beowulf informative essay

Introduction of Beowulf

Despite its popularity during the previous few centuries, Beowulf, written by some anonymous author, is stated to have emerged between the period from 975AD to 1025AD. The whole manuscript is spread over a few pages comprising 3,182 lines. The storyline presents a Geats hero , Beowulf, who comes to help the Danish king, Hrothgar, to fight against the monster, Grendel. Not only he slays the monster but also attacks the monster’s mother to seal his victory and goes to Geatland to live a peaceful and comfortable life. However, when he gets old, he hears about a dragon and finally dies of wounds when battling and ultimately killing the dragon. The poem celebrates the victories as well as mourns the death of the brave king.

Summary of Beowulf

The storyline shows a Danish King, Hrothgar, from the linage of Shield Sheafson, a royal family head, living a prosperous and happy life with his subjects , enjoying great feasts in his Heorot, a mead-hall, when a plague strikes his subjects. It is a horrible monster or demon, Grendel, who appears and kills whom he sees at night . He has spread his reign of terror in the entire kingdom, making people stay ducked at their homes, forcing them to empty the hall. However, a young Geatish prince, Beowulf, happens to hear about this demon and reaches Hrothgar to offer his help to compensate for the assistance that he offered to his father when he was seeking refuge.

Having great regard for his father, Ecgtheow, Hrothgar jumps at the opportunity and welcomes Beowulf with a great feast. The great mead-hall is filled with his subjets to welcome the great hero but Unferth, a Danish warrior, mocks Beowulf for having won recognition without having executed any exploit. Boasts of Beowulf about his achievements, however, win him praise from the subjects. Finally, Grendel strikes during this pandemonium but finds Beowulf wrestling with the demon instead. With a torn arm left behind, Grendel escapes to the swamp.

Feeling boundless joy, Hrothgar profusely praises Beowulf and showers loads of gifts on him. A great feast is arranged in his honor with musicians displaying their skills. However, another threat appears on the horizon that his mother, who comes to Heorot and murders Hrothgar’s advisor in revenge. Aeschere’s death jolts the king into a rude awakening seeing whom Beowulf foams at the mouth and plunges into the swamp to kill Grendel’s mother. With his forged sword, he finally slays her and finds the dead body of the demon, Grendel. He also brings his head as a sign of his victory. The Danes celebrate this final victory with great pomp and show.

These two great exploits make Beowulf a household name in Denmark. He, however, has to depart to his land saying a sad adieu to King Hrothgar who is not willing to allow the warrior to depart, though, Geatland is calling him. Therefore, he returns to his land to unite with his people to help them live a prosperous life, leaving the royal couple to narrate his exploits. He then gives all his collection of treasures and gifts to the king who rewards him profusely for making Geatland a land of great warriors.

During the time, wars ensue and Hygelac gets killed battling the Shylfings, leaving only Beowulf to take the throne. Ruling for half a century and making his country prosperous and happy, Beowulf finally accepts the onslaught of age when he hears another plague that is of a dragon awakened in some cave by a thief. Seeing the destruction of the Geats, Beowulf again girds up his loins and battles the dragon in which he himself receives severe injuries, dying a bit later. However, he expresses his desire of having a good funeral pyre and a grave with the treasure extracted from the dragon’s grave.

Major Themes in Beowulf

• Heroic Code: Beowulf shows the heroic code of living and dying with honor that has been prevalent during the Anglo-Saxon age. The character of Beowulf shows that bravery, courage , and battling the demons and dragons win praise from the subjects and royals. When Beowulf expresses his desire to battle Grendel and settles the scores, he wins popularity in Denmark, and more so when he kills his mother too. The same goes when he dies in the last battle against the dragon. Thus he follows the heroic code and sets another example of bravery, chivalry, courage, and sacrifice.
• Good against Evil: Beowulf shows good versus evil through the character of Beowulf. Grendel kills the Danes for nothing, forcing Hrothgar to seek assistance from Beowulf who becomes a paragon of power as well as bravery. Later, the Geat leaves for his land and locks horns with the dragon when he is old to show that he has fought the evil during his youth and could fight if again when old even if he dies.
• Loyalty: Beowulf shows the theme of loyalty through Beowful and Unferth. When Hrothgar, the Danish king, faces the evil of Grendel and his mother, he accepts Beowulf’s offer. However, his own warrior, Unferth, is hellbent on making Beowulf fail. His taunts to Beowulf during the feast shows his prejudice toward the king. On the other hand, Beowulf’s companion Wiglaf stands in contrast to him that he supports Beowulf when death is staring in his face and yet he does not flee.
• Bravery: Beowulf shows the theme of bravery through King Hrothgar, Beowulf, and even Wiglaf. Beowulf’s offer to King Hrothgar to fight against Grendel is based on partly bravery and partly desire to repay his debt of providing shelter to his father. He even battles the dragon by the end of the story to demonstrate his bravery and this desire for popularity for bravery takes his life .
• Revenge: The epic shows the theme of revenge through the character of Grendel and Beowulf. Although the arrival of Beowulf is just to repay his debt to his father that Horthgar sheltered him in the past, his main desire is to exact the revenge of the killed Danes from Grendel. Then it moves the vicious circle of revenge in which Grendel’s mother, too, gets killed by Beowulf. The same goes for the killing of the dragon in which Beowulf suffers fatal injuries.
• Generosity: The heroic code of generosity is another theme that runs through Beowulf . The first example of this generosity is the act of Hrothgar to extend refuge to Ecgheow, when he was fleeing during his tribal feud. The second act is Beowulf’s offer to Hrothgar to battle Grendel to save the Danes. Although the royal couple, too, demonstrates this generosity, it is the rule of Beowulf that shows his generosity toward his subjects in that he loses his own life when battling the dragon.
• Hospitality: King Hrothgar shows the trait of hospitality when he extends refuge to Ecgheow. When Beowulf offers to repay the old debt, he also enjoys the same hospitality, though, he is a guest who has come on his own will to fight Grendel.
• Death: The theme of death has been shown through the heroic acts of Beowulf who defies all ancient norms and chases the demon to his swamp. He even battles the dragon that takes his own life, but does not budge from his stand of saving his subjects. This brave act of dying for one’s people wins him the praise of the poets.
• Duty of the King: The character of Beowulf shows the theme of the duty of the king in that a king is responsible for the lives of his subjects. That is why Hrothgar accepts his offer to help him get rid of Grendel and Beowulf loses his own life when he battles the dragon by the end of his rule.

Major Characters in Beowulf

• Beowulf: Major character and hero, Beowulf moves the storyline of the epic forward with his background, his parentage, his exploits, and his heroic death. A Geat by ethnicity, he leads from the front and takes his warriors to Denmark when he hears that the former benefactor of his father, Hrothgar, is facing a demon, Grendel, and feeling helpless to save the lives of his subjects. He offers his assistance and battles not only the demon but also kills his mother, diving deep into the swamp after her. After winning a heroic success, he leaves for his land to rule the Geats until he is quite old when he has had to fight the dragon – a battle which also takes his life. However, he advises Wiglaf, his aide, to take charge of the Geats and rule them like him.
• King Hrothgar: The second main character of Beowulf, King Hrothgar is a peace-loving person who wins the allegiance of the adjoining tribes and expands the frontiers of his kingdom. He is the second son of Healfdene, a Danish King, and has succeeded his brother Heorogar to rule Denmark after his death. Despite his bravery, courage, and boldness, he feels helpless in the face of Grendel, a demon that attacks his mead-hall and kills his soldiers in his attacks. Finally, Beowulf arrives to assist him in this battle, though, it is actually a return of his act of extending shelter to his father.
• Grendel: Grendel, the demon that attacks Hrothgar’s warriors and subjects when they are engaged in festivities in Heorot, represents evil to be conquered by Beowulf. He appears when the Danes are engaged in merrymaking and disappears when Beowulf cuts down his arm and makes him flee to his den under the swamp. However, his mother appears to exact revenge to whom Beowulf slays when he chases her down the swamp.
• Grendel’s Mother: Although she is a female character and anonymous as well, she attacks the Danes to avenge her son’s death. However, Beowulf chases her to the swamp and kills her after a fierce battle with her.
• The Dragon: The significance of the dragon lies in that he wounds Beowulf when he has witnessed a glorious period of prosperity and laid the example of a generous rule. The Geats, however, find themselves in hot waters when a thief mistakenly awakens the dragon, making him go on the killing spree. Thus, it becomes Beowulf’s responsibility to face the dragon and save his people. Ultimately he kills the dragon with the aid of his companion, Wiflag, but at the cost of his own life.
• Shield Sheafson: Despite being a minor character, Sheafson plays an important role in the upbringing of a good offspring of the kings. Hrothgar proves this when he orders the building of Heorot and later by accepting the assistance from Beowulf to relieve his subjects from the pangs of the death spree launched by Grendel. Sheafson receives heroic mourning from his subjects when they hand over his dead body to the sea waves.
• Unferth: Despite having a minor role, Unferth follows Hrothgar after his death and lacks the qualities to lead like him. Both of them have a brawl in Heorot where he dispises Beowulf’s qualities, while the latter accuses him of killing his brother. Later, both of them reconcile after Beowulf wins the swimming match and Unferth awards him his family sword.
• Wiglaf: The character of Wiglaf is significant in that he sides Beowulf against the dragon and wins that battle. In this way, he proves himself a suitable person to lead the Geats after Beowulf though his persona does not prosper under the towering shadow of Beowulf.
• Ecgtheow: The significance of the character of Ecgtheow lies in that he is the father of Beowulf and has trained him in chivalrous acts in that Beowulf immediately comes to the aid of the benefactor of his father when he hears about Dane’s problem of Grendel.

Writing Style of Beowulf

The writing style of the epic, Beowulf, by Seamus Heaney is quite plain and simple. The language, however, is rich with different types of images and other literary devices . The most prominent feature of this version is its terseness and conciseness interspersed with compound words such as “bone-house” and “whale-road.” Its alliterative verses create a melody, making it a fit read for gatherings as the use of two syllables in each half-line enriches its melodic impacts. Yet, it preserves its grandiose style that is fit for such classical epics.

Analysis of Literary Devices in Beowulf

• Action: The main action of the epic comprises the attack of Grendel at Heorot and then Beowulf’s battle with him, his mother, and then with the dragon. The rising action occurs when Beowulf enters the swamp to chase the mother of Grendel, and the falling action occurs when the dragon injures Beowulf.
• Alliteration : The epic shows the use of alliteration . For example,
• For the killing of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: Cain got no good from committing that murder because the Almighty made him anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and the giants too who strove with God time and again until He gave them their reward. (97-115)
• “It bothers me to have to burden anyone with all the grief Grendel has caused and the havoc he has wreaked upon us in Heorot, our humiliations. (474-478).
• An attendant stood by with a decorated pitcher, pouring bright helpings of mead. (494-497).

