“In Geár-dagum”: Beowulf as an Anglo-Saxon Fornaldarsaga

The genre of Beowulf is a topic that continues to be hotly debated, as Breizmann has already noted[1], and as any scholar working in the field will have already observed. Indeed, Beowulf scholarship concerning matters of genre goes way back to the “Age of Enlightenment” of Beowulf criticism when J.R.R. Tolkien opened the floodgates through his revolutionary essay, The Monsters and the Critics[2]. Breizmann thoroughly documents the developments after Tolkien, citing, on top of the innovative critic and author: Irving, Earl, Greenfield, and Klein; and recording their classifications of Beowulf as a “fairy tale, elegy, heroic lay, oral-formulaic poetry, historical and legendary narrative, and Christian allegory.”[3] She adds to this her own proposal of Beowulf as romance. Moreover, there are scholars such as Greenfield who have contemplated on Beowulf’s essence as a tragedy[4]. Such a variety leads one to ask whether there may be an all-encompassing label for Beowulf, one that includes every category in Breizmann’s critical compilation. In this paper, I wish to offer my own categorisation of Beowulf as an Anglo-Saxon fornaldarsaga by exploring the definition(s) of fornaldarsögur then positioning Beowulf in such a context.

What then, we may ask, are fornaldarsögur? The term fornaldarsögur (“sagas of ancient times”) is a modern term derived from Carl Christian Rafn’s original coinage, “foraldar sögur Norðurlanda,”[5] which means “sagas of ancient times in the North.” Stephen Mitchell attempts to give a very broad definition of fornaldarsögur, writing that they are “Old Icelandic prose narratives based on traditional heroic themes, whose numerous fabulous episodes and motifs create an atmosphere of unreality.”[6] Whilst such a definition agrees with the traditional opinion that “the fornaldarsögur are heroic,”[7] it falls short when tested against contemporary standards of specificity in that its description can be applied to any of five more subdivisions of the saga genre, which include: kings’ sagas, sagas of Icelanders, bishops’ sagas, Sturlunga sagas, and riddarasögur (“knightly romances”)[8]. What can be potentially ambiguous, and thus a matter of contention, in Mitchell’s definition is its lack of a hair-splitting distinction between fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur. Torfi Tulinius, however, allows for a distinct separation between the two categories, writing that

the fornaldarsögur all take place in the North and deal with Nordic heroes but the riddarasögur take place in the south of Europe or even more remote places, and the heroes are “valiant knights” who were infrequent visitors here in the North. Furthermore, some literary characteristics distinguish between these groups of sagas[9].

Jakobsson clarifies what exactly these distinguishing literary characteristics are: “The tragic end of traditional fornaldarsögur – e.g. Hálfs saga, Hrólfs saga kraka, and Völsunga saga – also distinguishes them from adventure sagas and romance in general.”[10] Hermann Pálsson further divides the fornaldarsögur into two categories: “heroic legend” and “adventure tales.”[11] Tulinius explains that “the former are based on the same ancient heroic tradition in the tragic mode as the lays of the Edda and have links with similar traditions in other Germanic languages”; the “‘adventure tales’ usually end well about heroes undertaking a quest or series of quests.”[12]  And while there is, as yet, and despite all the aforementioned criticisms, no clear-cut authoritative definition for fornaldarsögur, Clunies-Ross provides two essential characteristics that many works which are considered fornaldarsögur share. She posits that firstly, “a number of fornaldarsögur represent a world of Scandinavian royal and heroic dynasties”[13] and that, secondly, the characters in the stories “frequently interact with beings that are not fully human.”[14]

In Beowulf, the first point in Clunies-Ross’ characterization of fornaldarsögur ­– its depiction of Scandinavian royal and heroic dynasties – becomes a major axis upon which the work’s action revolves. The poem’s narrator begins with “Hwæt wé Gár-Dena,”[15] invoking, through the use of the first-person plural pronoun “wé,” the Danish identity of both the speaker and his audience. Magennis notes, moreover, of the emphatic placement of “Gár-Dena” in Beowulf’s opening line. In light of this, Howe explains that “the setting of Beowulf may be understood as the homeland before conversion,”[16] and thus the “stories about the Danes and the Geats could serve as a powerful reminder of the Anglo-Saxon’s origins, both geographically and religiously.”[17] And if we are to divide the poem into two halves based on setting, the first being in Denmark, and the second in Geatland, we may observe in the first half an almost panoramic attention to the house of the Scyldings, the descendants of “héah Healfdene” (“the great Halfdane”)[18]. Indeed, while the first half marks the actions of the poem’s titular hero, it also prefigures and laments the downfall of the Scylding household: “nalles fácen-stafas / Þéod-Scyldingas þenden fremedon” (“The Scylding nation / was not yet familiar with feud and betrayal,” ll. 1018-1019). Such events as are referred to in Beowulf thus accentuate its essence as a fornaldarsaga, in that it “display[s] a lengthy continuity within the Nordic cultural context.”[19] Consequently, the poem aligns itself not only with Icelandic kings’ sagas such as Heimskringla[20] and Skjöldunga saga, but, more importantly, with other fornaldarsögur as well, such as Hrólfs saga kraka and Völsunga saga.

It is not surprising then, that, as North argues, “…the poet appears to draw on the unquantifiable sources of a living Danish mythology. Respectively he plays on Freyja’s Brísinga men, Óðinn’s vengeance for Baldr, and Þórr’s death by the World Serpent.”[21] Along with the quasi-mythological atmosphere of Beowulf and fornaldarsögur come the monsters and otherwordly beings. The world that their presence invokes is a world “when Scandinavia was still pagan,” and thus “the action of [fornaldarsögur] was removed from the world of the everyday, at least in part, but not so fully removed that its subject-matter could not be meaningful to [the audience].”[22] In this sense, it is difficult to fully agree with Tolkien when he writes that “it is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant…It glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important.”[23] In ignoring the antiquarian historicity—the reality of the pagan world—alluded to in the poem, we take away not only the full force of the Þórr myth as it is ascribed to Beowulf and his fight against the dragon[24], but also the pathos that the audience, the “Gár-Dena in géar-dagum,” are meant to feel towards their pagan ancestors. Black, et al. put the situation in a better perspective: “Whatever its underlying structural patterns, Beowulf is neither myth nor folktale; its stories of dragon-slaying and nocturnal struggles are set against a complex background of legendary history.”[25] This is what makes Beowulf a unique work of literature in the Old English tradition. Not only does it seem somewhat out of place with its “foreign-ness” (in terms of its Nordic connection) when compared with other Old English heroic poems like Judith (which stems from Biblical tradition) and The Battle of Maldon (which is set in Anglo-Saxon England), but the presence of the monsters, especially the dragon, invokes the mythic climate of the Eddas and other fornaldarsögur. Thus, it is easy to see how Richard North comes to observe there to be a growing consensus that the poet of Beowulf adapts tales connected with those of Norse mythology: Freyja’s Brísingamen; Höðr’s slaying of Baldr and Óðinn’s vengeance; and Þórr’s battle against the World Serpent,’’[26] since Beowulf belongs to what Tulinius calls “the Matter of the North” and its vast range of saga literature, as much as it belongs to the English—specifically Anglo-Saxon—tradition of poetry.

