Beowulf - Three Readings of an Epic Poem

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Beowulf: Analyzing briefly three readings of an epic poem.

DAVID SILVA ARAUJO

ABSTRACT: In the most of the lectures through the journey throughout world literature, critics have been concerned with epic poems and the heroes. Heroes whose lived in the epic poems. The last one of those today in the Germanic epic poem is Beowulf. But it is not just an ending; it is also a forthwith transition poem because one of the things that make this poem different from other epics poems that readers looked at is one that has been touched by Christianity. And one of the questions that critics and readers have asked over the years is: How much does it matter? How much does it count with? This is a pagan poem in the beginning with it has so Christian additions. Do those Christian additions change the poem? Do they have to be taken account? This article briefly argues with three different readings of this epic poem.

Keywords: Beowulf. Pagan. Christianity. Reading. Transition.

Introduction Beowulf the poem seems to have come from southern Sweden to England with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who started arriving in England about the fifth century. It seems to survived orally for several centuries before it was written down sometime between eight and 10th century. It survives in a single manuscript which was damaged by fire in 17 th century. We came very close to not having this poem at all. The plot of the poem concerns its hero Beowulf who travels from a people in southern Sweden called the Geats to Denmark to help Hrothgar the king of the Danes whose meet hall under siege from a kind of gigantic half man half monster a kind of troll named Grendel. To the Anglo-Saxon audience Grendel’s rampage was not a random act of terror, in attacking the mead hall he was attacking society as a whole but here the rituals were enacted which bound their society together. Therefore, the whole is not only the social order but also moral order. ‘So Grendel ruled in defiance of right, one against all, until the greatest house

in the world stood empty, deserted wallstead.’ (lines 144-146)

Beowulf defeats Grendel in a big battle inside the mead hall. Then he was to fight Grendel’s mother who renews the attack on the Danes to avenge her son’s death. This fight occurs at the bottom of a really frightfully lake. After Beowulf wins this battle there was a great feast at Hrothgar’s hall which Beowulf is loaded with gifts and he achieves the full rank up of hero by being sung in heroic songs by Hrothgar’s bards. In the second part of the poem, Beowulf returns home and the story jumps ahead about fifty years, during which Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and protects his people very well. However, when Beowulf is an old man a dragon in his kingdom awakened by a theft of a cup from his horde and he begins to terrorize Beowulf’s people. Therefore, he puts his arms one more time and goes out to fight one last battle. In the fight, all his handpicked warriors desert him. They all run away in fear except Wiglaf who stays and helps Beowulf in the end. After a terrific struggle they kill the dragon but in the battle is mortally wounded and he lives just long enough some other treasure that he won for his people brought out of the cave before he dies. The Poem ends with the Geats building a brit burial mound for Beowulf and with some really gloomy predictions about what will happen to the people now the Beowulf is gone.

The poem includes a great deal with other materials as well. A great portion of what is given over the feast and the celebrations. And the poem digresses often about 10 different other stories. The stories are told in enough detail that clearly they were stories that people knew and stories that were well developed but none of them were material completely. So we have to guess that the people who heard the story initially would have understood those stories well enough to know what was being looted to.

For us as moderns readers we have to have a text with some really good footnotes to help us keep track of where those allusions and what they refer to will get back to those allusions in a bit.

Beowulf shares with the other epic poems a lot of features like Gilgamesh, Achilles, Odysseus, and so on. Beowulf is a hero who is larger and stronger than other man but he is never the less mortal he can and will die like Gilgamesh with Humbaba or Odysseus with the Cyclops. Beowulf has to fight and struggle against monsters whose have more than human

