Beowulf

Жанр и език

- an epic poem of about 3000 lines, originated from popular ballads and minstrel poetry based on these popular ballads.
- language – a vernacular (диалект, местен говор, народен език) - the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are
inhabiting a particular country or region the native language, normally spoken informally rather than written, and seen as
of lower status than more codified forms.
- The oldest epic poem written in Old English (Anglo-Saxon)– a dead language nowadays; we can’t understand it.
- we are reading it in translation. No matter how skilful a translation can be, it’s still a translation and a lot could get lost or
changed in translation.
- It’s translated into New English
- best translation by Seamus Heaney
- not a lyrical piece
- only one manuscript surviving - the Nowell Codex
- epic poem - poetry has a story to tell.
- date - disputed ( c. 700–1050 AD)
- memorable stories – human beings being fond of stories
- the clash between good and evil is basic to all epic poems
- the text was not born on the British Isles. It was brought from Scandinavia.
- tribes travelling and conquering new territories - the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes
- Christianity coming from 2 different directions – from the Roman Empire and from Ireland.
- Christianity was introduced considerably in Britain in 597 and within the VII century the isle was Christianized. The Roman
Christianity prevailed on the bigger Island, not the island of Ireland.
- a period of oral development - people pre-writing, gathering together, telling each other stories and accompanying these
stories with music, like the music of a harp or a lyre.
- this kind of poetry is not very melodious, well refined. The actual musical instruments lends melodiousness to the event.
- printing of the surviving text only took place in 1815 - important as Beowulf didn’t have much of an influence on the
development of English literature.
- People didn’t know about it beyond the immediate context in which it was orally presented - would have been in very
limited circles, amongst the people closest to the king, who were treated to an evening of entertainment via poetry and
storytelling.
- oral development of the text - different bards singing the texts or reciting it in the accompaniment of musical instruments
would have changed lines.
- there isn't much of a continuity linguistically speaking.
- The events described are set in Scandinavia

- 2 different approaches to literary legacy.

o Old English - more in terms of talking about national identity and seeing Englishness and English
literature beginning from that point onwards,
o Anglo-Saxon - emphasizes the links with the continent - with Scandinavia. And as a result of this,
Scandinavian scholars would claim it is their own heritage.

- the text is organized around 3 different events:

o Beowulf - a superhero at the centre of attention
o his 3 encounters with monsters
o this is the content orientated approach.

- stories about 3 nations - 3 ethnicities associated with the development of the story.
o the land of the Geats /’gi:ts or ‘geats/ - a tribe; Beowulf comes from the Geates
o the land of the Danes - the Scylding(s), – the ruling clan in Denmark
o the Swedes - more like a tribe - threatening the borders of the Geates and the Danes; the neighbour tribe that is
keeping everyone on their toes - sort of a threatening presence in the poem, but not involved in the action.

- The 3 monsters are:

o Grendel (a man-eating monster)
o his mother - who’s not given a name
o a dragon

- 2 different layers in Beowulf: the layer of

o a very intense action - there’s a lot of glory, and a lot of blood. Quite gruesome.
o speeches made - boring to read, but give the motivation of the superhero, and reveal what we would call an
Anglo-Saxon code of behaviour and the values of society - very different from today’s ones.
 - 3 major motivations for the superhero to behave the way he does:
o duty - of responsibility towards a community
o glory - What is happening to people after they die? They are usually forgotten about, unless they’ve achieved
something that will make them survive physical death. And it is through the achievement of glory, through doing
something memorable that they may live on, after their demise.
o the legacy – that he is going to leave for his people
- The motivation is different from the one today particularly in the sense of duty, because with the individualism that rose in
the 18th-19th century, people are more concerned with what they want. And back in those days nobody asked you what you
wanted to do. You had a duty to do things for your community whether you liked it or not. So, this individual choice –
this/that suits me or doesn’t suit me – is completely out of the picture.
- Society and the community pre-determined your line of action, your choices. You choose things because you’re supposed
to; you choose things because everybody expects you to do them.

- 2 Layers of imagery - the coexisting of Christian and Pagan imagery.

o debate if this is a pagan text tampered with by Christian scripts, or
o a Christian text that realizes that the events described are from pagan times; therefore pagan imagery is part of
the story as a result of the chronology of the events taking place.
o Currently, the scholars favour that this is a Christian text which has this awareness about the pagan characters
and the events taking place. And this is why we have co-existence in it of the presence of God, Cain, elfs and
other sorts of creatures.

The text

- On the left hand side the text is in Anglo-Saxon. There’s a snake-like line in the middle, which is the pause, probably for
bards to take their breath - a construction out of necessity for the convenience of those who were reciting the text.
- On the right hand side is Seamus Heaney’s translation.
- It consists of different ballads from different periods of time - associated with different locations.
- the narration is not lineal and straight forward. It is actually rather cyclical. So, the same events are repeated again and
again in the course what happened next.
- There are many screened adaptations - each one changes the text depending on the agenda of the filmmaker.
- Tolkien was an Anglo-Saxon literature scholar fascinated by Beowulf; there’s some carry on from Beowulf to the film
making in particular of The Lord of the Rings.
- There’s a Hallmark production which is rather feminist.
- The last thing we can say about that early medieval patriarchal time is that there are feminist ideas in it. There aren’t
any.
- There are unrhymed verses. They are not arranged in stanzas. There are more commonly ends stopped than is
characteristic of contemporary poetry.
- ‘Ends stopped’ means that the ending of the thought corresponds to the ending of the line. And in contemporary poetry
this is not the case. Very often you finish with the sentence midline and you carry over a sentence from one line onto the
next.
- kenning – a metaphorical phrase or compound used to name a person, place or thing indirectly.
- “Beowulf” consists of seven six-line stanzas. Each stanza describes one part of the narrative, following chronological order.
The tone is formal, in keeping with the account of a hero.
- We have emphatic stress and alliteration as a part of the tools to create the imagery and the sound in the text and we
have a lot of metaphors. There are interesting combinations of words (in the metaphors) like – the salmon road, or the
ring giver (Hrothgar), the whale road (the sea) – they stand for a particular very specific thing, but this notion is, thus,
described using a metaphor.
- So, a lot of imagination is involved in the story and it’s not a single imagination of one poet, it’s obviously the collective
imagination of generations of bards who had been telling the story to their audiences.

