Making Meanings
Epics 5 - 6
from Beowulf
Reading Check
a. Describe how Beowulf manages to kill Grendel’s mother.
b. Who comes to Beowulf’s aid in his final battle with the dragon? Why does he help Beowulf?
c. What sad scene concludes the epic?
d. What happens to the dragon’s hoard?
First Thoughts
1. Beowulf’s story is an ancient one, more than one thousand years old. Did its age make it entirely alien to you, or did you find that it deals with issues or themes that seem relevant in our modern society as well? If so, what are they?
Shaping Interpretations
2. A hoarded treasure in Old English literature usually symbolizes spiritual death or damnation. How does this fact add significance to Beowulf’s last fight with the dragon?
3. What details describe the dragon? Keeping those details in mind, explain what the dragon might symbolize as Beowulf’s final foe.
4. Beowulf battles Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. What do these battles have in common, and what do they suggest Beowulf and his enemies might represent for the Anglo-Saxons?
5. Given what you know about the structure of Anglo-Saxon society, explain what is especially ominous about the behavior of Beowulf’s men during the final battle. What does this suggest about the future of the kingdom?
6. The epic closes on a somber, elegiac note—a note of mourning. What words or images contribute to this tone?
7. Epic poetry usually embodies the attitudes and ideals of an entire culture. What values of Anglo-Saxon society
does Beowulf reveal? What universal themes does it also reveal?
Extending the Text
8. How would we tell a hero story today? What would the setting be, what would the enemy be, and what values would the hero embody?
9. The Connections, “Life in 999: A Grim Struggle,” describes daily life in late Anglo-Saxon England. How does this picture of daily life relate to what you’ve read in Beowulf—and to how you live today?
10. In the last episode of the epic, the leader’s followers mourn his passing and praise his life. What qualities do we look for in leaders today—are they the same qualities Beowulf’s people loved him for?
Challenging the Text
11. What do you think of the way women are portrayed in (or absent from)
Beowulf?
Elements of Literature
Alliteration and Kennings: Taking the Burden off the Bard
The Connections, “ A Collaboration Across 1,200 Years,” shows that the oral tradition is still alive and still a powerful way of communicating from poet to audience.
The Anglo-Saxon oral poet was assisted by two poetic devices, alliteration and the kenning.
Alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds in words close to one another. Anglo-Saxon poetry is often called alliterative poetry. Instead of rhyme unifying the poem, the verse line is divided into two halves separated by a rhythmical pause, or
caesura. In the first half of the line before the caesura, two words alliterate; in the second half, one word alliterates with the two from the first half. Many lines, however, have only two alliterative words, one in each half of the poetic line. Notice the alliterative
g and the four primary stresses in this Old English line from Beowulf:
Kennings. The kenning, a specialized metaphor made of compound words, is a staple of Anglo-Saxon literature that still finds a place in our language today. Gas guzzler and headhunter are two modern-day kennings you are likely to have heard.
The earliest and simplest kennings are compound words formed of two common nouns: “sky-candle” for sun, “battle-dew” for blood, and “whale-road” for sea. Later, kennings grew more elaborate, and compound adjectives joined the compound nouns. A ship became a “foamy-throated ship,” then a “foamy-throated sea-stallion,” and finally a “foamy-throated stallion of the whale-road.” Once a kenning was coined, it was used by the singer-poets over and over again.
In their original languages, kennings are almost always written as simple compounds, with no hyphens or spaces between the words. In translation, however, kennings are often written as hyphenated compounds (“sky-candle,” “foamy-throated”), as prepositional phrases (“wolf of wounds”), or as possessives (“the sword’s tree”).
The work of kennings. Scholars believe that kennings filled three needs: (1) Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry depended heavily on alliteration, but neither language had a large vocabulary. Poets created the alliterative words they needed by combining existing words. (2) Because the poetry was oral and had to be memorized, bards valued ready-made phrases. Such phrases made finished poetry easier to remember, and they gave bards time to think ahead when they were composing new poetry on the spot during a feast or ceremony. (3) The increasingly complex structure of the kennings must have satisfied the early Norse and Anglo-Saxon people’s taste for elaboration.
Analyzing the text. As you examine these poetic devices, be sure to listen to the way they sound.
1. Read aloud the account of Beowulf’s death (lines 791–828), and listen for the effects of the alliteration. Where are vowels, rather than consonants, repeated?
2. Look back over lines 233–391 from Beowulf. Locate at least two examples of kennings written as hyphenated compounds, two examples of kennings written as prepositional phrases, and two examples of kennings written as possessives. What does each kenning refer to?
3. Compile a list of modern-day kennings, such as headhunter.
4. Translators differ dramatically in how they rephrase the Old English to handle alliteration and the kennings. Below is a passage from a translation done many years before the Raffel translation. How does it compare with the corresponding lines (392–398) in Raffel’s translation? Which translation sounds more modern? Which do you prefer to listen to?
Now Grendel came, from his crags of mist
Across the moor; he was curst of God.
The murderous prowler meant to surprise
In the high-built hall his human prey.
He stalked neath the clouds, till steep before him
The house of revelry rose in his path,
The gold-hall of heroes, the gaily adorned.
—translated by J. Duncan Spaeth
Choices: Building Your Portfolio
Writer’s Notebook
1. Collecting Ideas for a Literary Analysis
At the end of this collection, you’ll write a literary analysis. When you analyze a literary work, you usually focus on some element in the selection that interests you. You then analyze, or “take apart,” the element to see how it works in the text. To start collecting ideas for an analysis, focus now on the
character of Grendel, the monster. Look back over the passages in Beowulf
that describe Grendel, and gather evidence on how he is described. Consider these questions: How does the storyteller, in the words he uses to describe the creature, also shape our feelings toward him? What accounts for Grendel’s evil? What does Grendel seem to represent in the story? Save your work for later use.
Autobiographical Incident
2. Facing Monsters
Write a brief narrative in which you tell about a time when you, like Beowulf, faced an intense physical challenge, or were taunted over something you said or did, or had to overcome fear to do something that had to be done. Remember that a narrative tells of a series of related events. Give your narrative a strong ending.
Creative Writing
3. It’s All in the Point of View
Just as John Gardner tried imagining this story from Grendel’s point of view (see
Connections), you might try retelling an episode from the perspective of one of the other characters, perhaps Grendel, his mother, the dragon, Hrothgar, or Beowulf’s detractor, Unferth.
Speaking and Listening
4. Being a Bard
Retell an episode of Beowulf for your classmates, or, if it can be arranged, for a grade-school audience. Be faithful to the plot of the story, but feel free to change or adapt the content to fit your audience and your own storytelling talents. Plan an introduction to your story, and try to find ways of involving your listeners. For drama, use gestures, sound effects, and pauses.
Comparing Film and Epic
5. Movies and Beowulf
Movies, the cornerstone of American entertainment, often rely on familiar images: Heroes face villains to do battle in all kinds of places—from the ordinary to the strange. In a brief essay, compare and contrast Beowulf with some action movie you know well.
Use the following questions to guide your comparison:
• Where does each hero come from?
• Who are the hero’s trusted aides?
• What role does violence play in the story?
• How does the hero struggle against evil?
• Is the hero an outsider or a part of the community?
• What rewards or glory does the hero receive?
Click here to navigate through the epics: epic 1, epic 2, epic 3, epic 4 epic 5 epic 6 .
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