introduction essay for beowulf

You are here

An introduction to beowulf.

The long Old English heroic poem known to modern audiences as Beowulf is probably the most famous product of the rich literary tradition of Anglo-Saxon England (which flourished in the period c. 650-1100). The poem tells the story of Beowulf, a heroic warrior, and later king, of the Geats (a possibly mythical Scandinavian tribe). The events of the poem are set during the Germanic 'heroic age' - a period stretching from the fourth to the sixth century by modern reckoning but described by the poet simply as geardagas ('days of old').

During the course of the poem, the young Beowulf travels across the sea from his homeland in order to help the Danish King Hrothgar, whose people have suffered for twelve years at the hands (and teeth) of a man-shaped and man-eating creature known as Grendel. Having been graciously received by Hrothgar and promised great rewards, Beowulf awaits Grendel's coming by night in the royal hall Heorot. In a scene of great drama and suspense, the poet describes Grendel's approach out of the misty darkness, his sudden and violent entrance into the hall, and his ferocious hand-to-hand encounter with Beowulf. The hero is, of course, victorious, and the fight ends with Beowulf ripping off Grendel's arm at the socket and with Grendel fleeing back into the darkness, mortally wounded. The relief that this victory brings to the Danes is, however, short-lived, as the very next night Grendel's (unnamed and previously unmentioned) mother attacks the hall and kills one of Hrothgar's chief counsellors by way of revenge for her dead son. Once again, Beowulf is called into action, this time going on the offensive and descending through a mere into a subterranean cave-like hall to fight and ultimately kill this ferocious woman (described in the text as ides aglæcwif - 'a lady, a fearsome woman').

Beowulf's exploits amongst the Danes take up most of the first two-thirds of the 3,182 lines of the poem. In the remainder of the poem, Beowulf returns home to the Geats, where his hard-won glory is celebrated and rewarded by his uncle King Hygelac. Fifty years pass, and Beowulf, now an old man, is king of the Geats when his people are menaced by a fire-breathing dragon. Roused once more to heroic action, Beowulf leads an expedition to the dragon’s barrow, where he intends to fight the creature in single combat (as in the days of his youth and glory). The old king is, however, overmatched in his final battle. Seized by the neck in the dragon's mighty jaws, Beowulf is able to win victory only with the help of his young kinsman Wiglaf and at the cost of his own life. The poem ends in elegiac mood, as celebration of Beowulf's heroism mingles with lament for his death and with fearful predictions regarding the fate of his people.

Such a bare summary makes the plot and structure of the poem sound straightforward, but one of the distinctive characteristics of the artistry of Beowulf is the way in which the poet skilfully moves backwards and forwards along a linear narrative timeline, interweaving the main events of the poem with a plethora of inset and secondary narratives. Foreground and background merge in this consummate example of so-called 'interlace' structure, so that the exploits of Beowulf himself are inextricably immersed within a richer background of heroic legend. The success of this narrative technique is one of the many astounding features of the poem. Although many of the events and characters mentioned in Beowulf (including both Hrothgar and Hygelac) are more or less familiar from other early medieval written sources, Beowulf himself is not mentioned elsewhere. It seems likely that the narrative core of the poem was the invention of the Anglo-Saxon poet, part of whose achievement was to 'place' this new narrative material so seamlessly within the wider corpus of Germanic legendary history.

The individual responsible for this remarkable achievement has remained elusive. Beowulf survives in a single manuscript copy (now held in the British Library: Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv), probably produced around about the year 1000. Beyond this fact, however, the poem's origins are obscure. Like most English verse from this period, the poem is anonymous, and the approximate date of composition has long been a topic of (sometimes acrimonious) debate amongst scholars, with estimates ranging from the mid seventh to the early eleventh century. Faced with such a lack of solid evidence, we can deduce little about the circumstances in which the poem was produced. Like other surviving Old English poems (though to an even greater degree), the language of Beowulf is marked simultaneously by an astonishingly creative and poetic verbal inventiveness - particularly evident in the use of uniquely-occurring descriptive compound words - and by a layer of verbal formulas and 'type scenes' which recur both throughout the poem and throughout the surviving corpus of Old English poetry. These latter features, which may seem dangerously close to cliché for a modern audience, point to the ultimate origins of Old English poetry in an essentially pre-literate, oral, and performative tradition. It seems unlikely, however, that Beowulf is itself in any real sense an oral composition. Most scholars today would accept that the poem is (very largely if not entirely) the product of a single poetic vision, the work of a literate and Christian poet probably working within a monastic or courtly milieux.

That the poet was a Christian writing for a Christian audience is clear. Grendel, for example, is explained by the poet-narrator as a diabolical descendant of Cain, the first murderer, from whose off-spring, according to the Old Testament and to Judeo-Christian Apocrypha, arose the various races of giants. This contextualizing knowledge is not shared, however, by the characters who inhabit the heroic world of the poem. Looking back to the heroic age, the poet is looking back into the pre-Christian Germanic past of the Anglo-Saxon people. The assumed Christian perspective and beliefs of the poet and audience stand in uneasy juxtaposition to the ill-defined but definitely pre-Christian and fatalistic beliefs of the characters themselves. Beowulf, Hrothgar, and other actors in the poem often frame their behaviour in terms of a moral imperative that in many ways approximates the basic tenets of Christianity, but, ignorant of the teachings of Christ, their perspective is limited by the reach of human life on earth. According to Beowulf himself, fame amongst men is the best that can be hoped for a dead warrior:

'Ure æghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes; wyrce se þe mote domes ær deaþe; þæt bið drihtguman unlifgendum æfter selest.'

( Beowulf 1386-89, 'Each of us must await the end of life in the world. Let he who may achieve glory before death - that will afterwards be best for the dead warrior.')

The poignant irony of such a statement could not have been lost upon an audience for whom life in the world was merely a precursor to the eternal reward (or punishment) to be experienced in the world to come.

As an Old English poem, Beowulf is a unique and incomparable literary artefact - the only known surviving example of the efforts of a supreme master working within a mature and remarkably long-lived poetic tradition. Its superlative poetic qualities have been recognized by generations of modern readers, and there is increasing evidence to suggest that Beowulf was both widely known amongst and frequently imitated by other Anglo-Saxon poets whose work also survives. There are, to be sure, difficulties associated with the appreciation of the poem today. Most notably, modern readers must overcome the barrier caused by the language of the poem, recognizably English but a form of English in use a thousand years before our own time. But such barriers are far from insuperable, especially given the availability of many excellent and sympathetic modern translations. The effort is well-rewarded. We need not seek an excuse to read and study Beowulf today; the poem is its own best justification.

If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: An Introduction to Beowulf at http://writersinspire.org/content/introduction-beowulf by Daniel Thomas, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (2.0 UK).

A Summary and Analysis of Beowulf

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What happens in Beowulf , the jewel in the crown of Anglo-Saxon poetry? The title of the poem is probably the most famous thing about it – that, and the fact that a monster named Grendel features at some point. But because the specific details of the story are not widely known, numerous misconceptions about the poem abound. When was Beowulf  written?

This is a matter of some conjecture, with guesses ranging anywhere between the eighth century and the first half of the eleventh century. Critics can’t even agree on what the first line of the poem means . In the following post, we offer a short summary of  Beowulf , and an introduction to its main themes.

Plot Summary

We’ll start with a brief summary of  Beowulf  before proceeding to some textual analysis and critical reading.  Beowulf is a classic ‘overcoming the monster’ story. Most people know that the poem documents the struggle of the title character in vanquishing a monster named Grendel.

But what is less well known is that Beowulf has to slay not one big monster, but three: after he has taken care of Grendel, the dead monster’s mother shows up, and she proves even more of a challenge for our hero (though ultimately Beowulf triumphs and wins the day).

The poem then ends with Beowulf, now in his twilight years, slaying a third monster (this time, a dragon), although this encounter proves his undoing, as he is fatally wounded in the battle. The poem ends with his subsequent death and ‘burial’ at sea.

But the poem doesn’t begin with Beowulf. It opens with an account of a Danish king named Hrothgar, who was the one responsible for building a great hall (named Heorot), a hall which is now being terrorised by the monstrous Grendel. Beowulf hears that Grendel is killing Hrothgar’s men at Heorot and so our hero departs from home to go and help rid Heorot of this monster.

Beowulf is from a different kingdom – the nearby Geatland, in modern-day Sweden – so we have one of the classic tropes of adventure narratives, that of the hero leaving home to go and vanquish some foe in a foreign land. Think of Bilbo Baggins leaving the Shire, or Frodo for that matter, in  The Hobbit  and  The Lord of the Rings (and, indeed, we’ll return to Tolkien shortly).

Beowulf and his men spend the night at Heorot and wait for Grendel to turn up. When the monster appears, Beowulf and his men attack the troll-like monster with their swords.

But the monster – which is described as resembling a troll – cannot be killed with a blade, as Beowulf soon realises. So he does what lesser men would fear to do: he wrestles the monster with his bare hands, eventually tearing off one of its arms. Grendel flees, eventually dying of his wound.

The next night, Grendel’s mother – angered by the attack on her son – turns up to wreak vengeance, and once again Beowulf finds himself having to roll up his sleeves and engage in fierce combat, which this time takes place in the underwater lair of the monster deep beneath the surface of a lake.

Although he has been given a strong sword (named Hrunting) by Unferth (a man who had previously doubted Beowulf – the sword is given as a token of friendship), Beowulf finds this sword useless against Grendel’s mother. (Immunity to swords evidently runs in the family.) But this time, hand-to-hand fighting, which had proved handy against Grendel, is equally useless.

Beowulf only succeeds in vanquishing the monster when he grabs a magic sword from the pile of treasure lying in the monster’s lair, and is able to behead the monster with the weapon.

Travelling deeper into the monster’s lair, Beowulf comes across the dying Grendel, and – armed with his new magic sword – decides to lop off the son’s head as well, for good measure. Both monsters have now been slain, and Beowulf is a hero.

Following his victory over the two monsters, Beowulf then returns to the water’s surface (at ‘noon’ – which, interestingly, when the poem was written, was actually three o’clock in the afternoon, or the ninth hour after dawn) before rejoining his men and journeying back to the hall for mead and rejoicing.

The poem then moves forward fifty years to Beowulf’s last fight, his run-in with the dragon (which has been angered by the theft of some of its treasure – shades of The Hobbit once more?). This fight results in one last victory for our great hero, followed by his own death from the mortal would inflicted by the poisoned horn of the beast (though presumably Beowulf was rather advanced in years by this point anyway).

The poem ends with Beowulf’s burial at sea, which is described in much detail – why this might be is discussed below. But this much constitutes a reasonably complete summary of the plot of  Beowulf . So, what about the context for the poem?

Facts about  Beowulf

Although it is celebrated nowadays as an important work of Anglo-Saxon – indeed, ‘English’ – literature, Beowulf was virtually unknown and forgotten about, amazingly, for nearly a thousand years. It was only rescued from obscurity in 1815, when an Icelandic-Danish scholar named Thorkelin printed an edition of the poem.

And although it is seen as the starting-point of great English literature – at many universities, it is still the earliest literary text studied as part of the literary canon – it is very different from other medieval poetry, such as that by Chaucer or Langland, who were writing many centuries later.

It is set in Denmark, has a Swedish hero, and – when read in the original Anglo-Saxon – seems almost more German than ‘English’. This is, of course, because Anglo-Saxon (i.e. the language of the Angles and Saxons from north Germany)  was  Old English (the two terms are used synonymously), and at the very latest the poem was written down some time in the early eleventh century, before 1066 and the Norman invasion, which would bring many French words into English and would pave the way for Middle English (or the English of the Middle Ages).

In ending with the tale of a dragon attempting to defend a mound of treasure, the poem prefigures not only the works of J. R. R. Tolkien (who, as well as being the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , was also an influential Anglo-Saxon scholar who translated Beowulf   and wrote an important article on it   – of which more below) but also, more surprisingly, other poems like Lewis Carroll’s nonsense masterpiece, ‘Jabberwocky’ . It also looks back to Greek and Roman epics like Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid .

Indeed, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many scholars endeavoured to show that the author of Beowulf had been influenced by these classical works, but, in summary, the truth appears to be far more interesting. Rather than directly drawing on the work of Homer and Virgil, the Beowulf poet simply seems to have hit upon the idea of using similar plot devices and character types.

This suggests that different cultures, in these old days of oral storytelling, utilised the same methods in very different works of literature, without having direct knowledge of each other. We can compare Beowulf , too, with the legend of King Arthur (which began to appear in written sources around the same time), specifically in terms of the magic sword which the hero of both stories uses in order to fulfil his quest.

These aspects seem to be hard-wired within us and to be integral parts of human nature: for instance, ideas of bravery and of triumphing over an evil, superhuman force.

This plot, as our brief summary of Beowulf above suggests, shares many of the typical elements of heroic narratives. Although the analogy might seem a little crude, the mechanics of the plot are not so far removed from, say, a James Bond or Indiana Jones film, or a fast-paced fantasy novel or superhero comic strip. The hero takes it upon himself to save the kingdom at immense personal risk to himself.

The foe he faces is no ordinary foe, and conventional weapons are powerless against it. Despite the odds being stacked against him, he manages to ‘overcome the monster’, to borrow Christopher Booker’s phrase for this type of narrative . But this action has consequences, and is in fact merely the prologue to a bigger conflict that must take place: that between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother.

This is why it is odd that the story of the poem is generally thought of as ‘Beowulf versus Grendel’. But this next conflict will prove even more difficult: as well as swords being useless, the strong sword (Hrunting) given to Beowulf by Unferth will also be powerless against Grendel’s mother. But hand-to-hand combat – which was deployed successfully in the vanquishing of Grendel – is also of no use now.

