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Background and originsImage:180px-Ottar03.jpg Beowulf meets archaeology. As the barrow in Vendel (in Sweden) was indicated as the barrow of Ohthere by local tradition, an excavation was undertaken in 1917. The dating was consistent with that of Beowulf and the sagas: the early 6th century. Norse sources also relate that a place called Vendel was the place of Ohthere's death.[1] The events described in the poem take place in the late 5th century and during the 6th century after the Anglo-Saxons had begun their migration and settlement in England, and before it had ended, a time when the Anglo-Saxons were either newly arrived or in close contacts with their Germanic kinsmen in Scandinavia and northern Germany. The poem could have been transmitted in England by people of Geatish origins,[2] and it may not be a coincidence that whereas Beowulf is the most well-known Anglo-Saxon work left to posterity, the most well-known Anglo-Saxon archaeological find, Sutton Hoo, also showed close connections with Scandinavia. It has consequently been suggested that Beowulf was first composed in the 7th century at Rendlesham in East Anglia,[3] and that the East Anglian royal dynasty, the Wuffings, were descendants of the Geatish Wulfings.[4]
The majority view appears to be that people such as king Hroðgar and the Scyldings, in Beowulf, are based on real people in 6th century Scandinavia.[9] Like the Finnsburg Fragment and several shorter surviving poems, Beowulf has consequently been used as a source of information about Scandinavian personalities such as Eadgils and Hygelac, and about continental Germanic personalities such as Offa, king of the continental Angles. Image:Eadgil's barrow.PNG Eadgils was buried at Uppsala, according to Snorri Sturluson. When Eadgils' mound (to the left) was excavated, in 1874, the finds supported Beowulf and the sagas. They showed that a powerful man was buried in this large barrow, c 575, on a bear skin with two dogs and rich grave offerings. These remains include a Frankish sword adorned with gold and garnets and a tafl game with Roman pawns of ivory. He was dressed in a costly suit made of Frankish cloth with golden threads, and he wore a belt with a costly buckle. There were four cameos from the Middle East which were probably part of a casket. A burial fitting a king who was famous for his wealth in Old Norse sources. Ongenþeow's barrow to the right has not been excavated.[10] Whilst it could be said that Beowulf is the only substantial extant Old English poem that addresses matters heroic rather than Christian, there are nonetheless Christian viewpoints expressed within the poem, and the overall judgement on both Christian and heroic society is ambiguous. Some scholars have suggested that the Christian elements were inserted later, perhaps by the scribe or scribes copying the manuscript. A turning point in Beowulf scholarship came in 1936 with J. R. R. Tolkien's essay Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics when, for the first time, the poem and Anglo-Saxon literature were seriously examined for its literary merits—not just scholarship about the origins of the English language as was popular in the 19th century. The Beowulf manuscript
The poem is known only from a single manuscript. The spellings in the surviving copy of the poem mix the West Saxon and Anglian dialects of Old English, though they are predominantly West Saxon, as are other Old English poems copied at the time. The earliest known owner is the 16th century scholar Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is known, though its official designation is Cotton Vitellius A.XV due to its inclusion in the catalog of Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the middle of the 17th century. It suffered irreparable damage in the Cotton Library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin made the first transcription of the manuscript in 1786 and published it in 1815, working under a historical research commission of the Danish government. Since that time, the manuscript has suffered additional decay, and the Thorkelin transcripts remain a prized secondary source for Beowulf scholars. Their accuracy has been called into question, however (e.g., by Chauncey Brewster Tinker in The Translations of Beowulf, a comprehensive survey of 19th century translations and editions of Beowulf), and the extent to which the manuscript was actually more readable in Thorkelin's time is unclear. Authorship and questionsAccording to the Norton Anthology of English Literature, most scholars believe that Beowulf was written by a Christian poet.