An introduction What is Beowulf? A 3,000 line Anglo-Saxon epic A poem dating from the first half of the 8 th century A poem surviving in only one 10.

An introduction

What is Beowulf?

• A 3,000 line Anglo-Saxon epic

• A poem dating from the first half of the 8th century

• A poem surviving in only one 10th century manuscript copy

• A poem that tells the story of a great monster-slayer named Beowulf

What is Anglo-Saxon?

A Germanic language with several dialects

Independent kingdoms

Primarily Germanic

culture

Were the Anglo-Saxons always in England?

• No! They invaded England in the 5th century. The original inhabitants were Christian Celts whom the Germanic invaders pushed ultimately into the mountains of Wales.

• The Germanic invaders were pagans and belonged to three related tribes – the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

• The Germanic invaders were also pre-literate; they did not read or write but they possessed a rich oral tradition.

How did the epic Beowulfget written down then?

Christianity

The Dream of Pope Gregory (590-604)

Gregory dreamed of converting all non-Christians.

The pagan Germanic tribes living in England occupied an area which was formally a colony of imperial Rome.

For Gregory, the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic tribes became a symbol of his papacy’s success.

The Mission of a Benedictine Monk

• Pope Gregory sent Augustine as a missionary to King Ethelbert of Kent, a kingdom in south-eastern England

• Simultaneously, the Irish church sent missionaries to the northern kingdoms

• In 75 years, most of the inhabitants were nominally Christian

What was a major cultural consequence of Christianity?

Literacy

Literacy and Manuscripts

• Christianity is a based on reading a sacred text which requires at least one person be able to read aloud

• The only persons who could read and/or write during the Anglo-Saxon period from 450 to1066 were monks, nuns, and a few members of the nobility.

• Only in monasteries were texts written.

What has Ingeld (Beowulf) to do with Christ?

So asked Alcuin in 797. He reasoned that the monastery of Lindisfarne was sacked by pagan Norsemen because the monks listened to pagan heroic poetry over dinner.

But who was Ingeld?

• He was a prince of the Heathobards and he married the Danish princess Freawaru in order to reconcile two feuding kingdoms. The peaceweaving of marriage failed tragically.

• In the epic Beowulf, the poet tells of Ingeld.

And so? Get to the point!

• The poem Beowulf or at least basic parts of the poem were well known and popular in both the court and the church;

• The poem Beowulf was preserved by monks who wrote it down;

• The poem Beowulf straddles two worlds of Christian and pagan, Jesus Christ and hero, humility and pride.

The Beowulf Epic

• Set in a pre-Christian, pagan world • One reference in poem to an actual

historical event that occurred in 520, when Beowulf’s lord Hygelac was killed in a raid

• All the characters are pagan• All the characters adhere to a

Germanic honor code which requires undying loyalty to one lord

• The monsters exemplify in their behaviors what the Germanic cultures feared and abhorred most – disloyalty, outlawry, cowardice, malice, and greed

• Set not in England, but in Denmark and southern Sweden

• The characters are the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon audience of the poem

But the Beowulf epic also

• Was written by a Christian monk who honored his pagan ancestors and felt ambivalent about their damnation

• Was written with many of the characteristics of oral poetry such as repeated phrases (formulas), motifs, episodes (scenes), and themes

How to read Beowulf?

Watch for balanced oppositions

1. Good king vs bad king

2. Hero vs monster

3. Hero vs coward

4. Good woman vs bad woman

5. God vs Satan, Cain, or monster

6. Hall vs wilderness

Stylistic Peculiarities of Beowulf

1. Kenning: a compound of two words in place of a single world

example: whale-road for “sea”2. Litotes: grim irony or understatment

example: battle-play for “fighting”3. Appositives: series of phrases describing a

single entity or eventexample: Holy creator, mankind’s

Guardian, eternal Lord for “God”

What are the pleasures of reading this ancient poem?

• The primal confrontation between a hero and monsters

• The definition of the human by what is not human

• The exploration of competing hierarchies of affection (do you love your lord more or fame more or wife more)?

And why really?

Your answer is your own.

Sources

Map of England and picture of falling angels from: “The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf: Illustrations,” The Norton Anthology of English Literature : Norton Topics Online at http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/middleages/topic_4/illustrations.htm. September 7, 2004.

Sound file from “Readings from Beowulf” from Old English at the University of Virginia at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/Beowulf.Readings/Grendel.html. September 7, 2004.

Secondary Works Consulted

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Seamus Heaney. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company. 2000.