BEOWULF - pron. [beioulf]
Beowulf is a long epic poem of little more than 3,000 lines written (ca. 790 AD) in Anglo-Saxon, or Old
English (see file: "The English Language") (roughly 500 AD – 1150 AD, one hundred years after the Norman
Conquest, spoken in a variety of dialects).
contents (shortened - study the summary on your book)
The poem celebrates the deeds of an intrepid warrior * of the tribe of the Geats /pr. djeiats/ (Jutes /pr. djuts/)
and is divided into two parts.
The first part tells the story of how Beowulf went to the help of Hrothghar, king of the Danes, whose territory
was being harassed by a man-eating monster, Grendel. Beowulf kills the monster and goes back to his land,
where he will become king.
The second part, with Beowulf as a king, tells the story of how one of his followers robbed the fire-drake of his
treasure and how he fought and killed the drake, which had started ravaging the country. Beowulf is killed in turn
by its fire-breath. The poem closes, like the Iliad, with the solemn burning of the hero’s body on a pyre.
message
Although the poem lays before us the heroic pagan Anglo-Saxon world **, with its code of conduct and
customs, it is (at least in the form we know it) undoubtedly the work of a Christian poet, the Anglo-Saxons
having been converted to Christianity (St. Augustine) at the end of the VI century. As you would clearly see if
you read it all, the poem is characterized by the gloomy sense of the Fate impending over the heads of men
and, despite being a celebration of great enterprises, there are constant allusions to the nothingness of life.
structure and vocabulary
The composition of Beowulf has been the object of much debate. Was the poem composed and written as we
know it today? Or did it gradually grow and take shape as it was transmitted orally from generation to
generation?
In the tradition of the Germanic tribes, the professional poet or “scop” (scupa o scaldo), as the “minstrels” in
the Romanic tradition, had a very important role: …”When the lord called upon him for a “lay” (laio), everybody
in the hall (the “mead hall”- huge wooden house in the middle of the camp meant to host public gatherings)
listened: through him, the tradition was made new”. Lays were made up without much preparation and both the
poet and the audience delighted in refined poetical device. For this reason the structure of this oral poem was
imposed by the necessity to keep going (see below).
In Beowulf every single line is divided into two half-verses. The rhythm is based on four stressed ***
syllables (2+2), while the number of unstressed syllables is variable. Moreover, both stressed syllables in the
first half-verse - in some cases only one – and one stressed syllable in the second half-verse, have the same
initial consonant (alliteration = repeated initial consonant or group of consonats in successive words).
Alliteration, so the stress, is often to be found on key words (words with a particular/ relevant meaning).
As the poet often needed time to think about the second half of the line, he had to make extensive use of
formulae (putting it plainly: a sort of supply of expressions) for very common nouns he had to repeat. The poetic
vocabulary of Beowulf is remarkable for the large number of words with a same or similar meaning, for
“sword”, for example ( battle-flasher), or for “sea” (sea-paths, swan-road), or for “strong” (fire-hard, ironhard). Many of these words or adjectives were in the form of compounds. The most elaborated ones, a sort of
condensed metaphors, are called kennings, which helped the alliteration and made the verse more solemn.
* Remember that epic poems (e.g.: Iliad) do not deal - if not incidentally - with the lives of common people, but with the
deeds (great doings = imprese) of heroes (aristocratic, military society), thus pointing to a heroic ethic, according to which
all men should direct themselves to actions leading to glory and praise.
** Your book uses the word "canvas", that is "tela", "substrato", referring to the whole bulk (massa) of legends, folk-tales
and mythological events lying behind the story.
Bear in mind the difference between story and plot.
*** Do not forget that in the English tradition we deal with accentual-syllabic verse ≠ quantitative verse of the Latin
tradition. The former depends on both stressed and unstressed syllables, the latter depends on the length of the syllables, a
iamb [ ∪ _ ], for example