The odds continue to be stacked against our hero, the difficulties multiplying, the tension raised to an almost unbearable pitch. Can he still save the day, when everything he tries seems to be of no avail? Well, yes – though for a while the chances of Beowulf triumphing are looking less and less likely.

The final encounter, with the dragon years later, will prove the most difficult of all – and although he is successful and overcomes the monster, he will pay the ultimate price: victory will come at the cost of his own life.

This patterning of three – three monsters, each of which proves successively more of a challenge to the hero – is found in numerous adventure plots. To a greater or lesser extent, it can be seen in much modern fantasy fiction – such as that by Tolkien.

One thing that the basic overarching story or plot summary of  Beowulf makes clear is just how formative and archetypal it is, not just in heroic ‘English’ literature, but in fantasy literature, too.

Interpretations of  Beowulf

Talking of Tolkien, it was his influential 1936 essay, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, which was really responsible for a shift in the way that people read Beowulf.  Rather than viewing it as a historical document, Tolkien urged, we should be reading and appreciating it as a work of poetry.   Tolkien also argued that the poem is not an ‘epic’ but an  elegy , ending as it does with the moving account of its hero’s funeral.

Tolkien also argues that Beowulf’s death following his combat with the dragon represents a fitting and more ‘elemental’ end for the hero, who had successfully vanquished the monster Grendel and Grendel’s mother (who, although not human, were nevertheless closer to man than a dragon).

The story is about overcoming an evil foe, only to have to give way to death at the end: even heroes must accept that they will not live forever, even if their names will. ‘Men must endure their going hence’, as Shakespeare has it in  King Lear (a line borrowed for C. S. Lewis’s tombstone).

But Beowulf’s life has been a life well lived because he stood up to evil and was victorious. And Grendel and his mother are ‘evil’ in the Christian sense of the word: the author of  Beowulf tells us that they were spawned from Cain (the first murderer in the Bible) when he was cast out of Eden. Grendel and his mother, then, are similarly outcasts, something that has been rejected by mainstream society and whose violence must be overcome. (For more on Tolkien, have a read of our five fascinating facts about him .)

Beowulf’s name, by the way, was long thought to mean ‘bee-wolf’, as in the two animals. The ‘bee’ theory appears unlikely, however – as does the idea that it is from the same root as our word ‘bear’, suggesting bearlike strength.

No, it turns out that the first part of Beowulf’s name is more probably related to a pre-Christian god named ‘Beow’. Beowulf has an almost divine strength, but also something primal and temporal, but just as valuable: the courage of a wolf.

If you enjoyed this brief summary of, and introduction to,  Beowulf , then you can learn more about the poem here  at the British Library website.

Further Reading

26 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Beowulf”

Beowulf is indeed a fascinating work and I always look forward to introducing my students to this foundation of hero motifs. Beowulf, despite his tendency to boast a bit (isn’t that where we get kennings?), he was pretty much the perfect hero–intregrity, strong, clever, self-sacrificing.

Reblogged this on Willow's Corner and commented: We read a snippet of Beowulf in Jr. High School (the dragon part) and I’ve always found the story fascinating. I can’t quite read the Old English, but I love to read the different translations. And anyone who’s a Tolkien fan should read his essay.

I would argue that Grendel’s mother (who is interestingly only ever referred to as “the mother”) commits her acts of revenge out of grief, as well as anger. Also, Beowulf is most commonly described as an epic poem; the label makes its main character, Beowulf, an epic-hero. By virtue of being a hero, Beowulf is set-apart from the society presented in the heroic epic. However, in order to be recognized as heroic hero, Beowulf must participate in society in some meaningful way. Thus the character’s role is split and this binary role is portrayed in different ways depending on the translation of Beowulf. There are more than 85 translations of Beowulf, and each one is slightly biased in its interpretation. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s translation in particular equates Beowulf with the dragon, another “other” figure, in a way that is not replicated by the other translators to emphasize Beowulf’s role as a distinct hero. Since translation is a form of interpretation, I believe Heaney’s translation is particularly biased in thinking about Beowulf in the ancient Ango-Saxon tale and makes Beowulf a more complex character than the original tale describes, torn by his glorious role as epic hero and his duty to his people within a carefully constructed social structure. As the author of this post writes, the morals, tropes, and figures create a bases for understanding many other English works that were to follow, so it’s interesting to see how relatively young Britain works with this tale and interprets its own history.

Tolkien was also heavily influenced by the old Norse (Norwegian/Icelandic) prose Edda and Voluspa; this was where he found the names of his dwarves. In addition, the poem Havamal also speaks of how everyone must die, except a man’s reputation.

Reblogged this on F.T. McKinstry and commented: Some interesting thoughts here on a classic, with references to J.R.R. Tolkien’s take on it.

Reblogged this on Mistrz i Małgorzata .

Fantastic article, it was education and entertaining all at once. I definitely want to go read Tolkien’s essay.

I have often wondered why the Beowulf story was lost for so long. The Arthurian story was passed down for generations, but Beowulf and his bravery forgotten. I think it is because people could relate to, and thus embrace, the faults of Arthur over the heroism in Beowulf.

Reblogged this on Storey on a Story Blog and commented: This is a great commentary on the story of Beowulf. I wanted to share it with you all.

The poem actually begins with Scyld Sheffing’s funeral, and it ends with Beowulf’s. This is deliberate. The central section is the killing of the monsters. The pattern is the establishment of the house of the Geats, the rescue of the house of Heorot by destroyng the house of Grendel, and the end of the house of the Geats with Beowulf.

How utterly fascinating! I have a copy of Beowolf which I confess to my shame I’ve never read despite it being on my shelf for more than 30 years. I must make amends!

Interesting post (!) and it struck a chord (!) funnily enough with a podcast i was listening to yesterday made by a music blogger, who did a 20 minute podcast on the 12 bar blues https://goodmusicspeaks.wordpress.com/good-music-speaks-podcast-3/ . Which of course is heavily dependent on the rule of 3 – line A; repeat line A; variation/resolution. And funnily enough, listening to a Mozart piano concerto, the same pattern was in the phrases, with the third line, the variation, leading of course to a musical resolution /transformation which enables the lead on the the complete next stage – so, in this, there is Beowulf triumphs, Beowulf triumphs again, Beowulf triumphs but in this third phrase his ‘phrase’ resolves with transformation/death.

I guess the ‘rule of three’ is viscerally satisfying!

There’s an excellent film called ‘The Thirteenth Warrior’, in which an exiled Islamic poet joins a band of Vikings to defeat what appears to be a Beowulfian monster attacking a hall. The producers showed some respect for scholarship by including authentic details, for instance the rituals surrounding the ship burial of a Viking chief.

The film being referenced in the comment above by poetmcgonagall, is a film adaptation of Michael Crighton’s excellent ‘Eaters of the Dead’ which gives a facinating take on the Beowulf/Grendel legend. Pay particular attention to his treatment of the Dragon which is all the more horrifying for not being a giant lizard.

I’ve read Beowulf many times over the years (was introduced to the Old-English version back in High School) and you’ve provided an excellent summary.

“not so far removed from, say, a James Bond or Indiana Jones film, or a fast-paced fantasy novel or superhero comic strip” Yes–but also, surely, the Western? What this tells us, I think, is how deep-rooted is the human need for the idea of the stranger who rides (all right, comes by boat) into town, deals with the monster/fear/rich landowner/evil bandit who is terrorising the townfolk and rides out again. No?

Reblogged this on Blogging Beowulf and commented: A great post on one of my favorite works.

• Pingback: What Happens in Beowulf? An Interesting Summary | the shadows illuminated

Reblogged this on cjheries and commented: If, in my first year at Reading University in 1964/65, we had studied Beowulf instead of extracts from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (so dull!) maybe I should have stuck with reading English instead of switching to Philosophy and obtained a better class of degree than the Gentleman’s I ended up woth (a pass, just like T S Eliot).

I’ve just startd reading Seamus Heaney’s translation and I must say it’s easy to follow so far!

I’ve had the Heaney translation on my shelves for years, but your post has piqued my interest. It will be moved to my TBR pile. Thank you!

• Pingback: 10 Short Medieval Poems Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature
• Pingback: Scurte #308 | Assassin CG

Reblogged this on beocorgi and commented: Very Interesting. I never thought of Jabberwocky like that but now that its pointed out I can definitely see it

• Pingback: Five Fascinating Facts about Geoffrey Chaucer | Interesting Literature
• Pingback: Five Fascinating Facts about ‘Jabberwocky’ | Interesting Literature
• Pingback: Happy Tolkien Reading Day! | Interesting Literature
• Pingback: ‘Jabberwocky’: Key Themes – Interesting Literature

Comments are closed.

<script id=”mcjs”>!function(c,h,i,m,p){m=c.createElement(h),p=c.getElementsByTagName(h)[0],m.async=1,m.src=i,p.parentNode.insertBefore(m,p)}(document,”script”,”https://chimpstatic.com/mcjs-connected/js/users/af4361760bc02ab0eff6e60b8/c34d55e4130dd898cc3b7c759.js”);</script>

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Anonymous's Beowulf . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Beowulf: Introduction

Beowulf: plot summary, beowulf: detailed summary & analysis, beowulf: themes, beowulf: quotes, beowulf: characters, beowulf: symbols, beowulf: theme wheel, brief biography of anonymous.

Historical Context of Beowulf

Other books related to beowulf.

• Full Title: Beowulf
• When Published: Beowulf exists in a single damaged manuscript in the British Library. The manuscript was probably written in England in the early eleventh century, though the poem itself was probably first written down in the eighth century, and was passed on orally before that.
• Literary Period: Medieval; Anglo-Saxon
• Genre: Epic poem
• Setting: Northern Europe, especially Denmark and Sweden, around the sixth century
• Climax: Beowulf's final fight with a dragon
• Point of View: The unnamed speaker of the poem

Extra Credit for Beowulf

Old English Style. Beowulf is the longest poem written in Old English. Old English poetry uses alliterative meter, meaning that the stressed words in a line begin with the same sound. A line of Old English poetry has two halves, with a brief pause, called a caesura, in the middle of the line. The two halves of a line are linked by the alliteration (repetition of an initial consonant); at least three words in a line alliterate. Old English poetry also uses kennings , compressed metaphors like "heaven's candle" for the sun, or "whale's road" for the sea, or calling a woman married in an effort to gain peace a "peace weaver."

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Introduction

by Allegra Villarreal

An epic poem of 3,182 lines, Beowulf is regarded as one of (if not the) most important works of Old English literature. This poem is known from a single manuscript found in the Nowell Codex , and dated to 1,000 CE. It suffered damage in 1731, during the Cotton Library fire at Ashburham House where it had been stored; efforts to bind and restore it were made but in the process some letters were lost.  Thankfully, the original was transcribed long before, likely by two different monks, the latter of whom  is also thought to be the scribe of Judith (which may account for their similarities in writing style). This manuscript also includes accounts of saints’ lives and tales of travel to the Orient; while wildly different in terms of content, all the stories in the Nowell codex focus on heroes and monsters, good and evil. Beowulf , as a literary work, represents the culmination of an era of early English history; several decades after its transcription, the Normans would invade and bring with them new customs, language and forever transform English literature.

Story Summary

This story, while written in England, is set in Scandinavia and follows the exploits of a great warrior of the Geats, Beowulf. At the story’s open, he appears to the aid of the Danes and their king, Hrothgar, by slaying a monster known as Grendel who has been attacking the mead-hall of Heorot for years. In the aftermath, Grendel’s mother is enraged to the point of attacking the mead-hall herself; she too is ultimately killed by Beowulf. Victorious, he sails back to his homeland and becomes king of the Geats, reigning without significant incident for 50 years. In old age, Beowulf must again take up arms to defeat a dragon who hoards gems and shining weapons. Though he wins handedly, he is mortally wounded in the process and dies as a revered warrior king.

The story is often divided into three parts (each devoted to the slaying of a monster) and though it may seem that the focus here is on the exploits of battle, there are some deeper themes here. The first monster, Grendel, is identified as “one of Cain’s clan” – a monster that is also vaguely human, an outcast who is “spurned and joyless.” He envies the comradery of Hrothgar’s men, their closeness as a tribe. When he is killed, it is maternal anguish that motivates his unnamed mother to avenge the death of her son and when he enters the dragon’s lair, it is Beowulf who is called “invader” (Puchner 887). The line between monster and man is murkier than one might, at first, assume. Similarly, the ties of kinship and clan speak to the importance of communal life during this time as an antidote to solitude and protection against certain death. In many ways, this story explores what it means to be human, to be part of a collective, and, most importantly, what the nature of heroism truly is.

Historical Background

The story appears to be set in the sixth century, a time when the British Isles were first settled by Germanic tribes from the north. These tribes likely brought with them folktales and songs from their native lands which may have filtered their way, thematically and linguistically, into this tale. We date it to this time as it does feature historical figures (such as Beowulf’s lord, Hygelac, who died around 520) though there is no known historical figure called “Beowulf”  (Robinson 14).

The poem was recorded by Christian Anglo-Saxons, though it is set during a time period when the characters themselves would have held pagan beliefs. The Germanic warrior society presented shows the importance of hierarchy in that context, and while some scholars point to a particularly Christian or pagan reading of the text, what is certain is that there are only allusions to the Old Testament and Christ is never mentioned. Richard North, in discussing this ambiguity states: “As yet we are no closer to finding out why the first audience of  Beowulf  liked to hear stories about people routinely classified as damned. This question is pressing, given… that Anglo-Saxons saw the Danes as ‘heathens’ rather than as foreigners” (qtd. in “Beowulf”).