These examples show the alliterative sound of  /c/, /m/ in the first, /h/ in the second, and /p/ in the last.

3. Antagonist : Beowulf shows Grendel, his mother, and the dragon as antagonists of the epic as they kill the people mercilessly just to satisfy their instincts.

4. Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the epic such as;

• Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: (96-99)
• There was no hoard like it since Hama snatched the Brosings’ neck-chain and bore it away with its gems and settings to his shining fort. (1197-1199)
• Fate swept him away because of his proud need to provoke a feud with the Frisians. (1205-1208)

These two allusions are the biblical allusions taken from the religious setting to shed light on the existing setting. However, the third one is a historical allusion .

5. Conflict : The conflict in the epic, Beowulf, is between the good and evil on one level and between the representative characters on the other level. Beowulf stands for good and Grendel, his mother and the dragon stand for evil.

6. Characters: Beowulf presents static characters . The reason is that all the characters stay almost the same from the first to the last, representing either good or evil such as Beowulf, Grendel, the dragon, Hygelac, and Hrothgar.

7. Climax : The climax occurs when Beowulf fights the demon and his mother.

8. Foreshadowing : The epic shows the following examples of foreshadowing ;

• There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes, a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes. This terror of the hall-troops had come far. (4-6)
• That doom abided, but in time it would come: the killer instinct unleashed among in-laws, the blood-lust rampant. (84-87)
• Then the gold hilt was handed over to the old lord, a relic from long ago for the venerable ruler. (1677-1680)
• He carried the arms to the victim’s kinfolk, the burnished helmet, the webbed chain-mail and that relic of the giants. (2615-2619)

These quotes from Beowulf foreshadow the coming events.

9. Hyperbole : Hyperbole or exaggeration occurs in the epic at various places such as;

• greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back with the butchered corpses. (121-125)

These verses show the exaggerated killing of the demon, Grendel.

10. Imagery : Imagery means using images such as given in the novel . For example,

• Then as dawn brightened and the day broke Grendel’s powers of destruction were plain: their wassail was over, they wept to heaven and mourned under morning. (126-130)
• The bloodshot water wallowed and surged, there were loathsome upthrows and overturnings of waves and gore and wound-slurry. With his death upon him, he had dived deep into his marsh-den, drowned out his life and his heathen soul: hell claimed him there. (846-852)
• the old dawn-scorching serpent’s den packed with goblets and vessels from the past, tarnished and corroding. Rusty helmets all eaten away. Armbands everywhere, artfully wrought. (2760-2764)

These examples show the use of different images such as sound, color, and sight.

11. Litotes : The epic shows the example of litotes . For example,

• Cain got no good from committing that murder because the Almighty made him anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms. (8-12)

Here instead of using “bad,” Heaney has used negative “no good.”

12. Metaphor : Beowulf shows good use of various metaphors such as;

• I have heard, who was Onela’s queen, a balm in bed to the battle-scarred Swede. (62-63)
• Hrothgar, the helmet of Shieldings, spoke (456)
• Every bone in his body quailed and recoiled, but he could not escape. (752-753)
• This terror of the hall-troops had come far. A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on as his powers waxed and his worth was proved. (6-8)

These examples show that Onela is compared to balm, Hrothgar to the helmet, and bones to recoils.

13. Mood : The epic, Beowulf, shows festive mood and enjoyment in the beginning but then it turns out tragic in the middle and the end.

14. Motif : Most important motifs of Beowulf are the monster, the oral traditions, Heorot, the sea, and the dragon.

15. Narrator : Beowulf has been narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator .

16. Personification : Beowulf shows the use of personifications such as;

• My armour helped me to hold out; my hard-ringed chain-mail, hand-forged and linked. (550-551)
• Through my own hands, the fury of battle had finished off the sea-beast. (557-559)
• Then his rage boiled over, he ripped open the mouth of the building, maddening for blood. (723-724)

Here armor, hands, and rage have been shown as if they have lives of their own.

17. Point of View : The epic has been narrated from the third person point of view based on the views of the omniscient narrator.

18. Protagonist : The Geatish hero, Beowulf is the protagonist of the epic. The epic starts with his entry in Denmark and moves forward as he fights the demon, his mother, and finally the dragon until his death.

19. Rhetorical Questions : The epic shows good use of rhetorical questions at several places. For example,

• how could they know fate, the grim shape of things to come, the threat looming over many thanes as night approached and King Hrothgar prepared to retire to his quarters? (1233-1237)
• Then Hrothgar, the Shieldings’ helmet, spoke: “Rest? What is rest? Sorrow has returned. Alas for the Danes!  (1320-1323)
• How did you fare on your foreign voyage, dear Beowulf, when you abruptly decided to sail away across the salt water and fight at Heorot? Did you help Hrothgar much in the end? Could you ease the prince of his well-known troubles? (1987-1992)

This example shows the use of rhetorical questions posed but different characters not to elicit answers but to stress upon the underlined idea.

20. Setting : The setting of the epic, Beowulf, spreads over Denmark and then some areas of Geatland.

21. Simile : The epic shows a good use of various similes such as;

• Over the waves, with the wind behind her and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird. (217-218)
• Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike and welt on the hand of that heathen brute was like barbed steel. (983-987)
• King Hrethel kept me and took care of me, was open-handed, behaved like a kinsman. (2430-2431)

These are similes as the use of the word “like” shows the comparison between different things.

Related posts:

• Beowulf Characters
• Beowulf Themes
• Beowulf Quotations

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Anonymous's Beowulf . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Beowulf: Introduction

Beowulf: plot summary, beowulf: detailed summary & analysis, beowulf: themes, beowulf: quotes, beowulf: characters, beowulf: symbols, beowulf: theme wheel, brief biography of anonymous.

Historical Context of Beowulf

Other books related to beowulf.

• Full Title: Beowulf
• When Published: Beowulf exists in a single damaged manuscript in the British Library. The manuscript was probably written in England in the early eleventh century, though the poem itself was probably first written down in the eighth century, and was passed on orally before that.
• Literary Period: Medieval; Anglo-Saxon
• Genre: Epic poem
• Setting: Northern Europe, especially Denmark and Sweden, around the sixth century
• Climax: Beowulf's final fight with a dragon
• Point of View: The unnamed speaker of the poem

Extra Credit for Beowulf

Old English Style. Beowulf is the longest poem written in Old English. Old English poetry uses alliterative meter, meaning that the stressed words in a line begin with the same sound. A line of Old English poetry has two halves, with a brief pause, called a caesura, in the middle of the line. The two halves of a line are linked by the alliteration (repetition of an initial consonant); at least three words in a line alliterate. Old English poetry also uses kennings , compressed metaphors like "heaven's candle" for the sun, or "whale's road" for the sea, or calling a woman married in an effort to gain peace a "peace weaver."

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An introduction to beowulf.

The long Old English heroic poem known to modern audiences as Beowulf is probably the most famous product of the rich literary tradition of Anglo-Saxon England (which flourished in the period c. 650-1100). The poem tells the story of Beowulf, a heroic warrior, and later king, of the Geats (a possibly mythical Scandinavian tribe). The events of the poem are set during the Germanic 'heroic age' - a period stretching from the fourth to the sixth century by modern reckoning but described by the poet simply as geardagas ('days of old').

During the course of the poem, the young Beowulf travels across the sea from his homeland in order to help the Danish King Hrothgar, whose people have suffered for twelve years at the hands (and teeth) of a man-shaped and man-eating creature known as Grendel. Having been graciously received by Hrothgar and promised great rewards, Beowulf awaits Grendel's coming by night in the royal hall Heorot. In a scene of great drama and suspense, the poet describes Grendel's approach out of the misty darkness, his sudden and violent entrance into the hall, and his ferocious hand-to-hand encounter with Beowulf. The hero is, of course, victorious, and the fight ends with Beowulf ripping off Grendel's arm at the socket and with Grendel fleeing back into the darkness, mortally wounded. The relief that this victory brings to the Danes is, however, short-lived, as the very next night Grendel's (unnamed and previously unmentioned) mother attacks the hall and kills one of Hrothgar's chief counsellors by way of revenge for her dead son. Once again, Beowulf is called into action, this time going on the offensive and descending through a mere into a subterranean cave-like hall to fight and ultimately kill this ferocious woman (described in the text as ides aglæcwif - 'a lady, a fearsome woman').

Beowulf's exploits amongst the Danes take up most of the first two-thirds of the 3,182 lines of the poem. In the remainder of the poem, Beowulf returns home to the Geats, where his hard-won glory is celebrated and rewarded by his uncle King Hygelac. Fifty years pass, and Beowulf, now an old man, is king of the Geats when his people are menaced by a fire-breathing dragon. Roused once more to heroic action, Beowulf leads an expedition to the dragon’s barrow, where he intends to fight the creature in single combat (as in the days of his youth and glory). The old king is, however, overmatched in his final battle. Seized by the neck in the dragon's mighty jaws, Beowulf is able to win victory only with the help of his young kinsman Wiglaf and at the cost of his own life. The poem ends in elegiac mood, as celebration of Beowulf's heroism mingles with lament for his death and with fearful predictions regarding the fate of his people.

Such a bare summary makes the plot and structure of the poem sound straightforward, but one of the distinctive characteristics of the artistry of Beowulf is the way in which the poet skilfully moves backwards and forwards along a linear narrative timeline, interweaving the main events of the poem with a plethora of inset and secondary narratives. Foreground and background merge in this consummate example of so-called 'interlace' structure, so that the exploits of Beowulf himself are inextricably immersed within a richer background of heroic legend. The success of this narrative technique is one of the many astounding features of the poem. Although many of the events and characters mentioned in Beowulf (including both Hrothgar and Hygelac) are more or less familiar from other early medieval written sources, Beowulf himself is not mentioned elsewhere. It seems likely that the narrative core of the poem was the invention of the Anglo-Saxon poet, part of whose achievement was to 'place' this new narrative material so seamlessly within the wider corpus of Germanic legendary history.

