“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).

ALIENATION, MOURNING, AND MELANCHOLIA IN ELIOT’S “PRELUDES” AND “PRUFROCK”

Two of the most fundamental and universal issues of existence and ontology concern the relationships of individuals with their own Selves and those they have with other human beings. Upon entering a new and unprecedented age – an age of profound skepticism and cynicism – the modernists encountered challenges of a new front; with the façades and pretenses of the humanistic ideals of previous ages having fallen apart, there remained an anxiety of facing the emptiness of the human “Being”. There is a fear that humanity has become as cold and empty as the concrete buildings that surround it. The individual’s alienation from one’s Self and from human fellowship are themes that T.S. Eliot explores in “Preludes” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. In “Preludes”, the speaker presents the people of his (or her) city to be unaware of their alienation from their sense of humanity. Being conscious of such an alienation, he, as an observer, is in turn depicted to be in a state of mourning. The speaker in “Prufrock”, to a more personal degree, is shown to be aware of his own alienation from the world, and such a self-awareness manifests itself through his state of melancholia.

Sigmund Freud’s work on Mourning and Melancholia (1917)[1] distinguishes for us the differences between the two terms. “Mourning,” Freud writes, “is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one.”[2] In melancholia, “one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost, and it is all the more reasonable to suppose that the patient cannot consciously perceive what he has lost either.”[3] “In mourning,” Freud puts in another way, “it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.”[4] It appears, then, that mourning according to Freud is a condition whereby an individual is in a position of being inside looking out, and in melancholia the individual is outside looking in. The mourning subject is thus in a state of extrospection, and the melancholic subject in a state of introspection[5].

In the “Preludes”, we are presented with a speaker and his/her omniscient observations. The first two movements however do not immediately indicate the presence of an interactive speaker – a first-person narrator in particular – as they seem to be fragmentary descriptions of city life by a third-person, uninvolved narrator. In fact, it is not until the third movement that the pronoun “you” is mentioned, and the possibility of the Preludes being a dramatic monologue, when taken as a whole, comes into play. But the “I” that appears in IV.10 and the idea that the “I” is interacting with “these images” (IV.11) contextualise the previous passages. They become the speaker’s very observations of the city, its atmosphere, and its people.

And what does the speaker observe? He notes the presence of “burnt-out ends of smoky days” (I.4), “withered leaves” (I.7), “vacant lots” (I.8), “broken blinds” (I.10), and a “lonely cab-horse” (I.12). The adjectives attached to the speaker’s descriptions mark a sense of absence, decay, and isolation that pervades throughout the city. If we take the descriptions further as Symbolistic[6] imageries, they become indicative of the internal emptiness of the city’s inhabitants. Indeed, when the speaker begins to observe the “you” of the third movement, he/ she draws the readers (to whom “you” is possibly referring), and consequently the whole of humanity, into the city space and the poem’s artistic frame. What we have then is a totalising and omniscient observation of modern humanity by the poem’s speaker.

The modern human being here is alienated from its sense of humanity. We see a soul “trampled by insistent feet / At four and five and six o’clock” (IV.3-4), unnoticed by people during the business of rush hours. The human Soul, far from being sublime, is “constituted” by a “thousand sordid images” (III.5,4). The only feeling beings are the personifications of evening and morning in the first and second movements. Termed by Montgomery as “collectives”[7], the entities of evening and morning are the only ones conscious of the sceneries in the respective movements, collecting “the small world of each consciousness.”[8] Such an observation of modern humanity’s condition draws the speaker into a state of mourning. He “clings” to “fancies that are curled around these images” (IV.10-11) – his observations – in an attempt to hold onto “the notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing” (IV.12-13). This “thing” is the lost sense of humanity of the speaker’s community: the city for him has become “poor and empty”[9] – and so have its residents. The speaker is unable to redeem this lost and fragile “thing,” and thus ironically comforts himself with the idea that “the worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel in vacant lots” (IV.15-16). The courses of human actions are as vain and absurd as the attempts to gather fuel in empty spaces.