[11] Grendel and Grendel's Mother are described as descendants of Cain, and share similarities with antagonists in medieval Christian stories. Since the Beowulf poet was also very knowledgeable about pagan beliefs, the descriptions of Grendel and Grendel's mother, for example, could owe as much to pagan beliefs about trolls as they do to Christian beliefs about demons. In addition, Beowulf's cremation at the end of the poem also refers to a pagan practice. On one view, the problem is resolved by supposing that, even though Beowulf was a pagan, the poem's Christian audience could admire his heroic deeds. Beowulf may thus be a product of the poet's knowledge of both Christian beliefs and the ancient history of his people. However, this approach may overestimate the historical knowledge and multicultural tolerance of the poem's last redactor. A somewhat more complex view, typical of oral traditional scholars, suggests that in the long history of the poem's transmission, a pre-Christian heroic narrative has been "baptised," perhaps superficially and with references only to those features of Christian tradition consistent with a heroic ethos. In whatever manner the two are combined, the result is a poem that seems to have appeal and to be intelligible outside of a Christian belief system. Professor Robert F. Yeager notes that the role of Christianity in a pagan context poses one of the mysteries surrounding Beowulf:
Beowulf the hero
Beowulf scholar J. R. R. Tolkien noted that the name Beowulf almost certainly means bee-hunter (literally, bee-wolf) in Old English. The name Beowulf could therefore be a kenning for "bear" due to a bear's love of honey. Bees figure prominently in many mythologies in Europe and the Near East (see Bee (mythology)). Jacob Grimm attributes the term "bee-hunter" to a type of woodpecker. Some scholars suggest that Beowulf could correspond to Bödvar Bjarki, the battle bear, from Norse sagas. Both left Geatland (where Bjarki's brother was king), arrived in Denmark and slew a beast that terrorized the Danish court. They also both helped the Swedish king Eadgils defeat his uncle Áli in the Battle on the Ice. An alternative theory is championed by author John Grigsby in his 2005 text, Beowulf & Grendel: The Truth Behind England's Oldest Legend. In this book, Grigsby argues that the word Beowulf translates as 'Barley wolf' and links this character to ancient warrior cults of Indo-European tradition such as the Ulfhednar ('wolf-heads') of Norse myth who may have gone into battle intoxicated with a sacred narcotic. This narcotic was most likely ergotized barley, a substance found in the stomachs of Iron Age bodies found preserved in peat bogs in Denmark such as Tollund Man. That these preserved bodies appear to have been slain in rites to the goddess Nerthus, mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania, has prompted Grigsby to argue that Grendel's lake-dwelling mother may be a late echo of this goddess, and that Beowulf's victory over her represents the ending of her cult in Age of Migration Denmark by Odin-worshipping Danes. Themes, characters, and storyThemesImage:Beowulf (geography)3.PNG An approximation of the central regions of the tribes mentioned in Beowulf. The red area is Västergötland (the core region of Geatland), the yellow area is the territory ruled by the Wulfings, the pink area is the Danish territory. The green area is the land of the Swedes. For a more detailed discussion on the fragmented political situation of Scandinavia during the 6th century, see Scandza The poem as we know it is a retelling of orally transmitted legends for a Christian audience. It is often assumed that the work was written by a Christian monk, on the grounds that they were the only members of Anglo-Saxon society with access to writing materials. However, the example of King Alfred suggests the possibility of lay authorship. In historical terms the poem's characters would have been pagans. The poem's narrator, however, places events into a Biblical context, casting Grendel and Grendel's Mother as the kin of Cain and placing monotheistic sentiments into the mouths of his characters. Although there are no direct references to Jesus in the text of the work, there are many indirect references. Also, the book of Genesis serves as a touchstone for the poem, since Grendel and Grendel's mother (due to their heritage) are seen as punished by the Curse and mark of Cain.