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Write in your Commonplace Book and post a photo to Blackboard by 11:59 PM the Saturday night* before class: Commonplace Book (CPB) Entry 2. CPB instructions: write a short (250ish word) reflection on one of the following topics pertaining to Beowulf so far. Whichever topic you choose, make sure to end your reflection with a question you’d like to ask your classmates about the text. Here are some topics you might choose to write your reflection on (Back up your claims with some specific evidence from the text–quotes, etc.):Based on our discussions last week, what aspects of Anglo-Saxon / Old English cultural values can you see in Beowulf so far?What do you think about the character of Beowulf so far? What evidence do we have so far for deciding whether the poet wants us to admire Beowulf or not? (Back up your claims with some specific evidence from the text–quotes, etc.)What do we notice about the female characters in this text so far? (Back up your claims with some specific evidence from the text–quotes, etc.)What does this text seem to be saying or showing about warfare, conflict, blood feuds, and revenge? (Back up your claims with some specific evidence from the text–quotes, etc.)Scholars disagree over whether Beowulf was originally a Christian poem, or whether the monk writing it down added more Christian beliefs and ideas to an originally pagan / polytheistic text. What do you notice about this poem’s treatment of religion and different religious beliefs? (Back up your claims with some specific evidence from the text–quotes, etc.)Pick a specific passage that stood out to you and describe the specific choices the poet made that are so vivid. Why do you think the poet made those choices?Anything else that stood out to you as you read Beowulf is fair game for you to talk about, too! Just make sure to bring in some specific quotes as evidence for your claims, and make sure to end your reflection with a question you’d like to ask the rest of the class.
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ENGL 203: Reading Journal (“Commonplace Book”)
In the Renaissance era, writers often used a “Commonplace Book” which they used to organize
their thoughts, keep track of their reading notes, and begin their own writing process. As they read
other authors’ work, they’d write down particularly striking or important passages in their own
commonplace book, under an appropriate subject heading. Then, they would use their
commonplace book as a way of keeping track of quotations they wanted to use in their own writing.
Essentially, “commonplace books” functioned for such writers both as a form of reading journal
and as a way of jump-starting their own writing process. Recent psychological research has shown
that these Renaissance authors were on the right track: numerous studies have shown that writing
out one’s notes by hand actually improves our memory and retention of what we are writing down.
(For just one recent study, see Umejima et al., 2021.)
(Transcription of the page above from a Renaissance author: “My purpose was in making this book to gather out of diverse authors (as
the bee does [out] of many flowers the honey), the best and pithiest sentences wherein either for discourse or for life instruction may be
gathered, this order I have observed, I put the author’s name (out of which I have collected it) in the margin”)
This semester, like Renaissance poets, you will be keeping a reading journal / commonplace book,
to help you with your own writing for this class. At several points throughout the semester, you will
be asked to write a reflection on one of our readings, in which you note and reflect on several key
details or quotes that are particularly memorable or thought-provoking. This will be helpful to do
for several reasons:
• It helps you think about our readings before our class discussions, making you more
prepared to share your excellent insights with the rest of the class
• Finding and writing about specific quotes from our texts helps you practice the kinds of close
reading skills that will be helpful for our essays
• Keeping a reading journal is a low-stakes way of generating ideas for what you might write
about for our essays
• Keeping a reading journal or commonplace book is also an excellent way of keeping track of
quotes you might want to write down to use in the papers you will write for this class
•
•
•
•
As you write in your Commonplace Book, keep your entries in one notebook (or if you are
using a tablet with a stylus, keep the Commonplace Book in one saved document—I suggest
saving it to a cloud-based storage service)
Although there are several days that you will be required to write up your notes in a
Commonplace Book entry for this class, I encourage you to use your Commonplace Book
more frequently to store your notes on our readings and class discussion. (The more notes
that you write in it, the more notes you will have available for the final exam)
The tactile qualities of handwriting (or using a tablet with a stylus) will help you remember
what you write more than simply typing it up and submitting it to Blackboard
Finally, we will have 3 exams for this class, and the final exam at the end of the
semester will be a cumulative essay exam. Since the final will be cumulative, I am
allowing you to consult your Commonplace Book (but no other resources) as a study
aid during the final exam.