Literary Style

While it was written in 1000 CE, it likely has an older provenance through oral storytelling; those listening to the tale in the year 1,000 would have found its antiquated language strange and removed even in its own day. Written in a West Saxon dialect of Anglo-Saxon/Old English, the poem is most notable for its use of alliteration (repeated initial consonants), which is different from the French-inspired forms that would later dominate English poetry. The poem also consists of half lines, with two stressed words each, followed by a “caesura” or natural pause (Catlin). This lends a rhythm to the reading that is entirely different from other forms such as the iambic pentameter (which was also inherited from the French). An example can be found here as Justin A. Jackson, Professor of English, reads the opening lines.

Another standard feature of Anglo-Saxon (and Norse) writing is its use of kennings : a type of metaphor that signifies a person or thing by a characteristic or quality; examples from Beowulf include: “dwelling place” for residence, “earth hall” for burial mounds, “stout hearted” for bravery and “helmet bearer” for warrior (Paradine). This metaphoric language adds another level of meaning to a revered and often challenging text.

Works Cited

“Beowulf.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 24 Jan. 2019. Web. 29 Jan. 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf

Catlin, Sally. “Anglo-Saxon Alliterative Epics.” Vision: A Resource for Writers , 2002. http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue9/poetry.htm

Paradine, Gerald. “Kennings.” Pace University , n.d. http://csis.pace.edu/grendel/projs991b/kenning.html

Puchner, Martin, ed. The Norton Anthology of World Literature . Norton, 2013.

Robinson, Bonnie J. and Getty, Laura, British Literature I: Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century and Neoclassicism . English Open Textbooks, 2018. https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/17

Discussion Questions

• While Beowulf is seen as an ideal character and hero, was there anything lacking in his character that makes him less honorable?
• Compare Beowulf to what we consider to be a hero in today’s society. How do they differ?
• Does the heroic code expressed in  Beowulf  conflict with a Christian sensibility?
• What is the status of gold and gift-giving in the poem? Who gives gifts, who receives them, and why? Are the modern concepts of wealth, payment, monetary worth and greed appropriate for the world of Beowulf?
• Can Beowulf’s journey be better described as an attempt to find oneself or to actually protect Herot, the Danes, and eventually his own life?

Further Resources

• A podcast covering the history, culture and literary value of Beowulf (from the “In Our Time” BBC series).
• An infographic depicting the intersection of Beowulf and our modern pop culture (in terms of monsters and dragons).
• An audiobook version of Beowulf Parts I & II.
• A video clip of plot summary and key themes/motifs by Thug Notes. Wisecrack. “Thug Notes: Beowulf.” Youtube.com . 24 Sept. 2013.

Reading: Beowulf

I. the life and death of scyld, ii. scyld’s successors–hrothgar’s great mead-hall, iii. grendal the murderer, iv. beowulf goes to hrothgar’s assistance, v. the geats reach heorot, vi. beowulf introduces himself at the palace, vii. hrothgar and beowulf, viii. hrothgar and beowulf– continued, ix. unferth taunts beowulf, x. beowulf silences unferth–glee is high, xi. all sleep save one, xii. grendal and beowulf, xiii. grendel is vanquished, xiv: rejoicing of the danes, xv. hrothgar’s gratitude, xvi. hrothgar lavishes gifts upon his deliverer, xvii: banquet (continued) — the scop’s song of finn and hnaef, xviii. the finn episode (continued)–the banquet continues, xix. bewoulf receives further honor, xx. the mother of grendel, xxi. hrothgar’s account of the monsters, xxii. beowulf seeks grendel’s mother, xxiii. beowulf’s fight with grendel’s mother, xxiv. beowulf is double-conqueror, xxv. beowulf brings his tropies–hrothgar’s gratitude, xxvi. hrothgar moralizes.–rest after labor, xxvi. sorrow at parting., xxviii. the homeward journey.–the two queens, xxix. beowulf and higelac., xxx. beowulf narrates his adventures to higelac., xxxi. gift-giving is mutual., xxxii. the hoard and the dragon., xxxiii. brave though aged–reminiscences, xiv. beowulf seeks the dragon.–beowulf’s reminiscences., xxxv. reminiscences (continued).–beowulf’s last battle, xxxvi. wiglaf the trusty.–beowulf is deserted by friends and by sword., xxxvii. the fatal struggle.–beowulf’s last moments, xxxviii. wiglaf plunders the dragon’s den.–beowulf’s death., xxxix. the dead foes.–wiglaf’s bitter taunts., xl. the messenger of death., xli. the messenger’s retrospect., xlii. wiglaf’s sad story.–the hoard carried off., xliii. the burning of beowulf..

Source Text: 

Hall, Leslie, trans. Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Poem . D.C. Heath & Co. Publishers, 1892, licensed under no known copyright.

An Open Companion to Early British Literature Copyright © 2019 by Allegra Villarreal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Essays About Beowulf: Top 5 Inspiring Examples Plus Prompts 

To write excellent essays about Beowulf , you first need to understand the poem more deeply; see our examples and prompts to help you with your essay writing.

The Old English epic Beowulf is one of the most famous stories. This iconic piece of Old English literature is believed to have been composed between 700 and 750. Many people in school or university study this poem for its structure and because many of Beowulf’s lessons are still relevant today. 

This guide will look at five example essays focused on the epic poem Beowulf, its characters, plot, and other literary elements. Consider using what you’ve read as inspiration for your Beowulf essays . 

1. Beowulf as a Representation of Mankind by Anonymous on GradesFixer

2. the women in beowulf by anonymous on papersowl, 3. essay on beowulf for students and children by prasanna.

• 4. What Is the Role of Treasure in Beowulf?  by Anonymous on SparkNotes

5. Beowulf Conclusion Essay by Anonymous on StudyDriver

1. what i learned from beowulf, 2. beowulf and its impact on modern life, 3. monsters in beowulf, 4. beowulf: good vs. evil, 5. reflection essay on beowulf, 6. beowulf’s best and worst character traits, 7. loyalty in beowulf, 8. what makes beowulf stand out among other old literature, 9. elements in beowulf, 10. qualities of a hero: beowulf vs. king arthur, 11. modern heroes and beowulf, 12. the trials of beowulf and how they strengthened him.

“It is no mistake that the giant sword is the only weapon that can slay the mother, nor is it a mistake that ordinary weapons cannot harm either Beowulf or Grendel’s mother, for in the greatest conflict man will ever face, the battle for the heart of another, a little out of the box thinking is required.”

This essay compares the story and characters in Beowulf with the biblical text and other symbolisms. It relates Grendel to Cain, the Heorot to the womb, and more. The author also likens Beowulf’s epic battles to man’s struggles in life.

“…In the epic poem Beowulf, the women presented are central to not only the story but also to society itself. They present voices that offer influence over the predominately male group and often are the voice of reason with their husbands. These women should not be taken lightly. 

The writer focuses on the female characters presented in the epic poem Beowulf. They discuss the different characteristics and symbolisms of these women and emphasize the essential roles of each female character. The essay also presents characters that didn’t meet the stereotype of women in the Anglo-Saxon period.

“He fears nothing, not even death, and possesses a unique physical strength; also, he is always prepared to sacrifice for his people’s welfare despite his old age as an ideal king.”

Prasanna wrote two essays: a long and a short one about Beowulf. In the extended essay, she talks about the epic’s impact on Anglo-Saxon literature. She also discusses the characters, themes, and lessons one can glean from analyzing the poem.

4. What Is the Role of Treasure in Beowulf?   by Anonymous on SparkNotes

“In Beowulf, however, the Danes, Geats, and Swedes’ collective reverence for treasure is not represented as a shortcoming or moral weakness. In fact, the poem often uses treasure as a symbol of the Scandinavian people’s most cherished cultural values.”

Many stories have used treasure as a tool to show the true character of their heroes and villains. This essay delves into how treasure symbolizes prosperity and stability in Beowulf instead of greed and corruption. It also mentions how other characters’ value is on par with the treasure.

“Beowulf is victorious in all of his battles; however, in doing this he lives in isolation; never marries and has no close friends.”

This essay summarizes the poem before critiquing its hero and his values. It also compares Beowulf with his enemies and considers the differences between the animated film and its source material.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

12 Creative Prompts On Essays About Beowulf

Take a look at our writing prompt to help you get started on your essay. If you don’t know which topic to focus on, consider the different essay prompts listed below.

Beowulf is more than a poem about a legendary warrior and their pursuits. Despite being one of the oldest stories in English literature, it holds many relevant lessons for modern audiences. Share what you learn from the epic poem. Did it affect your life?

Although Beowulf doesn’t have the same impact on the modern lifestyle as newer pieces of literature, it has applicable lessons, relatable characters, and challenging topics that many contemporary works don’t tackle anymore. In your essay, discuss how Beowulf can be used in modern times and how it can inspire people to lead a different way of life.

The epic poem Beowulf is rich with monsters like Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon. These monsters have different functions and symbolism. Write your essay discussing these monsters and what they stand for. You can also include what you think they represent in the poem; are they symbolizing something in real life? Delve into this question for a compelling essay.

Like most epics, the poem Beowulf portrays many battles where good wins against evil. In your essay, you can present the apparent good and evil in the poem, then share your thoughts on why they are labeled so.

How did Beowulf inspire or impact you while reading and analyzing the poem? Discuss your thoughts, feelings, and opinions about the literature with a reflective essay. Discuss your reaction to the characters’ actions, understanding their motives, and other similar topics.

The epic poem focuses on the hero Beowulf for many reasons. The king of the Danes has many great and inspiring traits. His actions and words also reflected some lacking or undesirable characteristics that made him a flawed character. Share your thoughts about these negative traits in your essay.

Ancient kings found power with the help of loyal subjects and warriors. In Beowulf, the Danish king had his group of dedicated warriors fighting alongside him in battle. Your essay about loyalty portrayed in Beowulf can focus on this and other portrayals of loyalty.

Beowulf is still discussed in schools and universities today because it has qualities that other works of literature don’t. It’s well-preserved, rich in ancient culture, depicts old practices, and more. Consider using this essay prompt to analyze the story’s uniqueness and why it remains a must-read piece today.

If technicalities are your specialty, consider this essay prompt. Here, you can write about the formal elements in the poem. Focus on technical aspects, like style and tone.

You can discuss Beowulf in comparison with another Old English classic. The stories of Beowulf and King Arthur have many similarities. But they also differ in the monsters they fight, the values they hold, and others. Use this prompt if you’ve already analyzed the story of King Arthur and Beowulf.

Today, superheroes, edgy yet quirky romantics, and secret agents make up the main characters in an array of literary genres. If you love keeping up to date on the latest literary heroes, you’ll also love this essay prompt. With it, you can compare Beowulf with contemporary protagonists like Katniss Everdeen or Harry Potter.

Everyone reacts to trials and hardships differently. Some come out stronger, while others develop negativity after surviving life challenges. If you are interested in people and how they react to difficult situations, you might enjoy writing this prompt. It also helps to compare Beowulf’s reactions to tests with some firsthand experiences you’ve witnessed.

Check out these essay writing tips for a stellar output!

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

View all posts

• study guides
• lesson plans
• homework help

Introduction & Overview of Beowulf

Beowulf Summary & Study Guide Description

The Old English poem Beowulf follows Beowulf from heroic youth to heroic old age. He saves a neighboring people from a monster, Grendel, eventually becomes the king of his own people, and dies defending them from a dragon. It is a great adventure story, and a deeply philosophical one. Scholars differ over the poem's original purpose and audience, but Beowulf probably appealed to a wide audience and garnered a range of responses.

Beowulf survives in one manuscript, which is known as British Library Cotton Vitelhus A. 15. At least one scholar believes the manuscript is the author's original, but most scholars believe it is the last in a succession of copies. Beowulf may have been written at any time between circa 675 A.D. and the date of the manuscript, circa 1000 A.D.

No one knows where the manuscript was before it surfaced in the hands of a man named Laurence Nowell in the sixteenth century. An edition of Beowulf was published by G. S. Thorkelin in 1815, but for over 100 years study focused on Beowulf 'not as poetry, but on what it revealed about the early Germanic tribes and language (philology).

J. R. R. Tolkein's "The Monsters and the Critics" moved study on to the poem as literature. The excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial and Tolkein's own popular Lord of the Rings, influenced by his lifelong study of Beowulf, helped to interest general readers in the poem. Since then translations and adaptations of the poem have increased the poem's audience and recognition. It has influenced modern adventure fantasy and inspired at least two best-sellers, comic books, and even a BeowulflStar Trek Voyager cross-over.

In 1939, an important archaeological discovery was made which contributed to the twentieth-century understanding of Beowulf. The remains of a ship burial were uncovered at Sutton Hoo, an estate on the estuary of the Deben river in Suffolk, England. Some of the objects in the grave included a sword, shield, and helmet, a harp, and Prankish coins which date approximately to 650-70 A.D.— the presumed date of the action of the epic.

Read more from the Study Guide

FOLLOW BOOKRAGS:

A Classical Teacher's Journal

Beowulf #1: introduction.

Beowulf is hard, Shakespeare hard. Both take a lot of time and attention to understand what is really being said. But when it comes to Shakespeare, that effort is rewarded with something akin to gold. With Beowulf, however, it feels a little more like unearthing a fossil. You know you found something valuable, even priceless, but it’s hard to know exactly what.

As the oldest surviving epic poem in the English language, Old English really, and with an oral tradition dating back to the fifth or sixth century, it feels worlds away from today. In fact, we knew nothing of this story until 1731 when it was found amidst the wreckage of a fire. Tucked away on some back shelf of Ashburnham House in London, who knows how long it would have remained hidden if not for that fire.

