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RE: Beowulf on: October 15, 2006 09:54
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Dolwen :Welcome Weavers to the Realm of Vairë's Beowulf discussion.
Beowulf is an Old English poem about a hero named Beowulf who travels across the sea to save the Danes from a monster called Grendel, then again from Grendel's mother. Later, he returns home and eventually becomes king. In old age he dies saving his own people from a dragon.
Most scholars believe that Beowulf was written between the middle of the seventh century and the end of the tenth century A.D. Only one copy of the poem exists and is now in the British Museum.
Beowulf has been translated and debated by many different scholars throughout the years. Many of the earliest scholars believed that Beowulf had no value as a poem but only as a historical document to be studied. However, J.R.R. Tolkien's essay on Beowulf changed forever how the poem was viewed and it started being read for its literary value.
This map is from Readings on Beowulf, to give an idea of the locations in the poem.
pv :
Hope you're all enjoying Beowulf, if you're reading it!
Here's a quote on epics in general that talks about the profound sense of tragedy that pervades most epics. *Spoiler Warning* - this quote reveals the ending of Beowulf, so don't read it if you'd like to keep yourself in suspense! ...the epic vision is a tragic one. Jasper Griffin, discussing a translation of Gilgamesh in The New York Review of Books, recently remarked "There is no happy ending, even for mighty heroes who are close to the gods … This is the true epic vision … An older wisdom, and a truer poetry, sees that the highest nobility and the deepest truth are inseparable, in the end, from failure - however heroic - from defeat, and from death." (NYRB, 9 March, 2006). So Beowulf dies in the moment of his triumph against the dragon, and King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table go down to defeat in their final battle, and as Hjalti says in Sagas and Myths of the Northmen in this collection, "It is not possible to bend fate, nor can one stand against nature."
... The epic is not a place where anyone lives happily ever after; it obeys a mightier realism than that. The quotation is from this article on epics by Philip Pullman. Dolwen :Great quote pv. I have a couple quotes that I would like to share also.
The essence of the tragedy in Beowulf is an intense vision of what it is that sustains a human society and life itself and what it is that destroys them. "Alan A. Lee- Golden Hall and Earth-Dragon"
And of course Tolkien from The Monsters and The Critics
Beowulf is not a primitive poem; it is a late one, using the materials (then still plentiful) preserved from a day already changing and passing, a time that has now forever vanished, swallowed in oblivion; using them for a new purpose, with a wider sweep of imagination, if with a less bitter and concentrated force... it is in fact written in a language that after many centuries has still essential kinship with our own,it was made in this land, and moves in our northern world beneath our northern sky, and for those who are native to that tongue and land, it must ever call with a profound appeal- until the dragon comes. pv :
As I believe it's out of print in certain parts of the world now, I'll post a summary of Tolkien's essay on Beowulf, "The Monsters and the Critics," sometime soon.
In the meantime, if you'd like to see a picture of the original Beowulf manuscript, click here. pv :
The Beowulf story has also been made into a movie - you can check out the official film website here, and watch the trailer, too!
And here's a picture of Beowulf himself! Dolwen :Online version of Beowulf for those who haven't been able to get a copy of the book. pv :There’s also a very readable, often humorous, translation in simple language by Dr. David Breeden which can be read online ...
Here are the links to each episode :
The adventure begins here!
In episode two, Grendel attacks.
In episode three, Beowulf comes to fix the problem.
In episode four, Grendel meets Beowulf!
In episode five we hear many speeches.
In episode six Grendel’s mother gets mad!
In episode seven a sword fails and Beowulf takes a dive.
In episode eight we learn how to be good warriors.
In episode nine a dragon gets angry.
In episode ten Beowulf suits up for another fight.
In episode eleven Beowulf shows what he’s made of.
In episode twelve Beowulf meets his maker. Dolwen :The first time I read Beowulf was Seamus Heaney's tranlation. It took me a few pages to get the feel of the poem and I was a little confused by all of the back stories and what they meant. But I really got into it and couldn't put it down. I think it is a very exciting story and I really enjoy reading it. I think it is like LotR in the way that with every reading you discover something that you didn't notice or understand before. I also like seeing familiar things from Tolkien's work, even if it is just finding a familiar name.
pv :I'm reading the Seamus Heaney translation, and I found that the very beginning of the story reminded me of Tolkien - Shield Sheafson's* funeral boat was probably the inspiration for Boromir's funeral boat in LotR. And the great hall Heorot also reminded me of Tolkien's Meduseld.
