Springer - BEO WULF Beowulf · 2017-08-28 · Beowulf's relationship to the treasure might support the idea that Beo- wulf is as human as heroic, and that a personal lapse contributed

MONSTER-MAN IN BEO WULF

Since Tolkien wrote "The Monsters and the Critics" it has been easier to regard Beowulf primarily as a work of art rather than as a reposi- tory of folklore, a guide to Germanic Society or a philological hunting ground. Recovery of a literary emphasis in Beowulf criticism enables us to pass beyond simple critical formulations like Skeat's firm identification of Grendel as a bear and of Grendel's grip as a bear-hug. "Fur- ther than this [he suggests] it is needless to enquire. ''1 Unconvinced by Skeat's conclusion, scholars looking squarely at Grendel and the other monsters have begun to feel that our response to them, as to the entire poem, need not be simplistic. With the critical blinders off it is easier to see that the Beowulf-poet manipulates his story and his characters to implicitly make an ironic comment on the heroic social structure his poem is based upon. The main story of consolidation then dissolution of social structure is a recurrent theme of unstable Germanic life. This instability the poet understands and regrets the more because he knows what limitations, in both society and human nature, are responsible for dissolution.

To reinforce his conception of a crumbling society, the poet has placed Beowulf in a symbolically complex situation. Beowulf is partly a story of the decline and fall of a society. But since Beowulf is the symbolic embodiment of his followers (hief~ond heora/Ourh ~nes crceft ealle ofere6mon,/selfes mightum. 698-99) 2 sharing their aims and attitudes, the story of dissolution is his story, and its tragedy is his. To show what human characteristics foster the tragedy, the poet symbolically shows the limitations of his hero by associating him physically and psychologically with deadly monsters and violent humans in the poem. And he widens the range of his symbolism by giving his monsters and their habitations complementary human attitudes and characteristics. The effect is to illuminate, even perhaps explain, the broa- der disintegration of a society in terms of the human limitations of its heroic embodiment in Beowulf. That is to say, the success of the dark, chaotic forces in the poem may be partially explicable in human terms if Beowulf symbolically contains the human germ of failure within himself, a possibility which would supplement the usual explanation that the downfall of the Geats is engineered by fate. To show how this downfall has its symbolic explanation in Beowulf, the microcosmic center of the poem, is to discuss the basic symbolic irony arising from the close identification of man and monster, the primitive and the civi- lized in Beowulf

One of various approaches to the "monstrous" side of Beowulf is by

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way of his association with the Bear's-Son folktale. Nora Chadwick noticed that in the folktale analogues to Beowulf(particularly in Gret- tir's saga) there is a curious sense of identity between the hero and his adversary, between the man and the monster. "I t is possible [she asks] that in origin Grendel and Grettir are identical, and that in the Norse story the monster has been transferred into the hero - - that a story, originally told from the monster 's point of view, has left traces on this strange and capricious, pitiful yet very sinister outlaw? ''a Without ci- ting some of the other analogues which support Mrs. Chadwick's interesting speculation it is possible to say that within the Bears'-Son tale there does seem to be a curious give and take, between the characteristics of the hero and his adversary, which has a rather modern feel. The spirit of the Bear's Son tale is not so very alien from that of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolfor even Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, both of which depend on the author 's apprehension of the monstrous side of humanity. This conception of a monstrous double, a useful way of explaining some of the action in various sagas, suggests that we might find interesting parallels if we look for resemblance, rather than as- suming basic difference, between Beowulf and his monsters.

One might begin indirectly by glancing at some of the secondary characters in the poem who are closer to Beowulf than Grettir. Here- rood, for instance, is generally thought o f as a foil to Hrothgar and Beowulf, which he is. But some of the ways he apparently differs f rom them show him close in spirit to the monsters, something Hrothgar reveals in comparing the behaviour of Beowulf and Heremod:

Ne wear(5 HeremOd swft eaforum Ecgwelan, Ar-Scyldingum: ne gewEox hE him tO willan, ac tO w~elfealle ond t6 dEa6cwalum Deniga IEodum; brEat bolgenm6d bEodgenEatas, eaxlgesteallan, ola 19~et hE ~na hwearf mere iaEoden mondr~amum from . . . .

