Beowulf

Hi all,
 
I've been dipping into the ongoing debate on universitality and we've had a few references to Beowulf. Since generally the references seem to be based around the fact that people don't know much about it I thought I'd comment on a few of the aspects mentioned recently. I'm not particularly diving into the conversation as a whole, although as my main area of interest is the medieval period I am a reasonably firm believer in texts which transcend their specific periods (I don't think, from what I've seen from this thread, that anyone actually disagrees with this, just the whats, whys, hows). Anyway, for the sake of any idle curiosity out there.
 
Beowulf exists in only one manuscript (Cotton Vitellius) and is therefore the kind of text which can fuel entire scholarly careers. The date of composition has been endlessly argued over but it's between the seventh and the tenth centuries; the bulk of the evidence suggests an earlier rather than later date. The manuscript itself is tenth century. Since this is the only copy of the poem it's difficult to ascertain which parts are scribal interpolations and which are part of the 'original' poem.
 
Someone (I forget who) referred to the scorn the Beowulf poet had for his pagan subjects. The Christian and pagan elements of the poem are hotly disputed; some people regard the Christian parts as later additions while others have argued that Beowulf is actually a Christ figure (!) However, whichever is true it's certainly not the case that the poet / scribe is scornful of the pagan society depicted in the poem. There's only one passage which directly criticises the pagan nature of the characters, it's possible that this part was added in. The general tone is admiring of the characters, while accepting as sad but inevitable the fact that the society depicted is coming to an end. It seems probable to me that the poem was originally composed when Christianity was a new and relatively weak presence in Britain, but one which was clearly threating to overcome the old ways.
 
As for the question of whether the poem was originally sung... another vexed one. It shows definite oral-formulaic characteristics (repeated phrases, etc) but these may be 'relics' in written poetry rather than evidence of original oral composition. An earlier date for the poem gives strength to the idea it was spoken rather than written, but as Robbie says we can never be sure about these things since only the written evidence survives. That an oral culture existed is beyond doubt (in fact the 'scops' depicted in Beowulf give some idea as to what it was like) but it's hard to say how the written texts left to us fit into that.
 
Anyway, all of this is pretty incidental to the discussion on hand, but I thought it might be interesting to one or two people. I do recommend reading Beowulf, there are some good translations out there (Alexander's is fairly faithful to the literal meaning, and Heaney's to the spirit) or it's not so hard in the original if you've a bent for languages and the time to sit down with a Old English grammar.
 
Best,
 
Lucy-Ruth

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Received on Sun Dec 14 15:16:15 2003