Overall Instructions for Your Reading Journal Entries
In this modified version of a commonplace book, you will write several “Commonplace Book
Entries” throughout the semester. In each Commonplace Book Entry, you will consider a key
question or insight you have about our assigned reading for that day, and you will relate your
reflection to at least one specific quotation from the text. For each Commonplace Book Entry, I
will often provide you with some questions you might consider in your reflection, but you are always
welcome to go in a different direction—the main thing is to include some specific quotes as evidence
for whatever claims or questions you have about the reading.
As you write additional Commonplace Book Entries, write them in the same notebook. That way,
you will have all of your Commonplace Book in one location for easy access when you want to look
at it as you write your essays and build on ideas and quotes that you had earlier on in the semester.
Remember, the point of this assignment is 1) to help you prepare for class, 2) to prepare you to
share your ideas with others, 3) to help you write our essays, and 4) to have a helpful collection
of your notes that you can use on our final exam!
Logistical note: You will not be handing in the entire Commonplace Book until the end of the
semester; however, on the days throughout the semester that a Commonplace Entry is due, I will
just have you take a photo of your handwritten Commonplace Book Entry on your phone and
upload that photo to Blackboard. That way, you will continue to have your Commonplace Book
available to take notes in, and I will be able to look at what you wrote and give feedback on it.
Required materials for this assignment: A spiral-bound notebook or large journal-type notebook
that you should bring to class every day
Expectations:
• I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the texts that we will be reading and
learning from together! Here are some basic guidelines for our discussions.
• Commonplace Book entry length: about 1-2 substantial paragraphs long, totaling about
250 words
•
•
•
When a Commonplace Book entry is due, it will be noted on the schedule in Blackboard’s
Weekly Overview pages
When a Commonplace Book entry is due, I will ask you to take a photo of your
Commonplace Book entry for that day and upload a photo of your reading journal entry to
Blackboard the night before class. That way, I can take a look at what you wrote before class
and bring your insights into our class discussion that day.
FYI, I generally expect people to keep their Commonplace Book in a paper notebook as
handwriting has a strong correlation with memory and retrieval of information for most
people. However, I am fine with you using a tablet with a stylus if that is your preference, as
it also exercises the same kinds of muscle memory that help you remember what you are
learning. If you use a tablet/stylus, just make sure to keep all your reading journal entries in
one document. Also, if there is a compelling reason for you to type your Commonplace
Book instead of handwriting it, let me know—I’m sure we can find a solution that works for
you.
Best Practices & Guidelines for Writing Your Reflections
• Start by noting a specific moment, detail, quote, or specific theme from the text that
seems intriguing, significant, provocative, or perplexing, and include that specific quote in
your reflection, with a citation (citations = a line number for poems, page number for prose).
• Then, explain what stood out to you about this specific detail from the text. As you
explain why this detail is significant, work towards developing a thesis, argument, or
a question about a perplexing or confusing aspect of the reading, and explain how
the text supports your point. Whichever approach you take, you should offer an insight
that is not already immediately obvious to all readers. Instead, it should be an insight that will
provoke the rest of us to further thought and consideration. As you develop this point, feel
free to bring in additional quotes from the text to support your point.
• Finally, to wrap up your reading journal entry, end with a question about the text that
you would like to ask the rest of your classmates. (Entries that do not end with a
question will only be able to receive 2 out of 3 points, at most.)
Suggestions for Successful Reading Journal entries:
• Your reflection should contain a clear insight and specific evidence to support your insight,
but it does not have to be longer than one or two substantial paragraphs (about 250 words of
good writing, not repetition or wordiness).
• Make one point, supported by evidence and sound reasoning, per entry.
• Your position need not be forever. One of the beautiful things about good academic
discussions is being convinced to improve your interpretation based upon the evidence and
reasoning. It is, indeed, admirable to have the presence of mind to say that new information
or perspectives raised have changed your mind. We are here to learn from our readings and
from another, so we should expect that our minds will be changed as we grow in our
knowledge.
