The Seamus Heaney translation is full of masculine sounding heavy consonant sounds, repetitions of "G," "H," and "W." This is known as alliteration. There is far less internal rhyme in the translation we studied in class.
In the photo, intricately made chain mail, far from the chrome armor we see in many films based in pre-medieval Europe. In Segment 3 of Beowulf, the Danish King invites Beowulf to reopen the Mead Hall after twelve years of abandonment. The warriors are thrilled to be back together, but one, Unferth, questions the stories he's heard about Beowulf killing monsters, particularly a tale about a swimming challenge. In the debate that follows, Unferth serves as the hero's foil, making Beowulf look much better when measured against the weakling who "crouches near the King" while he levels accusations. Beowulf now gets the chance to boast of a swimming competition which, he says, he still won despite having to kill nine sea monsters. He then accused Unferth of killing his own kin. By Anglo-Saxon law, if this is true, Unferth should have been banished from his tribe, exiled to wander alone. The fact that Unferth is still allowed to drink with the man speaks of Hrothgar's kindness, or perhaps his weakness. Beowulf adds that the Danes are all cowards since they have allowed the monster to live and control their kingdom. Anglo-Saxon culture allowed bragging as a kind of self-talk that motivated the men to go into battle sometimes against larger forces. The culture prized bravery and loyalty above all. Kings honored brave warriors with land, gold, rings, and fine swords. Men of that time didn't steal from or hurt the other members of the tribe. No one wanted to risk being exiled from everything he knew. This, after all, was Grendel's true curse, his life outside the fellowship of others like him, or his kin.
The Seamus Heaney translation is full of masculine sounding heavy consonant sounds, repetitions of "G," "H," and "W." This is known as alliteration. There is far less internal rhyme in the translation we studied in class.
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Beowulf is an epic narrative poem sung or performed as spoken word possibly for centuries before it was written down by Christian monks. There are historical people in the poem, and part of the manuscript speaks of a real battle at a place called Ravenswoods, but the story is considered a work of fiction. In fact, the poem sets forth a mythological world alongside the real lives of the warriors of the mead hall, Herot, home of the Danish king, Hrothgar, and Beowulf, a member of the royal family of Geatland (present-day Sweden), who comes to Hrothgar's aid when a giant troll, Grendel, terrorizes the tribe of Danes, killing dozens of men at a time. The most important theme of the poem is Exile, both in the pagan sense and the Christian sense. To the pagan Anglo-Saxons, nothing was worse than being cast out of your tribe, sent away. You couldn't make it alone, and warriors (and their families) depended on the kindness and wealth of the king to survive. To the Christian monks who wrote down the poem, exile was illustrated by connecting Grendel to Cain, the first murderer, and to his exile from mankind. The monk gives the lineage of all evil monsters back to Cain.
Anglo-Saxon poetry depends heavily on internal rhyme. The introduction to Grendel on p. 42 includes several lines with the sound "all" including the words "call," "hall," "all," and "Almighty." The most unique poetic device is the kenning, a compound metaphor that provides an instant image, such as "whale-road" for sea. In the first lines of p. 42, "hell-forged hands" gives us an instant image of Grendel as being made for evil, a killing machine. The introduction to Beowulf, the hero, comes on p. 45-47, where Beowulf arrives and asks Wulfgar to lead him to the Danish King. Wulfgar asks Beowulf and his 30 men to leave their spears and shields behind. They are decked in chain mail, carrying their swords, and Beowulf tells Hrothgar he wants to fight Grendel. He says his men know his quality and how he has rid the world of giants and sea monsters. He vows he will fight Grendel with no weapon but his hands. Oddly Grendel is a giant troll, and Beowulf feels obligated to kill "the last of the giants of the earth." At the same time, Grendel is the only one of his kind, without companionship or fellowship. In John Gardner's Grendel, we see the monster as obscene. There are several translations of Beowulf. Two of the best are the Grummere and the Heaney, neither of which are in your textbook. The Grummere is available on archive.org. Hadrian's Wall is a good image to start with when talking about Early Britain. The Romans built the wall in the 100's A.D. (Anno Domini) to keep out the Picts, a warring tribe that tattooed themselves blue and kept invading the South. From the Picts, we get the word Picture.
Before the Romans, the Celts occupied England. They were farmers, worshipped many gods, and practiced "animism," the belief that the gods resided in nature. In 55 B.C., Julius Caesar claimed England for Rome and over the centuries, Rome gave England an infrastructure: roads, bridges, aqueducts, baths, and coliseums. The Roman soldiers married Celtic women birthing a new race of people known as Brythons, which is where we get the name "Britain." King Arthur, originally named Arturius, meaning "bear," was on of these Romanized Celts. In the 300's, St. Augustine came as a Christian missionary to England. His task was to convert pagans to the Christian faith, but the pagans would not give up their many religious festivals. Concessions were made on spring fertility festivals and winter solstice to coincide with Christian celebrations of Easter and Christmas. Tribes in such northern places as modern-day Denmark, Sweden, Norway desired England's farmland and invaded in the 400's. By then, the Roman Empire had all but disintegrated, and the Romanized Celts, or Brythons, were on their own. It is said that King Arthur himself battled the Anglo-Saxons invading from present day Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxons ran the Celts into Western England, eventually unifying England and ruling from the 400's A.D. to 1066. In the 600's A.D., a monk known as Bede wrote a narrative poem on a wooden cross in runes. The poem, "Dream of the Rood," (Rood means cross) was a propaganda tool depicting Christ as a superhero, leaping up to the cross to defeat death. In the poem, the cross speaks, a direct appeal to the pagan belief in animism. The cross in the poem is decked with precious jewels, which would have been important to pagans. Go to the website below to see your name written in the runic alphabet. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vikings/runesright.html |
1984 linkhttp://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm Archives
September 2019
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