Monday, November 25, 2002
Appointment with Dr. Morgan at 1p.m.
I will be seeing Dr. Morgan today to show him the results of my Beowulf outline. Hopefully everything goes smooth and I can keep going on with the project with minimal changes. I also re-checked out my library books (9) and will keep working on my documentation as I can.
~Ayleen~ at
10:11 AM
Sunday, November 24, 2002
The Metaphoric Beowulf
A paper I wrote for my English lit. Class 11/20/02
There is a great opportunity for discussions on the different meanings that can be found within the Beowulf text. We could take the poem literally, a view into the early history of Europe. But, with the fantastical characters interlaced throughout the text we accept Beowulf as a work of fiction. Settings and characters can be linked with possible metaphors as discussed in class and based on a book by Alvin A. Lee, Gold-Hall and Earth- Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor.
In class, we discussed the three monsters as allegories to human conditions, or rather, sins. The first monster introduced is a large beast named Grendel. This fiend is from “Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts” (Beowulf 35). Grendel can see the happiness within Heorot, “the hall of halls” (34). This hall is the place where Hrothgar practices gift-giving to his people and is a mead-hall of fellowship. Grendel envies the hall of God’s light and decides to take his jealousy out on the people by taking over the hall in blood shed. As alluded in the poem, Grendel had been cast out from man’s heavenly light and the punishment would be a thirst to destroy all that is good since he is denied heavens salvation. The sin of jealousy is a horrible monster that will destroy lives if unleashed.
The second human condition, revenge, rears its ugly head in Grendel’s mother. After she discovers her son is killed by Beowulf she goes back to Heorot to exact her “wergild (man-price)” (30). Since she has no use for monetary compensation for the loss of her son she takes the life of Hrothgar’s “right-hand man” (61). This is an eye for an eye revenge that was common in the feudal lives of the early Europeans. So consumed with thoughts of revenge and hatred for Beowulf, she was not able to foresee him taking up the sword “from the days of the giants, an ideal weapon, one that any warrior would envy” (66). This sword that she unwittingly supplies to Beowulf becomes her downfall. Perhaps a second human condition can be added to Grendel’s mother, the sin of pride. No ordinary weapon could bite through her skin and she kept that prideful thought close to heart and ends up paying for it in the end. The giant’s sword was able to swipe her head off with one mighty stroke.
The third monster is a dragon full of avarice. This dragon is “the guardian of the mound, the hoard-watcher” of an ancient stash of riches within a mountain (81). The dragon is said to have guarded this treasure for three centuries. Greed is commonly known as an ugly green monster within men, men who spend their days hoarding away money and keeping it for themselves. When the dragon realizes that a single gold-plated cup has been stolen, it goes into a rage, devastating the surrounding village in search of its lost treasure and the thief who stole it. The dragon is a great example of the one-mindedness that can take a hold of a person bent on one thought - wealth.
In Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor, Lee mentions a few theories that can coincide or add to our class discussions. First, there is Müllenhoff’s theory of Beowulf as “a rescuing god who struggles with the elements and the forces of nature” (110). As said in the Beowulf text, Beowulf “was the mightiest man on earth, highborn and powerful” (Beowulf 36). We are told of his god-like deeds that surpass any other mans strength. He fights against “sea-brutes” in the open sea in his race against Brecca, tears off Grendel’s arm with his bare hands and eventually defeats a dragon with a sword that only giants would have been able to handle.
Müllenhoff also addresses the settings and monsters as perhaps the “elements and forces” that Beowulf struggles with:
Grendel is the stormy North Sea in the spring threatening human dwellings, his mother is the depths of the North Sea, the dragon is autumn and the coming of wild weather, and Beowulf’s death is the coming of winter. (Lee 110)
In European past, the seasons were a huge part of regular life. Grendel embodies the damning waves from a violent sea that come to the shores to wipe out all the homes (Heorot) in its way. Grendel’s mother drags and kills her victim in the deep “mere” – a lake of “hot gore”. This is similar to Beowulf being dragged under the lake to be killed at the mother’s leisure, which in turn is reminiscent of the sea dragging down victims as they drown. The dragon is compared to autumn in the way it swoops down on the village with fire-red leaves announcing the coming of winter – a death-like hibernation of life. As winter is constantly called the death of the world, the death of Beowulf can be comparable. At Beowulf’s death, we are told the Swedes will inevitably invade and the end of a Geat’s rule will be realized (Beowulf 99).