In “Prufrock,” the speaker is conscious of his own alienation from the world. Prufrock’s state of alienation is immediately set up in the poem through the epigraph from Guido da Montefeltro, wherein he implies that Dante will not be able to return to the human world. Juxtaposed into the poem, the epigraph subsequently reflects Prufrock’s own isolation from the human world. “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” (45-46)[10] Prufrock asks. Indeed, he is a character hesitant to impose the footprints of his essence – his actions – upon the universe. He frequently repeats the question “Do I dare?” and asks moreover with the same frequency, “How should I presume?” He opts to remain as an observer, unnoticed, as he is in “the room” where “women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” (13-14). Prufrock adds that he “should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” (73-74) marking his extreme displacement from human society. Here he is not only non-human (he is depicted through the synecdoche as something like a crab) but he is more importantly situated far away from the business of the modern city, scuttling unnoticeably in the still waters. He sees the “mermaids singing,” but they sing “each to each” (124). He understands his complete exclusion, and simply says, “I do not think that they will sing to me” (125). He settles on being one who merely observes them, seeing the mermaids “riding seaward on the waves” (126). Prufrock’s isolation and exclusion put him in the position of an unnoticed observer, but eventually he becomes seemingly comfortable with it.

Nevertheless, Prufrock’s alienation and isolation drive him into melancholia, a condition characterised by “an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale”[11]. He knows that he is “no prophet” and such a fact is “no great matter” (83). He describes himself as a man of high class, possessing a “morning coat” (42) and a “necktie rich and modest” (43), but after having “seen the eternal Footman hold [his] coat, and snicker” (85) – an image of Death awaiting – is made afraid of Death’s insubordination; the illusion of security his class offers him no longer seems to him believable. Prufrock also admits that he is “not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” (111), but he quickly moves into further diminishing his status to “an attendant lord” (112) and eventually to “the Fool” (119). Ultimately all the walls that Prufrock raises to protect his ego break down, and all that is left is someone who, despite his sophistication, fails to break through the boundaries of the “formulated phrase,” and who, consequently, becomes himself formulated, paralyzed and unable to do anything about his isolation.

What we have then in “Preludes” and “Prufrock” are characters who deal, directly or indirectly, with alienation, but who ultimately are unable to do anything about it. They enter a state of mourning or melancholia, but their conditions prove to be paralyzing. Being in such dispositions, they position themselves to be mere observers of the alienation of others or the isolation of themselves. They deprive themselves of fruitful human interactions, but perhaps in invoking the readers in their use of the word “you,” they are seeking companionship with and, ultimately, empathy from the readers.

 

[1] Taken from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volue XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258.

[2] p.243

[3] p. 245

[4] p. 246

[5] And indeed, Freud remarks that “the disturbance of self-regard is absent in mourning” (p.244) as mourning does not concern the ego as much as melancholia.

[6] For a brief overview of the Symbolist movement, see Sam Phillips,. …isms: Understanding Modern Art. (New York: Universe Publishing, 2012), 18-19.

[7] Marion Montgomery, “Memory and Desire in Eliot’s ‘Preludes’ in South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 38, No. 2 (South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 1973), 63.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Freud, 246.

[10] All references to “Prufrock” taken from T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in The Longman Anthology of British Literature, eds. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar (Pearson Education, Inc., 2010), 2287-2291.

[11] Freud, 246.

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.

OLD ENGLISH ELEGIAC LOSS AND SELF-IDENTITY IN “THE WANDERER” AND “THE SEAFARER”

In this essay I argue that the Old English elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” demonstrate the instability and fragility of Anglo-Saxon society. The reason for such instability is that the members of the un-Christian Anglo-Saxon society have no knowledge of God nor subsequently could they have any relationship with him. My analogies are based primarily on Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” from Book 7 of The Republic, and shall be furthermore expounded upon with Plotinus’ writing “On the Intellectual Beauty”. After discussing the essential content of Plato’s myth and the relationship thereof with Plotinus’ work, I shall apply them both as filters for my interpretation first to “The Wanderer”, and then to “The Seafarer”.

Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” demonstrates an individual’s release from ignorance into a profound experience upon seeing the very image of  God, whom he calls the True, Good, and Beautiful, and whom Plotinus, in his work, calls the “One”. This encounter with God allows the individual to receive enlightenment, where, being thus released from ignorance, he is given the opportunity to contemplate God as he is (Plato 280). And being enlightened by such an experience, he can no longer see the “shadows which he formerly saw”, but rather only the realities of the world outside the cave (Plato 280). It also gives the individual a “perfect self-identity”, as he “forms a multiple unity with the God silently present” (117). This enlightenment causes an individual’s separation[1] from society, as it “upholds some beings, and they see; the lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun” (Plotinus 117). Moreover, it causes the individual to reflect upon his alienation and the state of his fellow-prisoners who are left in the cave, pitying therefore their condition as members of an unenlightened society (Plato 281). Plato explains as well that “those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell” (282). It is this beatific vision that is the profound experience – the conversion point – of the individuals exemplified in Plato’s and Plotinus’ works.