size and strength, and like virtually all the heroes we have considered, Beowulf is eager to win fame, to be remembered in song and story after his death. In the last line, Beowulf was keenest to win fame and fame is one of his great motivators. He helps to understand the value of Germanic culture, especially the values of a great chieftain; the scop helps to define not just the people but an entire culture. Like all good literature, Beowulf is capable of being read in a lot of different ways. We are going to take a look at three different readings to ‘solve’ this poem. Focusing briefly at least on the question about those Christian elements these interpretations give the reader some suggestions of the kind of debate that is going on around this and then to explore some other poem’s possibilities. Tolkien’ Reading One of the famous readings in the poem is of J.R.R. Tolkien who is the author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In 1936, he wrote an article “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”. He argues that Beowulf is essentially a pre-Christian poem with a few inadvertent Christian details. They were unavoidable because the poet who wrote this down was a Christian, but he was a Christian who was looking back on a pre-Christian past with admiration and some nostalgia (TOLKIEN, 1936). The scop who wrote this poem out was clearly Christian, he calls Grendel a descendent of Cain, moreover the story of Noah’s Flood is inscribed on the hilt of the sword which Beowulf uses to try to kill Grendel’s mother, and in the Hrothgar’s mead-hall a scop sings a song about creation that sounds like it comes very much from the book of Genesis. Tolkien (1936) argued that this Christian poet in Britain wrote a poem that look backwards on a heroic pre-Christian past and he looks back with admiration which interestingly is precisely what Tolkien himself was going to do in his great trilogy. There is of course evidence in the poem to support this view. In many ways the definitions, terms and assumptions of the poem are those of a pre-Christian people. Early in the poem, the poet defines a good king and he defines what good kings do. And a good king is who scourges of many tribes, he is a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among his foes: ‘There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes, a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.’(Lines 5-6)

After a while, all the other surrounding tribes have to pain him tribute: ‘In the end each clan on the outlying coasts beyond the wale-road had to yield to him and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.’ (lines 9-11)

If we ask whom is mead-benches as he wrecking? Whom is he scourging? The answer is other Germanic tribes. A first century Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus traveled north to visit these people and studied them and he wrote a book Germania (98A.D.) which he said that the warfare was the standard way of life for these people, fighting was what they did, they live to fight and they fight to live. And what that means is: for a good health in a society like this in a clan, the retainers or thanes as they are called, when capture booty from other people, they bring it back and give to their chieftain and the chieftain distributes it back to the thanes. It is one of the why in the poem a good king is also called a ‘ring-giver’, he is someone who distributes his thanes bring in for him. As Potter (1935) describes in The Germania of Tacitus that this state of spiritual health where everybody doing what it was supposed to be done when a society works like this. Immortality in this culture means winning a reputation that survives one, and Hrothgar tells Beowulf after the second battle with Grendel’s mother he says ‘you have made yourself immortal your glorious action.

Scops are already making up stories about him even before he returns home and that is a really good sign. But Tolkien is a lot less interested in Beowulf’s fights with neighboring tribes even though that it does establish the ambience in the poem purely Germanic. All of which Tolkien says comes from deep within Norse and Germanic Mythology, they are associated with cold, darkness and wilderness. Their enemies, human values, achievements and the reflections do really hostile places in which this people had live for centuries. In Tolkien’s vision humans create little tiny circles of light. Hrothgar’s mead-hall is one of those circles of light, and inside of one of those circles there is laughter, music and fellowship, but just outside those circles are all the forces that want to destroy it. These people would live long enough in places where nature tries to kill you about five months all over every year. They knew that they live in a hostile place and so in some ways, building a mead-hall like one

which Hrothgar builds, actually calls Grendel into existence. Create something human and the hostel universe will try to destroy it. The third monster, the dragon, besides being compounded eve all the themes of the northern imagination most loathed, made up of a snake, a bat, a lizard, and a worm it is also a negation of all the values of a good king. Where a good king is a ring-giver, a dragon is a ring-holder; it is simply sits on the pile of treasure. So in terms of opponents as far as Tolkien is concerned, we work backwards in the poem from the more nearly human to the less human, toward the deeper and more pervasive evil that surrounds these people in the world in which they lived (TOLKIEN, 1936). The dragon kills Beowulf, and that he does kill Beowulf at the end replicates the pattern of all the northern mythology in which in the final battles the gods and humans will line up against the monsters in the last great battle. Men and gods will lose to the monsters and the world will be destroyed. It means that the entire arc of northern mythology is gloomy and there are no ultimate winners. There are only glorious and inglorious defeats (TOLKIEN, 1936). As Hrothgar reminds Beowulf on the night after his defeat of Grendel, Beowulf is at the pick of his powers, and Hrothgar says to Beowulf not to be too sure of him, or not to be too confident because nothing less, your strength full less, life does not less. Hrothgar says that there will probably come an illness, or a sword, or a fire, or even a spear thrust, and then he says: “O flower of warriors, beware of that trap. Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloom but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow illness or a sword to lay you low, or a sudden fire or surge water or jabbing blade or javelin from the air or repellent age. Your piercing eye will dim and darken; and death will arrive, dear warrior, to sweep you away.” (lines 1758-1768)

