Robin, my thanks for the Michael Alexander _Beowulf_ URL.
I've so far just read the introduction of some 11 pages and find it so
telling, so clearly written, and so helpful for this discussion [as well as
"eternal" politics] that I'll now type in quoted parts that seem to answer
questions I'll pose. First, though, again, the URL for those who'll want to
read the intro for themselves, which includes many excellent examples I've
omitted for brevity's sake:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KFlpxcQftwoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPR5,M1
And now parts of Michael Alexander's introduction in 'response' to my
questions:
1) Who would've been _Beowulf's_ original audience?
The ruling Anglo-Saxon Kingdom's families in the 7th and 8th century. _B's_
about "their conquering forefathers and continental grandfathers."
2) Who wrote it, when, and why?
"_Beowulf's_ the earliest extant poem in a modern European language. It was
composed in England four centuries before the Norman Conquest." ..... "No
one knows exactly when it was composed, or by whom, or why" ... It reflects
a feudal nation new to Christianity.
3) What about its poetic composition and what about its history?
"The poetic composition as well as the poem's history is a conglomerate" ...
The Anglican component "took place north of the Thames at a court with
Scandinavian ancestral interests" ... "...(T)he Hengest of the poem may be
the Hengest who came to Kent in 449; and the Offa of the poem was claimed as
an ancestor of Offa of Mercia in the 8th century."
"The writer of the poem must be presumed to have been a cleric, for whom the
heathen [sic] ancestors of his king would have been like Old Testament kings
of Israel, such as Saul or David. Some clerics had the same ancestors as
their kings."
"The knowing way much _B_ alludes to tales of Finn and of Ingeld makes it
clear that their stories were in oral circulation before there was a written
_B_ , and much of the poem may have been available in oral verse tradition
before a monk dipped his quill in ink. In which case, the writer who gave
the poem its final shape shares the credit of authorship with the unlettered
poets who went before him, unclerical poets like those celebrated in the
poem."
4) What's it about?
"What _B_ relates of the Danes, Swedes and Geats [the dynastic history of
Denmark, Geatland and Sweden over two or three generations], then, has a
strong basis in the events of history shaped in legendary patterns." ...
"The poem itself deals with legend rather than history, however, and is
called after a hero who is more mythical than historical. In no other
source do we find the name Beowulf (or Biowulf, as he is called by the
second scribe of the manuscript)."
"There are two narratives in the poem, the story of the northern dynasties
and Beowulf's own story. The dynastic history is also the far-back family's
history of those who were the patrons of poetry and of its audience. Then
there is the heroic story of Beowulf, an archetype not an ancestor."
"The dynastic and the personal narratives compare the life of the heroic age
with the life of a hero: what the experience of living in the heroic age
had been like, and what the ideal hero could be like. The Anglo-Saxons
looked for ethical wisdom in their poems, and their poem is preoccupied with
the fate of heroes, of dynasties and of nations."
"The portrait of the noble Beowulf is surrounded by portraits of less ideal
heroes and kings...."
5) What 'messages' seem to be in the poem?
"Heroic obligations were often in conflict in a warrior society of tribal
kingdoms: the law of hospitality and the law of vengeance for a lord or a
kinsman; the duty to avenge a father and the duty to a wife."
"An epic is also a tribal encyclopaedia, and _B_ is a lexicon of the
warnings offered by history to heroes and rulers. Many of the allusions and
episodes of the poem are lost at first on a modern reader, and some of them
will remain lost. It is unlikely that a later Anglo-Saxon audience would
have recognised every tragic irony with the clarity of a well-instructed
audience of _Oedipus Rex_. But they would have taken the general point of
the constant comparisons and caught the tone of the allusions."
____________
Best,
Judy
2008/11/23 Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
> <<
> keep meaning to get a version that has the original alongside the
> transcription/interpretation.
>
>>
>>>
> Tina,
>
> You might want to consider:
>
> Beowulf: A Glossed Text
> By Michael Alexander
> Published by Penguin Classics, 1995
> ISBN 0140433775, 9780140433777
> 237 pages
>
> It's not quite a parallel text, but one *heavily glossed on the right hand
> facing page.
>
> You can get an idea of what it's like from google books, which allows you
> to read as far as about line 20.
>
>
> http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KFlpxcQftwoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0
>
> There are, I think, several versions of the original text on the Web as
> well as various out-of-copyright translations.
>
> Best,
>
> Robin
>
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