in poetry, everlasting shame awaits those who fail to observe it.”

17. Important Terms • Wergild: “manprice”; “If one of his kinsmen had been slain, a man had a special duty of either killing the slayer or exacting from him the payment of wergild. The money itself had less significance as wealth than as proof that the kinsmen had done what was right. Relatives who failed either to exact wergild or to take vengeance could never be happy, having found no practical way of satisfying their grief.” • Comitatus: “the society . . . or brotherhood of men who owed allegiance to a chieftain and expected his benevolence in return.” • Wyrd: fate, which was believed to be the controlling force of the world for pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon culture.

18. Basic Narrative of Beowulf • Beowulf (a Geat) travels to Denmark to help their king, Hrothgar; Beowulf’s victory over the cannibal/ogre/monster Grendel in Hrothgar’s mead-hall, Heorot. • Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel’s mother in her lair: a cave at the bottom of a swamp/lake • Beowulf’s return in glory to his uncle, Hygelac, King of Geatland, whose son Heardred, he succeeds to the throne • Fifty years later, with help of faithful young kinsman, slays dragon, but himself falls in the fight

19. Anglo-Saxon Characteristics • The “Hero-King”: Superman • Importance of the “mead-hall” (read “castle”) Heorot • Heorot, therefore, is symbol of man’s loyalty and celebration of unity • Grendel, excluded, is jealous? --Grendel as “outsider” • Warrior-Thane relationship of mutual trust and respect • Good kings: “protector of warriors,” “dispenser of treasure,” “ring-giver” • Bad kings: greedy, bad-tempered

20. Anglo-Saxon Characteristics • Wer-gild (man-price) • Loyalty is paramount • Revenge payment for slain kin • $ is not as significant as wealth as it is proof of worth (great treasure on Beowulf’s pyre) • Better to avenge death (by killing Grendel and mom) than to mourn • Notion of avenging Abel (Grendel as descendant of Cain) • Existence of so many feuds requiring vengeance & unsatisfied by arranged marriages leads to feeling of potentiality of attack & pervading sense of doom

21. Old English Poetry • Tone • Beowulf shares its gloomy mood with a good many other Old English poems. In this poetry the season seems always to be winter (hail, snow, icicles), the central figure often a displaced person comparing his or her present misery with some past (or hypothetical) state of joy.

22. Christianity in Beowulf • The only hope can come from God--the Christian God. • Some see Beowulf as a Christ figure, dying for his people; • Some see him as a doomed pagan, victim of his own pride when he decides to take on the dragon single-handed. • The poet treats Beowulf sympathetically, but Beowulf's behavior generally fits the values of a Germanic warrior better than the values of Christ, and his self-sacrificing death leads not to the salvation but to the destruction of his people.

23. Christianity in Beowulf • Old English poets seem less interested in confronting their heroes with moral choices (one right, one wrong) than in putting them in situations where any choice loses. • The Old English heroes do what they think is right, but lose anyway. • The importance of fate (or wyrd) in the Old English worldview.

24. THE UNIQUENESS OF BEOWULF • The author of Beowulf transcends the folk tales on which the story is based, for he strove to serve a purpose not unlike Virgil in the Aeneid (a Roman work, the “monk” would have known well): exalt a past which by tradition or fictions belongs to the cultural heritage of the poet’s nation (ie. English literature begins to see self at “nation”) • In structure and tone, this is NOT a song such as would have been sung by a scop, but has been transformed into a elaborate and sophisticated narrative (again, reminiscent of the Aeneid)...hence, making ,self-consciously, something much closer to what we would call “Literature.” Ie. a purposefully artful “story.” AND, remember “narrative” can still be “in poetic format.”