Since then, scholars have translated and transliterated Beowulf dozens of times. For an eager student, going through the stylistic differences and tonal shifts of each would be fascinating, if not fun. But for many, just reading one of these translations would feel tiresome.

Now, I’m not judging one way or the other. I like this stuff. As a seventh grade teacher, I also like giving my students a work that will immediately pull them in. That’s why I was so excited when I found Ian Serraillier’s version, Beowulf the Warrior . It’s a faithful text, written as much for a child as an adult, complete with blank verse, and full of literary elements. To return to our previous fossil analogy, it reads more like the dragon than the dragon’s bones.

Better still, it sounds like the dragon!

True to the oral tradition from which it came, Serraillier’s retelling makes a hauntingly beautiful read-aloud . Its primordial pulse paints my students’ faces with fascination and suspense when we read something like:

“Tricked of his treasure, angrily he prowled

Over the headland, sniffing the ground, devouring

The track of his enemy—but none could he find. At nightfall,

When the daystar was darkened, the candle of the world snuffed out,

Revengeful, riotous with rage, he went forth in flame,

Breathing out ruin, snorting hurricane.”

And just like that, the whole class begins to wonder if dragons really did exist!

Beowulf is more than fantasy, however. It is also a window into the past, showcasing what people of the early Middle Ages valued, believed, and loved. This includes not only the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples of Europe who were the focus of the tale, but also the Anglo-Saxons who eventually claimed the story as part of their cultural heritage.

Whatever your interest in Beowulf —anthropological, literary, or just plain old fun—this blog series has something for you. You’ll meet our title character, his three beastly foes, and a few other important figures. We’ll also analyze the plot and a number of significant motifs. Here is the line-up:

I. Characters

II. The Fight with Grendel

III. The Fight with Grendel’s Mother

IV. The Fight with the Fire Dragon

Whether you read Serraillier’s retelling or one of the originals, I hope this series helps transport you to the world of Beowulf and unlock its mysterious beauty.

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem Essay

Introduction.

Beowulf epitomized the persona of an epic hero. An epic hero is one with attributes that others do not possess. Some of these traits are; selflessness, wisdom and physical strength. Wisdom in Beowulf’s life is evident in his journey to Denmark and his reign over the Geats. His physical strength is apparent in the way he battles Grendel’s mother as well as mythical creatures. Selflessness was manifested in the way he interacted with his countrymen. Beowulf has these three traits of wisdom, selflessness, and strength, which help him lead his people and fight battles with monsters.

Evidence That Supports Beowulf as a Hero

This character’s physical prowess was undisputed as he possessed enough physical strength to fight with mystical creatures and be victorious. Beowulf prepared for battle with Grendel after arriving in Denmark and traveling to Herot. While in Herot, he managed to instantly seize Grendel; this was a thing that no man had ever accomplished (307). Beowulf’s bravery is portrayed in events where he performed things that no other man would dare to do. Beowulf believed that God was in control, so this made him brave and allowed him to draw courage from God. He could face battles without fear or hesitation because he believed he had no control over his death. In one scene, while fighting with Grendel, he lay down patiently so that he could wait for his adversary; he proved his bravery by seizing him (295 & 296). Also, Beowulf jumped into the lake and sunk in pursuit of Grendel’s mother. At this time, all he had in his mind were the battles he was going to engage in and win (307 & 308). While fighting the dragon, Wiglaf and Beowulf were left by their allies but that did not make Beowulf retreat as he continued with the battle.

Wisdom is another trait that he possesses. He was a wise man because he chose to become a boat captain when sailing to Denmark. Beowulf leads his fellow Geats on this long journey, and they safely arrive in Denmark. While fighting with Grandel, Beowulf is seen to have powerful fighting ability and strategy for combat. He pretended to be asleep so that he could apply an element of surprise against Grendel; a move that gave him an upper hand in the fight. There is also an instance where Beowulf is dragged into the she-witch lair. Here, he was smart enough to realize that the weapons he had were not effective and therefore, he had to think quickly. He saw a giant’s sword hanging on the wall and picked it. He used this sword to chop off Grandel’s mother’s head and automatically won the battle. The fights that Beowulf encountered gave him the wisdom to lead his people efficiently as the ruler of Geatland.

Beowulf is considered an epic hero because he is brave, wise and selfless. Beowulf shows all these traits in the battles he fought. Beowulf displayed selflessness by sharing the treasure with his people instead of keeping it to himself. Beowulf protected his culture until he died. The Geats lost their culture after the death of this hero.

Beowulf’s life is proof that he is truly an epic hero. The poem Beowulf was a reflection of the wisdom, selflessness, and strength that characterize such persons. He was wise in his leadership over the Geats and selfless when handling material wealth. The character’s strength shone during battles with difficult adversaries. Beowulf typified these qualities without looking forced or unnatural.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 2). Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem. https://ivypanda.com/essays/beowulf-the-hero-of-the-epic-poem/

"Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem." IvyPanda , 2 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/beowulf-the-hero-of-the-epic-poem/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem'. 2 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem." November 2, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/beowulf-the-hero-of-the-epic-poem/.

1. IvyPanda . "Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem." November 2, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/beowulf-the-hero-of-the-epic-poem/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Beowulf, the Hero of the Epic Poem." November 2, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/beowulf-the-hero-of-the-epic-poem/.

• Grendel’s Mother in Film "Beowulf"
• Beowulf Defeats Grendel: Relationships With Family, Women, and His Own Gender
• Heroism in Beowulf
• Heroes’ Noble Intentions in Epic Poems: Sundiata, Beowulf and Gilgamesh
• The Poem "Beowulf": The Monster Grendel
• Gardner's "Grendel" as a Nihilist and Existentialist
• Main Idea and Literary Devices of Beowulf Poem
• The Epic Poem "Beowulf": Arms and Armor
• Beowulf: Grendel's Mother Viewpoint
• "The Poem of Beowulf" in the Anglo-Saxon Culture
• Modernism and Avant-Garde in Edward Estlin Cummings' Poems
• “The Lesson” and “The Parable of the Talents” Poems Comparison
• The Grief Role in Achilles’ Name, Character and Actions
• Idealistic Love in "Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare
• The Poem "Hymn to Aphrodite" by Sappho

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Acquisition
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Religion
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business Strategy
• Business History
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Systems
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

Craig R. Davis, Smith College

• Published: 01 July 2014
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

Beowulf is a narrative meditation in traditional Old English alliterative verse on the origins of violence in human affairs; it was included in the Nowell Codex, an ethnographic miscellany compiled around the year 1000 on the most exotic peoples in space and time known to the Anglo-Saxons. No one knows when, where, by whom, or for whom this poem was first composed during the previous half millennium, but it was likely preserved, copied, or created at the court of King Alfred in the 890s. The hero confronts three monsters who personify forces that tear apart human communities and bring them to ruin: Grendel, who displays the power of entrenched tribal chauvinism; his mother, who reveals the source of such hatred in wounded love of kind; and the dragon, who embodies a more generalized principle of negative eventuality— wyrd —which renders all human efforts, even those of the noble hero, compromised and ultimately self-defeating.

The Poem and Its Manuscript 1

Beowulf is a narrative meditation in Old English verse on the origins of violence in human affairs and the capacity of both political institutions and individual leaders to control it. The poet’s prognosis is not good. He tells the story of a young prince who travels from his homeland in southern Sweden to help the old Danish King Hrothgar confront a troll-like revenant named Grendel, who has been terrorizing the royal hall of Heorot at night for some twelve years. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, ripping off his arm as the creature runs howling into the night. The next night Grendel’s mother, a smaller but equally dangerous monster, returns to take revenge. Beowulf then hunts down Grendel’s mother in her lair below the bottom of a haunted lake; he is almost overcome but resurfaces beyond hope with Grendel’s head as a trophy and the hilt of the ancient sword with which he dispatched the she-ogre. He then returns home to his uncle Hygelac, king of the Geats, and eventually assumes the throne himself, ruling his people peacefully for half a century before he, too, is suddenly confronted in old age by a menace from within his own kingdom. This time the menace is a dragon aroused by the theft of a single cup from its hoard. This “heathen gold” (line 2276b) is the accumulated wealth of a lost race, secreted a thousand years before by its last survivor. Beowulf seeks out this third monster, manages to kill it with the help of his young kinsman Wiglaf, but steps only paces away before succumbing himself. The dying king rejoices in his last moments of life over the treasure he has won for his people, but they fear the future without him. Three characters in the poem prophesy the imminent destruction of the Geats once their enemies learn of Beowulf’s death: Wiglaf (lines 2884–2890a), the messenger he sends back to the Geatish army (lines 2999–3027), and a Geatish woman who mourns by the old king’s funeral pyre, anticipating

cruel invasions, many murderous slaughters, terror of troops, humiliation [probably meaning rape], and enslavement. (lines 3153–3155a)

These eventualities were not far off the mark, the poet affirms in his understated style: The Geatish messenger “did not much lie / in his words or the deeds” he predicted (lines 3029b-3030a). But the Beowulf poet never tells us exactly what happened to his hero’s people in the end except to suggest that they are no more, obliterated long since by their enemies or driven into exile, victims of what we would nowadays call genocide or ethnic cleansing. The poem ends with the burial of Beowulf’s ashes in a mound overlooking the sea, along with rest of the dragon’s hoard. “There it still lies,” the poet remarks, “just as useless to men as it was before” (line 3168).

The 3,182 verses of Beowulf are in a form of highly allusive alliterative poetry that appears wherever Germanic languages have first been recorded in writing, beginning around 400 ce with the runic inscription on a gold horn from Gallehus, Denmark, suggesting that this oral tradition had developed in prehistoric times among various speakers of Common Germanic on the Continent. The poem was copied by two anonymous scribes into its single surviving manuscript—the Nowell Codex of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv—in some southern English monastery around the year 1000. No one knows when, where, by whom, or for whom this poem was originally composed during the previous half millennium, whether it reflects ancient legendary traditions brought to the former Roman diocese of Britannia by immigrants from northwestern Germany and Jutland during the fifth and sixth centuries or later literary art inspired by biblical, classical, or possibly even Scandinavian models, these last introduced to Britain by Danish Vikings during the ninth century. Serious scholars have proposed virtually every period and kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from the transmarine migration across the North Sea—before the Anglo-Saxons had even converted to Christianity or learned to read and write the Latin alphabet—through the middle of the eleventh century, that is, after the time most experts in paleography would date the copying of the Nowell Codex. None of these suggestions has ever won scholarly consensus or even a plurality of agreement, although fashions for earlier or later dating have come and gone. We have a better date for the creation of the Homeric poems on the Aegean island of Chios, ca. 700 bce, than we do for Beowulf in Britain over 1,200 years later.

Nor do we know how many copies of the poem lie between the archetype or first written version of Beowulf and the manuscript in which it has been preserved in the late West Saxon dialect of its last copying. Anglo-Saxon scribes routinely but inconsistently updated the language of their exemplar—the text of the poem from which they were copying—so that whenever we have two texts of a vernacular poem to compare, we can see that many of the lines have been altered or adapted in some way. But scribes often simply made mistakes as well—some obvious, others less clearly so. Much of Beowulf scholarship is devoted to determining and construing the words of the text the Cotton Vitellius scribes had before them. Some scholars are conservative when it comes to prioritizing the extant words and letters that appear in the surviving codex; others are more comfortable with emending that text on paleographic, philological, or even metrical and thematic grounds to offer what they believe to be a more plausible version. Either way, the Cotton Vitellius scribes’ mistakes and misprisions, especially their repeated misreadings of particular letters in their exemplar, suggest that this prior version had been reproduced in a scribal hand unfamiliar to them, probably Anglo-Saxon set miniscule, which had gone out of use about a century or so earlier. 2 In addition, this copy of the poem from sometime before ca. 900, apparently in the early West Saxon dialect of Old English, must have contained a number of linguistic and metrical archaisms shared by much earlier times and places in Anglo-Saxon England. These may be verbal fossils of a version first written down in seventh- or eighth-century Northumbria, Mercia, or East Anglia or, conversely, they may simply represent an older-fashioned koiné or regionally hybrid poetic language that continued to be cultivated for this elevated register of traditional verse in the courts and monasteries of a later period. One third of the surviving corpus of Old English poetry is of this secular heroic sort, but it shares many features of imagery and specialized diction with another third, which is mainly hagiographical in content, and also with a final third that, like parts of Beowulf itself, retells stories from the Bible in a way dramatized by Bede’s reported miracle of the seventh-century Northumbrian herdsman who was inspired to compose the first known poem in the English language, Cædmon’s Hymn , on God’s creation of middangeard “the middle enclosure, the world of human habitation” at the beginning of time. 3

The two Cotton Vitellius scribes copied Beowulf into a manuscript collection comprising another Old English poem about the ancient Hebrew heroine Judith and three prose texts translated from Latin into the vernacular: The Passion of St. Christopher, The Wonders of the East , and The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle . In 1953 Kenneth Sisam called this collection a liber de diversis monstris, anglice, or “book of various monsters, in English,” 4 even though two of the texts— The Passion of St. Christopher and Judith —lack any explicit reference to physical monstrosity per se. The saint is a very large man, however, apparently “twelve fathoms” tall from the equivalent length of the iron bench to which his persecutors bind him (lines 9–10). 5 In the Latin source from which this partially incomplete text has been adapted, St. Christopher is said to live among the man-eating cynocephali of Samos and is himself “dog-headed,” though human and true-believing in his heart. 6 Judith beheads a drunken sexual predator, the Assyrian general Holofernes, who, though human in outward form, is a monster on the inside, described as “the devil’s spawn” (line 61b) and “the hideous assailant” (line 75a), the same kind of language used to describe the giant cannibal Grendel in Beowulf . 7

The miscellany in which Beowulf has been preserved could thus be called more accurately a liber de diversis populis, anglice , or “book of various peoples in English,” a compilation of sensational ethnographic exotica on the most distant peoples in space and time known to the Anglo-Saxons, many of whom were familiar from earlier Greco-Roman accounts of such races: giants, cannibals, dog-headed men, and other Homodubii , as they are called in The Wonders of the East, †æt beoƒ twi-men “that is, maybe-people” (line 32), living among water-monsters, fiery-eyed beasts, poisonous serpents, dragons, and other strange creatures at the extremities of the known world. 8   Beowulf itself begins in geardagum —“in the old days” (line 1b)—of the ancient North and tells of even earlier times and peoples stretching all the way back to the primal murder of Genesis 4 to explain the division of the human race into warring tribes, one of which, the monstrous descendents of Cain, were banished by God to the waste places of the earth, literally “marginalized” from the rest of humanity for their ancestor’s sin. And it is the song sung by Hrothgar’s scop , or “bard,” in Heorot about God’s creation of divine order in the world—“a bright fair field surrounded by water” (line 93)—reminiscent of Cædmon’s Hymn , that so infuriates Grendel, who has been driven out with all his kind into the “land of the monster-race” (line 104b), in his case, the fens and moors, the “wolf-slopes” and “windy headlands” (line 1358), that edge the northern ocean.