The individual responsible for this remarkable achievement has remained elusive. Beowulf survives in a single manuscript copy (now held in the British Library: Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv), probably produced around about the year 1000. Beyond this fact, however, the poem's origins are obscure. Like most English verse from this period, the poem is anonymous, and the approximate date of composition has long been a topic of (sometimes acrimonious) debate amongst scholars, with estimates ranging from the mid seventh to the early eleventh century. Faced with such a lack of solid evidence, we can deduce little about the circumstances in which the poem was produced. Like other surviving Old English poems (though to an even greater degree), the language of Beowulf is marked simultaneously by an astonishingly creative and poetic verbal inventiveness - particularly evident in the use of uniquely-occurring descriptive compound words - and by a layer of verbal formulas and 'type scenes' which recur both throughout the poem and throughout the surviving corpus of Old English poetry. These latter features, which may seem dangerously close to cliché for a modern audience, point to the ultimate origins of Old English poetry in an essentially pre-literate, oral, and performative tradition. It seems unlikely, however, that Beowulf is itself in any real sense an oral composition. Most scholars today would accept that the poem is (very largely if not entirely) the product of a single poetic vision, the work of a literate and Christian poet probably working within a monastic or courtly milieux.

That the poet was a Christian writing for a Christian audience is clear. Grendel, for example, is explained by the poet-narrator as a diabolical descendant of Cain, the first murderer, from whose off-spring, according to the Old Testament and to Judeo-Christian Apocrypha, arose the various races of giants. This contextualizing knowledge is not shared, however, by the characters who inhabit the heroic world of the poem. Looking back to the heroic age, the poet is looking back into the pre-Christian Germanic past of the Anglo-Saxon people. The assumed Christian perspective and beliefs of the poet and audience stand in uneasy juxtaposition to the ill-defined but definitely pre-Christian and fatalistic beliefs of the characters themselves. Beowulf, Hrothgar, and other actors in the poem often frame their behaviour in terms of a moral imperative that in many ways approximates the basic tenets of Christianity, but, ignorant of the teachings of Christ, their perspective is limited by the reach of human life on earth. According to Beowulf himself, fame amongst men is the best that can be hoped for a dead warrior:

'Ure æghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes; wyrce se þe mote domes ær deaþe; þæt bið drihtguman unlifgendum æfter selest.'

( Beowulf 1386-89, 'Each of us must await the end of life in the world. Let he who may achieve glory before death - that will afterwards be best for the dead warrior.')

The poignant irony of such a statement could not have been lost upon an audience for whom life in the world was merely a precursor to the eternal reward (or punishment) to be experienced in the world to come.

As an Old English poem, Beowulf is a unique and incomparable literary artefact - the only known surviving example of the efforts of a supreme master working within a mature and remarkably long-lived poetic tradition. Its superlative poetic qualities have been recognized by generations of modern readers, and there is increasing evidence to suggest that Beowulf was both widely known amongst and frequently imitated by other Anglo-Saxon poets whose work also survives. There are, to be sure, difficulties associated with the appreciation of the poem today. Most notably, modern readers must overcome the barrier caused by the language of the poem, recognizably English but a form of English in use a thousand years before our own time. But such barriers are far from insuperable, especially given the availability of many excellent and sympathetic modern translations. The effort is well-rewarded. We need not seek an excuse to read and study Beowulf today; the poem is its own best justification.

If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: An Introduction to Beowulf at http://writersinspire.org/content/introduction-beowulf by Daniel Thomas, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (2.0 UK).

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Craig R. Davis, Smith College

• Published: 01 July 2014
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Beowulf is a narrative meditation in traditional Old English alliterative verse on the origins of violence in human affairs; it was included in the Nowell Codex, an ethnographic miscellany compiled around the year 1000 on the most exotic peoples in space and time known to the Anglo-Saxons. No one knows when, where, by whom, or for whom this poem was first composed during the previous half millennium, but it was likely preserved, copied, or created at the court of King Alfred in the 890s. The hero confronts three monsters who personify forces that tear apart human communities and bring them to ruin: Grendel, who displays the power of entrenched tribal chauvinism; his mother, who reveals the source of such hatred in wounded love of kind; and the dragon, who embodies a more generalized principle of negative eventuality— wyrd —which renders all human efforts, even those of the noble hero, compromised and ultimately self-defeating.

The Poem and Its Manuscript 1

Beowulf is a narrative meditation in Old English verse on the origins of violence in human affairs and the capacity of both political institutions and individual leaders to control it. The poet’s prognosis is not good. He tells the story of a young prince who travels from his homeland in southern Sweden to help the old Danish King Hrothgar confront a troll-like revenant named Grendel, who has been terrorizing the royal hall of Heorot at night for some twelve years. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, ripping off his arm as the creature runs howling into the night. The next night Grendel’s mother, a smaller but equally dangerous monster, returns to take revenge. Beowulf then hunts down Grendel’s mother in her lair below the bottom of a haunted lake; he is almost overcome but resurfaces beyond hope with Grendel’s head as a trophy and the hilt of the ancient sword with which he dispatched the she-ogre. He then returns home to his uncle Hygelac, king of the Geats, and eventually assumes the throne himself, ruling his people peacefully for half a century before he, too, is suddenly confronted in old age by a menace from within his own kingdom. This time the menace is a dragon aroused by the theft of a single cup from its hoard. This “heathen gold” (line 2276b) is the accumulated wealth of a lost race, secreted a thousand years before by its last survivor. Beowulf seeks out this third monster, manages to kill it with the help of his young kinsman Wiglaf, but steps only paces away before succumbing himself. The dying king rejoices in his last moments of life over the treasure he has won for his people, but they fear the future without him. Three characters in the poem prophesy the imminent destruction of the Geats once their enemies learn of Beowulf’s death: Wiglaf (lines 2884–2890a), the messenger he sends back to the Geatish army (lines 2999–3027), and a Geatish woman who mourns by the old king’s funeral pyre, anticipating

cruel invasions, many murderous slaughters, terror of troops, humiliation [probably meaning rape], and enslavement. (lines 3153–3155a)

These eventualities were not far off the mark, the poet affirms in his understated style: The Geatish messenger “did not much lie / in his words or the deeds” he predicted (lines 3029b-3030a). But the Beowulf poet never tells us exactly what happened to his hero’s people in the end except to suggest that they are no more, obliterated long since by their enemies or driven into exile, victims of what we would nowadays call genocide or ethnic cleansing. The poem ends with the burial of Beowulf’s ashes in a mound overlooking the sea, along with rest of the dragon’s hoard. “There it still lies,” the poet remarks, “just as useless to men as it was before” (line 3168).

The 3,182 verses of Beowulf are in a form of highly allusive alliterative poetry that appears wherever Germanic languages have first been recorded in writing, beginning around 400 ce with the runic inscription on a gold horn from Gallehus, Denmark, suggesting that this oral tradition had developed in prehistoric times among various speakers of Common Germanic on the Continent. The poem was copied by two anonymous scribes into its single surviving manuscript—the Nowell Codex of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv—in some southern English monastery around the year 1000. No one knows when, where, by whom, or for whom this poem was originally composed during the previous half millennium, whether it reflects ancient legendary traditions brought to the former Roman diocese of Britannia by immigrants from northwestern Germany and Jutland during the fifth and sixth centuries or later literary art inspired by biblical, classical, or possibly even Scandinavian models, these last introduced to Britain by Danish Vikings during the ninth century. Serious scholars have proposed virtually every period and kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from the transmarine migration across the North Sea—before the Anglo-Saxons had even converted to Christianity or learned to read and write the Latin alphabet—through the middle of the eleventh century, that is, after the time most experts in paleography would date the copying of the Nowell Codex. None of these suggestions has ever won scholarly consensus or even a plurality of agreement, although fashions for earlier or later dating have come and gone. We have a better date for the creation of the Homeric poems on the Aegean island of Chios, ca. 700 bce, than we do for Beowulf in Britain over 1,200 years later.

Nor do we know how many copies of the poem lie between the archetype or first written version of Beowulf and the manuscript in which it has been preserved in the late West Saxon dialect of its last copying. Anglo-Saxon scribes routinely but inconsistently updated the language of their exemplar—the text of the poem from which they were copying—so that whenever we have two texts of a vernacular poem to compare, we can see that many of the lines have been altered or adapted in some way. But scribes often simply made mistakes as well—some obvious, others less clearly so. Much of Beowulf scholarship is devoted to determining and construing the words of the text the Cotton Vitellius scribes had before them. Some scholars are conservative when it comes to prioritizing the extant words and letters that appear in the surviving codex; others are more comfortable with emending that text on paleographic, philological, or even metrical and thematic grounds to offer what they believe to be a more plausible version. Either way, the Cotton Vitellius scribes’ mistakes and misprisions, especially their repeated misreadings of particular letters in their exemplar, suggest that this prior version had been reproduced in a scribal hand unfamiliar to them, probably Anglo-Saxon set miniscule, which had gone out of use about a century or so earlier. 2 In addition, this copy of the poem from sometime before ca. 900, apparently in the early West Saxon dialect of Old English, must have contained a number of linguistic and metrical archaisms shared by much earlier times and places in Anglo-Saxon England. These may be verbal fossils of a version first written down in seventh- or eighth-century Northumbria, Mercia, or East Anglia or, conversely, they may simply represent an older-fashioned koiné or regionally hybrid poetic language that continued to be cultivated for this elevated register of traditional verse in the courts and monasteries of a later period. One third of the surviving corpus of Old English poetry is of this secular heroic sort, but it shares many features of imagery and specialized diction with another third, which is mainly hagiographical in content, and also with a final third that, like parts of Beowulf itself, retells stories from the Bible in a way dramatized by Bede’s reported miracle of the seventh-century Northumbrian herdsman who was inspired to compose the first known poem in the English language, Cædmon’s Hymn , on God’s creation of middangeard “the middle enclosure, the world of human habitation” at the beginning of time. 3

The two Cotton Vitellius scribes copied Beowulf into a manuscript collection comprising another Old English poem about the ancient Hebrew heroine Judith and three prose texts translated from Latin into the vernacular: The Passion of St. Christopher, The Wonders of the East , and The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle . In 1953 Kenneth Sisam called this collection a liber de diversis monstris, anglice, or “book of various monsters, in English,” 4 even though two of the texts— The Passion of St. Christopher and Judith —lack any explicit reference to physical monstrosity per se. The saint is a very large man, however, apparently “twelve fathoms” tall from the equivalent length of the iron bench to which his persecutors bind him (lines 9–10). 5 In the Latin source from which this partially incomplete text has been adapted, St. Christopher is said to live among the man-eating cynocephali of Samos and is himself “dog-headed,” though human and true-believing in his heart. 6 Judith beheads a drunken sexual predator, the Assyrian general Holofernes, who, though human in outward form, is a monster on the inside, described as “the devil’s spawn” (line 61b) and “the hideous assailant” (line 75a), the same kind of language used to describe the giant cannibal Grendel in Beowulf . 7

The miscellany in which Beowulf has been preserved could thus be called more accurately a liber de diversis populis, anglice , or “book of various peoples in English,” a compilation of sensational ethnographic exotica on the most distant peoples in space and time known to the Anglo-Saxons, many of whom were familiar from earlier Greco-Roman accounts of such races: giants, cannibals, dog-headed men, and other Homodubii , as they are called in The Wonders of the East, †æt beoƒ twi-men “that is, maybe-people” (line 32), living among water-monsters, fiery-eyed beasts, poisonous serpents, dragons, and other strange creatures at the extremities of the known world. 8   Beowulf itself begins in geardagum —“in the old days” (line 1b)—of the ancient North and tells of even earlier times and peoples stretching all the way back to the primal murder of Genesis 4 to explain the division of the human race into warring tribes, one of which, the monstrous descendents of Cain, were banished by God to the waste places of the earth, literally “marginalized” from the rest of humanity for their ancestor’s sin. And it is the song sung by Hrothgar’s scop , or “bard,” in Heorot about God’s creation of divine order in the world—“a bright fair field surrounded by water” (line 93)—reminiscent of Cædmon’s Hymn , that so infuriates Grendel, who has been driven out with all his kind into the “land of the monster-race” (line 104b), in his case, the fens and moors, the “wolf-slopes” and “windy headlands” (line 1358), that edge the northern ocean.