Rubric for Grading Your Commonplace Book Entries
Content &
Textual
Evidence
Unsatisfactory (0)
Basic (1)
Proficient (2)
Excellent (3)
Writes about a general
or superficial idea that
are unrelated to the
topic at hand and/or
posts no journal entry,
and/or writes so
vaguely as to be
incomprehensible.
(Gives no indication of
having done the week’s
reading.)
Demonstrates a
Demonstrates a solid
mostly adequate
understanding of the
Demonstrates a
understanding of concepts, topics, and
restricted
the concepts,
ideas as evidenced by
understanding of the topics, and ideas as thoughtful insights and
concepts, topics, and evidenced by
questions that show a
ideas. (May not have posting superficial, clear connection (are
done the reading, or unnecessarily
integrated) with the
perhaps has only
repetitive, or
course material at hand.
skimmed.)
general statements. Student shows depth and
Gestures towards a includes multiple specific
few specific details. supporting details.
Has an intriguing and
Advances a clear
perceptive idea or
Provides no evidence of Makes a vague claim claim about our
question that is clearly
Critical
thinking, does not ask about the week’s
reading or asks an
relevant to the course
Thinking
any questions, or does reading, but provides insightful question,
material, and develops
no justification or
but could develop
Evidenced by not make any claim
this insight in depth.
about the week’s
explanation for
these
Entry
(Would likely make a
reading.
comments.
claims/questions
great topic for a longer
further.
research paper!)
The tone is clear,
respectful, and
Tone and
Uses an
appropriate for
Mechanics of
Tone generally
inflammatory/offensive
academic
Uses complete sentences,
Contributions tone, or a tone that is respectful but may discussion.
organization is clear and
feel slightly “off.”
informal/unprofessional
Uses complete
thoughtful, the posting is
Uses mostly readable
(FYI, I don’t
enough to take away
sentences,
grammatically correct,
sentences and the
grade on
from the ethos of the
organization is
and free of errors. The
postings are
handwriting, but author. Or, uses such
evident, and the
tone is clear, respectful,
if it’s completely frequent or consistent comprehensible,
postings include no appropriate for academic
though they include a
illegible I may
errors in mechanics
more than one
discussion, and
few distracting
ask you to
(grammar, usage) that
mechanical error sophisticated.
rewrite it more postings are unreadable. errors.
(grammar, spelling,
legibly.)
usage) per
paragraph.
Note: based on past experience teaching this class, generally the most important (and most common) way that less effective posts
can be improved is by backing up your claims with more specific details. At least two pieces of detailed supporting evidence (or a
very in-depth description of one supporting detail) and an explanation of why it supports your point is a good place to start.
Examples of Graded Commonplace Book Entries
Entry on Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale (graded 3/3 for outstanding use of detail;
note the use of specific quotes from the text)
One of the most interesting things about acts 3 and 4 of The Winters Tale was how Leontes’
guilt was treated. Throughout the play so far, Leontes has proven himself to be driven by paranoia,
to the point where even when the Oracle of Apollo tells him his wife is innocent and that there is no
affair with the prince of Bohemia, he accuses the Oracle of lying to him, exclaiming, “there is no
truth at all i’th’ oracle. The sessions shall proceed—this is mere falsehood” (Shakespeare 229). The
pressure that he puts on his family out of paranoid insistence that his wife was having an affair with
his best friend leads to the death of his son, and his wife dies soon after hearing the news. Leontes
loses everything in a matter of minutes. And despite his insistence on his own twisted ideas being
right up until this point, Leontes suddenly changes his tune, but despite the rapid turnaround,
Leontes’ guilt feels genuine, as he states, “bring me to the dead bodies of my queen and son… once
a day, I’ll visit the chapel where they lie, and tears shed there shall be my recreation. So long as
nature will bear up with this exercise, so long I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me to these
sorrows” (Shakespeare 235). Leontes feels guilty enough that he is willing to venture to his family
members’ graves to mourn his mistakes every day. This expression of guilt, something he will
maintain over the course of the play’s jump forward in time, seems surprisingly genuine given
Leontes’ inability to see past his own delusions up until this point.