Beowulf thus offers an Anglo-Saxon supplement to biblical and classical accounts of the beginnings of human life on earth and the various peoples who have occupied its northern reaches. The poem is similarly concerned to describe the subsequent course of human events there in moral and spiritual terms, though deeply inflected by the world view and value system with which many of these old legends had been imbued during their previous retellings in pagan times. Especially significant in this regard is the influence of wyrd , a general principle of negative eventuality or cosmic entropy, sometimes translated neutrally as “fate” but more often connoting a less happy sense of “(bad) luck” or even “doom.” The term is an old one, with cognates in Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Norse, apparently the nominalized past participle of a verb that appears in Old English as weorƒan , “to happen, come about, turn out.” Wyrd is both what has “happened” in the past and a predictable “result” or inevitable “outcome” in the future that can be fled or resisted but never permanently escaped. We can have no real doubt that the poet of Beowulf was a baptized Roman Catholic Christian, probably literate in English if not in Latin as well, quite possibly in religious orders, but so familiar with the pre-Christian tradition of vernacular poetry that he could comfortably replicate its oral artistry and elegiac themes to invoke a whole world of antique northern legendry. In fact, he does so in an even more expansive and ambitious way than appears in the shorter heroic lays he gives to poet characters in his poem, probably a more accurate reflection of the scope of such traditional narratives in actual performance. These are the formal songs of the Fight at Finnsburg performed by a royal scop in Heorot (lines 1063–1159a) and a more extemporaneous celebration of Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel by one of Hrothgar’s retainers on horseback:

At times a thegn of the king, a man laden with song, mindful of lays, he who remembered a vast multitude of old stories, found fresh words bound truly together; thoughtfully the man began to recount the adventure of Beowulf and deftly to weave an apt tale, varying his expressions. (lines 867b-874a)

If Beowulf is the product of such oral-formulaic composition in public performance, its written form must be the result of a special dictation over several sittings, perhaps the “self-dictation” by a poet who could read and write, instead of the direct transcription of a single event. Yet the complex plotting and self-conscious craftsmanship of this much longer poem—its piquing internal parallelisms and neatly calculated word chimes over many hundreds of lines, its command of both Christian learning and native lore, its restless and incomplete reflection on the meaning of the events it dramatizes—suggest that the poet of Beowulf , at his desk,was rather imagining an oral performance.

Unfortunately his poem seems to have flopped in its own day, if not with its immediate patrons at least with ensuing generations of Anglo-Saxon readers. 9 Except for the two Cotton Vitellius scribes, we have no known audience or readership of Beowulf whose political interests, social identity, religious profession, or historical circumstances might help us to parse more precisely the poet’s likely intentions. Tom Shippey places the composition of Beowulf in the time of Eddius Stephanus, a Northumbrian Latin author who knew all about the Merovingian Franks mentioned in the poem and wrote his Life of Wilfrid at Ripon, North Yorkshire, in the second decade of the eighth century. 10 Shippey thus reasserts a once dominant view that Beowulf should be dated to the “age of Bede” (ca. 673–735) in Northumbria. He traces the historical setting of the poem, based on a reference to Hygelac’s raid in the sixth-century History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, to authentic oral memories of the reign of King Theudebert I, who died in 548, suggesting that “for Scandinavia in the Age of Migrations [ Beowulf ] could be the nearest thing to a contemporary document that we possess,” one that supplements but never seriously contradicts the bits of information we can gather from Frankish or Anglo-Saxon sources written in Latin. 11 R. D. Fulk would concur with this earlier dating on the basis of the conservative prosody of the poem, putting it on metrical and linguistic grounds to before the year 750, if composed south of the Humber, or before 850, if in the pre-Viking kingdom of Northumbria. 12 John D. Niles and Marijane Osborn believe the poet may have modeled Heorot on the large tenth-century halls recently excavated at Lejre at the head of Roskilde Fjord on the island of Zealand, a site traditionally associated with the Skjöldungar , the legendary Scylding kings of Denmark. 13 And Roberta Frank sees the influence of Norse skaldic poetry on Beowulf , plus a certain archaizing reinvention of the pre-Christian past extrapolated by the poet from his knowledge of contemporary pagan Vikings. 14 Kevin Kiernan puts the poem well into the eleventh century from the condition of its manuscript, which he believes consists of two originally separate poems joined together by a scribe or scribes around the year 1016, the advent of the rule in England of King Cnut of Denmark. 15

For my part, I suspect that the poem may have passed in some form through the court of King Alfred at Winchester in the later ninth century, since we know of only two Anglo-Saxons by name who were interested in the kind of old ethnic lore contained in Beowulf : (1) King Alfred, who traced his paternal ancestry back to the Danish king Scyld Scefing celebrated in the opening lines of the poem, 16 and (2) his mother Osburh, who was a Jutish princess from the Isle of Wight, a people rationalized as Scandinavian Geats in the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People , preserved in a manuscript contemporary with the end of Alfred’s reign in 899. 17 According to the king’s Welsh bishop Asser, Osburh promised to give a book of vernacular poetry to whomever of her sons could first learn its contents. 18 Alfred won. We would love to know what was in that book, of course, quite possibly some stirring tales that Osburh wished her West Saxon boys to know about their putative maternal forebears, the heroic predecessors of the “Geatish” kings of Wight. It may even have contained a version of Beowulf itself or of some similar verse legends about the ancient Geatish royals—Hrethel, Herebeald, Hæthcyn, Hygelac, Heardred—that went into its composition to be combined there with traditions of the early Danish kings brought to England by Scaldingi earlier in the ninth century, that is, Vikings who claimed Scylding heritage, 19 some of whom settled the Danelaw after 878 under King Alfred’s new godson Guthrum, king of the East Angles.

Later in life, Alfred assembled a team of scholars to translate into English those Latin works he felt most important for his people to know, very likely including some or all of the ethnographic works included in the Nowell Codex with a verse rendering of the Old Testament book of Judith , the namesake of the king’s Frankish stepmother and sister-in-law, Queen Judith of Flanders. King Alfred’s court at Winchester in the 890s was a veritable hotbed of dynastic speculation and learned inquiry. It is there and then that I believe we should look for the immediate manuscript precursor of a poem that memorializes Geats and Danes in their northern homelands. Whenever Beowulf was first composed in Anglo-Saxon England—in whatever kingdom and in whatever form—this inquisitive monarch would have found it of compelling personal interest. He had motive, means, and opportunity to sponsor the preservation, perhaps even the original composition, of a poem honoring the two ancestral peoples from whom he was proud to descend on both his mother’s and his father’s sides. 20

But we cannot know for sure. All we know is that a version of the poem in Alfred’s early West Saxon dialect of Old English from sometime before the year of his death in 899 seems to have found its way into a nearby southern English monastery during the following century. There Beowulf lay buried in its obscure codex for more than five hundred years, unread and soon virtually unreadable, until King Henry VIII nationalized the monasteries in the sixteenth century, after which it emerged among antiquarian book collectors before coming within inches of being destroyed by fire in 1731. It is scorched and crumbling around its edges, from which at least 2,000 letters have been lost since the end of the eighteenth century. The text of this damaged poem would itself seem to exemplify the fate it depicts for all human achievements.

Yet, since the time Beowulf was first translated (badly, into Latin) in 1815 and then presented in a more reliable scholarly edition in 1832, the power of its language, the starkness of its imagery, the subtlety of its thought, and the poignancy of its sad, brave view of life have inspired as many scholarly studies, at least until recently, as the combined tragedies of Shakespeare. It is the first great poem in English and, after centuries of silence of its own, speaks for generations of mute speakers of that language. It is perhaps the single most expressive statement of the imaginative world of northern Europe during the centuries that followed the fall of Rome, at least among those barbarian nobles who formed the first ruling elites in postimperial lowland Britain. But even so, Beowulf raises as many questions as it answers, leaving its readers in bemused uncertainty about the poet’s purpose and final characterization of his hero, creating a vertigo of moral ambiguity that stands in sharp contrast to its hero’s own quick confidence and decisive action. It is remarkable that this long-forgotten and poorly understood poem should finally have come into its own only at the beginning of the twenty-first century, emerging from its cloistered manuscript in the nineteenth and from anthologies for students in the twentieth to find itself even more compelling to translators, poets, scholars, writers, filmmakers, graphic artists, musical composers, and other interpreters than at any other time of its existence on earth. 21

In addition, the recent revolution of postmodern literary theory has opened up many new approaches to the interpretation of this old poem, transcending former debates about whether it is essentially a Christian work or a pagan one, whether it is the product of monastic literary culture or an ancient oral heritage, and whether its hero is to be seen as a doomed heathen warlord or a Christian role model, even a self-sacrificial figure of Christ. As we will see, current discussions of the meaning of Beowulf (or its conscientious lack thereof in certain deconstructive analyses) revive and reframe these scholarly controversies in ways that naturally reflect our own historical moment and cultural preoccupations. Many critics in recent years, for instance, have found sympathy not so much for the martial hero as for the monsters he kills, especially Grendel and his mother, who are felt to have been unfairly “Othered” or “abjectified” by the human characters in the poem, 22 providing painful examples of the way we demonize those who are different from us, especially those whom we have conquered, colonized, enslaved, supplanted, or otherwise abused, never more so than in our rewriting of their histories from our own triumphalist perspective.

But for virtually all interpreters, the meaning of the monsters lies at the very heart of the Beowulf poet’s project. Their character and significance has continued to exercise scholars ever since J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous defense of them in his 1936 British Academy address, “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics,” certainly the most provocative and influential reading of the poem to date. 23 Tolkien had hoped to restore these creatures to their rightful place in our appreciation of the poem, to counter earlier dismissals of the monster fights as puerile fantasies that the poet had inappropriately placed in the center of his poem’s attention, relegating the more weighty matters of ancient northern history to its periphery. To the contrary, Tolkien argues, the monsters make the poem. Beowulf is not demeaned but dignified by the dire antagonists he must face: Grendel as a young hero at the beginning of his career, the dragon as an old king at its end. These monsters represent forces beyond all human understanding and control, powers inimical to human civilization and social order. They can be held off ane hwile (“for a while”) (line 1762a), as Hrothgar says in his reflections on his own life that he shares with Beowulf, but not forever, not even for very long, even by the most courageous and determined of heroes.

The structure of Beowulf is simpler, Tolkien suggests, than the three monster fights into which it is divided. It recounts the rise and fall of a noble life, interweaving the hero’s adventures with countless other half told tales of similar, though often much less edifying struggles between human individuals and groups. Some of these episodes are recounted at considerable length by the poet in his own voice or by characters within his poem, but more often they are simply adduced by the slimmest and most cryptic of allusions, so that we often have a hard time reconstructing the backstory that would clarify the point of the reference. And these obscurely glimpsed episodes of legendary history only ramify with increasing intensity during the final third of the poem, significantly retarding the climax of Beowulf’s encounter with the dragon. He himself falls into a memory-riddled funk moments before calling out the chthonic worm, brooding obsessively on the sad and morally confusing deaths of his royal kinsmen before him. The general function of these ancillary tales and their thematic thrust in particular instances continues to bedevil Beowulf scholars, but they are clearly intended to contextualize our understanding of the hero’s fights with the monsters. And these creatures themselves are described in such suggestive language and juxtaposed to human characters in such striking ways that we begin to suspect that the poet is using them not only to challenge his hero but also to reflect upon his own motivations and those of other human figures in the poem. The poet’s relentless apposition of monsters and humans makes us wonder whether his hero and the other good characters are somehow complicit in their own demise, driven and distracted by the very demons they had hoped to exorcize from their own society.