[13] Scholars disagree as to whether Beowulf's main thematic thrust is pagan or Christian in nature. Of particular note is the description of soldiers' helmets, decorated with boar-carvings, alongside references to God and Christ, such as when Beowulf is given up for lost in Grendel's Mere at the sixth hour, which was the time at which Christ dies on the cross in the Bible. This could possibly be evidence of Christian details being placed in the story alongside traditional accounts of ancient Germanic religious practices. However, the lack of a pre-Christian written version of the epic leaves the issue unresolved. Thus reflecting the above historical context, Beowulf depicts a Germanic warrior society, in which the relationship between the leader, or king, and his thanes was of paramount importance. This relationship was defined in terms of provision and service; the thanes defended the interest of the king in return for material provisions: weapons, armor, gold, silver, food, and drinks. This society was strongly defined in terms of kinship; if a relative was killed it was the duty of surviving relatives to exact revenge upon his killer, either with his own life or with weregild, a reparational payment. In fact, the hero's very existence owes itself to this fact, as his father Ecgþeow was banished for having killed Heaðolaf, a man from the prominent Wulfing clan.[14] He sought refuge at the court of Hroðgar who graciously paid the weregild. Ecgþeow did not return home, but became one of the Geatish king Hreðel's housecarls and married his daughter, by whom he had Beowulf. The duty of avenging killed kinsmen became the undoing of king Hreðel, himself, because when his oldest son Herebeald was killed by his own brother Hæþcyn in a hunting accident, it was a death that could not be avenged. Hreðel died from the sorrow.[15] Moreover, this is a world governed by fate and destiny. The belief that fate controls him is a central factor in all of Beowulf's actions. Characters and objects
StoryScholars agree that Beowulf can be divided according to the three main battles of the poem. First battle: GrendelImage:Beowulf challenged by the coastguard by E Paul.jpg Beowulf is challenged by a Danish coast guard, by Evelyn Paul (1911). Beowulf, a young warrior, hears of Hroðgar's troubles and with his king's permission then leaves his homeland to help Hroðgar. Beowulf and his men spend the night in Heorot. After they fall asleep, Grendel enters the hall and attacks, devouring one of Beowulf's men. But Grendel dare not touch the throne of Hrothgar, because he is protected by the almighty God. Beowulf, feigning sleep, leaps up and grabs Grendel's arm in a wrestling hold, and the two battle until it seems as though the hall might fall down due to their fighting. Beowulf's men draw their swords and rush to his help, but their swords break upon Grendel's arm due to the thorny spikes and iron-tough skin of the monster. Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from his body at the shoulder and Grendel runs home to die. Second battle: Grendel's motherThe next night, after celebrating Grendel's death, Hroðgar and his men sleep in Heorot. Grendel's Mother appears, however, and attacks the hall. She kills Hroðgar's most trusted warrior, Æschere, in revenge for Grendel's death. Hroðgar, Beowulf, and their men track Grendel's Mother to her lair under an eerie lake. Beowulf prepares himself for battle; he is presented with a sword, Hrunting, by a warrior called Unferð. After stipulating a number of conditions (upon his death) to Hroðgar (including the taking in of his kinsmen, and the inheritance by Unferð of Beowulf's estate), Beowulf dives into the lake. There, he is swiftly detected and attacked by Grendel's mother. Unable to harm Beowulf through his armour, Grendel's mother drags him to the bottom of the lake. There, in a cavern containing her son's body and the remains of many men that the two have killed, Grendel's mother fights Beowulf. Grendel's mother at first prevails, after Beowulf, finding that the sword (Hrunting) given him by Unferð cannot harm his foe, discards it in fury. Again, Beowulf is saved from the effects of his opponent's attack by his armour and, grasping a mighty sword from Grendel's mother's armoury (which, the poem tells us, no other man could have hefted in battle), Beowulf beheads her. Travelling further into the lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse; he severs the head, and with it he returns to Heorot, where he is given many gifts by an even more grateful Hroðgar. Third battle: The dragonImage:Beowulf and the dragon.jpg Beowulf fights the dragon A further note: according to Seamus Heaney's translation (Beowulf: A New Verse Translation) Wiglaf says this to the cowardly warriors who fled the battle.
Spoilers end here.