My question to the group would be: what do you think caused Leontes to go as far as he did,
and what do you think make him change his mind at the end of the play?
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale, edited by John Pitcher, New York, Bloomsbury Publishing
Plc, 2010
Entry on Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (1.5/3, because it doesn’t have any
specific quotes in it, and it doesn’t include a question at the end that the student would like
to ask the rest of the class. Overall, although it gestures towards some good insights, this
post is just too vague to be effective, mostly just restating ideas that could be gathered from
a Wikipedia entry for the book. It’s also only about 200 words, whereas most of the time you
should write 250 words in your reflections on our texts.)
The main purpose of the Faust Book is to preach and echo the teachings of the church. Marlowe
has a different point of view by removing the moral teaching, Marlowe forces the audience to judge
Faustus on their own. Doctor Faustus portrays pride as the sin at the root of Faustus’s fall. If he
hadn’t been so full of himself, he never would have sold his soul to the devil. A whole boatload of
sins, among them pride, covetousness, and despair, all work together to bring about Faustus’s fall.
Faust, also called Faustus or Doctor Faustus, hero of one of the most durable legends in Western
folklore and literature, the story of a German necromancer or astrologer who sells his soul to the
devil in exchange for knowledge and power. The main themes in Doctor Faustus are the folly of
ambition, true versus illusive power, and good versus evil. The folly of ambition: Faustus’s initially
grand aims quickly give way to pranks and entertainments, showing the folly of his desire to reach
for power beyond human limitations. I think that Marlowe wants us to think about Faustus as
someone who can be easily controlled.
ALSO
BY S E A M U S
HEANEY
^
^
Death of a Naturalist
POETRY
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I S
E
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Door into the Dark
Wintering Out
North
%J
E
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» J k #
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Field Work
A
N E W V E R S E
S
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T R A N S L A T I O N
Poems 1965-1975
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish
Station Island
The Haw Lantern
Selected Poems 1966-1987
A
M
U
S
H
E
A
Seeing Things
Sweeney’s Flight (with photographs by Rachel Giese)
The Spirit Level
Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996
CRITICISM
Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978
The Government of the Tongue
The Redress of Poetry
PLAYS
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
New
York
•
London
N
E
Y
Copyright©2000 by Seamus Heaney
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Cynthia Krupat
First bilingual edition 2000 published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First published as a Norton paperback 2001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beowulf. English & English (Old English)
Beowulf I [translated by] Seamus Heaney. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Text in English and Old English.
1. Heroes—Scandinavia—Poetry. 2. Epic poetry, English (Old).
3. Monsters—Poetry. 4. Dragons—Poetry. I. Heaney, Seamus.
PE1383.H43 1999
829^.3—dC2i
ISBN 0-393-32097-9 pbk.
99-23209
W. W. Norton ir Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton ir Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T3QT
0
The Old English text of the poem is based on Beowulf, with the
Finnesburg Fragment, edited by C. L. Wrenn and W. F. Bolton
(University of Exeter Press, 1988), and is printed here by kind
permission ofW. F. Bolton and the University of Exeter Press.
^
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HugkeS
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Contents
Introduction
page ix
A Note on Names by Alfred
page xxxi
BEOWULF
page 2
Family Trees
page 217
Acknowledgements
page 219
David
Introduction
And now this is ‘an inheritance’—
Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked
In the long ago, yet willable forward
Again and again and again.
B E O W U L F : THE
POEM
The poem called Beowulf was composed sometime between the
middle of the seventh and the end of the tenth century of the first
millennium, in the language that is to-day called Anglo-Saxon or
Old English. It is a heroic narrative, more than three thousand
lines long, concerning the deeds of a Scandinavian prince, also
called Beowulf, and it stands as one of the foundation works of
poetry in English. The fact that the English language has changed
so much in the last thousand years means, however, that the
poem is now generally read in translation and mostly in English
courses at schools and universities. This has contributed to the
impression that it was written (as Osip Mandelstam said of The
Divine Comedy) “on official paper,” which is unfortunate, since
what we are dealing with is a work of the greatest imaginative
vitality, a masterpiece where the structuring of the tale is as elaborate as the beautiful contrivances of its language. Its narrative
elements may belong to a previous age but as a work of art it
lives in its own continuous present, equal to our knowledge of
reality in the present time.