Categorising Beowulf as an Anglo-Saxon fornaldarsaga helps give us a wider perspective of the work’s historicity. It is among the many sagas that deal with Scandinavian heroic royalty, and one amongst many more that incorporate the mythic and legendary “past” of its contemporary audience, reworking themes and motifs that help(ed) shape their society and burgeoning nations. Such a grouping thus removes Beowulf from isolation and assimilates it into the wealth of Icelandic fornaldarsögur that give it context, removing our need to force it into labels which may undermine its historical and structural richness. Being a fornaldarsaga, it becomes at once a folktale, a tragedy, a romance, as well as a historical and legendary narrative.

 

 

Bibliography:

Beowulf, in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, eds. Joseph Black et al. (Toronto: Broadview                 Press, 2016), 65-116.

Breizmann, Natalia. “”Beowulf” as Romance: Literary Interpretation as Quest.” MLN 113, no. 5                   (1998): 1022-035.

Fjalldal, Magnus. “An Unnoticed “Beowulf” Analogue in “Heimskringla.”(Critical                             Essay).” Notes and Queries 60, no. 3 (2013): 341-43.

Greenfield, Stanley. “”Beowulf” and Epic Tragedy.” Comparative Literature 14 (1962): 91.

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. London: Faber and Faber, 1999.

Howe, Nicholas, “Beowulf and the Ancestral Homeland,” in The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical                          Casebook, edited by Eileen A. Joy and Mary K. Ramsey, 49-89. Morgantown: West Virginia                University Press, 2006.

Jakobsson, Armann. “The Royal Ideology and Genre of Hrolfs Saga Kraka.” Scandinavian Studies 71,             no. 2 (1999): 139.

Magennis, Hugh. The Cambridge Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature. Cambridge Introductions to                    Literature. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Mitchell, Stephen A. Heroic Sagas and Ballads. Myth and Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,                   1991.

North, Richard. The Origins of Beowulf : From Vergil to Wiglaf. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University               Press, 2006.

Ross, Margaret Clunies. The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga. Cambridge                              Introductions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

—. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge, UK ; Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 2005.

—. Old Icelandic Literature and Society. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature ; 42. Cambridge, U.K.             New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Stefán Einarsson. A History of Icelandic Literature. New York: Johns Hopkins Press for the American               -Scandinavian Foundation, 1957.

Tolkien, J. R. R., and Tolkien, Christopher. The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. London ;                   Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983.

 

 

 

[1] Natalia Breizmann. “”Beowulf” as Romance: Literary Interpretation as Quest.” MLN 113, no. 5 (1998): 1022.

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. (London ; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983).

[3] 1022.

[4] Stanley Greenfield, “”Beowulf” and Epic Tragedy.” Comparative Literature 14 (1962).

[5] Margaret Clunies-Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga. Cambridge Introductions to Literature. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 28.

[6] Stephen Mitchell, Heroic Sagas and Ballads. Myth and Poetics. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 27.

[7] Ármann Jakobsson, “The Royal Ideology and Genre of Hrolfs Saga Kraka.” Scandinavian Studies 71,no. 2 (1999): 142.

[8] Cf. Ibid.

[9] Cf. Jakobsson, 143.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Torfi Tulinius, “The Matter of the North: fiction and uncertain identities in thirteenth century Iceland” in Margaret Clunies-Ross, Old Icelandic Literature and Society, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature ; 42. Cambridge, U.K. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 243.

[12] Ibid.

[13] The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga, 76.

[14] Ibid, 77.

[15] All lines from Beowulf here (in the original and in translation) are taken from Seamus Heaney’s version(1999).

[16] Nicholas Howe, “Beowulf and the Ancestral Homeland,” in The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook, edited by Eileen A. Joy and Mary K. Ramse. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006) 52.

[17] p. 53.

[18] line 57.

[19] Mitchell, 27.

[20] Cf. Magnus Fjalldal, “An Unnoticed “Beowulf” Analogue in “Heimskringla.”(Critical Essay).” Notes and Queries 60, no. 3 (2013): 341-43.

[21] Richard North, The Origins of Beowulf : From Vergil to Wiglaf. (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 194.

[22] Clunies-Ross, The Old Norse-Icelandic Saga, 58.

[23] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. (London ; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 33.

[24] Cf. North, 202.

[25] Beowulf, in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, eds. Joseph Black et al. (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2016), 66.

[26] And here North cites substantially: “Dronke, ‘Beowulf and Ragnarök’, 311—18. D.G. Calder, ‘Setting and Ethos: The Pattern of Measure and Limit in Beowulf’, SP 69 (1972), 21 – 37, esp. 36. Frank, ‘Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf’, 132 (Baldr and Óðinn). Beowulf: A Student Edition, ed. Jack, 101 (Brísingamen). Beowulf, ed. Mitchell and Robinson, 134 (Baldr and Óðinn). Orchard, Companion, 114-23 (all three motifs). Rauer, Beowulf and the Dragon, 136-7 (Þórr and the World Serpent). Niles (Beowulf, 193) is against, albeit he believes Beowulf was composed partly for Anglicized tenth-century Danes” (Cf. North, p. 205).

Uncanny Desire and the “Death-Drive” in Magritte’s The Lovers (1928)

Death and desire are two concepts and realities that greatly concern psychoanalytical and philosophical minds. Their enigmatic natures open up opportunities for various questions, answers, and interpretations concerning their relationship not only between one another, but also with human nature. What roles do both death and desire play in human thought and activity? How do they affect our sense of self, as well as our perception, reception, and interactions with others? Freud’s theories, specifically those found in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), attempt to make sense of death’s interplay with pleasure and desire. The art world, too, has been endeavoring to contemplate and represent such ideas within (and, in some instances, with-out) the context of their cultural and historical roots. René Magritte’s The Lovers (oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8″, 1928) depicts the drive of desire as a distortion of the “death-drive,” consequently invoking a sense of the “uncanny” through its manifestation of the “double,” the return of the repressed, and the “compulsion to repeat.” Freud’s work on “The Uncanny” (1919) will help us unveil the psychoanalytical implications of Magritte’s work.

The Lovers’s most striking feature is its depiction of what Freud calls the “double.” In the “phenomenon of the ‘double,’” Freud explains that “we have characters who look alike…so that one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other.”[1] The two figures in the painting – the “lovers” – though distinctly gendered in their attire, are made to appear similar to each other in countenance through the cloth(s) that conceal(s) their faces. Indeed, the lovers are necessarily gendered through their clothing in order to display an expression of desire in their contact with each other. In this way, they are made to represent one aspect of the “double”: they become “an insurance against the destruction of the ego.”[2] Moreover, while the lovers do manifest “an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’”[3], they simultaneously portray another, characteristically opposing aspect of the “double.” The double, Freud writes, “from having been an assurance of immortality…becomes the uncanny harbinger of death”[4]. Thus, the lovers, while daringly expressing desire, face the inevitability of eventual death through suffocation. Their desires, in this light, become constrained by death both in a physical and a symbolical sense. The uncanny nature, then, of the figures as “doubles” emanates an anxiety of death consuming the lovers in their display of desire.

