Download - BeoWulf
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BeoWulf
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When? Where? Who?
• We may say that Beowulf was composed somewhere in England between about 521 AD and1026 AD
• We do not know for sure where in England the poem was composed.
• Nor do we know if the poem was composed by a single author, or whether it is the result of the merging together of ballads by different authors, nor whether the poem was significantly altered subsequent to its first written form.
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Why?
• The poem's purpose is also unclear - arguments have been made for a naturalistic mythic allegory, a Christian allegory, a criticism of heroic culture, a mourning for the loss of heroic culture, a Germanic 'Old Testament', an allegory concerning contemporary politics in one or other of the Saxon kingdoms - just to mention a few.
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Fate vs. Free Will
• Over the whole poem broods the thought of Wyrd – the three sisters of fate. Gruesome and bloodthirsty.
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CLOTHO AND LACHESIS AND ATROPOS
• THERE WERE MEN FIGHTING IN WAR LIKE HARNESSES…AND BEHND THEM THE DUSKY FATES, GNASHING THEIR WHITE FANGS, GLOWERING. GRIM, BLOODY AND UNAPPROACHABLE, STRUGGLED FOR THOSE WHO WERE FALLING.
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From Hesiod
• FOR THEY ALL WERE LONGING TO DRINK DARK BLOOD. SO SOON AS THEY CAUGHT A MAN OVERTHROWN OR FALLING NEWLY WOUNDED, ONE OF THEM WOULD CLASP HER GREAT CLAWS ABOUT HIM. AND HIS SOUL WOULD GO DOWN TO HADES.
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• AND WHEN THEY HAD SATISFIED THEIR SOULS WITH HUMAN BLOOD, THEY WOULD CAST THAT ONE BEHIND THEM, AND RUSH BACK INTO THE TUMULT AND FRAY.
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• CLOTHO AND LACHESIS WERE OVER THEM AND ATROPOS LESS TALL THAN THEY, A GODDESSS OF NO GREAT FRAME, YET SUPERIOR TO THE OTHERS AND THE ELDEST OF THEM…AND THEY ALL MADE A FIERCE FIGHT OVER ONE POOR WRETCH, GLARING EVILY AT ONE OTHER WITH FURIOUS EYES AND FIGHTING EQUALLY WITH CLAWS AND HANDS.
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• The atmosphere is grey and misty like the marsh home of Grendel.
• The grey gloom is a reflection of the mood these folk had on life.
• Tragedy was always near.
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Yet….
• Fate must be fought against, whatever the odds. Brave before all else is this Beowulf, with the bravery of a young, strong, unsoftened people, the physical courage which not only meets an enemy unshrinkingly, but seeks him out to fight with him alone and weaponless.
• This is the very rapture and madness of bravery, the apotheosis of daring.
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• The love of praise and the desire for glory breathing through every utterance in the poem, are not the evidence of a vaulting ambition which seeks its goal through crooked ways, but rather the unrestrained outbreak of the longing for appreciated activity and power.
• Beowulf does not seek to conceal his desire for praise. • He boasts of his exploits with a child's simplicity of
enjoyment. His age is too far from civilization to have attained the virtue of modesty and the vice of hypocrisy.
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Grendel Came from Cain and Abel
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Loyalty is Everything• The spirit of loyalty that has already grown, in Beowulf's time,
into a racial institution, is strongly impressed upon the poem. • The duty of the thegn to his lord, a service resting upon
sentiment as well as upon necessity, is performed heartily. • Woman is seen in various relations, occupying always a
position of dignity, and inspiring those feelings of respect, that sense of her inviolability, which is the great honor of the Teutonic race; but the tenderer feeling that nourished feudalism into chivalry is quite beyond the pale of Beowulf's experience.
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Christian or Pagan?• In spite of the interpolations by a later Christian editor, the poem
is pagan and of the essence of paganism. • The old fragment touching the Passing of Scyld hints at the
mystery of birth and death; but aside from this there is no looking beyond that after-mystery, no dwelling upon the possibilities of the hereafter.
• The whole work is an embodiment of the idea of practicality. • Beowulf died, not to establish a principle, but to secure the
golden hoard of the fire-drake, and therefore the funeral dirge of this hero knells him out of the memory of men.
• The history of Beowulf is the pathos of paganism and of the material.
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The text itself…
• Alliteration!• Kenning: this is from the Old Norse verb
“kenna” which means to know or recognize. It is a device for introducing descriptive color or for suggesting associations without distracting attention from the essential statement.
• Basically, a kenning is a compact metaphor.• In its more complex form it is a riddle.
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Google – Beowulf text
• www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/beowulf• Everypoet.com• Etext.virginia.edu• Sparknotes - but the TEXT not the summaries.
• We have 20 books – so 11 computer savvy people should volunteer to read it on line.
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Literature Groups
• #1 John, Kerry, Gage, Brittany• #2 Amanda S., Samantha, Ilana, Connor• #3 Zain, Anna, Sharon, Jenna• #4 Emily, Alicia, Jooneil, Amanda A.• #5 Leahra, Scott, Reagan, Cindi• #6 David, Jasmine, Natasha, Bobbi• #7 Caitlin, Tyler, Kayla, Arriya• #8 Jennifer, Ali, Josh, Jamal