The poem was written in England but the events it describes
are set in Scandinavia, in a “once upon a time” that is partly historical. Its hero, Beowulf, is the biggest presence among the warriors in the land of the Geats, a territory situated in what is now
southern Sweden, and early in the poem Beowulf crosses the sea
to the land of the Danes in order to clear their country of a man-
x
eating monster called Grendel. From this expedition (which involves him in a second contest with Grendel’s mother) he returns
in triumph and eventually rules for fifty years as king of his
homeland. Then a dragon begins to terrorize the countryside and
Beowulf must confront it. In a final climactic encounter, he does
manage to slay the dragon, but he also meets his own death and
enters the legends of his people as a warrior of high renown.
We know about the poem more or less by chance because it exists in one manuscript only. This unique copy (now in the British
Library) barely survived a fire in the eighteenth century and was
then transcribed and titled, retranscribed and edited, translated
and adapted, interpreted and reinterpreted, until it has become
canonical. For decades it has been a set book on English syllabuses at university level all over the world. The fact that many
English departments require it to be studied in the original continues to generate resistance, most notably at Oxford University,
where the pros and cons of the inclusion of part of it as a compulsory element in the English course have been debated regularly in recent years.
extent (if at all) the newly Christian understanding of the world
which operates in the poet’s designing mind displaces him from
his imaginative at-homeness in the world of his poem—a pagan
Germanic society governed by a heroic code of honour, one
where the attainment of a name for warrior-prowess among the
living overwhelms any concern about the soul’s destiny in the
afterlife.
However, when it comes to considering Beowulf as a work of
literature, there is one publication that stands out. In 1936, the
Oxford scholar and teacher J.R.R. Tolkien published an epochmaking paper entitled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”
which took for granted the poem’s integrity and distinction as a
work of art and proceeded to show in what this integrity and distinction inhered. He assumed that the poet had felt his way
through the inherited material—the fabulous elements and the
traditional accounts of an heroic past—and by a combination of
creative intuition and conscious structuring had arrived at a
unity of effect and a balanced order. He assumed, in other words,
that the Beowulf poet was an imaginative writer rather than some
For generations of undergraduates, academic study of the
poem was often just a matter of construing the meaning, getting
a grip on the grammar and vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon, and being able to recognize, translate, and comment upon random extracts which were presented in the examinations. For generations
of scholars too the interest had been textual and philological;
then there developed a body of research into analogues and
sources, a quest for stories and episodes in the folklore and legends of the Nordic peoples which would parallel or foreshadow
episodes in Beowulf Scholars were also preoccupied with fixing
the exact time and place of the poem’s composition, paying
minute attention to linguistic, stylistic, and scribal details. More
generally, they tried to establish the history and genealogy of the
dynasties of Swedes and Geats and Danes to which the poet
makes constant allusion; and they devoted themselves to a consideration of the world-view behind the poem, asking to what
kind of back-formation derived from nineteenth-century folklore
and philology. Tolkien’s brilliant literary treatment changed the
way the poem was valued and initiated a new era—and new
terms—of appreciation.
It is impossible to attain a full understanding and estimate of
Beowulf without recourse to this immense body of commentary
and elucidation. Nevertheless, readers coming to the poem for
the first time are likely to be as delighted as they are discomfited
by the strangeness of the names and the immediate lack of
known reference points. An English speaker new to The Iliad or
The Odyssey or The Aeneid will probably at least have heard of
Troy and Helen, or of Penelope and the Cyclops, or of Dido and
the golden bough. These epics may be in Greek and Latin, yet the
classical heritage has entered the cultural memory enshrined in
English so thoroughly that their worlds are more familiar than
that of the first native epic, even though it was composed cen-
I
Introduction
Introduction
xi
turies after them. Achilles rings a bell, but not Scyld Scefing.