Moreover, The Lovers further heightens this anxiety through its depiction of the “return of the repressed”. The “return of the repressed” is “the frightening element” which shows itself “to be something repressed which recurs.”[5] The uncanny feeling of “the return of the repressed” is, as Freud explains, “in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.”[6] In the case of The Lovers, the “return of the repressed” is not overly much of a return as much as a recurring, or even a re-emerging of the death-drive which underlies every unconscious human thought. The lovers’ drive for desire obliquely coincides with their death-drive: the very expression of their desire, their mutual contact, is that which also emphasises the presence of death. In this light, The Lovers becomes an image that speaks to the irrepressibility of the death-drive. Thus, inasmuch as the desire manifested by the figures in the painting is a representation of the supposed dominance of the “pleasure principle”, so does their physical proximity – and, with it, the painting’s focal point – coincidingly accentuate the shrouding and threatening presence of death. Yet the figures arguably do not show any struggle to remove themselves from their doom-laden pose. It is because their sense of the pleasure principle – that is to say, their sense of desire – is at one with the death-drive, and, indeed, this affect of desire becomes a form of the death-drive.

To better understand why this is, it is of principal importance to observe further that the lovers express an uncanny “compulsion to repeat.” According to Freud, “it is possible to recognize the dominance in the unconscious mind of a ‘compulsion to repeat’ proceeding from the instinctual impulses and probably inherent in the very nature of the instincts – a compulsion powerful enough to overrule the pleasure principle.”[7] In The Lovers, the compulsion to repeat works to free the death-drive from the repressive impulses of the pleasure principle. There is a hint of irresistibility in the lovers’ pose: their lack of struggle to break free from their kiss despite their heads being wrapped in cloth marks their uncannily calm demeanour. Moreover, inasmuch as the binary boundary between the heimlich and the unheimlich is, as Freud hints, eventually broken down so that the “heimlich…finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich”[8], so much so is the boundary that divides the pleasure principle and the death-drive distorted, as the viewers are left to feel uncertain about whether the lovers’ primary drive is that of Eros or that of Thanatos. Thus, there is in The Lovers the inevitability of the viewer’s intellectual and emotional uncertainty regarding both the affect of desire and the anxiety of death – an uncertainty that allows the painting to radiate an overall feeling of uncanniness.

Ultimately, The Lovers prompts questions concerning the relationship between death and desire. The uncanny elements it embodies serve to make audiences obliquely contemplate over such a relationship. The presentation of the “double”, which juxtaposes themes of death and desire, points out to the ever-looming presence of death. Its depiction of the return of the repressed and the compulsion to repeat underscores the dominance of the death-drive in its unrepressed form. A Freudian reading, then, as we have seen, effectively brings out key themes from the painting – but it would be as interesting to see what Lacan or even the existentialist philosophers have to say in response.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

René Magritte, The Lovers, 1928, Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8″ (54 x 73.4 cm)

 

Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny.” In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary                   Trends, edited by David H. Richter, 514-532. Boston:  Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

[1] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter (Boston:  Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007), 522.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] p. 523.

[5] p.526.

[6] Ibid.

[7] p. 524.

[8] p. 518.

WRITING AND EXISTENCE IN MARTIN AMIS’ MONEY

Martin Amis opens Money with the following inscription: “This is a suicide note. By the time you lay it aside…John Self will no longer exist. Or at any rate that’s the idea. You can never tell, though, with suicide notes, can you?” With such a statement, Amis immediately puts into perspective the idea of death – but it is an idea that is subsequently superimposed with doubt. “Will John Self die?” the reader may ask. Or to be more specific: “Will John Self cease to exist?” In a novel that contains John Self’s past-tense narrative of what to him is his ever-dynamic present, his neverending “now”, these are questions that the readers are supposed to keep in mind upon reading the beginning all the way to the novel’s ending. Indeed, Money, as a suicide note, depicts John Self’s retrospective attempt to establish, through the reader, an existence that will survive his future inexistence. The novel, in this light, captures the totality of John Self’s essence as he writes and narrates events of his life to the readers. Jean-Paul Sartre’s work, Why Write?, and Peter Brooks’ work on Freud’s Masterplot will help us further understand and explain John Self’s search for such an existence.

Brooks states that “ultimately…the passion that animates us as readers of narrative is the passion for (of) meaning”, which passion “appears to be finally a desire for the end” (1162). This end, for Brooks as it was for Freud, is death. It is the final stroke of death that gives completion and meaning to the life that precedes it. “All narration is obituary in that life acquires definable meaning only at, and through, death”, says Brooks, connecting literary narratives with life and death (1163). As such, literary narratives are rendered incomplete, fragmentary, and meaningless without their appointed endings. Brooks points out that beginnings “presuppose the end” (1163),  and readers, upon reading a narrative’s beginning, assume a desire for its end. Amis taps on this expectation of death and endings, and the meaning which these bear with them, when he marks Money as a suicide note and announces, however ambiguously, John Self’s future inexistence.

Money thus becomes what Sartre would call an “appeal” by the writer to his/ her readers. In the preface to Why Write, Richter explains: “We who know that the physical world we animate with our perceptions will go on darkly after we are gone must write to make something that will survive us” (660). According to Sartre, the process of writing stems from a writer’s need to remain essential in a future wherein he no longer exists. In writing, the writer “meets everywhere only his knowledge, his will, his plans, in short, himself” (Sartre 663). The writer leaves an implant of his/her essence in the written word – a legacy that survives the writer even when he/she is gone. Ultimately, Sartre explains: “Since the creation [the written work] can find its fulfillment only in reading, since the artist must entrust to another the job of carrying out what he has begun, since it is only through the consciousness of the reader that he can regard himself as essential to his work, all literary work is an appeal” (665). “To write”, Sartre concludes, “is to have recourse to the consciousness of others in order to make one’s self be recognized as essential to the totality of being; it is to wish to live this essentiality by means of interposed persons” (670). Thus, in writing –a process that appeals to the reader’s sense of freedom to read –  the writer relays his/her being through the reader and the reader’s process of reading, and with this process of reading, the existence of the writer lives on.

 

The writer in the artistic frame of Money is John Self. The novel is an account of John Self’s experiences, conversations, and other such interactions that help readers construct a view of his character. Self’s is the main authoritative voice in the novel, and it is primarily through his own recapitulation of his own actions and conversations where we may form opinions about him. There is very little informative self-reflection and there are only very few instances where Martin Amis breaks the artistic frame to explain the dramatic ironies that concern John Self. What we have, then, is a first- person past-tense narration of Self’s experiences. In this perspective, moreover, John Self may be seen as writing in retrospect, with an end in mind even from the beginning of the novel.