To start addressing some of the settings, I would like to mention Hrothgar’s mead-hall first. Heorot is built as a gathering hall, the fanciest and biggest hall ever. Heorot is translated into the “hall of the hart” or heart. This hall becomes a symbol of light in the heart of darkness within the poem. It is a haven or heaven for Hrothgar’s people before Grendel attacks.
Not too far away we have Grendel and his mother's lair, a lake “infested with all kinds of reptiles” (63). This hellish scene depicts a lake of scum, blood-like gore and numerous beasts writhing around. As most would agree the description is as close to a Christian Hell as we can get, an opposite of Heorot. With these two destinations so near each other, we have a battle that lasts “twelve winters, seasons of woe” (35). Beowulf hears about Hrothgar's problems and miraculously shows up as an avenging angel who defeats the demons of hell - Grendel and his mother.
The last setting takes place during Beowulf’s final battle at the dragon’s lair:
Hard by the rock-face that hale veteran,
a good man who had gone repeatedly
into combat and danger and come through,
saw a stone arch and a gushing stream
that burst from the barrow, blazing and wafting
a deadly heat. (Beowulf 86)
The dragon is a keeper of hell’s gate. Beowulf does succeed in killing the absolute evil –the dragon- but at the expense of the world’s mightiest warrior – himself. This is all theorized from the Christian battles between good and evil being fought daily within devout hearts.
In conclusion, I have come across many ways to understand the Beowulf poem. As it started as an oral tradition, being passed on by word of mouth, we can only guess at the original narrator’s intentions. I have only mentioned a couple of the theories, as there are some that “tried to read Beowulf as a political or historical allegory“ or even as historical events being retold with embellishments (Lee 110). The Beowulf poem is a puzzle that may never be solved to a perfect conclusion, but the enjoyment found in searching for clues will always bring me back to the “oldest of the great long poems written in English” (Beowulf 29).
Works Cited
Beowulf. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. 29-99.
Lee, Alvin A.. Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc. 1998.
~Ayleen~ at
6:14 PM
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Lee - Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor (Continued...)
Lee, Alvin A..Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor. University of Toronto Press Incorporated. 1998.
"The Beowulf poet does not compose a a writer of representational or naturalistic fiction. Rather he works within a creative process in which, instead of describing the sixth-century world of the Danes and the Geats, he calls an imagined form of it into being. He makes or invents it for human listening from the raw data of inherited stories, traditional poetic language, and his own sensory perceptions. As with the original idea of Heorot for Hrothgar, so with the concieving of the poem, it comes into the poet's mind to tell a tale about brave men long ago, a tale that will embody the life and work of the greatest of all men between the seas." (p.97)
"As Karl Mullenhof (1889) would have had it, Beowulf in some phenomenal sense is a rescuing god who struglles with the elements and the forces of nature, Grendel is the stormy North Sea in the spring threatening human dwellings, is mother is the depths of the North Sea, the dragon is autumn and the coming of wild weather, and Beowulf's death is the coming of winter."
"Other scholars,..., tried to read Beowulf as a political or historical allegory, as a representation of actual people, places, and events, or at the very least as a work whose most important elements were so-called real world ones." (p.110)
"George Bond treated the text as a description of actual people, situations, and political events in the reigns of Mercian Kings Beornwolf and Wiglaf." (p.110)
~Ayleen~ at
6:09 PM
Monday, November 18, 2002
Lee - Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor
Lee, Alvin A..Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor. University of Toronto Press Incorporated. 1998.
"The poet's presentation of Beowulf's decision to go to Denmark and of the voyage itself is done with economy and just enough featural information to shape a vivid narrative. The main focus is on the extraordinary figure of the protagonist. Everything mentioned - his thanes, other Geats in Hygelac's court, the ship, the weather and the waves, God himself - favours the heroic action." (p.10)
"The world of the poem is intensely alive emotionally."
"It is pervaded by an animism that finds numerous interconnections between the human and the non-human, both within created nature." (p.57)
"Among the hundreds of compounds in Beowulf, one on average in every other line, and a different one in every third line, I conservatively identify as kennings between sixty and seventy."