Beowulf thus offers an Anglo-Saxon supplement to biblical and classical accounts of the beginnings of human life on earth and the various peoples who have occupied its northern reaches. The poem is similarly concerned to describe the subsequent course of human events there in moral and spiritual terms, though deeply inflected by the world view and value system with which many of these old legends had been imbued during their previous retellings in pagan times. Especially significant in this regard is the influence of wyrd , a general principle of negative eventuality or cosmic entropy, sometimes translated neutrally as “fate” but more often connoting a less happy sense of “(bad) luck” or even “doom.” The term is an old one, with cognates in Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Norse, apparently the nominalized past participle of a verb that appears in Old English as weorƒan , “to happen, come about, turn out.” Wyrd is both what has “happened” in the past and a predictable “result” or inevitable “outcome” in the future that can be fled or resisted but never permanently escaped. We can have no real doubt that the poet of Beowulf was a baptized Roman Catholic Christian, probably literate in English if not in Latin as well, quite possibly in religious orders, but so familiar with the pre-Christian tradition of vernacular poetry that he could comfortably replicate its oral artistry and elegiac themes to invoke a whole world of antique northern legendry. In fact, he does so in an even more expansive and ambitious way than appears in the shorter heroic lays he gives to poet characters in his poem, probably a more accurate reflection of the scope of such traditional narratives in actual performance. These are the formal songs of the Fight at Finnsburg performed by a royal scop in Heorot (lines 1063–1159a) and a more extemporaneous celebration of Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel by one of Hrothgar’s retainers on horseback:

At times a thegn of the king, a man laden with song, mindful of lays, he who remembered a vast multitude of old stories, found fresh words bound truly together; thoughtfully the man began to recount the adventure of Beowulf and deftly to weave an apt tale, varying his expressions. (lines 867b-874a)

If Beowulf is the product of such oral-formulaic composition in public performance, its written form must be the result of a special dictation over several sittings, perhaps the “self-dictation” by a poet who could read and write, instead of the direct transcription of a single event. Yet the complex plotting and self-conscious craftsmanship of this much longer poem—its piquing internal parallelisms and neatly calculated word chimes over many hundreds of lines, its command of both Christian learning and native lore, its restless and incomplete reflection on the meaning of the events it dramatizes—suggest that the poet of Beowulf , at his desk,was rather imagining an oral performance.

Unfortunately his poem seems to have flopped in its own day, if not with its immediate patrons at least with ensuing generations of Anglo-Saxon readers. 9 Except for the two Cotton Vitellius scribes, we have no known audience or readership of Beowulf whose political interests, social identity, religious profession, or historical circumstances might help us to parse more precisely the poet’s likely intentions. Tom Shippey places the composition of Beowulf in the time of Eddius Stephanus, a Northumbrian Latin author who knew all about the Merovingian Franks mentioned in the poem and wrote his Life of Wilfrid at Ripon, North Yorkshire, in the second decade of the eighth century. 10 Shippey thus reasserts a once dominant view that Beowulf should be dated to the “age of Bede” (ca. 673–735) in Northumbria. He traces the historical setting of the poem, based on a reference to Hygelac’s raid in the sixth-century History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, to authentic oral memories of the reign of King Theudebert I, who died in 548, suggesting that “for Scandinavia in the Age of Migrations [ Beowulf ] could be the nearest thing to a contemporary document that we possess,” one that supplements but never seriously contradicts the bits of information we can gather from Frankish or Anglo-Saxon sources written in Latin. 11 R. D. Fulk would concur with this earlier dating on the basis of the conservative prosody of the poem, putting it on metrical and linguistic grounds to before the year 750, if composed south of the Humber, or before 850, if in the pre-Viking kingdom of Northumbria. 12 John D. Niles and Marijane Osborn believe the poet may have modeled Heorot on the large tenth-century halls recently excavated at Lejre at the head of Roskilde Fjord on the island of Zealand, a site traditionally associated with the Skjöldungar , the legendary Scylding kings of Denmark. 13 And Roberta Frank sees the influence of Norse skaldic poetry on Beowulf , plus a certain archaizing reinvention of the pre-Christian past extrapolated by the poet from his knowledge of contemporary pagan Vikings. 14 Kevin Kiernan puts the poem well into the eleventh century from the condition of its manuscript, which he believes consists of two originally separate poems joined together by a scribe or scribes around the year 1016, the advent of the rule in England of King Cnut of Denmark. 15

For my part, I suspect that the poem may have passed in some form through the court of King Alfred at Winchester in the later ninth century, since we know of only two Anglo-Saxons by name who were interested in the kind of old ethnic lore contained in Beowulf : (1) King Alfred, who traced his paternal ancestry back to the Danish king Scyld Scefing celebrated in the opening lines of the poem, 16 and (2) his mother Osburh, who was a Jutish princess from the Isle of Wight, a people rationalized as Scandinavian Geats in the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People , preserved in a manuscript contemporary with the end of Alfred’s reign in 899. 17 According to the king’s Welsh bishop Asser, Osburh promised to give a book of vernacular poetry to whomever of her sons could first learn its contents. 18 Alfred won. We would love to know what was in that book, of course, quite possibly some stirring tales that Osburh wished her West Saxon boys to know about their putative maternal forebears, the heroic predecessors of the “Geatish” kings of Wight. It may even have contained a version of Beowulf itself or of some similar verse legends about the ancient Geatish royals—Hrethel, Herebeald, Hæthcyn, Hygelac, Heardred—that went into its composition to be combined there with traditions of the early Danish kings brought to England by Scaldingi earlier in the ninth century, that is, Vikings who claimed Scylding heritage, 19 some of whom settled the Danelaw after 878 under King Alfred’s new godson Guthrum, king of the East Angles.

Later in life, Alfred assembled a team of scholars to translate into English those Latin works he felt most important for his people to know, very likely including some or all of the ethnographic works included in the Nowell Codex with a verse rendering of the Old Testament book of Judith , the namesake of the king’s Frankish stepmother and sister-in-law, Queen Judith of Flanders. King Alfred’s court at Winchester in the 890s was a veritable hotbed of dynastic speculation and learned inquiry. It is there and then that I believe we should look for the immediate manuscript precursor of a poem that memorializes Geats and Danes in their northern homelands. Whenever Beowulf was first composed in Anglo-Saxon England—in whatever kingdom and in whatever form—this inquisitive monarch would have found it of compelling personal interest. He had motive, means, and opportunity to sponsor the preservation, perhaps even the original composition, of a poem honoring the two ancestral peoples from whom he was proud to descend on both his mother’s and his father’s sides. 20

But we cannot know for sure. All we know is that a version of the poem in Alfred’s early West Saxon dialect of Old English from sometime before the year of his death in 899 seems to have found its way into a nearby southern English monastery during the following century. There Beowulf lay buried in its obscure codex for more than five hundred years, unread and soon virtually unreadable, until King Henry VIII nationalized the monasteries in the sixteenth century, after which it emerged among antiquarian book collectors before coming within inches of being destroyed by fire in 1731. It is scorched and crumbling around its edges, from which at least 2,000 letters have been lost since the end of the eighteenth century. The text of this damaged poem would itself seem to exemplify the fate it depicts for all human achievements.

Yet, since the time Beowulf was first translated (badly, into Latin) in 1815 and then presented in a more reliable scholarly edition in 1832, the power of its language, the starkness of its imagery, the subtlety of its thought, and the poignancy of its sad, brave view of life have inspired as many scholarly studies, at least until recently, as the combined tragedies of Shakespeare. It is the first great poem in English and, after centuries of silence of its own, speaks for generations of mute speakers of that language. It is perhaps the single most expressive statement of the imaginative world of northern Europe during the centuries that followed the fall of Rome, at least among those barbarian nobles who formed the first ruling elites in postimperial lowland Britain. But even so, Beowulf raises as many questions as it answers, leaving its readers in bemused uncertainty about the poet’s purpose and final characterization of his hero, creating a vertigo of moral ambiguity that stands in sharp contrast to its hero’s own quick confidence and decisive action. It is remarkable that this long-forgotten and poorly understood poem should finally have come into its own only at the beginning of the twenty-first century, emerging from its cloistered manuscript in the nineteenth and from anthologies for students in the twentieth to find itself even more compelling to translators, poets, scholars, writers, filmmakers, graphic artists, musical composers, and other interpreters than at any other time of its existence on earth. 21

In addition, the recent revolution of postmodern literary theory has opened up many new approaches to the interpretation of this old poem, transcending former debates about whether it is essentially a Christian work or a pagan one, whether it is the product of monastic literary culture or an ancient oral heritage, and whether its hero is to be seen as a doomed heathen warlord or a Christian role model, even a self-sacrificial figure of Christ. As we will see, current discussions of the meaning of Beowulf (or its conscientious lack thereof in certain deconstructive analyses) revive and reframe these scholarly controversies in ways that naturally reflect our own historical moment and cultural preoccupations. Many critics in recent years, for instance, have found sympathy not so much for the martial hero as for the monsters he kills, especially Grendel and his mother, who are felt to have been unfairly “Othered” or “abjectified” by the human characters in the poem, 22 providing painful examples of the way we demonize those who are different from us, especially those whom we have conquered, colonized, enslaved, supplanted, or otherwise abused, never more so than in our rewriting of their histories from our own triumphalist perspective.