Ithaca leads the mind in a certain direction, but not Heorot. The
Sibyl of Cumae will stir certain associations, but not bad Queen
Modthryth. First-time readers of Beowulf very quickly rediscover
the meaning of the term “the dark ages,” and it is in the hope of
dispelling some of the puzzlement they are bound to feel that I
have added the marginal glosses which appear in the following
pages.
Still, in spite of the sensation of being caught between a
“shield-wall” of opaque references and a “word-hoard” that is
old and strange, such readers are also bound to feel a certain
“shock of the new.” This is because the poem possesses a mythic
potency. Like Shield Sheafson (as Scyld Scefing is known in this
translation), it arrives from somewhere beyond the known
bourne of our experience, and having fulfilled its purpose (again
like Shield), it passes once more into the beyond. In the intervening time, the poet conjures up a work as remote as Shield’s funeral boat borne towards the horizon, as commanding as the
horn-pronged gables of King Hrothgar’s hall, as solid and dazzling as Beowulf’s funeral pyre that is set ablaze at the end.
These opening and closing scenes retain a haunting presence in
the mind; they are set pieces but they have the life-marking
power of certain dreams. They are like the pillars of the gate of
horn, through which wise dreams of true art can still be said to
pass.
What happens in between is what William Butler Yeats would
have called a phantasmagoria. Three agons, three struggles in
which the preternatural force-for-evil of the hero’s enemies
comes springing at him in demonic shapes. Three encounters
with what the critical literature and the textbook glossaries call
“the monsters.” In three archetypal sites of fear: the barricaded
night-house, the infested underwater current, and the reptilehaunted rocks of a wilderness. If we think of the poem in this
way, its place in world art becomes clearer and more secure. We
can conceive of it re-presented and transformed in performance
ii
I
Introduction
in a bunraku theatre in Japan, where the puppetry and the poetry
are mutually supportive, a mixture of technicolour spectacle and
ritual chant. Or we can equally envisage it as an animated cartoon (and there has been at least one shot at this already), full of
mutating graphics and minatory stereophonies. We can avoid, at
any rate, the slightly cardboard effect which the word “monster”
tends to introduce, and give the poem a fresh chance to sweep
“in off the moors, down through the mist bands” of Anglo-Saxon
England, forward into the global village of the third millennium,
Nevertheless, the dream element and overall power to haunt
come at a certain readerly price. The poem abounds in passages
which will leave an unprepared audience bewildered. Just when
the narrative seems ready to take another step ahead into the
main Beowulf story, it sidesteps. For a moment it is as if we have
been channel-surfed into another poem, and at two points in this
translation I indicate that we are in fact participating in a poemwithin-our-poem not only by the use of italics but by a slight
quickening of pace and shortening of metrical rein. The passages
occur in lines 883-914 and lines 1070-1158, and on each occasion
a minstrel has begun to chant a poem as part of the celebration
of Beowulf’s achievement. In the former case, the minstrel expresses his praise by telling the story of Sigemund’s victory over
a dragon, which both parallels Beowulf’s triumph over Grendel
and prefigures his fatal encounter with the wyrm in his old age.
In the latter—the most famous of what were once called the “digressions” in the poem, the one dealing with a fight between
Danes and Frisians at the stronghold of Finn, the Frisian king—
the song the minstrel sings has a less obvious bearing on the immediate situation of the hero, but its import is nevertheless
central to both the historical and the imaginative world of the
poem.
The “Finnsburg episode” envelops us in a society that is at
once honour-bound and blood-stained, presided over by the
laws of the blood-feud, where the kin of a person slain are bound
to exact a price for the death, either by slaying the killer or by re-
Introduction
xiii
‘v
ceiving satisfaction in the form of wergild (the “man-price”), a
legally fixed compensation. The claustrophobic and doom-laden
atmosphere of this interlude gives the reader an intense intimation of what wyrd, or fate, meant not only to the characters in the
Finn story but to those participating in the main action of Beowulf
itself. All conceive of themselves as hooped within the great
wheel of necessity, in thrall to a code of loyalty and bravery,
bound to seek glory in the eye of the warrior world. The little nations are grouped around their lord, the greater nations spoil for
war and menace the little ones, a lord dies, defencelessness ensues, the enemy strikes, vengeance for the dead becomes an ethic
for the living, bloodshed begets further bloodshed, the wheel
turns, the generations tread and tread and tread. Which is what I
meant above when I said that the import of the Finnsburg passage is central to the historical and imaginative world of the
poem as a whole.