(1709-15)

Like Grendel, Heremod takes no pleasure in seeking happiness, but rejoices in the death and destruction of the Danes. He also goes into exile. He is almost, like Grendel, aria wiO eallum (145). Heremod is also just as parsimonious as another monster, the dragon:

Denum aefter dome; 19~et hE 19aes gewinnes, lEodbealo longsum.

nallas b6agas geaf dr~amk3as geb~,d, weorc lar6wade

(1719-22)'*

I f there is something primitive and uncontrolled in the actions of Heremod, the same is true of Beowulf's paternal kindred, whose story

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reveals to Frederick Seebohm "the melancholy fact that, however great the force of tribal custom in controlling feuds, the wild human nature of hot-blooded tribesmen was wont to break through restraints and often ended in the outlawry of tribesmen and the breaking up of kin- dreds. ''5 Similarly, Grendel 's ravages instigate a regression in the behaviour of at least some of the Danes. In fact Grendel seems to frighten them into becoming heathens after his own heart (Grendel is described in 986 as hceOen and in 852 as a hceOen sawol). The taint of the heathen in their souls emerges in the poet 's comment on their desperate sacri- fices to non-Christian gods:

Swylc waes b6aw hyra, h~el~enra hyht; helle gemundon in mOdsefan . . . . (178-80)

Hell was in their hearts. One might also say that the monster has wormed his way into their inmost being and caused them to behave as he does. We expect to find hell in the hearts of the monsters - - the Beowulf-poet makes this clear enough - - but perhaps he has also given us a way of finding hell and the monstrous in the hearts of men, including Beowulf, however indirectly (that is symbolically) the heroic mode requires him to express it. By reading analogues of Beowulf and by seeing that Heremod may be a counterpart as well as a foil for Beo- wulf, one may be prepared to note that Beowulf bears some resemblance to his monster-foes.

If Grendel is larger Oonne cenig mon 60er (1560), for instance, Beo- wulf is similarly distinguished in size from his retainers, The Danish watchman says of him:

N~efre ic m~ran geseah eorla ofer eorl~an, 6onne is Eower sum, secg on searwum . . . . (247-9)

On Grendel 's first sortie into Heorot he seizes thirty men; when Beowulf is introduced as a man who has the strength of thirty men in his handgrip the echo of the description of Grendel's raid lets us see him as a worthy and equal opponent of the giant-foe, but it also en- courages us to associate the two in our minds. This is also the case with Beowulf's preference, like Grendel's, of hand-to-hand combat over armoured battle, and the fact that he shares with Grendel the possession of a tremendous grip. (Grendel 's mother too has atolan clommum 1502 and grimman gra]gum 1542, and the struggle with her begins as a wrestling match.) Besides the general likeness in size and strength, the poet specifically associates Beowulf's state of mind with that of Gren- del in the encounter between the two. Beowulf seems to work himself

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into a furious mood before Grendel's arrival so that he is as ready to fight as Grendel himself. Beowulf

wr~tIoum on andan bad bolgenm6d beadwa gelvinges. (708-9)

Grendel similarly (ge)bolgen woes at the door of the hall (723), and he is yrrem6d (726) when be treads thef6gnefl6r. The impending mee- ting between the two begins to sound like the encounter of two berser- "kers.

To a modern reader, saying that a man has a monstrous side means that his full humanity is paradoxical, that he is as weak in some res- pects as he is strong in others. And heroic though Beowulf's actions are, his symbolic identity with monsters makes him appear more fully human than is usually thought. There may also be something less heroic than human in his possession of the dragon's treasure near the end of the poem. The dragon, as a distant monstrous relation of Ccendel and his mother, is presumably as damned as they are. As a matter of fact the Grendel kin are both damned by God and exiled by man, so it is curious that the treasure of the dragon is both under God's prohi- bition and cursed by man:

Swat hit 0(3 d6mes daeg diope benemdon bfiodnas m~.re, b~t 6a~t 19~r dydon, l~et se secg w~re synnum scildig, hergum gehea6erod, hellbendum fiest, wommum gewitnad . . . . (3069-73)