But for virtually all interpreters, the meaning of the monsters lies at the very heart of the Beowulf poet’s project. Their character and significance has continued to exercise scholars ever since J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous defense of them in his 1936 British Academy address, “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics,” certainly the most provocative and influential reading of the poem to date. 23 Tolkien had hoped to restore these creatures to their rightful place in our appreciation of the poem, to counter earlier dismissals of the monster fights as puerile fantasies that the poet had inappropriately placed in the center of his poem’s attention, relegating the more weighty matters of ancient northern history to its periphery. To the contrary, Tolkien argues, the monsters make the poem. Beowulf is not demeaned but dignified by the dire antagonists he must face: Grendel as a young hero at the beginning of his career, the dragon as an old king at its end. These monsters represent forces beyond all human understanding and control, powers inimical to human civilization and social order. They can be held off ane hwile (“for a while”) (line 1762a), as Hrothgar says in his reflections on his own life that he shares with Beowulf, but not forever, not even for very long, even by the most courageous and determined of heroes.

The structure of Beowulf is simpler, Tolkien suggests, than the three monster fights into which it is divided. It recounts the rise and fall of a noble life, interweaving the hero’s adventures with countless other half told tales of similar, though often much less edifying struggles between human individuals and groups. Some of these episodes are recounted at considerable length by the poet in his own voice or by characters within his poem, but more often they are simply adduced by the slimmest and most cryptic of allusions, so that we often have a hard time reconstructing the backstory that would clarify the point of the reference. And these obscurely glimpsed episodes of legendary history only ramify with increasing intensity during the final third of the poem, significantly retarding the climax of Beowulf’s encounter with the dragon. He himself falls into a memory-riddled funk moments before calling out the chthonic worm, brooding obsessively on the sad and morally confusing deaths of his royal kinsmen before him. The general function of these ancillary tales and their thematic thrust in particular instances continues to bedevil Beowulf scholars, but they are clearly intended to contextualize our understanding of the hero’s fights with the monsters. And these creatures themselves are described in such suggestive language and juxtaposed to human characters in such striking ways that we begin to suspect that the poet is using them not only to challenge his hero but also to reflect upon his own motivations and those of other human figures in the poem. The poet’s relentless apposition of monsters and humans makes us wonder whether his hero and the other good characters are somehow complicit in their own demise, driven and distracted by the very demons they had hoped to exorcize from their own society.

The poet of Beowulf at first presents Grendel as a kind of evil spirit: he is “a fiend in hell” (line 101a), a “grim ghost” (line 102a), “the enemy of mankind” (line 164b)—this last an epithet used to describe Satan in Old English biblical poems. Yet he names this character after a creature familiar from Anglo-Saxon folklore, a grendel , a marsh or boundary troll, whom the poet further rationalizes not as a fallen angel but as a mortal human renegade:

a terrible haunter of the borderlands, one who held the moors, the fens and fastnesses; this unhappy man inhabited the land of the monster-race for quite a while after the Creator had condemned him among the race of Cain—the eternal Lord avenged that killing in which he slew Abel; [Cain] had no joy in that feud, for the Maker banished him far from mankind for his crime. From him sprang all misbegotten creatures, etins and elves and ogres, and also the giants who strove against God for a long time; he paid them their reward for that. (lines 103–114)

This last is an allusion to the great Flood of Genesis 6 from which the Beowulf poet imagines some of the wicked giants surviving amphibiously in their watery refuges.

But none of the human characters in the poem knows any of this. Grendel’s malice is inexplicable to them. Nor do they know what provokes his attack upon the newly built royal hall in which he spitefully joins Hrothgar’s thegns uninvited at their feast, killing and eating thirty of them instead. But we know, because the poet tells us: It was the sweet song of the scop singing of divine order in the world, plus the sound of mirth among former enemies to whom the tough but generous Scylding monarchs have brought peace and amity. The Beowulf poet’s sympathies are plainly royalist. Of Hrothgar’s great grandfather Scyld, his judgment is famously terse but emphatic: “That was a good king!” (line 11b). There is no trace of condolence for the various tribal chieftains who were crushed and despoiled by Scyld, or intimidated into submission, local warlords from whom the upstart king wrested their mead benches, symbols of the autonomy with which they had once feasted their own followers in their own mead halls. Even in pagan times the Christian God promotes broad national monarchy and the political stability it brings. He sends Scyld an heir precisely because “he had seen the wicked violence / they once suffered for so long without a king” (lines 14b‒16a).

But it was not to last. The moment Hrothgar finishes building Heorot, the poet alludes to its imminent destruction—not by monsters, but by humans:

The hall towered tall, high and horn-gabled; it was waiting for waves of battle, the flame of hatred; nor would it be too long before sword-hate between father- and son-in-law had to awaken from murderous strife. (lines 81b‒85)

We learn the details later. Heorot will be burned to the ground by Ingeld, future husband of Hrothgar’s daughter Freawaru, tribal king of the Heathobards in northern Germany, with whom the great king Hrothgar hopes to make peace through this marriage alliance despite the fact that the Danes themselves have killed Ingeld’s father Froda in the process of building their empire. Hrothgar hopes that Ingeld will be seduced to forget his grief and humiliation with this advantageous match, but he will not succeed. Beowulf is made shrewdly to foresee the failure of the good king’s plans when he reports back to his uncle Hygelac in Geatland. He can just imagine the barely suppressed resentment of the Heathobard warriors as they observe their family heirlooms dangling from their enemies’ sword belts. It will not take much to reignite Ingeld’s animosity, the hero surmises, “even though the bride be good” (line 2031b). With a narrative trick he uses time and again, the Beowulf poet scarcely finishes building the royal hall in our minds’ eyes before he erases it forever in the most aggressive and totalizing way. 25 It will be consumed by the fire of renewed hostility between intimately related folk before it is even rescued from its earlier haunting by an enemy inspired by similar ethnic animosity. Grendel wants no sibb , no “peace” or “kinship,” “with anyone of the Danish host, / would not relax his mortal hatred, negotiate a settlement” (lines 154b‒156). Grendel foreshadows in monstrous caricature the angry spirit that will well up in the breast of the all too predictable human king.

The poet uses flame as a symbol of hatred and its power to destroy. Fire burns everywhere in this dark poem. It burns on the water of the monsters’ mere, “a hateful marvel” (line 1365b). It flashes in Grendel’s eyes—“an unlovely gleam, most like a flame” (line 727). It burns uncle and nephew lying side by side on their pyre in the Finnsburg lay (lines 1107–1124) after the Frisian king Finn has plotted vengeance against his brother-in-law Hnæf for nearly two decades under the pretense of a happy marriage to the Danish princess Hildeburh. It is no wonder the Beowulf poet makes Grendel a direct descendent of Cain, the perpetrator, he implies, of the real original sin of mankind, 26 a view shared by other Old English poets. That of Maxims I says:

Feuding came to mankind from the instant earth swallowed Abel’s blood. That was no one-day deed of strife. From it the drops of malice splashed far and wide, great evil among men and hate-stirred strife among many peoples. Cain slew his own brother, but did not keep killing to himself. From then on it was seen that everywhere constant strife destroyed men. (lines 192–198a) 27

Or the poet of Genesis A , using a different image:

From that stem afterwards, ever longer the stronger, grew hateful and furious fruit. The shoots of violence spread far and wide among the tribes of men. The branches of evil, hard and sharp, pricked the sons of men. They still do. From that broad blade every injury began to blossom. Not without cause can we weep over this story, this slaughter-grim result [ wyrd ]. (lines 988b‒997a) 28

Grendel embodies our violent human heritage in its most hideous, characteristic, and predictable form; his cannibalism incarnates a system of human interaction that incessantly devours the lives of men.

Grendel’s Mother 29

Paul Acker has observed an interesting irony about Tolkien’s classic defense of the monsters of Beowulf , especially with regard to Grendel’s mother—that is, he completely ignores her. 30 Tolkien apparently did not respond to this character with the same critical approval he gave the other two monsters. He did not find the hero similarly enhanced by his encounter with her. Why not? Why did Tolkien not recognize in Grendel’s mother a menace of comparable significance to that which he found in Grendel and the dragon? Is she a mere redundancy, a storyteller’s trick, used to scare the audience with a sudden new threat once they think the real danger has passed?

I would suggest that Grendel’s mother’s reiteration of her son’s violence is part of the poet’s point, reflecting his further thoughts on the irrepressibility of the violence these monsters represent and its ultimate origin. The attack by Grendel’s mother is surprising in several ways, partly in her character as a female but also as the mother of her monstrous son. Who would have thought that man-eating fen trolls had fretful moms waiting for them back in their lairs? And the poet slyly remarks that it was only a girl monster who came to Heorot that second night, one whose threat was weaker than her son’s to the extent that “a woman’s strength” and “a female’s fighting power” is less than that

of an armed man when forged sword, beaten by hammers, the blood-stained blade with its mighty edges, cleaves boar-crests on helmets. (lines 1282b–1287)

Well, a woman’s strength and fighting power do not sound too terribly dangerous compared with that kind of hard, weaponized masculine force.

But the poet is only teasing us. Grendel may have burst headlong into Heorot “like a man,” but his mother proves to be the far wilier and more formidable opponent. She is difficult for Beowulf even to find among the many hazards at the bottom of her mere; she is slippery, quick, and clever as she reverses his grip on her shoulder (or hair), flips him under her, and draws her long knife. She almost gets him, too, and would certainly have done for Beowulf if Almighty God himself had not intervened at that very moment in one of the most explicit intrusions of divine agency in the entire poem:

Then the son of Ecgtheow would have perished under the broad earth, the champion of the Geats, if his war-shirt had not given him help, the hard battle-net—and holy God. The wise Lord, ruler of the heavens, gave him victory in battle; he decided it rightly, easily, when [Beowulf] stood up again. (lines 1550–1556)

In addition, when we compare her motivation to Grendel’s indiscriminate rapacity or the dragon’s blind possessiveness, Grendel’s mother is the most intelligent and rational of the three monsters in Beowulf . She leaves her lair for one very specific reason: to avenge her son. Her behavior has both intellectual clarity and a certain moral rigor: She scrupulously exacts a life for a life, according to the strict rules of the old lex talionis (Exodus 21: 24). Andy Orchard suggests that we should see her as the “wronged” party in this exchange, 31 and Alfred Bammesberger agrees that Grendel’s mother is “legally entitled to avenge” Grendel because a foreign stranger, to whom her people have never done any harm, has just killed her only son. 32 At the very least, the poet has given this monster a moral and emotional claim upon our sympathies that provokes one of the poem’s most potently ambivalent moments, since a mother’s outraged love for her mutilated child is a feeling that everyone in the audience of Beowulf —Anglo-Saxon, modern, or postmodern—can be expected immediately to recognize and understand. We know exactly how this mother—any mother—would feel. So the introduction of Grendel’s mother creates a point of intimate but repellent contact between the monsters of the poem and the humans of its audience that the poet contrives to confuse or complicate our perception of the evil these creatures are supposed to represent and their apparent Otherness from our own conscious values. Grendel’s mother is not an utterly alien Other.

