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    Beowulf: Beowulf, Heroic Poem, The Highest Achievement of Old English Literature and The

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    Fernando Varón
    The poem Beowulf is considered the highest achievement of Old English literature. It was composed between 700-750 AD, dealing with events of the 6th century. The poem follows the story of Beowulf, a Geatish hero who battles the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother. In his later life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and fights a dragon, dying in the battle. The poem blends Germanic heroic ideals with Christian influences and provides insight into Anglo-Saxon culture.

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    Beowulf: Beowulf, Heroic Poem, The Highest Achievement of Old English Literature and The

    Uploaded by

    Fernando Varón
    276 views4 pages
    The poem Beowulf is considered the highest achievement of Old English literature. It was composed between 700-750 AD, dealing with events of the 6th century. The poem follows the story of Beowulf, a Geatish hero who battles the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother. In his later life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and fights a dragon, dying in the battle. The poem blends Germanic heroic ideals with Christian influences and provides insight into Anglo-Saxon culture.

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    first written poem in English

    Original Title

    Beowulf

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    The poem Beowulf is considered the highest achievement of Old English literature. It was composed between 700-750 AD, dealing with events of the 6th century. The poem follows the story of Beowulf, a Geatish hero who battles the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother. In his later life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and fights a dragon, dying in the battle. The poem blends Germanic heroic ideals with Christian influences and provides insight into Anglo-Saxon culture.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    276 views4 pages

    Beowulf: Beowulf, Heroic Poem, The Highest Achievement of Old English Literature and The

    Uploaded by

    Fernando Varón
    The poem Beowulf is considered the highest achievement of Old English literature. It was composed between 700-750 AD, dealing with events of the 6th century. The poem follows the story of Beowulf, a Geatish hero who battles the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother. In his later life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and fights a dragon, dying in the battle. The poem blends Germanic heroic ideals with Christian influences and provides insight into Anglo-Saxon culture.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    Beowulf

    OLD ENGLISH POEM


    Beowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the
    earliest European vernacular epic. It deals with events of the early 6th century and is
    believed to have been composed between 700 and 750. Although originally untitled,
    it was later named after the
    Scandinavian hero Beowulf, whose
    exploits and character provide its
    connecting theme. There is no evidence
    of a historical Beowulf, but some
    characters, sites, and events in the poem
    can be historically verified. The poem did
    not appear in print until 1815. It is
    preserved in a single manuscript that
    dates to circa 1000 and is known as
    the Beowulf manuscript (Cotton MS
    Vitellius A XV) .

    Beowulf
    Beowulf preparing to cut off the head of
    the monster Grendel, illustration
    from Hero-Myths & Legends of the British
    Race, 1910. Beowulf falls into two parts. It
    opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar’s
    splendid mead hall, Heorot, has been
    ravaged for 12 years by nightly visits from
    an evil monster, Grendel, who carries off
    Hrothgar’s warriors and devours them.
    Unexpectedly, young Beowulf, a prince
    of the Geats of southern Sweden, arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to
    cleanse Heorot of its monster. Hrothgar is astonished at the little-known hero’s daring
    but welcomes him, and, after an evening of feasting, much courtesy, and some
    discourtesy, the king retires, leaving Beowulf in charge. During the night Grendel
    comes from the moors, tears open the heavy doors, and devours one of the sleeping
    Geats. He then grapples with Beowulf, whose powerful grip he cannot escape. He
    wrenches himself free, tearing off his arm, and leaves, mortally wounded.

    The next day is one of rejoicing in Heorot. But at night as the warriors sleep, Grendel’s
    mother comes to avenge her son, killing one of Hrothgar’s men. In the morning
    Beowulf seeks her out in her cave at the bottom of a mere and kills her. He cuts the
    head from Grendel’s corpse and returns to Heorot. The Danes rejoice once more.
    Hrothgar makes a farewell speech about the character of the true hero, as Beowulf,
    enriched with honours and princely gifts, returns home to King Hygelac of the Geats.

    The second part passes rapidly over King Hygelac’s subsequent death in a battle (of
    historical record), the death of his son, and Beowulf’s succession to the kingship and
    his peaceful rule of 50 years. But now a fire-breathing dragon ravages his land and
    the doughty but aging Beowulf engages it. The fight is long and terrible and a painful
    contrast to the battles of his youth. Painful, too, is the desertion of his retainers except
    for his young kinsman Wiglaf. Beowulf kills the dragon but is mortally wounded. The
    poem ends with his funeral rites and a lament.