Grendel – the man-eating monster

- this monster is associated with the Christian demon.

- there’s torment being introduced with the first sentence of the excerpt. The language revealing the 2 different layers of
imagery.
- A prowler is like a predator, like a beast – to get there what they can; - мародер, звяр, хищник

The darkness is an important moment introduced into the poem, because one way of interpreting the text is a border line between
light and darkness, interpreted as good and evil, the clash between good and evil is basic to all epic poems , such as the Iliad and
Odyssey, which are presumably Homer’s.

The story:

- It begins with the death of a king (Hygelac – his uncle), and it ends with the death of Beowulf, so funerals are an
important background of understanding the story.
 - Beowulf comes from the land of the Geats and offers to kill the monster that threatens the Danes, out of his own accord .
This is not even his people nor is his land that is threatened by the monster.
- He is a young warrior at the beginning of the poem, and by the end he’s an old man who had been a king for 50 years for
his people. At this old age he’s supposed to fight the dragon and he needs the help of the young warriors, but most of them
get frightened by the dragon and leave him alone. So, he has to fight the dragon with the help of one single aid, called
Wiglaf; and even though he does slay the dragon, he is mortally wounded and dies at the end of the poem.
- The elders of his tribe talked to him as a man of talent in the art of war and fighting, that because he had the ability, he had
to deal with this monster in the foreign lands.
- This poem is about the upper cast warriors
- King Hrothgar has built a large banquet hall in which he gathers his warriors and a mead hall (mead – a medieval drink –
медовина) - quite strong in terms of alcohol.
- The warriors had to be quite strong to work with 30/50-pound swords, up to 25-kilos.
- There would be women and slaves taking care of their food in their everyday lives. We don’t hear anything about it because
the story wasn’t meant for entertainment of women, old men and slaves. It was meant for entertainment of the circle
around the king and upper cast warriors.
- The story begins from the beginning of life and here the poet is telling how the Earth was made by God, so the Almighty is
a reference to the Christian God. It can’t be mistaken for any other type of god.
- Pay attention that the Sun and the Moon are like our lamps, not the other way around. Everything abstract like the
creation of the world is compared to our domesticated circle, things we are familiar with.
- So, pay attention to the connection between these monsters and the stories in the Bible.
- The story of Cain and Abel is one of the best known stories, the first murder in the history of Christianity.
- And the monsters are descendants of Cain. We don’t know even whether Abel had descendants, or whether humanity is
associated with Cain or with Abel in Christian terms.
- Grendel, the man-eating monster, comes at night and picks a warrior to dine on, destroying the circle around king
Hrothgar by eating his warriors at night.
- This is why Beowulf steps in it.
- Part of his speech to King Hrothgar, whom he visits to offer his services to, is part of his CV as if it were a part of his
credentials;
o This is why I come here;
o This is what motivated me, and
o This is what I have done in the past – and there’s a long list of bragging what he’s achieved in terms of fights and
whom he has won over and conquered.
- There is further clarification of Cain’s clan whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcast. 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 sprung August, and elves and the evil phantoms, and the giants too,
who strove with God time - and again until he gave them their reward.
- So, it’s a world in which all co-exist.

The second excerpt repeats some of this information and adds new information to it.

- Beowulf comes; at night Grendel appears and he has the bad luck to approach Beowulf amongst the warriors present in
this banquet room. The moment Beowulf grabs his arm, Grendel knows he’s in trouble. He tries to run away, but he can’t
get his arm back, so it gets thorn away from his body and remains as a trophy; and Grendel goes back to die in his den.
- Everybody celebrates and thinks that they’ve won, this is it. But, this is not it, because on another night, and it’s not clear if
it’s on the following night or a couple nights later, something horrific happens again and it transpires that there’s another
monster to fight, which is Grendel’s mother who has come to take revenge for the death of her son.
- Beowulf fought Grendel with no arms, just with his bare hands, but in order to fight his mother he decides he needs full
armour; he needs 4 different types of weapons to carry with him.
- You can think about all the connotations of that – for the old woman, the mother, he needs all these weapons, and for her
son, he doesn’t need any weapons at all.
- you can see the prejudice against women who do not fight according to the rules, who are mean, and you have to be
prepared for all sort of nasty surprises in the process.
- Another way of thinking about it - he has to fight her on her own ground. He’s not going to fight her in the hall this time.
He’s going to meet her in the marshes under the water, where she lives. And this is unfamiliar territory and dangers might
be lurking there.
- The listeners learn that avenger lurked and was still alive ‘grimly binding time’ - his mother taking her time in order to take
her revenge, not going out there immediately to fight and expose herself to danger.
- Heorot is the name of the banquet hall
- The Watcher is Beowulf who has come to take care and to protect the banquet hall.

Ани Михайлова: It’s very similar to other epic poems that we have read. There’s a hero, there’s an obstacle or a monster that has
to be slayed, there’s a quest of some type, and there’s the victory. The good beats the evil.

slay – slew(UK)/slayed (US)