The individual’s conversion point prompts the individual to a journey to reach what Plotinus terms as “the Beauty There” (117), the place of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in Plato’s universe, the residence of God, which is heaven. The journey is, however, not only a spiritual undertaking towards the ideal paradise, but it is, more importantly for the individual, a quest for ultimate self-identity. Plotinus implies that nearness to God allows an individual to see an image of himself in the light of a “better beauty” (Plotinus 117). The individual then would exhibit a desire to set upon a journey to reconcile his image of a better beauty with the reality upon which it is based, a reality which is in the same realm as God, which is the Beauty There. This reconciliation allows the “two [to] become one”, a unity which, in Christian terms, brings together the individual’s soul and God’s own being (Plotinus 117). This, following Plato’s and Plotinus’ works, is thus the objective of the Christian journey, a journey which, upon completion, gives the individual a perfect form of self-identity to be found only in his union with God.

The foundation built upon an individual’s union with God and the journey for such a unity are precisely what concern(s) the author(s) of both “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”. According to Crossley-Holland, both poems are chiefly concerned with the topic of loss (46). It is through the loss of the essential elements of their Anglo-Saxon societies that the speakers in the poems mark their alienation from their comitatus. This loss and alienation of the speakers evolves in the poems into a loss of their identity. Sharma suggests that “identity is always correlative to a cultural world” (611). Removing the individual from his society would thus be taking away his identity. The poems present this problem of identity and attempt to show the solution by having the speakers base the foundation of their identities not on their society but entirely on God.

In “The Wanderer” there is a longing to find a “ground for a self threatened by fragmentation and an abject loss of coherence on account of cultural upheaval” (Sharma 612). The cultural upheaval is experienced by the speaker of the poem through the “death of kinsmen” (line 7), his removal from his homeland (20), and his deprivation of the essential elements that make up his Anglo-Saxon heroic society, elements such as a hall and “a lord of rings” (25). All of these aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture that are specified in the poem point out to the speaker’s identity as an archetypal warrior of his society. And so his “loss of heroic culture”, as Sharma puts it, results in a loss of heroic identity (612). Indeed, the speaker laments over the complete ruin of his heroic society. He contemplates on “how the time has passed / …as if it never was” (95-96), how “that happy time is no more” (36), and, in lines 92-95, voices out his nostalgia for an atmosphere reflective of his heroic society; for ultimately the speaker stands as the last man of the Heroic Age, being placed in the poem in a “‘fiction’ of the apocalypse” (Green 502) as the Anglo-Saxons would have imagined it. Therefore such is the threat to the speaker’s self-identity that, due to the decline of the Anglo-Saxon heroic world, he experiences an “anxiety of meaninglessness”[2], an anxiety that makes him yearn for a sense stability for his identity.

This sense of stability he cannot find in his society but in God. In a world where kinsmen “fade on their way” (54), where the “middle-earth / from day to day dwindles and fails” (62-63), a world where “all is wretchedness in the realm of earth” (104), and almost everything is fleeting (108-109), the speaker turns to God for relief (1-2). It is in Him where “eal seo fæstnung stondeð” (115). In finding God, the speaker, as Plotinus explains it, “sinks into a perfect self-identity” (117). Through such a kind of self-awareness, the speaker “will learn how to achieve disillusionment, to move from destructive grief to healthy negativity” which is a kind of “melancholy logic” (Champion 195). This healthy negativity manifests itself in the form of the poem, the elegy recited by the speaker, which becomes the remedy, the bote (line 113) of the “good man” (112) for his grief. Where the “memories of kinsmen” (51) fail to bring him consolation, God offers the speaker the experience he needs to attain wisdom, for “no one is wise without his share of winters” (64). It is wisdom that allows the speaker in “The Wanderer”, being a figure representative of the released prisoners in Plato’s Cave, to reflect on his enlightened state and compare it to the state of those still left to “observe the passing shadows” (Plato 281).  Thus, being identified in the last segment of the poem as “snottor on mode”, he is consequently described as one who is “sundor æt rune” (111). The speaker, sundered in his stage of wisdom, and given a perspective through which he can contrast his condition with that of his foregone heroic comitatus, mourns the fleetingness and passing-away of their heroic society through a series of repetitions of “hwær” (92-93), “eala” (94-95), and “læne” (108-109). His final remark in the poem serves to emphasise his “frofre” (115) in the steadfastness of God that is in stark contrast with the venerating lamentation that makes up most of his speech.