And the logic of the revenge imperative she illustrates is also obvious, a principle of retaliation known to scholars of feud (perhaps a bit euphemistically) as “self-help justice,” a pattern of axiomatic reciprocity between rival groups—both positive and negative—whose conventional protocols function as a kind of organic constitution in stateless societies or those with weakly institutionalized law enforcement. 33 The system is supposed to minimize violence by channeling it through a limited number of expendable actors who must follow the rules of the feud, thus promoting a broader political balance and cohesion between competing clans or factions. However, the poet of Beowulf has already shown that any deterrent, equalizing, or cohesive purpose to a system of mutual exchange had long since broken down in Denmark. There is no “peace in the feud” between humans and monsters, since Grendel evinces no fear at all of retaliation from the Danes as a restraint upon his behavior and rejoices in the one-sided violence he is able to inflict on them. In fact, the Beowulf poet troubles to show us that even when a thoroughly just vengeance is taken upon this tihtbysig “crime-laden” man, a hardened criminal or repeat offender, violence does not settle the matter at all but simply provokes an immediate retaliation on the part of the perpetrator’s aggrieved kin.

Grendel’s mother drags off Æschere, Hrothgar’s oldest and most beloved retainer, the one surviving thegn who, as a young man, used to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with his lord as they defended each other’s heads in battle (lines 1325–1328a). His loss is specially and bitterly mourned, even after all the other deaths suffered by the Danes. The poet invents the vicious beheading of this character at the hands of Grendel’s mother in order to create a particular thematic opportunity. It gives him a chance to lament, in his own voice, the system of reciprocal violence that Grendel’s mother incarnates in her actions and intent: “that was not a good exchange / that on both sides they had to pay with the lives of their loved ones” (lines 1304b–1306a), he says, with remarkable compunction for the feelings of a deadly she troll. But this way, he suggests, both sides will always lose those they love the most.

The Beowulf poet uses Grendel’s mother to imagine with greater emotional clarity and intellectual precision the source of such self-consuming violence between groups. It is primordial love, he realizes, that is the bottomless wellspring of human hatred. We hate so hard because we love so much and so protectively those whom we see as moral appendages of own persons, a mother especially, since her physical connection to her offspring is so obvious and tangible. Families are the same. We are sprung from their bodies, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh. Wounded love of kind is thus the indefatigable engine of violence in human affairs. C. R. Hallpike, writing of the hill clans of Papua New Guinea, concludes that certain patterns of familial affection and group identity simply make “a high level of conflict both permanent and inescapable.” 34 The Beowulf poet agrees: He uses the image of a perfectly natural but monstrous mother’s love to convey the power and predictability of the impulse for revenge, the inevitability of the violence it constantly engenders. And rather than leave us merely appalled at this conclusion, within seventy lines the poet troubles to associate his own noble hero with this very same reaction: “Do not mourn, old man,” Beowulf reassures the grieving Hrothgar: “it is better for a man / to avenge his friend than to mourn much” (lines 1384b–1385). We best express our love not through sorrow but through more violence. Let’s kill one of theirs, we’ll feel better. And the old king leaps for joy, thanking God, when he learns of his young friend’s determination (lines 1397–1398).

This embrace of the revenge imperative by the good people in the poem is no temporary or adventitious association, adduced at this particular point simply to motivate Beowulf’s next adventure. Even on the last day of his life on earth, when as an old king, the hero pauses to reflect before entering the path down to the dragon’s barrow, he rejoices not in having killed Grendel and his mother for Hrothgar. What Beowulf is most proud of is that his beloved uncle Hygelac had never needed to seek among other peoples a warrior worse than him to fight their enemies. He remained loyal to the end and personally succeeded in avenging the king’s death on that battlefield in Frisia by crushing the life out of his Frankish counterpart, the human champion Dæghrefn, with his own bare hands (lines 2501–2508). This gloating memory is what gives Beowulf the final gumption to call out the dragon a few moments later. And we might recall that the Geats’ attack upon the Franks, in which Hygelac was killed, is said three times by the poet to have been an unprovoked plundering raid, structurally analogous, one might say, to Grendel’s random depredation of Danes: “ Wyrd took him / when for pride [Hygelac] asked for trouble, for a fight among the Frisians” (lines 1205b–1207a; cf. 2490–2508a, and 2910b–2921). This observation puts our hero in a position precisely parallel to that of Grendel’s mother, in that he avenges the slaying of a close kinsman who has already put himself in the wrong by killing first. The Franks, like the Danes, were just trying to defend themselves from a wanton aggressor, only to suffer further loss of life at the hands of their attacker’s aggrieved kin: Beowulf in this case, Grendel’s mother in the other.

What is interesting here is that the poet has demonized in Grendel’s mother the same attitude he honors in his hero. And there are other moments in the poem where we feel the same thrill of revenge. I am thinking in particular of the relief created by the scop of the Finnsburg lay when, after that awful winter in Frisia where the Danish leader has been forced to swear allegiance to his lord’s slayer Finn, Hunlaf’s son finally puts the sword into Hengest’s lap. A satisfying moment of revenge—when Dæghrefn’s ribs crack in Beowulf’s bear hug or his windpipe collapses in the hero’s great grip—is a memory the old king cherishes to his dying day. This murderous pang of grief turned joy in the moment of revenge is the still point in the turning world of Beowulf , a satisfaction shared both by the Geatish prince and by Grendel’s mother.

But do we need go so far as to conclude that Beowulf himself becomes a monster by killing monsters, that he musters such force of inhuman rage and vengefulness, of arrogance and “us-ism,” that he takes on the character of the enemies he overcomes rather than the human beings he tries to protect? 35 Beowulf is not a monster, the poet reminds us. He is a really nice man. When he dies, the Geats mourn him from the bottom of their hearts:

They said he was of kings in the world the mildest of men and the most courteous, kindest to his people and most eager for their regard. (lines 3180–3182)

Much f this esteem comes from the fact that Beowulf never killed a kinsman, a blessing for which he thanks God (lines 2739b–2743a) and a rarity among Germanic princes, historical or legendary. But neither did Beowulf let his kinsmen lie unavenged, even when they were stupidly, wickedly, disastrously in the wrong. Beowulf does not become a monster by killing monsters: The monsters of Beowulf become human by killing humans. It’s what we do. It comes naturally to us, especially when someone harms our loved ones.

The Dragon 36

It may feel better to avenge one’s friend than to mourn much, but it does not bring him back (in the old cliché), nor does it seem to make things much better for anyone in the long run. Even the vengeance Beowulf takes upon the dragon for burning down his hall is just as self-destructive as the dragon’s own retaliation for the violation of its “hall” in the earth. They both get their revenge, of course, but lose their lives in the process. Like Grendel’s mother, Beowulf enjoys a momentary triumph, but blood is pulsing from the bite-wound in his neck, poison working in his breast, his face scorched by flames and caustic venom. Our damaged and disfigured hero is now something of a monster himself, exulting (almost pathetically) in the wealth he has won for his people, not realizing that it is worthless to them without him. Swedes and Franks and other enemies will all remember the many injuries Geats have done them in the past, including some big ones by Beowulf himself. This is not at all a good exchange, that on all sides everyone ends up paying with the lives of their loved ones, the hero of the poem just like everybody else.

Unlike Grendel and his mother, however, the dragon is not a humanoid monster. It is supercultural and therefore ultimately insuperable, 37 an earthly analogue of the great world serpent that the god Thor will kill on the last day, stepping, just like Beowulf, only paces away to his own death. Both god and hero try to defend their people from this existential threat, but their own great strength redounds upon them: It is the shock of Thor’s hammer blow that blasts all human life from earth, not the Midgard serpent. 38 Beowulf only breaks his good sword on the dragon’s hard skull, his final “victory,” leaving his people more vulnerable to their enemies than before. These are not ironies for the Beowulf poet. They are simply wyrd —the way things have always “turned out”—for all heroes, all monsters, all creatures on earth. “ Wyrd has swept away / all of my kinsmen to their predestined end,” the hero says: “I must follow them” (lines 2814b-2816). Despite his many references to the Christian God, then, whose presence is so palpable in the earlier parts of his poem, the poet of Beowulf chooses to end his story the old-fashioned way, a choice that may help explain why his work never achieved the kind of cultural authority in Christian Anglo-Saxon England enjoyed by other epics of comparable depth and artistry, which express for their societies a clearer sense of divine purpose, national mission, dynastic legitimacy, or folk character. Instead, Beowulf slipped away into the corners of English literary culture, quietly awaiting its revival in our own post-Christian, postmodern, less confident age.

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Davis, Craig R. “The Geats of Beowulf .” In The Dating of “Beowulf”: A Reassessment , ed. Leonard Neidorf . Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, forthcoming 2015 .

Davis, Craig R. “A Mother from Hell: Love and Vengeance in Beowulf .” In Vox Germanica: Essays in Germanic Languages and Literature in Honor of James E. Cathey , ed. Stephen J. Harris , Michael Moynihan , and Sherrill Harbison , pp. 187–198. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2012 .

Davis, Craig R. “Theories of History in Traditional Plots.” In Myth in Early Northwest Europe , ed. Stephen O. Glosecki , pp. 31–45. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2007 .

Frank, Roberta . “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History.” In Beowulf , ed. Harold Bloom , pp. 51–61. New York: Chelsea House, 1987 .

Harris, Joseph. “ Beowulf as Epic.” Oral Tradition 15 ( 2000 ): 159–169.

Hill, John M.   The Narrative Pulse of “Beowulf”: Arrivals and Departures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008 .

Hill, John M. , ed. On the Aesthetics of “Beowulf” and Other Old English Poems . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010 .

Hodges, H. J. “Cain’s Fratricide: Original Violence as “Original Sin” in Beowulf .” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 15.1 ( 2007 ): 31–56.

Johnston, Andrew James . “ Beowulf and the Mask of Archaism.” In his Performing the Middle Ages from “Beowulf” to “Othello ,” pp. 23–90. Leiden: Brepols, 2008 .

Kiernan, Kevin , ed. Electronic “Beowulf” 3.0 . London: British Library, 2011 . DVD.

Klaeber’s “Beowulf” and the “Fight at Finnsburg, ” 4th ed., by R. D. Fulk , Robert E. Bjork , and John D. Niles . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008 .

Lapidge, Michael. “The Archetype of Beowulf .” Anglo-Saxon England 29 ( 2000 ): 5–41.

