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Old English contexts of Beowulf and its supernatural characters

793. Her wæron reðe forebecna cumene ofer Norðhymbra land,

7

[ond] þæt folc earmlic bregdon, þæt

wæron ormete þodenas

7

[ond]ligrescas,

7

[ond] fyrenne dracan wæron gesewene on þam lifte

fleogende. Þam tacnum sona fyligde mycel hunger,

7

[ond]litel æfter þam, þæs ilcan geares on .vi. Idus

Ianuarii, earmlice hæþenra manna hergunc adilegode Godes cyrican in Lindisfarnaee þurh hreaflac

7

[ond]mansliht.

7

[ond]Sicga forðferde on .viii. Kalendas Martius.

[A.D. 793. This year came dreadful portents over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people
most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery
dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine:
and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of
heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island [Lindisfarne], by rapine and
slaughter.]

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Early medieval ideas on authorship, anonymity, text, and even reading certainly different from ours:

a.

texts “experienced,” i.e. read aloud. Audiences mostly aural (“listeners” rather than “readers”);

b.

the ability to read did not always mean the ability to write (the case of King Alfred);

c.

writing as copying – often palimpsestic nature of texts. Original authors would have no “textual control” over

them in our understanding. Authors did not “usurp” their “copyright” over the text: it would be selfish and
vain. Hence early medieval anonymity;

d.

Old English poetry was thus poetry re-worked after its “original” composition (the ur-text was merely a source

for its future scribal copies with possible additions). Did it also imply that the reception of Old English poetry
was therefore freer (i.e. not “controlled” by the “idea” of the author)?

e.

Because of the above Old English poetry is partly “mysterious”: we cannot possibly know the answer to the

above – no text on Old English literary theory (apart from some passages in Alcuin’s writings: the
word/Word/Logos as essential to the scheme of salvation).

f.

how intertextual was Old English poetry? Possible intertextuality (Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburh), also a

range poetic formulas/formulaic expressions used widely across various texts (the case of kennings –
becoming poetic formulas).

Anglo-Saxon scops and their role:

a.

the meaning of scop related to scippian “to shape, form, create.” God frequently described as Scyppend

“Shaper, Creator” – an etymological insight into the role of poets in early societies.

b.

The poet as the store of collective memory.

c.

Cædmon (described by Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica…) and his “Hymn.”

d.

the earliest poet writing in English mentioned by name (ca. 670).

e.

the gift of poetry as a divine gift, poetry as divine inspiration and even duty.

f.

the role of poetry as translation, interpretation, communication, education and a path towards spiritual

betterment.

The style and the prosody (metrics) of Old English poetry:

a.

in MSs poetic texts appear as prose (uninterrupted). We know they are poetic, because they are metric.

b.

alliteration - the use of the same consonant (consonantal alliter.) or of a vowel, not necessarily the same vowel

(vocalic alliter.), at the beginning of each word or each stressed syllable in a line of verse.

c.

kenning – condensed metaphors (usually consisting of two elements), circumlocutions instead of “unpoetic,”

regular words (beaduflama “battle flame,” i.e. “a sword,” garbeam “spear-tree,” i.e. “a warrior,”).
Etymologically related to Old English cenna “to know”)

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d.

variation – a double or multiple statement of the same concept or idea in different words, with a more or less

perceptible shift in stress. Variations could be of various length and complexity:

•

an example of triple and simple variation from Cynewulf’s Elene (ll. 460-461):
þæt he Crist wære, cyning on roderum, / soð sunu meotudes, sawla nergend

[that he was Christ, 1. king in the heavens, 2. true Son of God, 3. souls’ Saviour]

e.

Old English poetry as highly formulaic (repetition of fixed phrases, like wyrd seo mære “fate is inexorable”

etc.) – the trace of oral tradition (formulas facilitated better memorization). All three chief tropes of OE poetry
have their souces in oral beginnings.

f.

interestingly, all these elements are analogous in their form to Old English visual arts.

… segn eallgylden
heah ofer horde, hondwundra mæst,
gelocen leoðocræftum; …

[Beowulf, 2767b-2769a]

[a standard all of gold,
high over the hoard, most wondrously made by hand,
woven with the skill of hands / the skill of poetry]

Contents of Beowulf (a summary):

Opens with the genealogy of the early Danish kings; later King Hrothgar builds a magnificent hall
Heorot; it is then attacked by a man-eating monster, Grendel; after twelve years of carnage Beowulf,
a prince of the Geats (cont. Southern Sweden), comes and kills Grendel; celebrations follow; but
Grendel’s monstrous mother comes to avenge her son; Beowulf then kills her in an underwater cave
where the monsters lived; more celebrations follow; Beowulf returns home and reports to his uncle,
King Hygelac; after the death of Hygelac, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats; rules for fifty years;
then a sleeping dragon is awoken by someone stealing part of the treasure it guarded; the dragon
ravages and burns the lands of Beowulf; Beowulf then fights it and is supported by only one of his
men, Wiglaf (the rest flee); both Beowulf and the dragon die fighting each other. Beowulf is then
mourned, his body is burned and everything closes with a dark prophecy of chaos and destruction for
the Geats.