Language and Verse-formBeowulf is the longest poem that has come down to us from Old English, one of the languages ancestral to Modern English. It is seen as an encomium, a song of praise for a great king: Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum In modern English: Lo! Of the Spear-Danes, in days of yore, Old English poetry such as Beowulf is very different from modern poetry. Although the Beowulf poem probably started out as an oral poem, the form we have today is highly literate and shows literary devices that only work for a literate audience. Instead of pairs of lines joined by rhyme (similarity of sounds at the ends of words), Anglo-Saxon poets typically used alliteration - a technique in which the first half of the line (the a-verse) is linked to the second half (the b-verse) through similarity in initial sound: Oft Scyld Scefing sceaðena threatum A line of Old English poetry usually has three words that alliterate. The meter, or rhythm, of the poetry works together with the alliteration: The stress in a line falls on the first syllables of the words that alliterate, as in the line "weo'x under wo'lcnum, weo'rðmyndum þah." (He grew under the sky, he prospered in honors.) However, it must be noted that when alliterating, only stressed syllables are used, and thus, prefixes such as "ge-" do not count. For example, the word "gefrunon" might alliterate with "feond," but never with "gesyht." Also, the lines are divided into halves, and each half has two stressed syllables. There must be alliteration in the first half that carries over into the second half, but the fourth stressed syllable is never used for alliteration, though the first three stressed syllables will alliterate. Old English poets also used kennings, poetic ways of saying simple things. For example, a poet might call the sea the "swan-road" or the "whale-road"; a king might be called a "ring-giver." There are many kennings in Beowulf, and the device is typical of much of classic poetry in Old English, which is heavily formulaic. The name Beowulf itself may be a kenning, "bee-wolf," that is, "bear." Kennings may have been traditional metaphors, and may also have allowed for improvisational composition in performance, providing phrasal synonyms that could be substituted in such a way as to complete the sense of a given line while preserving the meter. These kennings work in much the same way as epithets and verbal formulae, as prefabricated diction for modular insertion into the basic structure of the Old English line. For example, in the speech-introducing-lines -- Beowulf maðelode bearn Ecgðeowes The poet has a choice of epithets or formulae to use in order to fulfill the alliteration. Fr. Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg has been the standard Old English text/glossary used by scholars since 1908. Two recent versions with Old English glossaries include George Jack's 1997, Beowulf : A Student Edition, and Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson's 1998, Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts. FormThe poem is in alliterative measure, in which the alliterative unit is the line and the metrical unit is the half-line. Its poetic vocabulary included sets of metrical compounds that are varied according to alliterative needs. It also makes extensive use of elided metaphors. The two halves of the poem are distinguished in many ways: youth, then age; Denmark, then Geatland; the hall, then the barrow; public, then intimate; diverse, then focused. Here is a small sample including the first naming in the poem of Beowulf himself. After each line is translation to modern English. A freely-available translation of the poem, now out of copyright, is that of Francis Gummere. It can be had at Project Gutenberg.[16]
TranslationsThe first translation, by Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin, was to Latin, in connection with the first publication of his transcription. Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, greatly unsatisfied with this translation, made the first translation into a modern language — Danish — which was published in 1820. After Grundtvig's travels to England came the first English translation, by J. M. Kemble in 1837. William Morris & A. J. Wyatt's translation was published in 1895. Since then there have been numerous translations of the poem in English. Irish poet Seamus Heaney and E. Talbot Donaldson have both published translations with W.W. Norton of New York. Heaney's translation is interestingly influenced by Hiberno-English. Other popular translations of the poem include those by Howell D. Chickering, C. L. Wrenn, Fr Klaeber, Frederick Rebsamen, E.T. Donaldson's very literal prose version, and Burton Raffel's verse rendering. An online free verse translation by David Breeden can be found at http://www.lone-star.net/literature/beowulf/ J. R. R. Tolkien believed the translation by J. J. Earle was not accurate, and did not convey the meaning and symbolism of the storyline or the beauty of the prose of the poem. Chauncey Brewster Tinker was much more positive about the translation, however. Tolkien never made a translation of his own, since he believed that the only function of a translation was to act as a crib sheet for someone reading the original, as he explains in his essay "On Translating Beowulf." Various publishers, among them Michael Drout, have made plans at one time or another to assemble loose scraps of translations of various passages that Tolkien made for his lectures and publish them as "Tolkien's translation of Beowulf", but the Tolkien Estate has not approved the idea. A few years ago, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney released Beowulf: A New Translation (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000). The book has won the prestigious Whitbread literary prize for poetry and has received critical acclaim from many sources.[17] There are also interpretations, if not translations, of Beowulf, including one written by Robert Nye. Derivative works and contemporary influencesLiterature
Films
A new release is scheduled for November 2007 http://www.beowulfmovie.com/ Television and music
Games
Comics
Artist's books
Theatre
Spoilers end here.
ReferencesOld English plus glossary
Modern English translations
Dual-Language Editions
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