This kind of gloomy visions that nothing less is deeply embedded in the northern imagination. For Tolkien, Beowulf is a hero in part because he knows it, and uses his strength to accomplish what he can in the meantime. There are no ultimate victories in this mythology. One can only hold back to feet for a while and that Beowulf manages to do for his people. So

the point of ending for Tolkien is not that the dragon kills Beowulf, but he takes the dragon with him when he goes. The poem begins with a funeral and it ends with a funeral. The poet is aware all the time throughout the entire poem that nothing less. When he tells us about the beautiful mead-hall that Hrothgar had built, he also says that was a curse before it burned down in the fire. He reminds us about the clans that are getting along with one another, and that was a curse before they went to war and destroyed each other. The scop knows that nothing less; he knows also that the Geats will disappear from history at the end of the poem. Even the little figures of speeches that the poet uses in his poem, stresses under this pessimistic vision. One of his favorite little devices is called understatement. According to Israel (2006, p. 1) “An understatement is a statement which, somehow, because it is conspicuously less informative than some other statement, can be used to express the meaning of the more informative statement.” Is the usage of a series of negatives to make a positive statement: instead of saying ‘I am happy’ one would say ‘I would not you to think that I am happy’. It simply understates what one is trying to say. When Grendel is killed, the poet says not to regret Grendel’s death too much. It is clearly an understatement. After about twenty lines how awful the lake is in the mirror in which Grendel’s mother lives, the poet sums up saying ‘that was no good place’. Thus it is the part of the darkness vision of this people. Tolkien states that it is essentially a pagan poem and points out not to pay much attention to the Christian bits in it because it really does not affect the texture, or the fiber of the entire poem. McGalliard & Patterson’ Reading A second reading suggested by John McGalliard and Lee Pattersson whose are editors of the Norton Anthology of World Literature. They see the poem as a kind of meditation on the futility of tribal warfare at the Germanic love of fighting. Most of the digressions, and all of them that can be accurately identified are about intertribal fields, most of which in badly. The Geats at poem’s end have lost their leader and because they lost him in the world which they live where everybody is always attacking everybody else, they know that they are vulnerable and doomed. The messenger who comes to tell them that Beowulf is dead says this: ‘Many a spear dawn-cold to the touch will be

taken down and waved on high; the swept harp won’t waken warriors but the raven winging darkly over thee doomed will have news, tidings for the eagle of how he hoked and ate how the wolf and he made short work of dead.’

Paradoxically, the only way one can control violence is through violence which mere perpetuates the cycle. In this reading the monsters are not symbols of a hostile universe as they were for Tolkien, but a kind of social sickness that pervades the whole culture. As Beowulf prepares for his final battle, he tells a story about king Wiglaf’s father, one of whom sons accidentally killed another, and when one son kills another son there is no way what one can compensate for this accident. Beowulf says that if Wiglaf’s father knowing that there is nothing he can do to avenge the death of a son, he feels as empty as a man watching his son dying on the gallows. In both cases cannot be compensated and if there is no compensation one can make for death, the life suddenly becomes empty. This is the term that Galliard & Patterson are pointing out that in a world which fighting, and revenge, and payment are all the qualities or values that one has, this is a society which is very ill down to this core is something which the poet knows. In summing up this is how they put it: “[…] the hero understands at some level the futility of the entire world of Germanic heroism that he himself so fully represents. Trolls and dragons can be killed, but how does ones eradicate the violence that serves to constitute society itself? The monsters are, finally instances of a social sickness that infects the culture as a whole: they may be killed, but the violence they represent will continue unabated.” (Galliard & Patterson)

Niles’ Reading A third reading and this one is interesting because it does make more of the Christian elements in the poem than Tolkien does. John Niles Colby (1983) in Beowulf: The Poem and its Tradition, he sees the poem sort permeated with Christian values, the ones whose Tolkien puts on the margins.