Lapidge, Michael. “ Beowulf and Perception,” Proceedings of the British Academy 111 ( 2001 ): 61–97.

Leyerle, John . “ Beowulf the Hero and the King. ” Medium Ævum 34 ( 1965 ): 89–102.

Leyerle, John . “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf .” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 ( 1967 ): 1–17.

McTurk, Rory . “External Prolepsis in Beowulf .” In ˇe Comoun Peplis Language , ed. Marcin Krygier , Liliana Sikorska , et al., pp. 113–130. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011 .

Niles, John D. “ Beowulf”: The Poem and Its Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983 .

Niles, John D. , and Marijane Osborn , eds. “ Beowulf” and Lejre . Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2007 .

Orchard, Andy . A Critical Companion to “Beowulf. ” Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003 .

Owen-Crocker, Gale R.   The Four Funerals of “Beowulf” and the Structure of the Poem. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 .

Robinson, Fred C. “ Beowulf” and the Appositive Style . Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1985 .

Russom, Geoffrey . “History and Anachronism in Beowulf .” In Epic and History , ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub , pp. 243–261. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 .

Scheil, Andrew. “ Beowulf and the Emergent Occasion.” Literary Imagination 11.1 ( 2008 ): 83–98.

Scheil, Andrew. “The Historiographic Dimensions of Beowulf .” JEGP 107.3 ( 2008 ): 281–302.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 ( 1936 ): 245–295.

1 The standard edition is Klaeber’s   “ Beowulf” and the “Fight at Finnsburg , ” 4th ed., by R. D. Fulk , Robert E. Bjork , and John D. Niles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) . For a version of this edition with prose translation, plus the texts and translations of other works included in the same codex and a related fragment, see The   “ Beowulf” Manuscript: The Complete Texts and “The Fight at Finnsburg ,” ed. and trans. R. D. Fulk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) . Translations of poetry are my own, but I have been guided by Fulk in rendering key words and phrases in Judith and the prose texts of the Nowell Codex, as noted below.

2 Michael Lapidge , “The Archetype of Beowulf ,” Anglo-Saxon England 29 (2000): 5–41 ; qualified by Craig R. Davis in “An Ethnic Dating of Beowulf ,” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006): 111–129, at p. 112.

3 Cædmon’s Hymn, in Three Northumbrian Poems , rev. ed. A. H. Smith (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1978) , line 7a.

4 Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 96 . Cf. Craig R. Davis , “The Geats of Beowulf ,” in The Dating of “Beowulf”: A Reassessment , ed. Leonard Neidorf (Cambridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming 2014) , from which the following comments have been adapted.

5 The Passion of Saint Christopher , in The “Beowulf” Manuscript , ed. and trans. Fulk , pp. 1–13 .

6 An Old English Martyrology , ed. and trans. George Herzfeld , Early English Text Society o.s. 116 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1900), pp. 67–69.

7 Judith , in The “Beowulf” Manuscript , ed. and trans. Fulk , pp. 297–323 .

8 The Wonders of the East , in The “Beowulf” Manuscript , ed. and trans. Fulk , pp. 15–31 . Cf. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories , ed. Robert B. Strassler , trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Random House, 2007).

9 Craig R. Davis , “Redundant Ethnogenesis in Beowulf ,” The Heroic Age 5 (2001). Available at: http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/5/Davis1.html

10 “The Merov(ich)ingian Again: damnatio memoriae and the usus scholarum,” in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge , ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 389–406.

11 Afterword in “Beowulf” and Lejre , ed. John D. Niles and Marijane Osborn (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2007): 469–79, at p. 470.

12 A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 348–392. Cf. “Dates, Origins, Influences, Genre,” in the Introduction to Klaeber’s “Beowulf” , pp. clxii‒clxxxviii, at clxv‒clxvii.

“Beowulf”’ and Lejre (2007) .

14 “Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf,” in The Dating of ‘Beowulf’ , ed. Colin Chase (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981): 123–139 , and “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History,” in Beowulf , ed. Harold Bloom (rpt. New York: Chelsea House, 1987): 51–61.

15 “Beowulf” and the “Beowulf” Manuscript , rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) . Cf. his Electronic ‘Beowulf’ 3.0 (London: British Library, 2011) , DVD.

16 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , rev. trans. ed. Dorothy Whitelock , et al. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961) , sub anno 855 (for 857).

17 Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” , ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) , bk. 1, chap. 15, and bk. 4, chap. 16; The Old English Version of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English People ,” ed. T. Miller , 2 vols. (London: Early English Text Society, 1959–1963) , vol. I, bk. 1, chap. 12; and vol. II, bk. 4, chap. 18.

18 Asser’s “Life of King Alfred,” ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1904) , chap. 23.

19 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: A History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony , ed. Ted Johnson South (Woodbridge/Rochester: D. S. Brewer, 2002) , chaps. 7 and 11.

Davis, “An Ethnic Dating,” p. 129.

For instance, four film versions have appeared in recent years: Graham Baker’s Beowulf (1999), John McTiernan and Michael Crichton’s 13th Warrior (1999), Sturla Gunnarson’s Beowulf and Grendel (2005), and Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf (2007) . In addition, poet Seamus Heaney first published his acclaimed and controversial rendering in 1999 (London: Faber and Faber), which has subsequently appeared in different editions by Norton in New York, plus many other translations and adaptations of the poem in several languages and various media.

22 For instance, Renée R. Trilling , “Beyond Abjection: The Problem with Grendel’s Mother Again,” Parergon 24.1 (2007): 1–20.

Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936) : 245–295.

24 Cf. my earlier study, “The Exorcism of Grendel,” chap. 5 of ‘Beowulf’ and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England (New York: Garland, 1996) .

25 Cf. Helen T. Bennett , “The Postmodern Hall in Beowulf : Endings Embedded in Beginnings,” The Heroic Age 12 (2009). Available at: http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/12/ba.php

26 Edward B. Irving, Jr ., Rereading ‘Beowulf’ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 138 . Cf. H. J. Hodges , “Cain’s Fratricide: Original Violence as ‘Original Sin’ in Beowulf ,” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 15.1 (2007): 31–56.

27 George Philip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie , eds., The Exeter Book (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 163.

28 George Philip Krapp , ed., The Junius Manuscript (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), p. 32.

29 The following comments are adapted from my recent essay, “A Mother from Hell: Love and Vengeance in Beowulf ,” in Vox Germanica: Essays in Germanic Languages and Literature in Honor of James E. Cathey , ed. Stephen J. Harris , Michael Moynihan , and Sherrill Harbison (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2012): 187–198.

30 “Horror and the Maternal in Beowulf ,” PMLA 21 (2006): 702–716 .

31 A Critical Companion to “Beowulf” (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2003), p. 187.

32 “Old English cuƒe folme in Beowulf , Line 1303A,” Neophilologus 89.4 (2005): 625–627, at p. 626 .

33 Cf. Jacob Black-Michaud , Cohesive Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s, 1975) ; Christopher Boehm , Blood Revenge: The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987) ; Max Gluckman , “Peace in the Feud,” Past and Present 8 (1955): 1–14 , and his Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1965) .

34 Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains: The Generation of Conflict in Tauade Society (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. vii.

35 For instance, Manish Sharma , “Metalepsis and Monstrosity: The Boundaries of Narrative Structure in Beowulf ,” Studies in Philology 102.3 (2005): 247–279 ; and Susan M. Kim , “‘As I Once Did with Grendel’: Boasting and Nostalgia in Beowulf ,” Modern Philology 103.1 (2005): 4–27.

Cf. “ Wyrd and the World-Serpent,” chap. 7 of my “ Beowulf” and the Demise (1996) .

Davis, “Beowulf”and the Demise , p. xi.

38 Völuspá , ed. Sigurƒur Nordal , trans. B. S. Benedikz and John McKinnell (Durham, NC: Durham and St. Andrews Medieval Texts, 1980) , stanza 56.

This list includes studies chosen for their contribution to the present essay and continuing promise for future study of the poem.

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Beowulf essay

Beowulf is a beautiful tale of heroism that inspires the audience to live a heroic life without holding onto illusions and false hopes. No mortal is strong enough to win against death itself, but Beowulf has depicted how the human will can transcend and fight the battle against the worst of human fears. There are three evils that Beowulf personified: Physical, moral and metaphysical.

A descendant of Cain, Grendel is the most frightening personification of physical Evil. As the author put it, Grendel lives “in a hell not hell but Earth”. There is no actual description of Grendel and it invokes the darkness and the fear of that which is unknown to humans. Grendel is a hybrid of the worst kind. He is part human and part beast- living in the darkness- evil misfit, vicious and cruel, cannibalistic and vengeful. He has no morals and poses a physical threat to mankind. One man’s self-defense is destined in a fight against Grendel. He depicts evil as an omnipresent being and stalks all men by following them- unseen, hiding in the dark, never visible but always there. Evil is always insatiable, and there is no sin big enough. Beowulf represents all that is good in mankind, the strength and courage needed to involve Grendel in a one-to-one fight with his bare hands. Beowulf stands firm and Grendel pushes away from his powerful embrace and ultimately destroys himself.

Evil knows no end and Grendel’s mother; Heorot is the moral evil, and she attacks Beowulf the very next day. The Mosaic code, “an eye for an eye” has been depicted to perfection in this tale. Moral vengeance, the need to quench the thirst for revenge is what drives Grendel’s mother to fight. She only takes one life and then runs for her life from the hallways. There are the slight perverse twists of events, Beowulf bursts into her home, and she is waiting for him with a warm embrace. Now Beowulf is consumed with self-doubt and most of his men give up on his cause too. Now, he uses Grendel’s magic sword doused in his blood and is ultimately victorious. This victory is, in essence, Beowulf’s entry into adulthood. He now faces complex choices and decisions. The war wounds and the fact that Beowulf is a mere mortal have awakened a deep sense of righteousness in the king.

Finally, Beowulf faces the ultimate challenge and goes into battle against the dragon. It is a monster of epic proportions- one who is not a humanoid and is vicious and fearsome. The dragon personifies metaphysical evil. The physical power of this evil lies in the ability to set things on fire and to take flight at his will. It is the evil that men arouse by theft. Beowulf is no thief and has to protect and fight for the honor of his people. Old age knowledge has made him tired and slow and walked with his head held high into the last battle with knowledge that this will be his last. The rising and setting of the great human spirit, the contrast of age and the amalgam of wisdom and pride are what this tale hints at.