There is some problem about Beowulf's relationship to this treasure. The poet says:

sE 6one wong strude, naefne goldhw~ete gearwor h~efde Agendes fist 6~r gesc6awod. (3073-75)

I f this passage means, as Wright translates it 6, that Beowulf has not "up till then . . . looked greedily upon their treasure of cursed gold," it looks as though Beowulf must somehow be involved in the curse on the gold. This would tie in nicely with Hrothgar 's warning after the defeat of Grendel's mother, that a man's conscience sometimes relaxes (]9onne se weard swefeO,/ sYzwele hyrde; bid se sleep t6 fcest,/ bisgum ge- bunden 1741-43), which may have happened to Beowulf. It would be difficult to insist upon this point, since Beowulf probably goes to his reward in Heaven, but there is something ambiguous or perhaps un- resolved in these lines, as H. L. Rogers notes: " I t is usually understood that Beowulf, in acquiring the treasure, thereby became involved in the

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curse on it. The curse on the gold is certain (3052), but from its effect Beowulf seems to be exempted, for 3053 ft. apparently mean that God allowed Beowulf to open the hoard. Great eagerness to win the treasure would be wrong, in the light of the poem in general and of Hroth- gar's homily in particular. Yet the poet never makes it quite clear whether Beowulf is condemned or exonerated. ''7 As conjectural as such an idea would be, perhaps the Beowulf-poet intended sone residual ambiguity to qualify the rise of Beowulf's soul to heaven (in the smoke of his funeral pyreS). Taken with other evidence the passage about Beowulf's relationship to the treasure might support the idea that Beo- wulf is as human as heroic, and that a personal lapse contributed to his downfall.

There would be little point in regarding Beowulf as one of Grendel 's kin (in a broad sense) if Grendel, his mother, and to a lesser extent the dragon were not endowed with a matching human side. In fact one can make a very good case for the humanity at least of Grendel. The fact that Grendel shares human characteristics with Beowulf makes him a believable symbolic alter-ego for the hero. Tolkien mentioned that Grendel is both wer and exile 9 and several critics have built upon the suggestion to place the giant in the context of Anglo-Saxon exile-poetry. But though some have acknowledged the use of human terms to describe Grendel and his mother, and their placement in human situa- tions, the idea is usually played down or explained away in favour of the conception of both as monsters or devils. O. F. Emerson, for example, remarks that Grendel is wonsceli wer, that his appearance is on weres wcestmum, that he is called feaseeaft guma, rine and so on, but he prefers to see the reference to wons~eli wer in the passage dealing with Cain (105-110) as applying to that unworthy and not to Grendel. And he canvasses most of the epithets describing Grendel and his mother to show that they are generally "called by such names as would be applicable to a monster of evil birth, or a devil. ''1~ In the main one has to agree with him, since far the greater number of references to Grendel relate him to the monstrous or devilish:fOond, fOond on helle, )C~ond mancynnes, wiht unhcelo, ellorgcest, manscaOa and so on. But the fact that the monsters primarily are evil spirits does not mean that their human attributes need be forgotten. There are many words and situ- ations in Beowulf which Emerson naturally ignored, since he was only dealing with the devilish side of the Grendel kin.

For Joseph Baird, Grendel's humanity derives from his status as exile: " G r e n d e l . . . is not only wiht unh~lo, godes andsaca, but also thane or guardian of the hall (healOegnes hete, 142; rO]~e renweardes, applied to both Grendel and Beowulf, 770). He has the form of a man (on weres wcestmum, 1352), except that he is larger ponne cenig man oOer.