hall of his “ring-giver,” Hygelac, lord of the Geats, the hero discourses about his adventures in a securely fortified cliff-top enclosure. But this security is only temporary, for it is the destiny
of the Geat people to be left lordless in the end. Hygelac’s alliances eventually involve him in deadly war with the Swedish
king, Ongentheow, and even though he does not personally
deliver the fatal stroke (two of his thanes are responsible for
this—see 11. 2484-89 and then the lengthier reprise of this modent at II. 2922-3003), he is known in the poem as “Ongentheow’s killer.” Hence it comes to pass that after the death of
Beowulf, who eventually succeeds Hygelac, the Geats experience
a great foreboding and the epic closes in a mood of sombre expectation. A world is passing away, the Swedes and others are
massing on the borders to attack, and there is no lord or hero to
rally the defence,
The Swedes, therefore, are the third nation whose history and
One way of reading Beowulf is to think of it as three agons in
the hero’s life, but another way would be to regard it as a poem
which contemplates the destinies of three peoples by tracing
their interweaving histories in the story of the central character.
First we meet the Danes—variously known as the Shieldings (after Shield Sheafson, the founder of their line), the Ingwins, the
Spear-Danes, the Bright-Danes, the West-Danes, and so on—a
people in the full summer of their power, symbolized by the high
hall built by King Hrothgar, one “meant to be a wonder of the
world.” The threat to this gilded order comes from within, from
marshes beyond the pale, from the bottom of the haunted mere
where “Cain’s clan,” in the shape of Grendel and his troll-dam,
trawl and scavenge and bide their time. But it also comes from
without, from the Heathobards, for example, whom the Danes
have defeated in battle and from whom they can therefore expect
retaliatory war (see 11. 2020-69).
destiny are woven into the narrative, and even though no part
of the main action is set in their territory, they and their kings
constantly stalk the horizon of dread within which the main protagonists pursue their conflicts and allegiances. The Swedish dimension gradually becomes an important element in the poem’s
emotional and imaginative geography, a geography which entails, it should be said, no very clear map-sense of the world,
more an apprehension of menaced borders, of danger gathering
beyond the mere and the marshes, of mearc-stapas “prowling the
moors, huge marauders / from some other world.”
Within these phantasmal boundaries, each lord’s hall is an actual and a symbolic refuge. Here is heat and light, rank and ceremony, human solidarity and culture; the dugud share the
mead-benches with the geogod, the veterans with their tales of
warrior kings and hero-saviours from the past rub shoulders
with young braves—pegnas, eorlas, thanes, retainers—keen to
Beowulf actually predicts this turn of events when he goes
back to his own country after saving the Danes (for the time being, at any rate) by staving off the two “reavers from hell.” In the
win such renown in the future. The prospect of gaining a glorious name in the wael-raes, in the rush of battle-slaughter, the
pride of defending one’s lord and bearing heroic witness to the
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Introduction
Introduction
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integrity of the bond between him and his hall-companions—a
bond sealed in the gleo and gidd of peace-time feasting and ringgiving—this is what gave drive and sanction to the Germanic
warrior-culture enshrined in Beowulf.
Heorot and Hygelac’s hall are the hubs of this value system
upon which the poem’s action turns. But there is another, outer
rim of value, a circumference of understanding within which the
heroic world is occasionally viewed as from a distance and recognized for what it is, an earlier state of consciousness and oilture, one which has not been altogether shed but which has now
been comprehended as part of another pattern. And this circumference and pattern arise, of course, from the poet’s Christianity
and from his perspective as an Englishman looking back at
places and legends which his ancestors knew before they made
their migration from continental Europe to their new home on
the island of the Britons. As a consequence of his doctrinal certitude, which is as composed as it is ardent, the poet can view the
story-time of his poem with a certain historical detachment and
even censure the ways of those who lived in Mo tempore:
Some