    Beowulf belongs metrically, stylistically, and thematically to a heroic tradition


    grounded in Germanic religion and mythology. It is also part of the broader tradition
    of heroic poetry. Many incidents, such as Beowulf’s tearing off the monster’s arm and
    his descent into the mere, are familiar motifs from folklore. The ethical values are
    manifestly the Germanic code of loyalty to chief and tribe and vengeance to
    enemies. Yet the poem is so infused with a Christian spirit that it lacks the grim fatality
    of many of the Eddaic lays or the sagas of Icelandic literature. Beowulf himself seems
    more altruistic than other Germanic heroes or the ancient Greek heroes of the Iliad. It
    is significant that his three battles are not against men, which would entail the
    retaliation of the blood feud, but against evil monsters, enemies of the
    whole community and of civilization itself. Many critics have seen the poem as a
    Christian allegory, with Beowulf the champion of goodness and light against the
    forces of evil and darkness. His sacrificial death is not seen as tragic but as the fitting
    end of a good (some would say “too good”) hero’s life

    That is not to say that Beowulf is an optimistic poem. The English critic J.R.R.
    Tolkien suggests that its total effect is more like a long, lyrical elegy than an epic. Even
    the earlier, happier section in Denmark is filled with ominous allusions that were well
    understood by contemporary audiences. Thus, after Grendel’s death, King Hrothgar
    speaks sanguinely of the future, which the audience knows will end with the
    destruction of his line and the burning of Heorot. In the second part the movement is
    slow and funereal: scenes from Beowulf’s youth are replayed in a minor key as a
    counterpoint to his last battle, and the mood becomes increasingly sombre as
    the wyrd (fate) that comes to all men closes in on him.

    Beowulf has often been translated into modern English; renderings by Seamus
    Heaney (1999) and Tolkien (completed 1926; published 2014) became best sellers. It
    has also been the source for retellings in text—John Gardner’s Grendel (1971), for
    example, which takes the point of view of the monster—and as movies.

    Taken from: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Beowulf


    Anglo-Saxon
    PEOPLE
    Anglo-Saxon, term used historically to describe any member of the Germanic
    peoples who, from the 5th century CE to the time of the Norman Conquest (1066),
    inhabited and ruled territories that are today part of England and Wales.

    According to St. Bede the Venerable, the Anglo-Saxons were the descendants of
    three different Germanic peoples—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. By Bede’s
    account, those peoples originally migrated from northern Germany to the island
    of Britain in the 5th century at the invitation of Vortigern, a ruler of Britons, to help
    defend his kingdom against marauding invasions by the Picts and Scotti, who
    occupied what is now Scotland. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first
    migrants from the Germanic areas of mainland Europe included settlers
    from Frisia and antedated the Roman withdrawal from Britain about 410 CE. Their
    subsequent settlements in what is now England laid the foundation for the later
    kingdoms of Essex, Sussex, and Wessex (Saxons); East Anglia, Middle
    Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria (Angles); and Kent (Jutes). Ethnically, the Anglo-
    Saxons actually represented an admixture of Germanic peoples with Britain’s
    preexisting Celtic inhabitants and subsequent Viking and Danish invaders.
    The peoples of each of the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms spoke
    distinctive dialects, which evolved over time and together became known as Old
    English. Within that variety of dialects, an exceptionally rich vernacular
    literature emerged. Examples include the masterful epic poem Beowulf and
    the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of manuscripts that cover events in the
    early history of England.

    The term Anglo-Saxon seems to have been first used by Continental writers in the
    late 8th century to distinguish the Saxons of Britain from those of the European
    continent, whom St. Bede the Venerable had called Antiqui Saxones (“Old
    Saxons”). The name formed part of a title, rex Angul-Saxonum (“king of the Anglo-
    Saxons”), which was sometimes used by King Alfred of Wessex (reigned 871–99) and
    some of his successors. By the time of the Norman Conquest, the kingdom that had
    developed from the realm of the Anglo-Saxon peoples had become known as
    England, and Anglo-Saxon as a collective term for the region’s people was
    eventually supplanted by “English.” For some time thereafter, Anglo-Saxon
    persisted as an informal synonym for English, but that use diminished as emigrants
    from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and other areas beyond northern Europe further
    reshaped Britain’s ethnic composition.

    “Anglo-Saxon” continues to be used to refer to a period in the history of Britain,


    generally defined as the years between the end of Roman occupation and the
    Norman Conquest. During that period, though, the various peoples commonly
    grouped together as Anglo-Saxons were not politically unified until the 9th century,
    and their reign over England was interrupted by 26 years of Danish rule that began
    in 1016 with the accession of Canute.

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