The poet of Beowulf at first presents Grendel as a kind of evil spirit: he is “a fiend in hell” (line 101a), a “grim ghost” (line 102a), “the enemy of mankind” (line 164b)—this last an epithet used to describe Satan in Old English biblical poems. Yet he names this character after a creature familiar from Anglo-Saxon folklore, a grendel , a marsh or boundary troll, whom the poet further rationalizes not as a fallen angel but as a mortal human renegade:

a terrible haunter of the borderlands, one who held the moors, the fens and fastnesses; this unhappy man inhabited the land of the monster-race for quite a while after the Creator had condemned him among the race of Cain—the eternal Lord avenged that killing in which he slew Abel; [Cain] had no joy in that feud, for the Maker banished him far from mankind for his crime. From him sprang all misbegotten creatures, etins and elves and ogres, and also the giants who strove against God for a long time; he paid them their reward for that. (lines 103–114)

This last is an allusion to the great Flood of Genesis 6 from which the Beowulf poet imagines some of the wicked giants surviving amphibiously in their watery refuges.

But none of the human characters in the poem knows any of this. Grendel’s malice is inexplicable to them. Nor do they know what provokes his attack upon the newly built royal hall in which he spitefully joins Hrothgar’s thegns uninvited at their feast, killing and eating thirty of them instead. But we know, because the poet tells us: It was the sweet song of the scop singing of divine order in the world, plus the sound of mirth among former enemies to whom the tough but generous Scylding monarchs have brought peace and amity. The Beowulf poet’s sympathies are plainly royalist. Of Hrothgar’s great grandfather Scyld, his judgment is famously terse but emphatic: “That was a good king!” (line 11b). There is no trace of condolence for the various tribal chieftains who were crushed and despoiled by Scyld, or intimidated into submission, local warlords from whom the upstart king wrested their mead benches, symbols of the autonomy with which they had once feasted their own followers in their own mead halls. Even in pagan times the Christian God promotes broad national monarchy and the political stability it brings. He sends Scyld an heir precisely because “he had seen the wicked violence / they once suffered for so long without a king” (lines 14b‒16a).

But it was not to last. The moment Hrothgar finishes building Heorot, the poet alludes to its imminent destruction—not by monsters, but by humans:

The hall towered tall, high and horn-gabled; it was waiting for waves of battle, the flame of hatred; nor would it be too long before sword-hate between father- and son-in-law had to awaken from murderous strife. (lines 81b‒85)

We learn the details later. Heorot will be burned to the ground by Ingeld, future husband of Hrothgar’s daughter Freawaru, tribal king of the Heathobards in northern Germany, with whom the great king Hrothgar hopes to make peace through this marriage alliance despite the fact that the Danes themselves have killed Ingeld’s father Froda in the process of building their empire. Hrothgar hopes that Ingeld will be seduced to forget his grief and humiliation with this advantageous match, but he will not succeed. Beowulf is made shrewdly to foresee the failure of the good king’s plans when he reports back to his uncle Hygelac in Geatland. He can just imagine the barely suppressed resentment of the Heathobard warriors as they observe their family heirlooms dangling from their enemies’ sword belts. It will not take much to reignite Ingeld’s animosity, the hero surmises, “even though the bride be good” (line 2031b). With a narrative trick he uses time and again, the Beowulf poet scarcely finishes building the royal hall in our minds’ eyes before he erases it forever in the most aggressive and totalizing way. 25 It will be consumed by the fire of renewed hostility between intimately related folk before it is even rescued from its earlier haunting by an enemy inspired by similar ethnic animosity. Grendel wants no sibb , no “peace” or “kinship,” “with anyone of the Danish host, / would not relax his mortal hatred, negotiate a settlement” (lines 154b‒156). Grendel foreshadows in monstrous caricature the angry spirit that will well up in the breast of the all too predictable human king.

The poet uses flame as a symbol of hatred and its power to destroy. Fire burns everywhere in this dark poem. It burns on the water of the monsters’ mere, “a hateful marvel” (line 1365b). It flashes in Grendel’s eyes—“an unlovely gleam, most like a flame” (line 727). It burns uncle and nephew lying side by side on their pyre in the Finnsburg lay (lines 1107–1124) after the Frisian king Finn has plotted vengeance against his brother-in-law Hnæf for nearly two decades under the pretense of a happy marriage to the Danish princess Hildeburh. It is no wonder the Beowulf poet makes Grendel a direct descendent of Cain, the perpetrator, he implies, of the real original sin of mankind, 26 a view shared by other Old English poets. That of Maxims I says:

Feuding came to mankind from the instant earth swallowed Abel’s blood. That was no one-day deed of strife. From it the drops of malice splashed far and wide, great evil among men and hate-stirred strife among many peoples. Cain slew his own brother, but did not keep killing to himself. From then on it was seen that everywhere constant strife destroyed men. (lines 192–198a) 27

Or the poet of Genesis A , using a different image:

From that stem afterwards, ever longer the stronger, grew hateful and furious fruit. The shoots of violence spread far and wide among the tribes of men. The branches of evil, hard and sharp, pricked the sons of men. They still do. From that broad blade every injury began to blossom. Not without cause can we weep over this story, this slaughter-grim result [ wyrd ]. (lines 988b‒997a) 28

Grendel embodies our violent human heritage in its most hideous, characteristic, and predictable form; his cannibalism incarnates a system of human interaction that incessantly devours the lives of men.

Grendel’s Mother 29

Paul Acker has observed an interesting irony about Tolkien’s classic defense of the monsters of Beowulf , especially with regard to Grendel’s mother—that is, he completely ignores her. 30 Tolkien apparently did not respond to this character with the same critical approval he gave the other two monsters. He did not find the hero similarly enhanced by his encounter with her. Why not? Why did Tolkien not recognize in Grendel’s mother a menace of comparable significance to that which he found in Grendel and the dragon? Is she a mere redundancy, a storyteller’s trick, used to scare the audience with a sudden new threat once they think the real danger has passed?

I would suggest that Grendel’s mother’s reiteration of her son’s violence is part of the poet’s point, reflecting his further thoughts on the irrepressibility of the violence these monsters represent and its ultimate origin. The attack by Grendel’s mother is surprising in several ways, partly in her character as a female but also as the mother of her monstrous son. Who would have thought that man-eating fen trolls had fretful moms waiting for them back in their lairs? And the poet slyly remarks that it was only a girl monster who came to Heorot that second night, one whose threat was weaker than her son’s to the extent that “a woman’s strength” and “a female’s fighting power” is less than that

of an armed man when forged sword, beaten by hammers, the blood-stained blade with its mighty edges, cleaves boar-crests on helmets. (lines 1282b–1287)

Well, a woman’s strength and fighting power do not sound too terribly dangerous compared with that kind of hard, weaponized masculine force.

But the poet is only teasing us. Grendel may have burst headlong into Heorot “like a man,” but his mother proves to be the far wilier and more formidable opponent. She is difficult for Beowulf even to find among the many hazards at the bottom of her mere; she is slippery, quick, and clever as she reverses his grip on her shoulder (or hair), flips him under her, and draws her long knife. She almost gets him, too, and would certainly have done for Beowulf if Almighty God himself had not intervened at that very moment in one of the most explicit intrusions of divine agency in the entire poem:

Then the son of Ecgtheow would have perished under the broad earth, the champion of the Geats, if his war-shirt had not given him help, the hard battle-net—and holy God. The wise Lord, ruler of the heavens, gave him victory in battle; he decided it rightly, easily, when [Beowulf] stood up again. (lines 1550–1556)

In addition, when we compare her motivation to Grendel’s indiscriminate rapacity or the dragon’s blind possessiveness, Grendel’s mother is the most intelligent and rational of the three monsters in Beowulf . She leaves her lair for one very specific reason: to avenge her son. Her behavior has both intellectual clarity and a certain moral rigor: She scrupulously exacts a life for a life, according to the strict rules of the old lex talionis (Exodus 21: 24). Andy Orchard suggests that we should see her as the “wronged” party in this exchange, 31 and Alfred Bammesberger agrees that Grendel’s mother is “legally entitled to avenge” Grendel because a foreign stranger, to whom her people have never done any harm, has just killed her only son. 32 At the very least, the poet has given this monster a moral and emotional claim upon our sympathies that provokes one of the poem’s most potently ambivalent moments, since a mother’s outraged love for her mutilated child is a feeling that everyone in the audience of Beowulf —Anglo-Saxon, modern, or postmodern—can be expected immediately to recognize and understand. We know exactly how this mother—any mother—would feel. So the introduction of Grendel’s mother creates a point of intimate but repellent contact between the monsters of the poem and the humans of its audience that the poet contrives to confuse or complicate our perception of the evil these creatures are supposed to represent and their apparent Otherness from our own conscious values. Grendel’s mother is not an utterly alien Other.

And the logic of the revenge imperative she illustrates is also obvious, a principle of retaliation known to scholars of feud (perhaps a bit euphemistically) as “self-help justice,” a pattern of axiomatic reciprocity between rival groups—both positive and negative—whose conventional protocols function as a kind of organic constitution in stateless societies or those with weakly institutionalized law enforcement. 33 The system is supposed to minimize violence by channeling it through a limited number of expendable actors who must follow the rules of the feud, thus promoting a broader political balance and cohesion between competing clans or factions. However, the poet of Beowulf has already shown that any deterrent, equalizing, or cohesive purpose to a system of mutual exchange had long since broken down in Denmark. There is no “peace in the feud” between humans and monsters, since Grendel evinces no fear at all of retaliation from the Danes as a restraint upon his behavior and rejoices in the one-sided violence he is able to inflict on them. In fact, the Beowulf poet troubles to show us that even when a thoroughly just vengeance is taken upon this tihtbysig “crime-laden” man, a hardened criminal or repeat offender, violence does not settle the matter at all but simply provokes an immediate retaliation on the part of the perpetrator’s aggrieved kin.

Grendel’s mother drags off Æschere, Hrothgar’s oldest and most beloved retainer, the one surviving thegn who, as a young man, used to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with his lord as they defended each other’s heads in battle (lines 1325–1328a). His loss is specially and bitterly mourned, even after all the other deaths suffered by the Danes. The poet invents the vicious beheading of this character at the hands of Grendel’s mother in order to create a particular thematic opportunity. It gives him a chance to lament, in his own voice, the system of reciprocal violence that Grendel’s mother incarnates in her actions and intent: “that was not a good exchange / that on both sides they had to pay with the lives of their loved ones” (lines 1304b–1306a), he says, with remarkable compunction for the feelings of a deadly she troll. But this way, he suggests, both sides will always lose those they love the most.

The Beowulf poet uses Grendel’s mother to imagine with greater emotional clarity and intellectual precision the source of such self-consuming violence between groups. It is primordial love, he realizes, that is the bottomless wellspring of human hatred. We hate so hard because we love so much and so protectively those whom we see as moral appendages of own persons, a mother especially, since her physical connection to her offspring is so obvious and tangible. Families are the same. We are sprung from their bodies, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh. Wounded love of kind is thus the indefatigable engine of violence in human affairs. C. R. Hallpike, writing of the hill clans of Papua New Guinea, concludes that certain patterns of familial affection and group identity simply make “a high level of conflict both permanent and inescapable.” 34 The Beowulf poet agrees: He uses the image of a perfectly natural but monstrous mother’s love to convey the power and predictability of the impulse for revenge, the inevitability of the violence it constantly engenders. And rather than leave us merely appalled at this conclusion, within seventy lines the poet troubles to associate his own noble hero with this very same reaction: “Do not mourn, old man,” Beowulf reassures the grieving Hrothgar: “it is better for a man / to avenge his friend than to mourn much” (lines 1384b–1385). We best express our love not through sorrow but through more violence. Let’s kill one of theirs, we’ll feel better. And the old king leaps for joy, thanking God, when he learns of his young friend’s determination (lines 1397–1398).

This embrace of the revenge imperative by the good people in the poem is no temporary or adventitious association, adduced at this particular point simply to motivate Beowulf’s next adventure. Even on the last day of his life on earth, when as an old king, the hero pauses to reflect before entering the path down to the dragon’s barrow, he rejoices not in having killed Grendel and his mother for Hrothgar. What Beowulf is most proud of is that his beloved uncle Hygelac had never needed to seek among other peoples a warrior worse than him to fight their enemies. He remained loyal to the end and personally succeeded in avenging the king’s death on that battlefield in Frisia by crushing the life out of his Frankish counterpart, the human champion Dæghrefn, with his own bare hands (lines 2501–2508). This gloating memory is what gives Beowulf the final gumption to call out the dragon a few moments later. And we might recall that the Geats’ attack upon the Franks, in which Hygelac was killed, is said three times by the poet to have been an unprovoked plundering raid, structurally analogous, one might say, to Grendel’s random depredation of Danes: “ Wyrd took him / when for pride [Hygelac] asked for trouble, for a fight among the Frisians” (lines 1205b–1207a; cf. 2490–2508a, and 2910b–2921). This observation puts our hero in a position precisely parallel to that of Grendel’s mother, in that he avenges the slaying of a close kinsman who has already put himself in the wrong by killing first. The Franks, like the Danes, were just trying to defend themselves from a wanton aggressor, only to suffer further loss of life at the hands of their attacker’s aggrieved kin: Beowulf in this case, Grendel’s mother in the other.

What is interesting here is that the poet has demonized in Grendel’s mother the same attitude he honors in his hero. And there are other moments in the poem where we feel the same thrill of revenge. I am thinking in particular of the relief created by the scop of the Finnsburg lay when, after that awful winter in Frisia where the Danish leader has been forced to swear allegiance to his lord’s slayer Finn, Hunlaf’s son finally puts the sword into Hengest’s lap. A satisfying moment of revenge—when Dæghrefn’s ribs crack in Beowulf’s bear hug or his windpipe collapses in the hero’s great grip—is a memory the old king cherishes to his dying day. This murderous pang of grief turned joy in the moment of revenge is the still point in the turning world of Beowulf , a satisfaction shared both by the Geatish prince and by Grendel’s mother.