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He is wons~li wer (105), rinc (720), deprived of joys (dr~am(um) bed~l- ed, 721, 1275), compelled to tread the exile paths (wrcecl~stas treed, 1352). This last theme of the exile is deeply embedded in the poet's conception of Grendel: he i s . . . exiled from God: he is here a treader of exile paths; and in lines 154-62 he is conceived as an outlaw who refuses to settle the feud with compensation . . . . ,, 11 Baird is fully aware that in creating Beowulf the poet was drawing on what Frank Bessai has called an "exile trope ''~z which would have been familiar to him through the elegiac strain in Anglo-Saxon poetry. The exile trope occurs in "The Seafarer," "The Wanderer," "The Wife's Lament", "Deor ;" even in poems with religious themes like "Genesis '~ (A and B), "The Life of Guthlac," "Christ and Satan" and "Resignation." These poems, mostly written in the first person, give the reader of Anglo-Saxon poetry a sense of the exile's tortured state of mind, a psychology the Beowulf-poet would have known well enough to make use of it in his creation of the Grendel kin.

One of the fairly significant redirections of Beowulf criticism may be the growing admission (always with qualifications) that it could be possible to feel for Grendel and his mother. Herbert Wright approaches the possibility cautiously: "The mere mention of Grendel's exile, a word that always stirred the heart of an Old English poet, is enough to call forth the epithets earmsceapen (1351) and wons~li (105~J, terms which betoken a momentary commiseration even for the heorowearh hetel~c (1267). "13 Frank Bessai provides a further basis for some sort of sympathy for Grendel by explaining the monster's strained relationship with Hrothgar's comitatus. He feels that deprivation from the joys of the comitatus "motivates the hostility of the monster against the race of men: he is driven to destroy what he cannot share. Hence Gren- deFs attacks on Hrothgar's men are made in Heorot, after scenes of fel- lowship; he does not strike at the straggler, in the way a wolf harries a flock, but at the heart of the troop. 14 It is what Grendel has in common with any Anglo-Saxon - - the threat of potential exile and consequent rejection from the comitatus - - that moves Baird to state, probably as strongly as it can be stated, why he thinks the reader's response to Grendel is and would always have been a complicated one: "The theme of man-exile, in agreement with the enemy of God images, would likely bring up associations of repulsion and hatred, for the outlaw was often a dangerous, desperate man who had committed some violent act. But it also, incongruously perhaps, called up the emotions of pity and fear. The mere mention of Grendel as man-exile would have engaged emotions contradictory to those aroused by Grendel as wiht. The exile t h e m e . . , embodies a host of emotional overtones and suggestions which carry over from one context to another. ''15 The Beowulf-poet


knew how it felt to see the order of the comitatus suddenly exploded by the death of the chief, that

Oft seldan hw~r ~efler 16odhryre lytle hwile bongftr bgge6... (2029-31)

And one of the contexts Baird refers to occurs within Beowulf itself when, at the end, we see chaos entering Beowulf 's realm after his death, and we fully realize what his existence has meant to his people. As Wiglaf deplores what is to come we realize that he accepts the dissolu- t ion of the Geatish nation just as inevitably as Beowulf accepts that Fate has decreed his death. As Beowulf goes, so go the Geats, and without their leader the Geats must begin to lead a joyless life of exile, pre- sided over by the beasts of battle, which is not unlike that of Grendel at the beginning of the poem:

"nalles eorl wegan ma66um t6 gemyndum, n~ m~eg6 scyne habban on healse hringweor6unge, ac sceal ge6morm6d, golde ber6afod oft nalles ~ne elland tredan, nQ se herewisa hleabtor ~.legde, gamen ond gl6odr6am. For6on sceall g~r wesan momg morgenceald mundum bewunden, h~efen on handa, nalles hearpan swfg wigend weccean, ac se wonna hrefn fOs ofer f~gum fela reordian, earne secgan, hO him ~te spfow, laenden h6 wi6 wulf w~el r6afode." (3015-27)

Like any Germanic exile, and specifically like Beowulfs' own people, Grendel is denied the joys of belonging and the fringe benefits accruing to a member of the comitatus. He may take over Heoro t at night, but he cannot approach the gif-stol, symbol of the king's power and source of his generosity. I f Grendel were no monster he might strike the reader as a kind of Iago, who hates Cassio because "he has a daily beauty in his l i fe /Which makes me ugly. ''16