The end of the novel contains the narrative of Self’s near-death experience, and the end of John Self’s narrative expresses the extra-narrative note of Martin Amis whereby “John Self will no longer exist”. Such an ending affects the overall tone of Self’s narrative. His narration thus ceases to be a mere retelling of events in his life, but, with the threat of inexistence and nothingness in the novel’s Beyond looming over his existence as a charcter, becomes an appeal. The narrative becomes Self’s appeal for a connection with the readers through his writing. In fact, Amis notes: “To whom is the note addressed? To Martina, to Fielding, to Vera, to Alec, to Selina, to Barry – to John Self? No. It is meant for you out there, the dear, the gentle”. Self’s writing, in turn, becomes a space wherein he can write out the essence of his character, so that he no longer remains simply as a voice, but becomes a being whose essence and experiences are imprinted in what he writes. The novel itself, the “note”, becomes John Self. Amis states that “usually the note is the thing. You complete it, and then resume your time travel. It is the note and not the life that is cancelled out. Or the other way round. Or death. You never can tell, though, can you, with suicide notes”. In our case for the novel, the note is not canelled out: the note becomes the life.

 

As he comes closer to disappearance in the novel, John Self begins to exist not in the past, but in the present, a time between the past and what Richter calls the “as-yet-nonexistent future” (659), the future that will be John Self’s void of inexistence. Self tells the readers: “You know, during that time of pills and booze, during that time of suicide, my entire future flashed through my head. And guess what. It was all a drag! My past at least was – what? It was…rich. And now my life has lost its form. Now my life is only present, more present, continuous present” (392). Here, Self’s present becomes in tune with that of his readers – supposing that they have read his story thus far –  marking the fulfillment of their unity through reading, an achievement which in turn grants security in Self’s existence. With the survival of his existence secured through the process of writing and reading, John Self accordingly “signs off” (392). He says further, “I’m closer to you, I hope, than he’ll ever be” (392). Though the answer to whom “he” might be remains vague, it may be postulated that he is the Self of the past. The Self of the present indeed is closer to the reader than the Self living in the past.

John Self is a memorable character – though not necessarily the most likeable one. But it is also his unique character that draws the reader along through the novel. In this way, his carnivalesque character helps him in his case to find essentiality in his future inexistence by making the readers at least interested enough to see him through the narrative’s end, and, having such an end, give meaning and completion to the life retold in the novel. The novel is John Self’s life, and in the act of opening the book and reading its contents, the readers in their freedom breathe life into its words and pages, giving John Self a voice, a character, and ,ultimately, an existence.

 

 

 

WORKS CITED:

 

Amis, Martin. Money. Vintage, 2005

 

Brooks, Peters. Freud’s Masterplot. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary                   Trends, ed. David H. Richter, 1161-1171. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Why Write? The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends,               ed. David H. Richter, 659-672. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DUSK AND THE UNCANNY IN CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS

The dichotomy of Light and Darkness is noticeably prevalent and all-encompassing in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so much so that the symbolisms and meanings of this antithetical pair may seem at times to fall into ambiguity or to get muddled into complicated significations. Yet the novel remains comfortable with such a situation. Its themes thrive on ambivalence and a tone of seeming uncertainty. What at first glance appears to be a scene of incertitude for characters can turn out to be, after an uncovering of many complex layers, a moment of revelation, self-awareness, or existential understanding. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the gulf between Light and Darkness – the gulf that harbours the uncanny, the gulf that represents Dusk – is depicted as a zone wherein Marlow experiences self-realisation and enlightenment.

There is in Heart of Darkness a gap in the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This gap is magnified and made observable by the distinct contrast in the representative figures of Light and Darkness, and indeed they are portrayed to be almost archetypal. Kurtz is said to be “claimed” by “powers of darkness” (1989). The darkness embodied in Kurtz is universalised as Marlow describes the last moments of his life: “The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea…and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time” (2003). The juxtaposition of these sentences parallels Kurtz’s heart with the “heart of darkness” that is found everywhere from the centre of the wilderness to which the phrase alludes, to the River Thames which it threatens to encompass. Kurtz’s position as a figure that embodies darkness is further solidified when he is described in his deathbed as not being able to see the “light…within a foot of his eyes” (2004). Indeed, his stare “could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness” (2005). The irony of this description is in Kurtz’s inability to see light no matter how wide or universal his stare is. All he is able to see is darkness, and that darkness resides within him.

Inasmuch as Kurtz is unable to see the light, the Intended is ignorant of – if not unable to comprehend – the darkness in Kurtz. She is portrayed as an archetype of light and of what is beautiful, pure, and innocent. Marlow describes her thus: “She struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features” (2007). She has “a pale head”, “fair hair”, a “pale visage”, and a “pure brow” (2007). All these fair and beautiful external features set her up in contrast with the darkness within Kurtz. However, her innocence, her “unextinguishable light of belief and love” (2008), is thought by Marlow to be incapable of understanding or bearing the reality of Kurtz’s darkness. He says that, for her, it would be “too dark altogether” (2010). He thus implies that there is a necessary separation between the dealings of Light and Darkness.

Following Marlow’s logic for separation, it would seem that the Darkness and Light that Kurtz and his Intended signify respectively have between them an unbridgeable gulf. And yet the novel complicates this distinction. Dusk, a time that rests between the bright and dark hours of the day, is depicted in the beginning of the novel with poignancy: “And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men” (1955). It is in the light of this setting sun where the Nellie’s crew go through a contemplative and aesthetic experience: “We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories” (1955). It is also in the climate of this setting wherein Marlow’s narrative is unfolded: not in the brilliance of midday nor in the darkness of midnight, but in the dying light of dusk.

Dusk is the gulf between Light and Darkness, and this gulf may be equated to the realm of the uncanny, the realm of Freud’s Unheimlich. Indeed, insofar as Freud’s concept of the Unheimlich breaks down the binary boundaries between its own essence and that of the Heimlich, so does the concept and imagery of dusk break down the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This area of the uncanny in the novel breaks down oppositions in such a way that there is certainty to be found in uncertainty and realisation in ambiguity. The gulf of the uncanny, the gap symbolised by dusk, is a dialectical realm wherein the ethos of Marlow’s character attains an understanding of its existence and that of the world and people around him. The culmination of Marlow’s experience, being a character situated symbolically in such a realm, is described by himself as such: “It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light” (1958). In his experiences are fragments of self-realisation, revelations, and understandings, not least of which is his understanding of Kurtz’s darkness and his Intended’s sparkle of sublimity. Marlow also explains to his fellow seamen that “it seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence” (1973). His contemplations and philosophies, unclear to himself at first, are constantly deconstructed and reconstructed in the course of his journey and his narrative.

Marlow is subsequently elevated into a state of enlightenment. He becomes representative of the individual who beholds the Truth and escapes the Platonic Cave, but who also consequently becomes alienated from his company. By the end of the novel he is said to have “ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha” (2010). And indeed he has already recognised his isolation in the artistic frame when he states, “We live, as we dream—alone” (1973). Yet this alienation, this dream-like uncanny state of retrospection, allows Marlow to observe and understand the universal darkness while remaining apart from it. He thereby becomes the didactic Individual, a signifier of the Particular marked especially by his contrast with the nameless Others, his fellow seafarers, to whom he shares his profound reflections on Truth and the human soul. In this perspective he is not alone. His life, as in his dream-like narration, is recounted with company. Together, they journey through the river of experience and past memories, with the threat of the looming darkness making their quiet solidarity all the more poignant.