Niles (1983), notices that both the poet and characters inside the poem refer to judgment day and heaven and hell. He notices that Grendel is placed both in the context of Cain, and in the context of the Giants’ war against God in the Old Testament which makes Beowulf fights against Grendel and Grendel’ mother into a kind of cosmic battle: God helping Beowulf to preserve that God had created. When Hrothgar praises Beowulf, he thanks God for send him. Beowulf acknowledges God is help in his fight with Grendel’ mother, as he puts it: “It was a hard-fought, a desperate affair That could have gone badly; if God had not help me, The outcome would have been quick and fatal.” (lines 1656-1658)

The reason why Niles fines these Christian values important is that he sees the poem concerned of that community which account for the emphasis he thinks on feasts, ceremonial speeches, and gifts exchanges which fill up this poem. Niles notices that the three fights (the ones that Tolkien finds most important) take up only about 500 under 3200 lines in the whole poem and the rest of it is dedicated to something else. The ceremonial opening above the poem, for Niles, is to show how community gets established. The earliest part of the poem is about a character named Shield Sheafson, and it argues about his funeral. For Niles this is the founding father and shows how a community gets established, and the funeral that Shield receives is a fitting funeral for a founding father. The ending of the poem show how community falls apart. The Geats will fall apart and will disappear from history because they fail to support they lord in a dragon fight. Wiglaf the only retainer who stays behind and helps Beowulf to kill the dragon, tells the people what they have done were really stinging rebuke at the end of the poem (NILES, 1983). The digressions for Niles shows how pride, or anger, or self-will, or the breaking of all, can destroy the community criteria apart. Grendel for Niles is a perfect symbol because he lives outside the community, he is a loner, he has no language he gives and receives no gifts, and he hates the light and the music from the mead-hall. Niles states that Beowulf comes to Hrothgar’ hall in first place not in search of fame, but because Hrothgar needs help, and besides Beowulf remembers that Hrothgar had helped Beowulf’ father once years ago, so he owes him a favor. (NILES, 1983).

The celebrations after the fights show what Grendel tried to destroy. It show joy in human community which is free of threats from outside people, singing and drinking together indoors who trust and love one another. According to Niles (1983) when Grendel’ mother retaliates; Beowulf fights her not because he wants to enhance his fame but because Hrothgar asked him to, and again more is made of the celebrations afterwards than the fight itself. The dragon is another outsider, another loner, and Beowulf fights it because it threatens his people. He means to make the treasure that the dragon is sitting on available to his people, but they realize that they are not where they overt it, and they buried with their king. Wiglaf’ loyalty in this last great dragon fight shows the real value of heroism, and this heroic act is useful that binds society together. He and Beowulf what loyalty to one another can accomplish. Niles argues that this disloyalty and cowardice at the Geats means that their communal life is over; their ornaments will be taken from them; their hearts will be uncrowned. At the very end of the poem a Geat woman laments at the Beowulf’ pyre and what she said for the people is: ‘A Geat woman too sang out in grief; with hair bound up, she unburdened herself of her worst fears, a wild litany of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.’ (lines 3150-3155)

For Niles the poem is not about heroism per se, but about what leaders need to do and act in order to hold society together. Courage and fortitude and the desire for fame can all be helpful to leader but they can also be destructive to society if they were used for selfish reasons instead of communal ones.

Conclusion Throughout the timeline of the epic poem Beowulf many readings and misreading have surged. Although, none of them must to be considered definitive, but should be interpreted analyzed and argued. This briefly analysis focuses only in three exceptional readings of the poem. Firstly, Tolkien states that it is essentially a pagan poem and points out not to pay much attention to the Christian bits in it because it really does not affect the texture, or the fiber of the entire poem. Secondly, Galliard & Patterson are pointing out that in a world which fighting, and revenge, and payment are all the qualities or values that one has, this is a society which is very ill down to this core is something which the poet knows. And considering from a third angle Niles (1983) argues that the poem is not about heroism per se, but about what leaders need to do and act in order to hold society together.

References J. R. R. TOLKIEN. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". Proceedings of the British Academy 22: 245–95, 1936. J. NILES. Beowulf: The Poem and its Tradition. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1983. S. HEANEY. BEOWULF: a new verse translation. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. J. McGalliard & L. PATTERSON. Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. R. R. Potter. The Germania of Tacitus. Middletown, Connecticut; American Philological Association, 1935