It seems that if we are not overwhelmed by the imagery of monsters and devils which partly defines Grendel there is ample encouragement to regard him as a man. He is rinc, wer, healOegn, even perhaps eorl. 17 But always he is wonsceli, earmsceapen, dreamum bedceled, geswenced (975, 1368) just like any other 8ngenga 165, 449) or exile of his time. N o t only this, though. In 2084 we hear Grendel described as mcegnes r6f, a term we might sooner expect to find characterizing Beowulf. 18 In 986, also, in the passage describing his a rmoured nails, Grendel is called hilderinc. And 1004 ft. connects, or at least compares, him with humani ty in describing him as one of the sawlberend. Perhaps his dual

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character is indicated by the image in 962 offOond onfrcetewum which combines the devil or monster (though, more generally, enemy) with the fully armed human.

This combination as it is found several places in the poem lends interest to the aftermath of Beowulf's swim from the Frisian raid. Re- membering that Grendel is an exile-figure, one sees by the following passage that Beowulf at least has known what it is to be an exile:

Nealles Hetware hramge l~orf(t)on f66ewiges, 1~6 him foran ong~an linde b~ron; lyt eft becw0m fram/pftm hildfrecan hftmes niosan! Oferswam 6ft siole6a bigong sunu Ecg66owes, earm finhaga eft tO 16odum... (2363-68)

As Frank Bessai says of this passage, "Beowulf is a battle-hero in one breath, and the hapless solitary man in the next. ''19 For Bessai a shift from the heroic to the elegiac context has occured. Though this shift might be explained as a traditional association the poet cannot resist, it is interesting both that the word 8nhaga is so often applied to Grendel, and that Beowulf is both the hero and the solitary in the same passage.

Solitary is the word for Grendel 's mother too. I f Grendel fits into Germanic society as exile and as a mean man with wergeld, his mother does what might be expected of any kinswoman by avenging her son's slaying. She

wolde hire bearn wrecan, fingan eaferan. (1546-47)

For this purpose she journeys (a sorhfulne siO, 1278) from the wyn- l~as wic (821) she once shared with Grendel. It appears that the Beo- wu/f-poet provides at least some basis for unders tandingand sympathy for the bereaved mother of Grendel, z~ a response which is perhaps encouraged by the fact that, as the Grendel kin have something human about them, Beowulf is in many places associated with the monsters.

The interconnection between Beowulf and the monsters adds interest to C. M. Lotspeich's etymology of the word aglwca, which is used more than once to describe Grendel: "OE 6gl8c [means] "misery," and aglOca, "mons te r" (Grendel and dragon) but also "hero" (Beowulf and Sigemund) . . . , ,21 He goes on to say that "this fundamental meaning of OE 6g--as "pursuing." "stalking," explains the two-fold use of 8gl~ca, as "mons ter" and "hero," because a pursuer could be either detested or admired. ''22 According to Lotspeich, monsters and exiles may be described by another ambiguous Anglo-Saxon word which also appears in various contexts in Beowulf." "OE wrcec and wracu.., means both "vengeance" and "misery," i.e. "the states of both pursuer and


pursued." A somewhat similar dualism is found in OE wra, cca, "ad- venturing hero" and "one driven out. ''23 If it is not to make too much of ambiguity in Anglo-Saxon words Lotspeich's remarks may support the case for the identification of Grendel as man and of Beowulf with the monsters.

Nothing illustrates the poet's ambivalent attitude to his heroic theme better than his presentation of Heorot and the merecave as related dwelling-places. Until Beowulf evicts him, Grendel is a part-time in- habitant of Heorot:

Heorot eardode, sincf~ge sel sweartum nihtum... (166-67)

Not only does Grendel occupy the hall at night: symbolically he is the night, as we can gather by the imagery of darkness which describes him. The monsters occupy the hall and they occupy the mere. Symboli- cally speaking the Heorot which is beorht contains the darkness of Grendel for a time, until it is "cleansed" by Beowulf. The point would be less significant were the cleansing of Heorot and the parallel purging of the fen-home permanent. But Heorot succumbs to the evil, divisive forces of men, and the burning of hall and country (including the destruction of Beowulf's own home, 2325-27) recurs in the last part of the poem when the dragon ravages the land of the Geats. At that point in the poem (2351-52) the mention of the fact that Beowulf Hrothgar's sele f~lsode is tragically ironic when juxtaposed with a recurrence of the monster malady Beowulf was supposed to have cured.