Kennings in an important sense are almost entirely verbal. They are imagined realities that do not exist in the actual physical on-verbal world, until material language puts them there." (p.58)
"The largest group of kennings in Beowulf has to do with weapons and war, the next largest with the sea, seafaring, water, and ships. A third group is related to the human body and, by parodic extension, to the bodies of monsters. A fourth group is used to characterize thoughts and emotions." (p.59)
~Ayleen~ at
7:33 PM
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Beowulf : My Senior Project Outline
I will be working on this project with aid by Dr. Morgan and Dr. Evans. My proposal is to make a “Rough Guide” for Beowulf. I wish this guide to be in a web-page format that can be utilized by university level students as well as any other Beowulf readers.
I want to include information that is the key to understanding Beowulf. I will be including critic’s views of the metaphors within the poem, journal articles, and any other websites that can be linked. I don’t intend to make cliff notes, but a guide. A rough guide, as I know it, is not just a restatement of what one person said, but a compilation of what numerous people have come up with, if they agree or not will not be my goal. I want the arguments to stand so that my colleagues can think on the problem itself, not on who agrees with whom.
Within the text I want to embrace the characters, intertwining stories, settings and the cultures. Starting with the characters, I will be seeking out different representations of Beowulf. I want to find his possible significance to the past ages and then to today’s society. The monsters of the poem will be dealt with in response to their specific symbols within the Beowulf society. There are three stories knotted within the text itself, much like a Celtic knot would be. They bring significance to certain actions being taken in the story and I would like to find out as much as I can to why they were included and from where. The settings can be considered as different planes of life, heaven and hell. I would like to explore the possible locations meanings. Another large part of Beowulf is the cultures permeated within the text. We have Swedish and Gaelic. It seems that this poem was written by a Christian, but we do have the pagan culture mixed in.
A huge part of understanding Beowulf includes the Historical events that are factual. I will be seeking out as much information as I can about where the text may have originated, who had it as an oral tradition and why it was written down. I will look into possible ancestry between the characters in Beowulf and the relations of the past. I will especially be seeking out information on what sort of events may have led to such a poem being devised. I will look into the purpose of the oral tradition and what good it would have done for the nations.
The relationship I would like between me and my audience is one of camaraderie. I want to seem as a colleague that is sitting down at a lunch and discussing the many interesting facts that can be had from a single poem. If they find a certain bit of information particularly fascinating, I would like them to be able to ask me questions and get feedback. This will bring me to the point of perhaps starting a message-board that is linked to my page for those that would like to discuss the different aspects. I do not want the website to be too “wordy” and feel like they are reading an essay, I want them to relax and be able to find a certain piece of information and maybe find links, books, or critics that go into better detail than I would. In this way, I will send them off for further investigation beyond my website.
I want my audience to be a part of my site, as much as I am. I have already begun a weblog that will become my journal for those that are interested in what I had read, considered and dropped in making this website. http://amlbeowulf.blogspot.com/
~Ayleen~ at
5:39 PM
Beowulf Links - Sibling Sites
**The complete Beowulf Manuscript translated by Francis B. Gummere
**Full Old English text at Georgetown University, with line numbers.
**A guide for Beowulf, very interesting design and information.
Goals
My goal for my website is for colleagues in an University setting utilizing my information to better understand the Old English poem "Beowulf". I want a comprehensive site that helps readers understand why the poem may have certain settings, weaponry, biblical references, paganistic references and intertwined stories within this one. I intend to not have a cliff notes site, but a rough guide.
~Ayleen~ at
1:12 PM
Thursday, November 14, 2002
And the project begins
As this is my first post, I will list the things I have done.
1) I have 8 books checked out. 2 have been read and I am devouring the different ideas that authors and critics come up with for interpreting the classic Beowulf.
2) I have searched the internet for other Beowulf guides, I see some are out there, but not the same kind as I am planning.
3) I have found my headers of what I would like to research and include.
My Plans for this blog
This blog is going to be my tool in research. I am going to list all my information that I find, all my thoughts, and any websites that I come across. Hopefully this will be something I can incorporate into the website I eventually have made.
~Ayleen~ at
10:21 PM