 

Bibliography:

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, ed.by K. J.H. Dettmar, Pearson Education, 2010. pp.1949-2010.

An Introduction to Allusions in Beowulf

The Oxford English Dictionary defines allusion as “an implied, indirect, or passing reference to a person or thing” or “any reference to someone or something”. When it comes to literature, however, it becomes a difficult task to avoid accidentally falling into affective and intentional fallacies when exploring whether or not certain words, phrases, or narratives are meant by the author to be distinct and relevant allusions to particular people or events. In works such as Beowulf, moreover, the task of pointing out allusions and understanding their meaning becomes even more difficult due to the obscurity of their context and cultural situations. Nevertheless, what I aim to explore are some allusions to elements present in Old Norse literature which are readily available to us in the text:  elements which we may assume to have been passed down to Beowulf’s author(s) through the culture of the Danelaw.

The Scyldings

One of the most notable of these allusions is that of the Scyldings. A prominent family not only in Beowulf, their stories also appear in Snorra Edda (Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda) and Hrólfs saga kraka (The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki). In the Edda, Skjöldur (Scyld Scefing), the founder of the Skjöldungar (Scyldings), is portrayed as a descendant of the god Óðinn himself. The legends of his descendants are recorded in Beowulf and Hrólfs saga kraka. Being slightly different in perspective to Beowulf, the focus of Hrólfs saga kraka is more so on Hroðgar’s nephew Hrólfur than on himself. Both narratives however include a troll-like being terrorising the halls at nightfall and a hero that comes and eradicates such threats.

Eotenas ond ylfe and gígantas

J.R.R. Tolkien notes in lines 112-113 the author’s use of two culturally different etymological sources to describe the race of Grendel and the descendants of Cain. On the one hand, Tolkien observes the use of gígantas in line 113 as a word borrowed from the Latin version of the Bible. On the other hand, he marks the words eotenas and ylfe in line 112 as distinctly Norse, coming from the words jötnar (giants) and álfar (elves). These words not only depict the author’s blending of pagan and Christian elements into the story of Beowulf, but as cultural allusions they furthermore offer a twofold perspective on Grendel’s background as a fiend – that is, he not only is an enemy of the Christians, being a descendant of Cain and the giants, but also at the sight of the pagan heroes he is considered an outcast of the Norse gods and humanity.

Wæls and Sigemund

The bard in Hroðgar’s hall recounts the story of Sigemund the dragon-slayer in lines 883-915 as words of praise, encouragement, and admonition to Beowulf. Similar narratives can be found in the Snorra Edda and the Völsunga Saga where Völsungur’s (Wæl’s) descendant Sigurður slays a dragon and takes possession of a treasure hoard. Placing these narratives in the context of Beowulf allows its author to portray ironies foreshadowing Beowulf’s death, but also comparative praise, as Sigurður is and will ever be remembered in Northern legend as Fáfnisbani –  the slayer of the dragon Fáfnir – after his death.

Thus allusions such as these allow us to understand more comprehensively the story of Beowulf. They give the text particular shades which reflect dramatic ironies that are not always obvious when the allusions are missed. And although many of these allusions and possibly the text itself are rendered obscure to us as modern audiences, their importance to the Anglo-Saxon audience as antiquarian reflections and contemporary innovations should never be understated, wont as the Anglo-Saxons would have been to do so.

 

 

Works Consulted:

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London:        Harper Collins Publishers, 2014. Print.

— . The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London:                  George Allen & Unwin Publishers, 1983. Print.

 

 

 

 

DUALITY AS A TRAGIC MOTIF IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH

Russ McDonald’s statement that “Shakespearean tragedy depends on a paradox” could not be better suited to any other play than in Macbeth[1]. The actions and the structure of the play hinge on the paradoxes found in accepted truths, language, and signifiers. The theme of duality, in particular, comes into special significance in Macbeth. Shakespeare utilizes duality as a tragic motif in Macbeth; that is, it is used to contextualize and procure Macbeth’s hamartia, and also to lead the hero eventually to his downfall and death. Theories from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” and Sigmund Freud’s “The ‘Uncanny’” would help us further understand the significance of duality in Shakespeare’s play.

The theme of duality is uncannily pervasive in Macbeth,[2] as is depicted in the diction of the characters. The witches “speak in paradoxes: ‘When the battle’s lost and won,’ ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (1.1.4,11),”[3] “Double, double, toil and trouble” (4.1.10). The human characters themselves speak at times through duality if not in paradoxes: “All our service / In every point twice done, and then done double” (1.6.15), “Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell” (2.1.64-65). Macduff, moreover, makes note of “such welcome and unwelcome things at once / ‘Tis hard to reconcile” (4.3.139-140). This extensive use of duality and paradox serves to reflect the play’s consciousness of and emphasis on the arbitrariness of language and words as signifiers.

Indeed, Nietzsche describes words as having “arbitrary assignments…beyond the canon of uncertainty” and “arbitrary differentiations”, explaining that “we believe we know something of the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors of things, which do not at all agree with the original entities.”[4] The human being’s “arrogance associated with knowing and feeling,”[5] as Nietzsche terms it, is tested in Macbeth, where Hecate remarks that “security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy” (3.5.32). To be secure in the stability of language in Macbeth is to forget that “truths are illusions that have become worn out and sensuously powerless.”[6] Macbeth, who, in the beginning of the play, is “sensitive and aware”[7] of the arbitrariness of language—for in fact he notes that “two truths are told (1.3.128) which “cannot be ill, cannot be good” (1.3.132)—in the end forgets the instability of words and signifiers, that they “speak metaphorically or metonymically to a single aspect of the signified; they cannot convey its essence.”[8] Macbeth perceives the admonitions of the apparitions only in their literal sense, and confidently declares that they “will never be” (4.1.94). He forgets Banquo’s warning that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence” (1.3.123-126). This situation William Scott explains thus: “In becoming a part of the self-deluding show and undoing some literalisms to confirm another, he [Macbeth] skews the boundaries of literal and figurative and of perceiver and perceived, with paradoxical results.”[9] As much as Macbeth, in self-delusion, “skews the boundaries of literal and figurative”, the witches do so as well, if not better, using Macbeth’s ambition-driven over-assurance in language to deceive him who so readily would be deceived. Accordingly, the witches’ use of seemingly impossible predictions and “hopeful messages”[10] effects the dissolution of Macbeth’s awareness of the arbitrariness of language: he who, being unprepared, thus becomes a servant to defect[11]. Hence Macbeth declares ironically that “damned [be] all those that trust them” (4.1.139), not realizing that he himself belongs with the damned.