If Heorot contains the symbolic darkness of Grendel, the mere-cave has something of the hall about it, described as it is as a kind of under- ground Germanic dwelling. It is hofe (1507) n~Osele (1513), hr6fsele (1515) and recede (1572). 24 It has aflet upon which Grendel's mother falls, and a wall upon which the ealdsweord eotenisc hangs. Further- more, Beowulf is a gist (1522), a selegyst (1545) in the hall, though he is unhospitably sat upon by his hostess. The irony here recalls and parallels that of Grendel as healOegn in Heorot (142).

It seems to me that all the parallelisms I have been tracing are such as to ironically qualify what one might be tempted to see as a clear-cut good-evil separation in the poem. I do not feel that we ever have, as George Clark claims for Beowulf's battle-plan, even a momentary polarization of "the ambiguous coexistence of social order and social violence into the clear-cut contrast of hero and monster, the vivid op- position of Heorot and the mere, the stark contrast between civilization and chaos. ''25 When there is so much to identify Grendel with Beowulf, when even the mere has a good deal in common with Heorot, I think it is difficult to talk about polarization in Beowulf Each unit of the

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opposit ion partakes of some of the qualities of its "oppos i te , " and there is no crystal clear-cut distinction to be made between chaos and civilization, except by the characters themselves. The poet and his reader knows better. I do not suggest that Heoro t and Beowulf are not to be seen as symbols of order and consolidation; I merely believe that to read Beowulf symbolically is to conclude that no man can be pure as long as he contains dark, monstrous forces within him, that no hall can be completely cleansed as long as it is the residence of impure men.

That Beowulf and Heorot are closely linked as symbols may be de- monstrated by the similarity of their protective functions and, specifically, through the symbol of the helmet. A good deal is made of helmets in the poem (and of other armour , as Professor Clark points out), and the helmet takes on a special significance when one realizes that Beo- wulf and, more ironically, Hro thgar serve as the helm of their respective peoples, helm often signifying "pro tec to r" in the poem. Heoro t spreads a protective roof over the Danes and Geats, and I think one can connect the helmet (and Beowulf) with Heoro t through the descrip- tive passage at 1030-34:

Ymb b~es helmes hr6f h~afodbeorge wirum bewunden wala titan h6old 19~et him f6la fftf fr6cne ne meahte scQrheard sceb6an, bonne scyldfreca ong6an gramum gangan scolde.

Helmes hr6f uses the metaphor of the hall to describe the helmet. Both this detail and the wirum bewunden (perhaps echoing irenbendum) recall the passage which described Heoro t just over thirty lines earlier:

W~es 19~et beorhte bold tObrocen swi6e eal inneweard irenbendum faest, heorras tOhlidene; hrOf ~_na gen~es ealles ansund . . . . (997-1 ooo)

If Beowulf and Heoro t may be so closely identified as protective symbols, both as a sort of helmet covering their respective charges, the word helm may take on a much deeper meaning when it recurs later in the poem. The impor tant last survivor 's speech, for instance, uses the helmet to symbolize the dissolution of a realm :

Sceal se hearda helm (hyr)stedgolde, f~tum befeallen; feormynd swefa6, b~- 6e beadogriman bywan sceoldon . . . . (22(55-57)

Symbolically this passage hearkens back to the one mentioned above, which introduces to us the helmet as a complex symbol of protection, and it also recalls the warning Hrothgar gives Beowulf which seems to

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include the fear that he will be under helm drepen (1745), though these words are not explicitly applied to Beowulf. And the last survivor 's speech may be regarded as a symbolic foreshadowing o f Beowulf ' s demise since the helmet it mentions includes Beowulf ' s function as representative of his people.