But do we need go so far as to conclude that Beowulf himself becomes a monster by killing monsters, that he musters such force of inhuman rage and vengefulness, of arrogance and “us-ism,” that he takes on the character of the enemies he overcomes rather than the human beings he tries to protect? 35 Beowulf is not a monster, the poet reminds us. He is a really nice man. When he dies, the Geats mourn him from the bottom of their hearts:

They said he was of kings in the world the mildest of men and the most courteous, kindest to his people and most eager for their regard. (lines 3180–3182)

Much f this esteem comes from the fact that Beowulf never killed a kinsman, a blessing for which he thanks God (lines 2739b–2743a) and a rarity among Germanic princes, historical or legendary. But neither did Beowulf let his kinsmen lie unavenged, even when they were stupidly, wickedly, disastrously in the wrong. Beowulf does not become a monster by killing monsters: The monsters of Beowulf become human by killing humans. It’s what we do. It comes naturally to us, especially when someone harms our loved ones.

The Dragon 36

It may feel better to avenge one’s friend than to mourn much, but it does not bring him back (in the old cliché), nor does it seem to make things much better for anyone in the long run. Even the vengeance Beowulf takes upon the dragon for burning down his hall is just as self-destructive as the dragon’s own retaliation for the violation of its “hall” in the earth. They both get their revenge, of course, but lose their lives in the process. Like Grendel’s mother, Beowulf enjoys a momentary triumph, but blood is pulsing from the bite-wound in his neck, poison working in his breast, his face scorched by flames and caustic venom. Our damaged and disfigured hero is now something of a monster himself, exulting (almost pathetically) in the wealth he has won for his people, not realizing that it is worthless to them without him. Swedes and Franks and other enemies will all remember the many injuries Geats have done them in the past, including some big ones by Beowulf himself. This is not at all a good exchange, that on all sides everyone ends up paying with the lives of their loved ones, the hero of the poem just like everybody else.

Unlike Grendel and his mother, however, the dragon is not a humanoid monster. It is supercultural and therefore ultimately insuperable, 37 an earthly analogue of the great world serpent that the god Thor will kill on the last day, stepping, just like Beowulf, only paces away to his own death. Both god and hero try to defend their people from this existential threat, but their own great strength redounds upon them: It is the shock of Thor’s hammer blow that blasts all human life from earth, not the Midgard serpent. 38 Beowulf only breaks his good sword on the dragon’s hard skull, his final “victory,” leaving his people more vulnerable to their enemies than before. These are not ironies for the Beowulf poet. They are simply wyrd —the way things have always “turned out”—for all heroes, all monsters, all creatures on earth. “ Wyrd has swept away / all of my kinsmen to their predestined end,” the hero says: “I must follow them” (lines 2814b-2816). Despite his many references to the Christian God, then, whose presence is so palpable in the earlier parts of his poem, the poet of Beowulf chooses to end his story the old-fashioned way, a choice that may help explain why his work never achieved the kind of cultural authority in Christian Anglo-Saxon England enjoyed by other epics of comparable depth and artistry, which express for their societies a clearer sense of divine purpose, national mission, dynastic legitimacy, or folk character. Instead, Beowulf slipped away into the corners of English literary culture, quietly awaiting its revival in our own post-Christian, postmodern, less confident age.

Bibliography 39

Anlezark, Daniel. “All at Sea: Beowulf’s Marvellous Swimming.” In his Myths, Legends, and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature in Honour of John McKinnell , pp. 225–241. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011 .

Google Scholar

Google Preview

The “Beowulf” Manuscript: The Complete Texts and “The Fight at Finnsburg ,” ed. and trans. R. D. Fulk . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010 .

Bennett, Helen T. “The Postmodern Hall in Beowulf : Endings Embedded in Beginnings.” The Heroic Age 12 (May 2009). Available at: http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/12/ba.php

Bibire, Paul . “ Beowulf. ” In British Writers , Supplement VI, ed. Jay Parini , pp. 29–44. New York: Scribner’s, 2001 .

Bruce, Alexander M. “Evil Twins? The Role of the Monsters in Beowulf .” Medieval Forum 6 (January 2007 ). Available at: http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume6/bruce.html

Chase, Colin , ed. The Dating of “Beowulf ” (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981 ).

Davis, Craig R.   “Beowulf” and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England. New York: Garland, 1996 .

Davis, Craig R. “An Ethnic Dating of Beowulf .” Anglo-Saxon England 35 ( 2006 ): 111–129.

Davis, Craig R. “The Geats of Beowulf .” In The Dating of “Beowulf”: A Reassessment , ed. Leonard Neidorf . Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, forthcoming 2015 .

Davis, Craig R. “A Mother from Hell: Love and Vengeance in Beowulf .” In Vox Germanica: Essays in Germanic Languages and Literature in Honor of James E. Cathey , ed. Stephen J. Harris , Michael Moynihan , and Sherrill Harbison , pp. 187–198. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2012 .

Davis, Craig R. “Theories of History in Traditional Plots.” In Myth in Early Northwest Europe , ed. Stephen O. Glosecki , pp. 31–45. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2007 .

Frank, Roberta . “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History.” In Beowulf , ed. Harold Bloom , pp. 51–61. New York: Chelsea House, 1987 .

Harris, Joseph. “ Beowulf as Epic.” Oral Tradition 15 ( 2000 ): 159–169.

Hill, John M.   The Narrative Pulse of “Beowulf”: Arrivals and Departures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008 .

Hill, John M. , ed. On the Aesthetics of “Beowulf” and Other Old English Poems . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010 .

Hodges, H. J. “Cain’s Fratricide: Original Violence as “Original Sin” in Beowulf .” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 15.1 ( 2007 ): 31–56.

Johnston, Andrew James . “ Beowulf and the Mask of Archaism.” In his Performing the Middle Ages from “Beowulf” to “Othello ,” pp. 23–90. Leiden: Brepols, 2008 .

Kiernan, Kevin , ed. Electronic “Beowulf” 3.0 . London: British Library, 2011 . DVD.

Klaeber’s “Beowulf” and the “Fight at Finnsburg, ” 4th ed., by R. D. Fulk , Robert E. Bjork , and John D. Niles . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008 .

Lapidge, Michael. “The Archetype of Beowulf .” Anglo-Saxon England 29 ( 2000 ): 5–41.

Lapidge, Michael. “ Beowulf and Perception,” Proceedings of the British Academy 111 ( 2001 ): 61–97.

Leyerle, John . “ Beowulf the Hero and the King. ” Medium Ævum 34 ( 1965 ): 89–102.

Leyerle, John . “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf .” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 ( 1967 ): 1–17.

McTurk, Rory . “External Prolepsis in Beowulf .” In ˇe Comoun Peplis Language , ed. Marcin Krygier , Liliana Sikorska , et al., pp. 113–130. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011 .

Niles, John D. “ Beowulf”: The Poem and Its Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983 .

Niles, John D. , and Marijane Osborn , eds. “ Beowulf” and Lejre . Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2007 .

Orchard, Andy . A Critical Companion to “Beowulf. ” Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003 .

Owen-Crocker, Gale R.   The Four Funerals of “Beowulf” and the Structure of the Poem. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 .

Robinson, Fred C. “ Beowulf” and the Appositive Style . Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1985 .

Russom, Geoffrey . “History and Anachronism in Beowulf .” In Epic and History , ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub , pp. 243–261. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 .

Scheil, Andrew. “ Beowulf and the Emergent Occasion.” Literary Imagination 11.1 ( 2008 ): 83–98.

Scheil, Andrew. “The Historiographic Dimensions of Beowulf .” JEGP 107.3 ( 2008 ): 281–302.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics.” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 ( 1936 ): 245–295.

1 The standard edition is Klaeber’s   “ Beowulf” and the “Fight at Finnsburg , ” 4th ed., by R. D. Fulk , Robert E. Bjork , and John D. Niles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) . For a version of this edition with prose translation, plus the texts and translations of other works included in the same codex and a related fragment, see The   “ Beowulf” Manuscript: The Complete Texts and “The Fight at Finnsburg ,” ed. and trans. R. D. Fulk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) . Translations of poetry are my own, but I have been guided by Fulk in rendering key words and phrases in Judith and the prose texts of the Nowell Codex, as noted below.

2 Michael Lapidge , “The Archetype of Beowulf ,” Anglo-Saxon England 29 (2000): 5–41 ; qualified by Craig R. Davis in “An Ethnic Dating of Beowulf ,” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006): 111–129, at p. 112.

3 Cædmon’s Hymn, in Three Northumbrian Poems , rev. ed. A. H. Smith (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1978) , line 7a.

4 Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 96 . Cf. Craig R. Davis , “The Geats of Beowulf ,” in The Dating of “Beowulf”: A Reassessment , ed. Leonard Neidorf (Cambridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming 2014) , from which the following comments have been adapted.

5 The Passion of Saint Christopher , in The “Beowulf” Manuscript , ed. and trans. Fulk , pp. 1–13 .

6 An Old English Martyrology , ed. and trans. George Herzfeld , Early English Text Society o.s. 116 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1900), pp. 67–69.

7 Judith , in The “Beowulf” Manuscript , ed. and trans. Fulk , pp. 297–323 .

8 The Wonders of the East , in The “Beowulf” Manuscript , ed. and trans. Fulk , pp. 15–31 . Cf. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories , ed. Robert B. Strassler , trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Random House, 2007).

9 Craig R. Davis , “Redundant Ethnogenesis in Beowulf ,” The Heroic Age 5 (2001). Available at: http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/5/Davis1.html

10 “The Merov(ich)ingian Again: damnatio memoriae and the usus scholarum,” in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge , ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 389–406.

11 Afterword in “Beowulf” and Lejre , ed. John D. Niles and Marijane Osborn (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2007): 469–79, at p. 470.

12 A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 348–392. Cf. “Dates, Origins, Influences, Genre,” in the Introduction to Klaeber’s “Beowulf” , pp. clxii‒clxxxviii, at clxv‒clxvii.

“Beowulf”’ and Lejre (2007) .

14 “Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf,” in The Dating of ‘Beowulf’ , ed. Colin Chase (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981): 123–139 , and “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History,” in Beowulf , ed. Harold Bloom (rpt. New York: Chelsea House, 1987): 51–61.

15 “Beowulf” and the “Beowulf” Manuscript , rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) . Cf. his Electronic ‘Beowulf’ 3.0 (London: British Library, 2011) , DVD.

16 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , rev. trans. ed. Dorothy Whitelock , et al. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961) , sub anno 855 (for 857).

17 Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” , ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) , bk. 1, chap. 15, and bk. 4, chap. 16; The Old English Version of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English People ,” ed. T. Miller , 2 vols. (London: Early English Text Society, 1959–1963) , vol. I, bk. 1, chap. 12; and vol. II, bk. 4, chap. 18.

18 Asser’s “Life of King Alfred,” ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1904) , chap. 23.

19 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: A History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony , ed. Ted Johnson South (Woodbridge/Rochester: D. S. Brewer, 2002) , chaps. 7 and 11.

Davis, “An Ethnic Dating,” p. 129.

For instance, four film versions have appeared in recent years: Graham Baker’s Beowulf (1999), John McTiernan and Michael Crichton’s 13th Warrior (1999), Sturla Gunnarson’s Beowulf and Grendel (2005), and Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf (2007) . In addition, poet Seamus Heaney first published his acclaimed and controversial rendering in 1999 (London: Faber and Faber), which has subsequently appeared in different editions by Norton in New York, plus many other translations and adaptations of the poem in several languages and various media.

22 For instance, Renée R. Trilling , “Beyond Abjection: The Problem with Grendel’s Mother Again,” Parergon 24.1 (2007): 1–20.

Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936) : 245–295.

24 Cf. my earlier study, “The Exorcism of Grendel,” chap. 5 of ‘Beowulf’ and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England (New York: Garland, 1996) .

25 Cf. Helen T. Bennett , “The Postmodern Hall in Beowulf : Endings Embedded in Beginnings,” The Heroic Age 12 (2009). Available at: http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/12/ba.php

26 Edward B. Irving, Jr ., Rereading ‘Beowulf’ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 138 . Cf. H. J. Hodges , “Cain’s Fratricide: Original Violence as ‘Original Sin’ in Beowulf ,” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 15.1 (2007): 31–56.

27 George Philip Krapp and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie , eds., The Exeter Book (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 163.

28 George Philip Krapp , ed., The Junius Manuscript (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), p. 32.

29 The following comments are adapted from my recent essay, “A Mother from Hell: Love and Vengeance in Beowulf ,” in Vox Germanica: Essays in Germanic Languages and Literature in Honor of James E. Cathey , ed. Stephen J. Harris , Michael Moynihan , and Sherrill Harbison (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2012): 187–198.

30 “Horror and the Maternal in Beowulf ,” PMLA 21 (2006): 702–716 .

31 A Critical Companion to “Beowulf” (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2003), p. 187.

32 “Old English cuƒe folme in Beowulf , Line 1303A,” Neophilologus 89.4 (2005): 625–627, at p. 626 .

33 Cf. Jacob Black-Michaud , Cohesive Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s, 1975) ; Christopher Boehm , Blood Revenge: The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987) ; Max Gluckman , “Peace in the Feud,” Past and Present 8 (1955): 1–14 , and his Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1965) .

34 Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains: The Generation of Conflict in Tauade Society (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. vii.

35 For instance, Manish Sharma , “Metalepsis and Monstrosity: The Boundaries of Narrative Structure in Beowulf ,” Studies in Philology 102.3 (2005): 247–279 ; and Susan M. Kim , “‘As I Once Did with Grendel’: Boasting and Nostalgia in Beowulf ,” Modern Philology 103.1 (2005): 4–27.