Macbeth’s defective action, then—his hamartia,[12]—is precisely that he blindly disregards the existence of dualities in the realm of the play. This gives him a false and unhealthy sense of security as, after saying, “I cannot taint with fear…. / The mind I sway by and the heart I bear / Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear” (5.3.3,9-10), Macbeth, in response to the servant’s entry, and in what is consequently an expression of his paranoia, says “The devil damn thee black, though cream-faced loon! / Where got’st thou that goose look?” (5.3.11-12). This sense of security is, in turn, haunted by the duality that Macbeth overlooks, and such effects Macbeth’s tragic recognition and reversal.

Informing and qualifying the notion of this haunting duality in Macbeth is Freud’s concept of the “double”[13]. In Macbeth there can be found characters whom Freud would identify as the “doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self.”[14] In fact, two stages of Freud’s “double” are represented in the play: that which “was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death,’”[15] and that which, “from having been an assurance of immortality…becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.”[16] The titular character of the play possesses three of these “doubles” in the figures of Lady Macbeth, the witches, and Macduff—and these figures offer Macbeth unique stages of his own recognition and reversal..

Lady Macbeth, as one of Macbeth’s “doubles,” figuratively completes him, exhibiting characteristics and performing actions that are either opposite or almost like his. In Act 1 Scene 5, she calls on the spirits (l. 40) to “take [her] milk for gall” (l. 48), since her husband is “too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” (l. 17). Her apostrophe to night beginning in line 50 of the same scene, resembling that of Juliet’s in Romeo and Juliet[17], is echoed by Macbeth in Act 3 Scene 2 when he calls on, “Come, seeling night” (l. 49). They both find themselves reluctant before the execution of their murderous actions, yet Lady Macbeth’s power over Macbeth’s identity earlier on in the play is such that he attempts to affirm his masculinity through Lady Macbeth so much so that “he sins to win her approbation.”[18] She inevitably corrupts his masculine identity by using it against him during his times of hesitation. Eventually Macbeth becomes “in blood / Stepped in so far that, should [he] wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3.4.137-139). Lady Macbeth realises only too late that “What’s done cannot be undone” (5.1.68). When it becomes her turn to regret the actions of herself and her husband, telling him “You must leave this” (3.2.39), Macbeth only informs her of a forthcoming plan for her to “applaud the deed” (3.2.49). Such has become of the situation of Macbeth’s identity as it relates to Lady Macbeth, that his actions have become mere performances, “deeds”, that need the applause of his one audience, his wife. Her death consequently triggers his speech in Act 5 Scene 5 wherein life is but “a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more” (ll. 24-26) –  a description of life that is very much pertinent to his own.

Realising such a fact, Macbeth “turns unsuccessfully to the witches for the power he needs to make him author of himself.”[19] The witches, who are characteristically duplicitous, symbolise Macbeth’s “double” that is supposed to assure him of immortality. They are beings who may be figuratively associated with Macbeth. Macbeth’s first words “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38) echo the witches’ last ones in Act 1 Scene 1 where they say “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.11) Cheung observes this of the witches’ interaction with Macbeth:

Significantly, it is not a surprise encounter but a meeting that is to take place. Already there is a hint of intercourse between the witches and Macbeth, so what seems to be an external temptation also can be interpreted, as many critics have done, as a psychological projection.[20]

The witches not only embody the external “multiplying villainies of nature / [that] Do swarm upon him” (1.2.11), but also they symbolize the internal, “black and deep desires” (1.4.51) already present in Macbeth’s character. Viewing their relationship thus makes it easier to relate such a relationship with Freud’s idea of the double where “the one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other.”[21] Indeed, the witches prove to be effective because, according to Scott, “they seemed to have access to the frightening secrets of his heart.”[22] The power in the duality of their nature, being representative of both the external and internal forces of evil that besiege Macbeth, makes it highly difficult for Macbeth to resist the temptation of accessing and utilizing the murderous ambition that their prophecies leave as a readily-available option for him. However, it is exactly this duality in nature that opens up and leads Macbeth to his downfall. He recognises that he has fallen into this pitfall, but only too late: “And be these juggling fiends no more believed / That palter with us in a double sense, / That keep the word of promise to our ear / And break it to our hope” (5.8.19-22).

In the face of this realisation, Macbeth finds himself pitted against Macduff, the “double” who is the “uncanny harbinger of death” for Macbeth. For, being what Campbell terms as a “figure of the tyrant-monster”[23], Macbeth’s presence inevitably calls for “the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence will liberate the land.”[24] And Scotland must needs be liberated from Macbeth, as it is described by Lennox as a “suffering country / Under a hand accursed” (3.6.49-50). Indeed, Macduff becomes for Macbeth “a thing of terror,”[25] who tells him: “Despair thy charm, / And let the angel whom thou still hast served / Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (5.8.13-16)[26]. Hence is Macduff qualified to be the nemesis of Macbeth, whereby he is also portrayed as a figure that is the direct opposite of Macbeth, a figure of “the self-creating and invulnerable masculinity that Macbeth cannot fashion for himself.”[27] Macduff’s character moreover serves to haunt Macbeth with the duality that the tragic character forgets persists in the play’s dramatic universe. The very fact of Macduff’s birth and existence, the circumstances of which Macbeth deems impossible, shakes Macbeth out of his self-inflicted tragic delusion and reverses his expectation of the witches’ equivocal prophecy. His death in the hands of Macduff symbolises the taking-over of the “double”: the former, suffering self, represented in Macbeth, is replaced by the projected and more perfect – though not entirely unscathed[28] –  self in the person of Macduff[29].

This ending for Macbeth is not to be restricted with a tragic affect. “Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms,”[30] writes Joseph Campbell. Macbeth, in this light, is at once tragic and liberating. The titular character is tragic because he, blinded by ambition, undermines if not forgets about the existence of duplicity and the prevalence thereof in the world he lives – but on the same note, this selfsame duplicity allows for the liberation of the imprisoned and corrupted self in Macbeth and transfigures it into the more complete, more heroically-realised self in Macduff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] R. McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2001), 86.

[2] All quotations from Macbeth are taken from D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare (The University of Chicago: 2013), 710-747.

[3] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare, 712.

[4] F. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 454.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 455.

[7] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakepeare,711.

[8] D. H. Richter, The Critical Tradition, 438.

[9] W. Scott, “Macbeth’s—And Our—Self-Equivocations” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1986), 160-174.

[10] Ibid, 171.

[11] I am referring here to 2.1.17-18: “Being unprepared, / Our will became the servant to defect”.

[12] Russ McDonald reminds us that hamartia would be “a term more properly understood as an error in action rather than as fatal weakness of character”. The Bedford Companion, 88.

[13] Quotes from Freud are collectively taken from “The ‘Uncanny’” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 514-532.

[14]Ibid, 522.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 523

[17] See Juliet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in The Necessary Shakespeare ed. D. Bevington (The University of Chicago: 2013), 3.2.5

[18] D. Bevington, 712.

[19] Ibid, 713.

[20] K.K. Cheung, “’Dread’ in Macbeth” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1984), 431.

[21] S. Freud, 522.

[22] W. Scott, 170.

[23] The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell Foundation: 2008), 11

[24] Ibid.

[25] S. Freud, 523.

[26] Macbeth is certainly made terrified by this statement, saying “it hath cowed my better part of man” (5.8.18).