Heoro t and Beowulf are essentially identical as symbols of order and civilization. But since neither Beowulf nor H e o r o t is an unqualified symbol of the good, each is to some extent being eroded from within. With this in mind an irony appears in the parallelism between the watchman on the Danish shore and Beowulf as watchman against Grendel (665-67). There is something futile about watching at the bor- ders, necessary though this precaut ion may seem, while the country is being ravaged f rom within, since Hro thgar (rices weard, 1390) is too feeble to do his part . The reader might see the state of affairs much in the terms of Browning 's Pope in The Ring and the Book, who describes

a potentate all fume For some infringement of his realm's just right, Some menace to a mud-built straw-thatched farm O' the frontier; while inside the mainland lie, Quite undisputed-for in solitude, Whole cities plague may waste or famine sap. z6

The psychological point is the same in "The Pope" as it is in Beo- wulJ~" one must at tack a problem at its center, or else its periphery will be a futile concern. But paradoxically, though Beowulf deals with the external heart of the Danish problem - - Grendel - - the true and recurrent heart of the problem is symbolically within him since so many de- tails in the poem conspire to present him ambiguously. I f in Beowulf, or in human nature, lies the germ of all mankind ' s troubles, the poet may be saying f rom the beginning, as Tennyson does of a similar con- flict between order and chaos in the Idylls of the King, that there is always a worm in the rose. 27 In the words of the Canadian poet Duncan Campbell Scott, " the shadow's afoot with the shine. ''28 Or, in the terms of the Beowulf-poet himself, even the return of the sun, after the defeat of Grendel and his mother , is announced by the raven:

Reste hine 1~- rfimheort; reced hliuade g~ap ond goldffth; g~est inne sw~ef, ob l~et hrefn blaca heofenes wynne bli6heort bodode. (1799-1802)

Admit t ing the pr imacy of the monstrous , repugnant aspect of Gren- del and the other monsters, then, more might be made of their human associations, and of the heathen, monst rous side of human beings in Beowulf. Perhaps what we have here is a critical question somewhat akin to the one posed by Satan in Paradise Lost, though on a much

S. L. Drag land- Monster-Man in "Beowu l f ' " 617

smaller scale. There is little danger of seeing Grendel as the hero of Beowulf, but ! believe there is a need to decide why the poet so closely associated the monstrous with the human. To take another parallel from literary criticism one might point to A. C. Bradley's out- moded opinion that Othello is a spotlessly noble hero. We now think that Othello is susceptible to seduction because he has normal if unsa- voury human weaknesses, that what Iago represents has a place in Othello's own psyche. The Beowulf-poet may have created in his monsters an external equivalent for the dark side of human nature, and at- tempted to show that the shadow belongs to Beowulf himself (and to other human characters in the poem) by associating him in some re- spects with the monsters. I would not suggest that Beowulf is presented as a complex character like Othello. That would be impossible tor a poet writing in a heroic mode. But what happens in Beowulf may be illuminated by considering the monsters in The Faerie Queene. Spenser has consciously made his dragons and giants in Book One, for instance, aspects of the Redcrosse Knight whose personality problems are ex- tracted from him so that he can fight and conquer them in an allegor- ical substitute for an internal struggle. Though Beowulf is not alle- gorical, The Faerie Queene may perhaps be regarded as one literary development (in an abstract direction) from the kind of thing the Beo- wulf-poet was doing, while a work like Othello may represent another, concrete and symbolic at once.

To appreciate the complexity of Beowulf one should probably resist an oversimplified interpretation suggested by the statement that Gren- del wiO rihte wan (144), and by the fact that when Beowulf defeats the monsters God has apparently on ryht gescOd/yOelice (1555-56). In view of what happens to Beowulf and the peace and order he brought to the Danes and the Geats it is possible to view Beowulf's temporary success ironically. And the universal irony of the individual's building for and depending on a future which does not exist for him personally (hence the elegiac laments at the end of Beowulf) is reinforced and explained by the fact that, when man acts, it is in defiance of his own inner weakness. The Beowulf-poet seems to say, through his association of man and monster, that there are good reasons for the kind of dissolution that occurs at the end of the poem, that they may be traced to a darkness in the human mind, and that Beowulf himself contains this shadow, as much as he also exemplifies heroism.