Cf. “ Wyrd and the World-Serpent,” chap. 7 of my “ Beowulf” and the Demise (1996) .

Davis, “Beowulf”and the Demise , p. xi.

38 Völuspá , ed. Sigurƒur Nordal , trans. B. S. Benedikz and John McKinnell (Durham, NC: Durham and St. Andrews Medieval Texts, 1980) , stanza 56.

This list includes studies chosen for their contribution to the present essay and continuing promise for future study of the poem.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

William Morris Archive

Introduction to the tale of beowulf.

An Introduction to Beowulf : Language and Poetics

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

This lesson provides an introduction to the language and poetics of the epic poem Beowulf . Although this lesson assumes students will read Beowulf in translation, it introduces students to the poem's original Old English and explains the relationship between Old, Middle, and Modern English. Students are introduced to the five characters in the Old English alphabet that are no longer used in Modern English. As a class, they translate a short, simple phrase from Old English, and then listen to a passage from the poem being read in Old English. Next, students are introduced to some poetic devices important to Beowulf . They learn about alliteration by reading an excerpt from W. H. Auden's modern English poem “The Age of Anxiety,” then listen for alliteration in the Old English version of a passage from Beowulf . Finally, students explore the poetic functions of kennings, compounds, and formulas in Beowulf .

Featured Resources

Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet : This reproducible provides information about the difference between Old, Middle, and Modern English, as well as poetic devices found in Beowulf . Literary Guide: Beowulf : This online tool can serve as an introduction to Beowulf , presenting information about the poem's significance as well as an overview of the story.

From Theory to Practice

Gillis argues that when we teach literature we often don't do so without teaching its background, its historical, philosophical, and environmental context. When teaching literature in translation, he argues, if we fail to consider the original language and stylistic features of that piece, then we have not taught all the background necessary for our students to have a full understanding of that literary work, even if we are not experts in that language. The purpose behind introducing students to the original language and style will foreground for them that they are reading a translation, which at its best can only give us "an inkling" of the original work. Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
• Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet  
• Old English Beowulf Passage Handout  
• Modern English Beowulf Passage Handout  
• Excerpt from “The Age of Anxiety" by W.H. Auden

Preparation

• Review the lesson and decide which elements you wish to use.  
• Review the Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet .  
• Print out for each student a copy of each handout you wish to use.  
• For more background information on Beowulf see Beowulf : A Study Guide  
• Test the Literary Guide: Beowulf on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool.

Student Objectives

Students will

• be introduced to Old English, the language of Beowulf.  
• know the relationship between Old English and Modern English.  
• learn about alliteration and alliterative verse.  
• understand kennings, a poetic device common to Old English poetry, and how they are used in Beowulf.

Session One: Introducing Old English

• If desired, use the Literary Guide: Beowulf to introduce the poem. The Overview outlines basic information about the poem.  
• Using the Quick Reference Sheet as a guide, explain that English is divided into three periods.  
• Introduce students to the unfamiliar letters used in the Old English alphabet. Use the Language section of the Literary Guide: Beowulf to discuss the five characters in the Old English alphabet that are no longer used in Modern English.  
• You may want to write the letters on the board and/or show them the first page of Beowulf . In case they ask, the manuscript dates to about 1000 CE and was damaged in a fire, which is why the top and right hand side of the page are badly damaged. The entire Old English alphabet is available in section 16.2 of The Electronic Introduction to Old English .  
• If you would like to spend a few minutes illustrating the changes between Old English and Modern English, write “Þæt wæs god cyning.” on the board, explain to the class how to pronounce the various sounds, and see if they can translate the sentence into Modern English. If you want to provide an example of how Chaucer might write that sentence, you can add “That wes good king,” “That wes goode king,” and/or “That wes god king” to the board after the class has translated the Old English sentence.  
• If you would like the class to hear some of Beowulf in the original Old English, pass out the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout and have the class go to  https://www.beowulfresources.com/ . While the students can listen to and see four Beowulf passages at this site, the handout covers lines 1–11 of the prologue. Note: while now is a logical time to listen to Beowulf read in Old English, your students may get more out of listening to the poem if you introduce alliteration and alliterative verse to them first (see below). You may also wish to distribute the Modern English Beowulf Passage Handout which provides a translation of the passage.

Session Two: The Poetics of Beowulf

• Using the Quick Reference Sheet as a guide, explain alliteration. You may wish to begin illustrating alliteration by using tongue-twisters as examples. The excerpt from W. H. Auden’s poem “The Age of Anxiety” and the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout can be used for further examples.  
• Once your students understand the concept of alliteration, pass out the excerpt from W. H. Auden’s poem “The Age of Anxiety” if you have not done so already.  
• Show the example of alliteration in the Poetics section of the Literary Guide: Beowulf .  
• Using the Quick Reference Sheet as a guide and the Auden poem , explain the basics of Old English alliterative verse. (Do not work through the whole Auden poem if you wish the students to work on the assignment alone or in groups.)  
• Once your class seems to have an understanding of alliterative verse, you may wish to turn to the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout , listen to the poem (see number 4 in the first session), and identify the alliteration and meter of the first 16 lines of Beowulf .  

Example: The Old English for Spear-Danes is Gar-Dena. If you look at the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout , you will see that gar (spear) alliterates and that the alliterative meter needs a G-word here. And, if you are familiar with the poem, you will know that Danes are compounded with many words: Ring-Danes, East-Danes, North-Danes, South-Danes, West-Danes, Bright-Danes. As this is the case, it would be simple enough to suggest that the meter requires the use of gar in this compound for metrical purposes, and, sometimes, this is the reason for the use of a particular word or compounding. However, it is worth noting that this passage is about the Dane’s conquests against their neighbors. It would seem then that the use of gar (spear) in this formulaic compound was not only to meet the needs of the alliterative meter, but also to foreground the Danes as an aggressive tribe. Here in the first line of the poem we find meter, poetic flourish, and theme all coming together in the poem’s first use of compounding.

• Either as homework or in class, ask your students to identify the stresses and alliteration in the Auden poem . You may also ask them to do the same with the Old English Beowulf Passage Handout . If you ask them to work with the Old English passage, give them the URL for audio files and suggest they listen to each section before marking the passage.  
• If your translation maintains compounding and kennings, select some good passages and ask your students to identify the compounds and kennings and explain their function.
• Formulas: Review the formula section of the Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet and The Electronic Introduction to Old English section on formulas (14.3) and have students look for formulas as they read Beowulf .  
• Variation: Review the variation section of the Beowulf : Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet and The Electronic Introduction to Old English section on variation (14.2) and have students look for variation as they read Beowulf .  
• Follow this lesson with the ReadWriteThink lesson, Reading Literature in Translation: Beowulf as a Case Study .

Student Assessment / Reflections

Session One

• Observe your students as you work through and discuss Old English and its relationship to Modern English. Do they seem interested and engaged with the discussion? Do their comments and questions demonstrate a growing understanding of the material?  
• If you plan on giving quizzes or exams which cover Beowulf , consider including questions on some of this material. If you plan on doing so, let your students know this as you introduce the material to them.

Session Two

• Observe your students as you work through and discuss the poetics of Beowulf and Old English alliterative verse. Do they seem interested and engaged with the discussion? Do their comments and questions demonstrate a growing understanding of the material?  
• Either informally discuss Auden poem after your students have completed them, or, alternatively, collect and grade them.  
• If you asked your students to identify and explain compounding or kennings in the poem, have them share their findings with the class, or, alternatively, collect and grade their work.
• Lesson Plans
• Calendar Activities

Students focus on the figurative language in Heaney's poem, "Digging," and discuss the speaker's attitude, and how metaphor, simile, and image contribute to the poem.

Add new comment

• Print this resource

Explore Resources by Grade

• Kindergarten K

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Beowulf — Introduction of Christianity In Beowulf

Introduction of Christianity in Beowulf

• Categories: Beowulf

About this sample

Words: 1278 |

Published: Jun 29, 2018

Words: 1278 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Biblical Symbols and References Towards Christianity in "Beowulf"

Works cited.

• Irving, Edward B. "The Christian Theme of Beowulf." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 89, no. 1, 1990, pp. 20-32.
• Lawrence, William Witherle. "Christian and Pagan Elements in Beowulf." Modern Language Notes, vol. 22, no. 1, 1907, pp. 1-9.
• Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to Beowulf. D.S. Brewer, 2003.
• Baker, Peter S. Introduction to Old English. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage, 2014.
• Greenfield, Stanley B., and Daniel G. Calder. A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York University Press, 1986.
• Chase, Colin. "Beowulf and the Christian Tradition." Neophilologus, vol. 85, no. 3, 2001, pp. 481-494.
• Kiernan, Kevin S. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. University of Michigan Press, 1997.
• Blackburn, F.A., and Albert S. Cook. "The Christian Coloring in the Beowulf." The Modern Language Review, vol. 5, no. 3, 1910, pp. 269-280.
• Klaeber, Friedrich. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. D.C. Heath & Co., 1950.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Heisenberg

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 316 words

3 pages / 1491 words

3 pages / 1231 words

3 pages / 1443 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words, is a literary device that has been used for centuries to enhance the auditory experience of a text. In the epic poem Beowulf, alliteration plays a [...]

The epic poem Beowulf is known for its use of caesura, a pause or break in the middle of a line of poetry. These pauses serve to add rhythm, emphasis, and structure to the text, allowing the reader to better understand and [...]

Loyalty is a central theme in the epic poem Beowulf, which tells the story of a heroic warrior who must navigate the complexities of loyalty in order to protect his people and achieve greatness. This essay will explore how [...]

Beowulf is an epic poem that has endured through the centuries and is still studied and celebrated today. Composed in Old English, the poem tells of the heroic exploits of Beowulf, a warrior who battles monsters and dragons to [...]

This is my comparison of Robert Zemeckis’ 2007 movie Beowulf and of the epic poem Beowulf. Robert Zemeckis’ 2007 movie tells the story of Beowulf, the character. However, they share not only similarities but also share [...]

In Beowulf, we see a clash between Christianity and Paganism often. Considering it was written to show how Christian beliefs are superior to Pagan beliefs, it would be strange if this wasn’t seen. When Beowulf was written, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Essay Sample: Luizza’s Introduction to Beowulf

Theorizations about the writer and context of Beowulf,  religious symbolism, similarities to other Northern Folklore, and the structure of the Old English poem are all topics R.M. Liuzza(Liuzza), translator and editor, discusses in his introduction. These details aid the reader in approaching the Old English epic poem in an informed manner.

Both the writer and origins of Beowulf, an epic poem that has been translated numerous times, are unknown. Liuzza states that numerous circumstances prevent Beowulf from being dated such as oral circulation and dialect. In regards to the oral circulation aspect, Liuzza states, “A literary work in oral circulation is always new, recreated at each performance; in effect, it has no history, no matter how ancient its traditional narrative or style may be.”(21) A great deal of the language in Beowulf is West-Saxon but also includes hints of Anglian vocabulary which Liuzza expresses is,” not easily traced to one time or place.”(22) There is “little hope” for scholars seeking to uncover the context to this poem.  Though not much, there is some information about the writer of Beowulf.  Liuzza is certain the poet is Christian as the poet is quite familiar with the Bible. Beowulf’s manuscript contains a bible story and there is a great amount of religious symbolism included in the poem.

Authors use religious symbolism in their writing to express concepts concerned with humanity’s relationship to holy beings. Similarly, Liuzza explains how the characters in Beowulf relate to characters in the Bible. Liuzza says, “Some of the details of Grendel’s lair seem to derive from descriptions of Hell in the Old English homiletic tradition.”(28) Liuzza also gives the reader examples of “cohabitations between the heroic story and the vocabulary of the Church,”  and states the “poem depicts a God who watches over history and secures even the safety of the Danes who do not know Him…”(28) The religious tone of the poem continues up to the end. Ultimately, the world of Beowulf shatters and all wealth, treasures, and fame are all lost to the ”inevitability of death”.

Lastly, Liuzza discusses the structure of Beowulf and how he has chosen to translate the poem. In addition to telling the reader “Beowulf is copied on its manuscript pages from margin to margin like prose, the poem consists of 3,182 extant lines of alliterative verse...,”(12) Liuzza also mentions different forms of figurative language used in the poem. Alliteration seems to be among the commonly used by the unknown poet. According to Liuzza, the half-lines are linked by alliteration between one or both stressed syllables in the first half-line and the first syllable of the second half-line. Near the end of the introduction, there are comparisons of Old and Modern English that aid in understanding the Old English poetic style. Before closing out his introduction, Luiza gives the reader insight into how he has chosen to write the poem. Liuzza says, “I have tried to write in a poetic idiom that is analogous to, not imitative of, the character of the original…”(42)

From the introduction, one can see that R.M Liuzza has put much thought into his translation of the Old English epic poem. Due to all the background information and explanations given, the reader is fully prepared for the Germanic heroic legend, Beowulf.

Related Samples

• Hesiod Theogony Analysis Essay Example
• Odysseus’s Struggles with Trust (The Odyssey by Homer Book Review)
• Argumentative Essay On Slavery
• My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke Poem Analysis (Essay Example)
• Literary Analysis of The Black Cat Essay Example
• The Odyssey Character Analysis Essay
• Identity in Homer's Odyssey Literary Analysis Essay
• My Lost Youth by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Literary Analysis Essay Sample
• Comparative Essay Sample: City on a Hill by John Winthrop and Upon the Burning of Our House by Anne Bradstreet
• The Dishonorable Brutus (Character Analysis)

Didn't find the perfect sample?

You can order a custom paper by our expert writers