[27] D. Bevington, 713

[28] For Macduff has also suffered loss: the death of his wife and children.

[29] Not coincidentally, Macbeth uncannily tries to refuse killing Macduff: “Of all men else I have avoided thee” (5.8.5). He sees a vision of a more perfect and unsullied self in Macduff – to him, there is something of the uncanny in Macduff, something, according to Freud in p. 526, “familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” This more perfect and now-alienated self that Macbeth finds in Macduff he has repressed in his murderous drive towards kingship.

[30] The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 21.

The Fragment of Elska

I.

I, now awake, have dreamt.

Though ‘tis unclear if indeed ‘twas so.

Misty mountains, whose clouds veil

Unseeing eyes, but lift souls, lost souls,

To mythic havens, where hill-gods

And elven goddesses linger and live —

In these lofty godsteads myself I found.

Embraced by the cold breeze,

I, a vagabond, a dreamland roamed

Where naked Nature,

In the fairest form of her unsullied beauty,

Enclosed her towns of mirth,

Her hidden heaths and turfy mounds;

And looked upon her people,

Forever free and independent,

Unbothered by the world without.

She, with the peaceful waves of her pristine shores

Caressing ancient stones on steep slopes,

Slopes grazed by sheep and horses wild —

Verdant were the pastures, and so will they ever be –

She called the sun and moon,

And, hark, they played, and paused,

While anon and henceforth the birds did sing

Above candle-lit barnyards and steeples.

II.

There she was, further up the mighty mount.

Like the nightingale’s, her tale-like song,

Soft and sweet, resounded clear.

Near she was, yet quite afar,

Her melody to me flowed, however,

As river water smoothly runs

Tow’rds valley fields and dale downs.

Enchanted, awe-struck – such was I.

The daughter of the mountain,

Slowly did she reveal herself to me.

Calmly she came,

Forth into the frosty wind,

Her graceful stride ‘gainst the storm.

Elska was she called.

Not even winter’s woes, nor its grinding gales

Could quench her spirit, warm and kind:

For though her ocean eyes may see the deep,

And bore with them the burdens of years,

How yet did they meet mine with friendly gaze,

Captivating effortlessly.

Thus we walked,

Travellers alike,

Down towards the valley vast,

Where spring and summer dance away

The sunlit days.

During my brief stay in Iceland I was able to compose this poem. It is a fragment, a brief vision or dream from the speaker, an idyll; although the speaker is not certain whether it is a dream or whether it is actual reality. The speaker starts off by recounting himself being lost in “a dreamland”, a land which people may recognise as, or connect with, Iceland. All of these happen in Part I. Part II sees the full personification of the land, of Iceland, as Elska, which in Icelandic means “love”. Elska, though introduced and seen only in passing, embodies certain characteristics of Icelandic nature and those of her people. The readers – and the speaker – never really get to know Elska in depth, as it is a fragment of a dream; something that is obscured by the reality of waking up. But the fragmented memories of the speaker of Elska show enough of the essence of her being, but only enough as to leave her to remain as the mysterious being that she is perceived to be. After all, the fragments of our dreams that rest with us upon our waking up are memories most poignant, those which leave us in a state surreal yet wanting — a state that makes us long for the unattainable reality found only in dreams.

Midsummer

Midsummer’s breeze,

the breath of June, no sooner blows

than floods the leaves of trees

and songs of birds

with your ‘membrance –

thoughts puffed into clouds

and sent back through the tears of the warm summer rain,

memories as keep our bond bound and sheltered

in my empty deep.

Empty it is, yet filled

with fragments of your once-attached soul,

splintered firmly upon the heart’s soft soil;

souls afore kindled leave embers which,

though turn cold, last awhile.

The loud silence

of these hollow summer days

echo the deep longing that follow

the blurred trail left behind

by your vagrant heart.

Vagabonds alike,

we so wander, called by empty summer

whose sunlit escapes bring not joy nor passion,

but wintered vigour that seek gladsome life in vain.

So we sail forth, you and I,

fooled by the season’s sparkling grin,

towards that which paradise

uncertainly points,

longing once more

to seek what in us abides though we know it not,

thus lost forever, with souls apart.

Night Gale

Dark is the night sky, a canvas

written upon with graceful strokes by poetic eve:

The stars, the glittering tears of its observing author,

thereat fashioned wanderers of never-ending space,

shed light upon us in our distant present,

Present unattainable with their ancient souls that

look and watch

from far upon their extant, undying

Past.

Ever do their spirits watch,

themselves long passed

away into the fading memory of old Universe. And yet.

Fixed into the tenderly woven sheet of  night,

gingerly they sparkle,

careful to keep peace

and leave us in wonder

to stand in awe.

We watch them, and they, us.

Deeds and lives echoed into their mysterious place,

beyond all knowledge.

And, when our lives be long passed,

there live on ourselves, in time, again —

all of earth, in the realm of stars,

all but memories that light the celestial way.

Mundane deeds, written upon the stellar nothingness,

lost perhaps to the present, but never forgotten

by the old souls that bear tales in starlight.

The New Historicist Approach to Beowulf

In his revolutionary essay entitled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien remarked that “Beowulfiana is, while rich in many departments, specially poor in one. It is poor in criticism” (5). This comment certainly is not true of current Beowulfiana criticism anymore. It is no longer a question of approaching Beowulf as a poem instead of merely as an historical artifact, but a question of what works best in approaching and fully understanding the poem and the themes at work therein. This paper intends to analyze Beowulf through a New Historicist perspective, contextualizing the relevance of the poem’s author, readership, and of Anglo-Saxon England, and through this filter, to furthermore seek out themes and literary techniques that a modern audience may overlook.

The critical theory in question is indeed a useful tool for understanding Beowulf because it requires the readers to not only close-read the text, but also to make relevant cultural connections that would help them grasp the ideals and poetic techniques that the author has craftily weaved into the poem. What then is New Historicism? Stephen Greenblatt, in his introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance explains that

…literary works are no longer regarded either as a fixed set of texts that are set apart from all other forms of expression and that contain their own determinate meanings or as a stable set of reflections of historical facts that lie beyond them. The [New Historicist] critical practice…challenges the assumptions that guarantee a secure distinction between ‘literary foreground’ and ‘political background’ or, more generally, between artistic production and other kinds of social production. Such distinctions do in fact exist, but they are not intrinsic to the texts; rather they are made up and constantly redrawn by artists, audiences, and readers. These collective social constructions on the one hand define the range of aesthetic possibilities within a given representational mode and, on the other, link that mode to the complex network of institutions, practices, and beliefs that constitute the culture as a whole (1445).

In essence, the New Historicists assert that “literature is conceived to mirror the period’s beliefs, but to mirror them, as it were, from a safe distance” (Greenblatt 1444). With regards to Beowulf, this means that a New Historicist reading would necessitate the understanding of the background of the author, his audience, and of Anglo-Saxon society, language[1], and culture in order to fully appreciate the artistry at work in the poem; consequently, the absence of such an undertaking would place the readers in a difficult position where they are lost in vague references to unfamiliar ideals.