* also known as Scield Scefing in other translations. Dolwen :When Beowulf returns home there is a back story of a King Offa and his son was named Eomer. Another thing that comes to mind is how the dragon in Beowulf was awakened by a thief taking a cup, Bilbo in The Hobbit. pv : Some critics have asked whether intelligent people can take Beowulf seriously, because it's all about monsters - a man fighting monsters of various shapes and sizes.
Tolkien had an answer to this, but before I go into that, I just wanted to ask you all how you personally feel about the monsters. Are you able to take them seriously, or do you (as the critics did) find them rather silly? Dolwen :
I didn't have a problem at all taking the monsters seriously. But in our modern world, fantasy is more accepted and isn't just for children's tales anymore. I think it is easier for us to accept monsters in a story than it was when the critics in Tolkien's time thought them silly. pv :
Good point, Dolwen! Attitudes towards monsters have changed since Tolkien's time. In fact, Tolkien himself was influential in changing people's attitudes towards monsters and dragons.
Here is a synopsis of Tolkien’s essay, The Monsters and the Critics, from this site…The Monsters and the Critics was a lecture given in 1936 to the British Academy. This lecture caused a total shift of focus in the way scholars viewed the Old English poem, Beowulf.
In the post-New Age world, it's hard to grasp what Tolkien was refuting. Today, the prevailing wisdom is that folklore and mythology are the keys to spiritual enlightenment. They are handy watering places for us as we follow our Road To Bliss. Tales of magic, monsters and the like nourish us, for they clue us in to bits of reality that we cannot grasp through the scientific method.
In Tolkien's day, however, scholars held that mythology was the product of a primitive mentality. Poems such as Beowulf were considered useful mainly as sources of old English vocabulary words and could hardly be considered great art.
Moreover, they felt that there was something childish about mythology. The Beowulf poet, they said, had lowered himself by focusing on Beowulf's struggle with Grendel, Grendel's Mom and the Dragon when he could have been detailing the human interactions of Beowulf's tribe, the Geats, or perhaps giving an account of their military and diplomatic history.
The consensus was that the poem was irrevocably marred because the Beowulf poet's brilliant language did not fit his low theme. Also, the important elements of the poem (wars, divided loyalties, and grand passions) were unaccountably kept at the periphery of the narrative, while the "trivial" stuff was placed at its heart. The focus on the monsters, they said, was "an inexplicable blunder of taste."
Tolkien, however, argues that in his encounters with these creatures from Hell, Beowulf confronts evil in its most pure form. He writes, "It is not an irritating accident that the tone of the poem is so high and its theme is so low. It is the theme in its deadly seriousness that begets the dignity of tone."
Even in these essays, the storyteller is at work. Tolkien keeps moving from academic, critical language into allegory, painting pictures with words. In arguing that Beowulf was not merely a historical document to be mined for Old English words and customs, he invents the story of a man who inherits a field filled with ancient stones.
The man builds a tower. Later, critics come and knock down the tower so that they can analyze ancient inscriptions on the stones. They criticize the man for building the tower and remain completely unaware that "from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea."
The Monsters and the Critics is not written for a general audience. It was written for scholars who had, among other things, a knowledge of the Old English and Latin languages and a familiarity with Beowulf and the critical analyses it has spawned. Tolkien's language in this essay is rich and allusive. It's not a text that one can breeze through. (Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf with its parallel English and Old English texts was a huge help in following the arguments.) pv : I'd just like to say a bit more about The Monsters and the Critics...
Tolkien was particularly interested in the theme of Beowulf, which he describes as follows :[The author of Beowulf] is still concerned primarily with man on earth, rehandling in a new perspective an ancient theme: that man, each man and all men, and all their works shall die. A theme no Christian need despise. Yet this theme plainly would not be so treated, but for the nearness of a pagan time. The shadow of its despair, if only as a mood, as an intense emotion of regret, is still there. The worth of defeated valour in this world is deeply felt. As the poet looks back into the past, surveying the history of kings and warriors in the old traditions, he sees that all glory (or as we might say 'culture' or 'civilization') ends in night. Tolkien, in The Monsters and the Critics talks about the pre-Christian attitude to life. Before man developed faith in a just God who would defend him against evil, he saw life in terms of a constant struggle against the forces of evil, which inevitably ended in defeat and death. But although man is ultimately doomed to death and defeat he is still respected for valiantly resisting the forces of evil as far as he can. As Tolkien puts it,
"The worth of defeated valour in this world is deeply felt."
This theme fascinated Tolkien, and it is the theme of much of his own work.
(This thread in the Book Discussion Forum, discusses the theme of fallen valour in Tolkien's own work.)
So that was all about Tolkien's view of Beowulf.
[Edited on 9/2/2008 by cirdaneth]
http://monstersandcritics.wordpress.com/
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