University of Western Ontario s.L. DRAGLAND

Notes

1. Walter W. Skeat, " O n the Significance of the Monster Grendel in the Poem of

618 S. L. Dragland- Monster-Man in "Beowulf '

Beowulf; With a Discussion of Lines 2076-2100." JP, XV (1886), 121. 2. All references to Beowulf will be from Fr. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finns-

burg, 3rd. ed. (Boston, 1950). 3. Nora Chadwick, "The Monsters and Beowulf," The Anglo-Saxons, ed. Peter

Clemoes (London, 1959), 193. 4. Hrothgar also (1047) is hordweard hceleba. 5. Frederick Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law (London, 1902), 71. 6. Beowulf, trans. David Wright (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1957), 99. 7. H. L. Rogers, "Beowulf 's Three Fights," RES, V1 (1955), 353. But Klaeber says

(Beowulf, 227n)" In its general intent the statement seems to be a declaration of Beo- wulf's virtual innocence."

8. See Paul B. Taylor. "Heofon r~ce swealg: A Sign of Beowulf's State of Grace," PO, XLII (1963), 258. D.M. Wilson, in The Anglo-Saxons (London, 1960). 40, quotes from the Ynglinga Saga to the effect t ha t " the higher the smoke [of a funeral pyre] rose in the air, the loftier would be the position of the burnt man in heaven . . . . "

9. J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Monsters and the Critics," The Beowulf Poet, ed. Donald K. Fry (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968), 41-42.

10. O. F. Emerson," Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English, PMLA, XXI (1906), 874.

11. Joseph L. Baird, "Grendel the Exile," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, LXVII (1966), 378.

12. Frank Bessai, "Comitatus and Exile in Old English Poetry," Culture, XXV (1964), 139.

13. Herbert G. Wright, " G o o d and Evil; Light and Darkness; Joy and Sorrow in Beowulf," RES, VIII (1957), 2. I should make it clear that Wright's mention of commiseration for Grendel is qualified by a later statement t ha t " the dragon, like the Giant Grendel, is an enemy of mankind, and the audience can have entertained no sympathy for either one or the other," (4)

14. Bessai, 142. 15. Baird, 379. The last part of Baird's point is supported, as he acknowledges, by

S. B. Greenfield's article, "The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of ' Exile' in Anglo- Saxon Poetry," Speculum, XXX (1955), 205.

16. William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. George Lyman Kittredge (Waltham, Mass., 1966), 120.

17. Baird, 378n, says: "Eor l of line 761 is ambiguous. In view of the poet's tendency toward applying ironical epithets to Grendel, this title might well be another example of the poet's grim humour."

18. A similar inversion takes place in 2287-9: b~. se wyrm onw6c wr6ht w~es geniwad; stonc 6ft ~efter stone, stearcheort onfand f6ondes f6tlflst . . . .

Here the stouthearted one is the dragon and the enemy is the plunderer of his hoard, at least from the dragon's point of view. In passages like this the poet achieves a curious shift of perspective whereby he may assume the attitude of one of his characters while retaining his third-person omniscience.

19. Bessai, 140. 20. Beowulf rules, like Hrothgar, for fifty years. Grendels mother also is

s6 6e flOda begong heorogifre beh~old hund miss6ra . . . . (1497-98)

21. C. M. Lotspeich, "Old English Etymologies," JEGP, XL (1941), 1. 22. Lotspeich, 1. 23. Lotspeich, 1. 24. The dragon's barrow, similarly, is called dryhtsele dyrnne. (2320). 25. George Clark, "Beowulf 's Armour," ELH, XXXII (1965), 422. 26. Robert Browning, "The Ring and the Book," Poems of Robert Browning, ed.

Donald Smalley (Boston, 1956), 437. 27. Alfred Tennyson,"Idyl ls of the King," The Poems andPlays (New York, 1938),

616. 28. Duncan Campbell Scott, "Labor and the Angel," Labor and the Angel (Boston,

1898).

Springer - BEO WULF Beowulf · 2017-08-28 · Beowulf's relationship to the treasure might support the idea that Beo- wulf is as human as heroic, and that a personal lapse contributed

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