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An Introduction to Beowulf : Language and Poetics

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

This lesson provides an introduction to the language and poetics of the epic poem Beowulf . Although this lesson assumes students will read Beowulf in translation, it introduces students to the poem's original Old English and explains the relationship between Old, Middle, and Modern English. Students are introduced to the five characters in the Old English alphabet that are no longer used in Modern English. As a class, they translate a short, simple phrase from Old English, and then listen to a passage from the poem being read in Old English. Next, students are introduced to some poetic devices important to Beowulf . They learn about alliteration by reading an excerpt from W. H. Auden's modern English poem “The Age of Anxiety,” then listen for alliteration in the Old English version of a passage from Beowulf . Finally, students explore the poetic functions of kennings, compounds, and formulas in Beowulf .

Featured Resources

Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet : This reproducible provides information about the difference between Old, Middle, and Modern English, as well as poetic devices found in Beowulf . Literary Guide: Beowulf : This online tool can serve as an introduction to Beowulf , presenting information about the poem's significance as well as an overview of the story.

From Theory to Practice

Gillis argues that when we teach literature we often don't do so without teaching its background, its historical, philosophical, and environmental context. When teaching literature in translation, he argues, if we fail to consider the original language and stylistic features of that piece, then we have not taught all the background necessary for our students to have a full understanding of that literary work, even if we are not experts in that language. The purpose behind introducing students to the original language and style will foreground for them that they are reading a translation, which at its best can only give us "an inkling" of the original work. Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
• Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet  
• Old English Beowulf Passage Handout  
• Modern English Beowulf Passage Handout  
• Excerpt from “The Age of Anxiety" by W.H. Auden

Preparation

• Review the lesson and decide which elements you wish to use.  
• Review the Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet .  
• Print out for each student a copy of each handout you wish to use.  
• For more background information on Beowulf see Beowulf : A Study Guide  
• Test the Literary Guide: Beowulf on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool.

Student Objectives

Students will

• be introduced to Old English, the language of Beowulf.  
• know the relationship between Old English and Modern English.  
• learn about alliteration and alliterative verse.  
• understand kennings, a poetic device common to Old English poetry, and how they are used in Beowulf.

Session One: Introducing Old English

• If desired, use the Literary Guide: Beowulf to introduce the poem. The Overview outlines basic information about the poem.  
• Using the Quick Reference Sheet as a guide, explain that English is divided into three periods.  
• Introduce students to the unfamiliar letters used in the Old English alphabet. Use the Language section of the Literary Guide: Beowulf to discuss the five characters in the Old English alphabet that are no longer used in Modern English.  
• You may want to write the letters on the board and/or show them the first page of Beowulf . In case they ask, the manuscript dates to about 1000 CE and was damaged in a fire, which is why the top and right hand side of the page are badly damaged. The entire Old English alphabet is available in section 16.2 of The Electronic Introduction to Old English .  
• If you would like to spend a few minutes illustrating the changes between Old English and Modern English, write “Þæt wæs god cyning.” on the board, explain to the class how to pronounce the various sounds, and see if they can translate the sentence into Modern English. If you want to provide an example of how Chaucer might write that sentence, you can add “That wes good king,” “That wes goode king,” and/or “That wes god king” to the board after the class has translated the Old English sentence.  
• If you would like the class to hear some of Beowulf in the original Old English, pass out the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout and have the class go to  https://www.beowulfresources.com/ . While the students can listen to and see four Beowulf passages at this site, the handout covers lines 1–11 of the prologue. Note: while now is a logical time to listen to Beowulf read in Old English, your students may get more out of listening to the poem if you introduce alliteration and alliterative verse to them first (see below). You may also wish to distribute the Modern English Beowulf Passage Handout which provides a translation of the passage.

Session Two: The Poetics of Beowulf

• Using the Quick Reference Sheet as a guide, explain alliteration. You may wish to begin illustrating alliteration by using tongue-twisters as examples. The excerpt from W. H. Auden’s poem “The Age of Anxiety” and the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout can be used for further examples.  
• Once your students understand the concept of alliteration, pass out the excerpt from W. H. Auden’s poem “The Age of Anxiety” if you have not done so already.  
• Show the example of alliteration in the Poetics section of the Literary Guide: Beowulf .  
• Using the Quick Reference Sheet as a guide and the Auden poem , explain the basics of Old English alliterative verse. (Do not work through the whole Auden poem if you wish the students to work on the assignment alone or in groups.)  
• Once your class seems to have an understanding of alliterative verse, you may wish to turn to the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout , listen to the poem (see number 4 in the first session), and identify the alliteration and meter of the first 16 lines of Beowulf .  

Example: The Old English for Spear-Danes is Gar-Dena. If you look at the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout , you will see that gar (spear) alliterates and that the alliterative meter needs a G-word here. And, if you are familiar with the poem, you will know that Danes are compounded with many words: Ring-Danes, East-Danes, North-Danes, South-Danes, West-Danes, Bright-Danes. As this is the case, it would be simple enough to suggest that the meter requires the use of gar in this compound for metrical purposes, and, sometimes, this is the reason for the use of a particular word or compounding. However, it is worth noting that this passage is about the Dane’s conquests against their neighbors. It would seem then that the use of gar (spear) in this formulaic compound was not only to meet the needs of the alliterative meter, but also to foreground the Danes as an aggressive tribe. Here in the first line of the poem we find meter, poetic flourish, and theme all coming together in the poem’s first use of compounding.

• Either as homework or in class, ask your students to identify the stresses and alliteration in the Auden poem . You may also ask them to do the same with the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout . If you ask them to work with the Old English passage, give them the URL for audio files and suggest they listen to each section before marking the passage.  
• If your translation maintains compounding and kennings, select some good passages and ask your students to identify the compounds and kennings and explain their function.
• Formulas: Review the formula section of the Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet and The Electronic Introduction to Old English section on formulas (14.3) and have students look for formulas as they read Beowulf .  
• Variation: Review the variation section of the Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet and The Electronic Introduction to Old English section on variation (14.2) and have students look for variation as they read Beowulf .  
• Follow this lesson with the ReadWriteThink lesson, Reading Literature in Translation: Beowulf as a Case Study .

Student Assessment / Reflections

Session One

• Observe your students as you work through and discuss Old English and its relationship to Modern English. Do they seem interested and engaged with the discussion? Do their comments and questions demonstrate a growing understanding of the material?  
• If you plan on giving quizzes or exams which cover Beowulf , consider including questions on some of this material. If you plan on doing so, let your students know this as you introduce the material to them.

Session Two

• Observe your students as you work through and discuss the poetics of Beowulf and Old English alliterative verse. Do they seem interested and engaged with the discussion? Do their comments and questions demonstrate a growing understanding of the material?  
• Either informally discuss Auden poem after your students have completed them, or, alternatively, collect and grade them.  
• If you asked your students to identify and explain compounding or kennings in the poem, have them share their findings with the class, or, alternatively, collect and grade their work.
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Students focus on the figurative language in Heaney's poem, "Digging," and discuss the speaker's attitude, and how metaphor, simile, and image contribute to the poem.

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Why Bother with Beowulf?

Medieval literature provides a gateway to our past

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In the film Annie Hall, Diane Keaton confesses to Woody Allen her interest in attending some college classes. Allen is supportive, and has this bit of advice: "Just don't take any course where you have to read Beowulf. "

Yes, it's funny; those of us who, by professorial demand, have plowed through books written in other centuries know just what he means. Yet it's sad, too, that these ancient masterpieces have come to represent a form of scholastic torture. Why bother anyway? you may ask. Literature isn't history, and I want to know what actually happened, not some story about unrealistic heroes who never existed. However, for anyone truly interested in history, I think there are some valid reasons to bother.

Medieval literature is history -- a piece of evidence from the past. While the stories told in epic poems can rarely be taken for actual fact, everything about them illustrates the way things were at the time they were written.

These works were morality pieces as well as adventures. The heroes embodied the ideals to which knights of the times were encouraged to strive, and the villains performed actions they were cautioned against -- and got their comeuppance in the end. This was especially true of Arthurian tales . We can learn much from examining the ideas people had then of how one ought to behave -- which, in many ways, are like our own views.

Medieval literature also provides modern readers with intriguing clues to life in the Middle Ages. Take, for example, this line from The Alliterative Morte Arthure (a fourteenth-century work by an unknown poet), where the king has ordered his Roman guests to be given the finest accommodations available: In chambers with chimpnees they changen their weedes. At a time when the castle was the height of comfort, and all the castle folk slept in the main hall to be near the fire, individual rooms with heat were signs of great wealth, indeed. Read further in the poem to find what was considered fine food: Pacockes and plovers in platters of gold / Pigges of pork despine that pastured never (piglets and porcupines); and Grete swannes full swithe in silveren chargeours , (platters) / Tartes of Turky, taste whom them likes . . . The poem goes on to describe a sumptuous feast and the finest tableware, all of which knocked the Romans off their feet.

The likely popularity of surviving medieval works is another reason to study them. Before they were set to paper these tales were told by hundreds of minstrels in court after court and castle after castle. Half of Europe knew the tales in The Song of Roland or El Cid , and everyone knew at least one Arthurian legend. Compare that to the place in our lives of popular books and films (try to find someone who never saw Star Wars ), and it becomes clear that each tale is more than a single thread in the fabric of medieval life. How, then, can we ignore these literary pieces when seeking the truth of history?

Perhaps the best reason for reading medieval literature is its atmosphere. When I read Beowulf or Le Morte D'Arthur , I feel as if I know what it was like to live in those days and to hear a minstrel tell the story of a great hero defeating an evil foe. That in itself is worth the effort.

I know what you're thinking: " Beowulf is so long I couldn't possibly finish it in this lifetime, especially if I have to learn Old English first." Ah, but fortunately, some heroic scholars in years past have done the hard work for us, and have translated many of these works into modern English. This includes Beowulf ! The translation by Francis B. Gummere retains the alliterative style and pacing of the original. And don't feel you have to read every word. I know some traditionalists would wince at this suggestion, but I'm suggesting it anyway: try looking for the juicy bits first, then go back to find out more. An example is the scene where the ogre Grendel first visit's the king's hall (section II):

Found within it the atheling band asleep after feasting and fearless of sorrow, of human hardship. Unhallowed wight, grim and greedy, he grasped betimes, wrathful, reckless, from resting-places, thirty of the thanes, and thence he rushed fain of his fell spoil, faring homeward, laden with slaughter, his lair to seek.

Not quite the dry stuff you imagined, is it? It gets better (and more gruesome, too!).

So be as brave as Beowulf, and face the fearsome fables of the past. Perhaps you'll find yourself by a roaring fire in a great hall, and hear inside your head a tale told by a troubadour whose alliteration is much better than mine.

• Overview of the Poem Beowulf
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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Beowulf / Beowulf Character Analysis

Beowulf Character Analysis

• Category: Literature , Life
• Topic: Beowulf , Beowulf Hero

Pages: 3 (1376 words)

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