 The central problem of Beowulf scholarship traditionally has been the following: Do we study Beowulf because it is a valuable work of art, or do we study it because it is the earliest extant piece of writing in Old English? For the purposes of this course, I believe that both reasons for reading the poem are valid--it has a certain value as a cultural artifact and it also contains characteristics that mark it as a work of art. That said, I do not believe that either of these ways of approaching the text has to be mutually exlusive. A good reading of Beowulf, as an epic narrative poem, will require you to do both the kinds of close reading necessary to understand a novel and the kinds of poetic readings that were fruitful in our study of Romantic poetry. In addition, to do a really solid reading of the poem you will have to be an amature historian of Anglo-Saxon Britain (Is that a contradiction in terms?).
"Yes, Mr. Lister, I see your point, but didn't you say that because this is a translation we cannot close read as if we were capable of reading it in the original."
"Well argued, dear student, but this is the reason that we are reading it in the Heaney translation. Because Seamus Heaney is one of our more celebrated modern poets, we can read the poem as a new work, based on original sources. It makes reading this poem no different than reading Shakespeare or Pope's translations of Homer. The key is knowing that we're analyzing the modern poetry. We can only make inferences about the original Beowulf without taking extensive courses on Old English as a foreign language."
"So where do we start"
"We start at the beginning, by understanding this poem as a form of epic"
Beowulf as Epic?
A Formal Boast: Composed by N.R.
I, Sir Eric Lister, son of William Shakespeare and the North Star, came to this puny earth to prove how puny it truly is! I shall compose a sonnet... at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, in a Tweed Suit! I shall brave the tube worms and the absolute darkness, protected only by fine fabrics, paper and the mighty Pen! Not only this, but I shall bring witnesses! Yes! I shall carry upon my shoulders from the depths of the trench the most fearsome, monstrous (and literate) creature from the dark abyss... the Mythical Jabberwocky, who shall verify my work. |