Beowulf: national/tribal identity, heroic tradition and an epic tale.

•

the age of uncertainty – migrating memories and identities;

•

the pagan hero in the Christian context – Beowulf the hero;

•

magic, otherness and atavism in Beowulf the poem;

•

the heroic ideal (?) – social structures mirrored in literature;

Beowulf MS: British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV, also known as the Nowell Codex.

Perhaps the monster-manuscript (?). The MS contains also:

•

a life of St. Christopher;

•

Wonders of the East, fantastic descriptions of far-away lands with their curios;

•

A Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, again journeys to the fantastic East;

•

Beowulf;

•

Judith, a biblical poem on Judith’s defeat of Holofernes (by beheading).

Heroic culture and history:

Tacitus (1st c. AD Roman historian): importance of the heroic tradition among continental Germanic tribes.

Warrior society → heroic culture → heroic narratives → heroic literature → later evolution into medieval culture of
chivalry and knighthood → contemporary heroic culture (James Bond, Batman etc.)

The hero as a monster too? Different, other, superhuman.

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Intertextuality of Anglo-Saxon culture – the epic proves cultural connection with the continental Germanic past.

a.

Source and origins, elements of magic and the world of fantasy.

b.

Different time of creation/action (origins before 5th/6th c.?) and of written composition (10th/11th c.).

c.

Style, diction and the mode of expression in Beowulf.

a.

the setting and the visual atmosphere of the epic.

b.

onomatopoeic elements.

c.

Poetic tropes: kennings, variation, alliteration.

d.

The heroic idea as a didactic power in the poem.

e.

The world of the uncanny (unknown): a metaphor of the mysterious element in human existence and of life

as a struggle. Beowulf’s monster as signs (monster – demonstrate).

f.

Old English fatalism and instability present in the idea of WYRD “fate.”

g.

Christianity as clearly a later addition (by the scribes).

Grendel – a par excellence liminal and shadowy being: a troll, a misshapen human, a monstrous hybrid, a fiend from
Hell, or something else?

Liminal, liminality (in cultural anthropology, developed by Victor Turner in 1950s and ‘60s) –
ambiguity, disorientation associated with a passage to a different state/status in one’s existence.

Liminality often more important than what it marks – how a culture marks rituals of passage may say
a lot about that culture.

Liminality – Lat. limes (border). In cultural theory: the state of in-betweenness, border-like condition,
close to hybridity, difference by not belonging to either of two or more spheres.

a.

Mysterious name – unclear etymology of Grendel: from grindan “to ground,” grund “ground/sea-bottom,”

also cf. Old Norse grindill “storm,” Middle English gryndel “angry”? In Yorkshire and Lancashire folklore
legends of Gryndilow.

b.

Several of some fifty terms – note how all of them indicate Grendel’s liminality: atol aglæca “terrible

monster,” deorc deaþscua “dark deathshadow,” fyrena hyrede “keeper of crimes,” heorowearh hetelic “hatefeul
blood-wolf,” bona blodtigtoð “bloody-toothed killer,” scaedugenga, “shadow-walker,” mære mearcstapa
“famous treader of the borderland,” ellorgast “spirit from elsewhere,” werga gast “grim spirit,” ellengæst
“mighty spirit”.

c.

Grendel and his mother inhabit the borderland – Grendel as a creature of the marshlands: se þe moras

heold, fen ond fæsten

“[he] who ruled the moors, fens and fastness”

d.

Given both biblical ancestry (descendant of Cain) and native pagan belief.

e.

A threat to mankind but also under a threat from mankind.

The dragon (OE draca, Lat. draco, Gr. drakon) is also liminal - the elements it spans are also contrastive (earth, air,
fire, dragon-like creatures also inhabit the seas and waters in Beowulf).

a.

Dragon as a hybrid – a winged snake. Sometimes alos called wyrm "the worm”, "serpent”.

b.

In Biblical context it is the devilish serpent.

c.

Uhtsceaða "dawn ravager"; niðdraca "dragon of malice"; ðeodsceaða "ravager of people"; guðsceaða "warlike

destroyer"; ligdraca, fyrdraca "fire-dragon"; inwitgæst "deceitful guest".

d.

In Old Norse contexts (dragons= serpents+ wisdom): Nidhogg is a serpent tormenting the bodies of the dead;

Fafnir (embracer), killed by Sigurd the Dragon-slayer who ate his heart; dragon figureheads mounted on ship-
prows.

e.

And yet, dragon shapes and ornamentation are shapes signifying power.