Most of the issues faced by modern readers in trying to understand Beowulf are due to the fact that the events depicted and the values that are prized in the poem are so far removed from their understanding of the world. Yet the key here is to understand that “every expressive act is embedded in a network of material practices” (Veeser xi).

The most influential material practices that directly affect major themes in Beowulf are the Christian tradition and the native Germanic heroic values. There is in Beowulf, a fusion “of the old and new”, a blending of ideals from Northern antiquity with Christian virtues (Tolkien Critics 20). These traditions do not, as modern readers might be inclined to suppose, create in the poem binary oppositions that heavily contradict each other, but instead we see “in the figure of Beowulf the heroic ideals of Germanic paganism and of Anglo-Saxon Christendom have been reconciled and fused, so that the hero exemplifies the best of both” (Brodeur 183).

The author and his audience were, without a doubt, Christian. Heather O’Donoghue explains that the “Anglo-Saxon authors were Christians, perhaps mostly clerics, and clerical culture dominated literary production” (11). There is plenty of evidence for this fact even within the text of Beowulf, not the least is the fact that the poet uses the Latin-borrowed term gígantas as one of his many nomenclatures when referring to the race of Grendel[2]. The poet’s audience moreover were “Christians whose conversion was neither partial nor superficial. He expects them to understand his allusions to biblical events without his troubling to be explicit about them” (Whitelock 280). The Anglo-Saxons were a deeply antiquarian people who strongly adhered to their Germanic past[3], and their author was no exception.

The Anglo-Saxons took special pride in their ancestry, and we see this pride expressed in the opening lines of Beowulf: “Hwæt wé Gár-Dena in géar-dagum / þéod-cyninga þrym gefrúnon” [Lo! The glory of the kings of the people of the Spear-Danes in days of old we have heard tell, how those princes did deeds of valour][4] (lines 1-2). E.G. Stanley comments that “the beginning of the poem with its piece of Danish history is relevant to England, to English kings” because “Beowulf could well have written late enough for at least some of the Danes mentioned in the poem to have been regarded by the poet and his audience as ancestors of Anglo-Saxon kings in England” (71). If the poem is read – in either the original Old English or in the translation – merely as an organic unity where external context is irrelevant, then the meaning of the opening lines becomes lost, and the lines may consequently be deemed unnecessary. Seeing the context of the opening lines with regards to the author and the audiences’ background, however, we begin to understand the sentiment that the Anglo-Saxons have felt upon hearing them recited in their mead-halls; their pride in the past and their heroic ancestors are at once invoked and their emotions stirred.

Another aspect of the poem that may be easily missed by a modern audience is the gravity of Hrothgar’s shame after the desolation of Grendel upon Heorot. The poem describes it thus:

Swá ðá mæl-ceare       maga Healfdenes

singála séað;                ne mihte snotor hæleð

wéan onwendan;        wæs þæt gewin tó swýð,

láþ ond longsum

[Even thus over the sorrows of that time did the son of Healfdene brood unceasingly, nor could that wise prince put aside his grief; too strong was that strife, too dire and weary to endure][5] (189-192).

This grief, to a modern audience, would seem to be simply grief on one level: one which Hrothgar experiences because his fellow men were murdered. But to an Anglo-Saxon audience, there is another level. Hrothgar is inconsolable not only because of the deaths of his retainers, but also because he cannot exact wergild, or man-price, from Grendel. Nor could he personally try to seek vengeance against a being as powerful and ruthless as Grendel (Greenblatt et al. 1: 38). Only a hero of Beowulf’s calibre could have defeated such an enemy.

Beowulf’s victory against Grendel meant not only the important preservation of Heorot, it also meant the restoration of Hrothgar’s honour and especially the advancing of Beowulf’s glory. The bard understood the importance of glory in the life of a heroic warrior. In their life in the mortal world, this quest for glory was the warrior’s primary goal. This belief can be exactly paralleled to that of the Anglo-Saxons’ Norse neighbours, a belief that was expressed in their old religion:

Odin came to know that the world would end in a great battle known as Ragnarök, during which the wolf Fenrir would swallow him. His son Vidar would then avenge him. Odin knew the fate of all the gods – who among them would survive Ragnarök and who would not – and also that the universe would be largely destroyed. His foreknowledge in some ways echoes the Norse warrior’s fatalism: death is inevitable, but word-fame lasts forever.

…The Twilight of the Gods is in many ways a metaphor for the personal Ragnarök that each Viking warrior faces when his time comes. His fate was decided long ago, just like those of his gods, and he goes to meet it with a brave heart, although he is spared the burden of knowledge that Odin carried. If it is his time, then he will die and go to wait for the day of Ragnarök. If not, then he can hope that there will be other battles.

It is not hard to see how these beliefs tended to produce fearless warriors who would face any odds and were not deterred by hardship. A hopeless battle was not something to be avoided; it was an opportunity to win undying word-fame in the mortal world and ultimately a place in the golden age after Ragnarök (Dougherty 28, 39).

Consequently, only a glorious and fame-worthy death would give justice to the life of Beowulf. Thus the poet provides Beowulf with his last fight against a dragon, not unlike the fight of the Norse warrior-god Thor against the Midgard Serpent. In very similar ways, they fight to preserve their society but also to secure their legendary status which gives them a place amongst the greatest of Germanic warriors-heroes.

A modern reader unfamiliar with northern medieval culture and beliefs will find it difficult to understand these complex messages within Beowulf. In uncovering these themes and messages, a New Historicist approach will yield the most successful results because it takes into account the history and context of both the author and the work, as well as the critics and readers who deal with them, which factors are of utmost import when dealing with a poem like Beowulf that is comparable to no other.

Works Cited:

Brodeur, Arthur. The Art of Beowulf. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.    Print.

Dougherty, Martin. Vikings. London: Amber Books, 2013. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance”. The        Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1443- 1445. New York:           Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Simpson, and Alfred David. The Norton Anthology of English           Literature. 2 vols. New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 1962-2013. Print.

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print.

Hill, Thomas. “The Christian Language and Theme of Beowulf”. Companion to Old English         Poetry. Amsterdam: VU UP, 1994. Print.

O’Donohue, Heather. English Poetry and Old Norse Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2014. Print.

Stanley, E.G. “Manuscript – Sources – Audience”. Beowulf: A Norton Critical Editions, 71.          New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1975. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London:         Harper Collins Publishers, 2014. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien.   London: George Allen & Unwin Publishers, 1983. Print.

Tuso, Joseph. Beowulf: A Norton Critical Editions. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,            Inc., 1975. Print.

Veeser, H. Aram. The New Historicism. New York: Chapman and Hall Inc., 1989. Print.

Whitelock, Dorothy. “The Audience of Beowulf”. Old English Literature. Yale UP: 2002.                        Print.

[1] By an understanding of the language I cannot specifically refer to the reader’s actual fluency – translations in hand are useful, but for a more thorough understanding of the poem, a grasp of Old English, however minimal it is, will be greatly insightful.

[2] See Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, p. 162

[3] Hill, 64

[4] Trans. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, p.13

[5] Ibid p.18