In “The Seafarer” there is a more apparent sense of immediacy expressed by the speaker to undertake a journey towards the “Beauty There”. He states his dissatisfaction with earthly life, saying, “Forþon me hatran sind / dryhtnes dreamas þonne þis deade lif, / læne on londe” (64-66). He is described by Greenfield as “an aspiring peregrinus, a voluntary exile who will relinquish earthly pleasures for the greater joys of Heaven” (15). At first, the speaker perceives his journey in the sea to be “a time of hardship” (3), a “wræccan lastum” (15), and furthermore describes himself to have “harboured bitter sorrow” (4), being a “sea-weary man” (12) who is “careworn and cut off from [his] kinsmen” (14). But his perspective on his sea-voyages changes beginning on line 33, marked by the word “nu” and a subsequent change of tense from the past to the present, where he is forthwith “stirred” (34) by his “heart’s longings / …to undertake a journey” (36-37). It is a “journey”, Calder explains, “to find the heavenly land” (272). Which journey is prompted by the speaker’s attempt to “locate [his life] in a meaningless present” (Green 506).

Indeed, the speaker is attempting to find a sense of belonging in a world where the “days of great glory / …are gone forever” (81-82) and “his former friends, / the sons of princes, have been placed in the earth” (93-94). And, as the speaker in “The Wanderer”, the speaker in “The Seafarer” endeavors to find his “perfect self-identity” in God. The chief catalyst that threatens to trap permanently the speaker in a meaningless present is the loss of his lord, whereupon there will no longer be a “protector-kinsman for his wretched spirit to travel toward” (Empric 25). His reaction to the threat, as exhibited in the word-play on the word “dryhten” in lines 41 and 43, is to shift his focus from earthly to spiritual pursuits (Greenfield 19-20). No longer does he need to rely on an earthly dryhten to give him a sense of self-identity; he realizes that “the splendours of this earth will [not] survive for ever” (66-67). Instead he looks to God and His “ecan eadignesse” (120) for permanent stability.

Upon thus being able to contemplate and unify their identity with God – the Sun in Plato’s myth – the speakers of both poems shift their speech from something that reflects the personal to something that ponders on the universal[3]. Their unification with God elevates the speakers to a place of greater vision and enlightenment, the place outside Plato’s Cave, whereupon they may contemplate not only their own condition, but also, in a new light, that of their un-Christianised comitatus. It is with this transcendent understanding that they gain the wisdom to talk about the instability of their society that is deprived of the knowledge of God. And it is also with such an understanding that they share in the poems the final mutual advice that invites their audience to find their perfect self-identification in God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Primary sources:

 

Plato. Book VII, The Republic. Plato: Selected Dialogues. Trans. Benjamin Jowett.           Pennsylvania: The Franklin Centre, 1983. 279-282. Print.

 

Plotinus. “On the Intellectual Beauty”. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and                Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007. 111      -119. Print.

 

“The Wanderer”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt.      W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 107-110. Print.

 

“The Wanderer”. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Ed.            Anne L. Klinck. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992.       75-78. Print.

 

“The Seafarer”. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Ed. Anne    L. Klinck. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. 79   -83. Print.

 

 

 

 

Secondary sources:

 

Beaston, Lawrence. “The Wanderer’s Courage”. Neophilologus, 2005. Vol. 89: 119-          137. Online.

 

Calder, Daniel G. “Setting and Mode in ‘The Seafarer’ and ‘The Wanderer’.                      Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 1971. Vol. 72 No. 2: 264-275. Online.

 

Champion, Margaret Gunnarsdóttir. “From Plaint to Praise: Language as Cure in ‘The       Wanderer’”. Studia Neophilologica, 2008. Vol. 69 No. 2: 187-202. Online.

 

Empric, Julienne H. “’The Seafarer’: An Experience in Displacement”. Notre Dame           English Journal. University of Notre Dame, 1972. Vol. 7 No. 2: 23-33. Online.

 

Green, Martin. “Man, Time, and Apocalypse in ‘The Wanderer’, ‘The Seafarer’, and          ‘Beowulf’”. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. University of        Illinois Press, 1975. Vol. 74 No. 4: 502-518. Online.

 

Greenfield, Stanley B. “Attitudes and Values in ‘The Seafarer’. Studies in Philology.         University of North Carolina Press, 1954. Vol. 51 No. 1: 15-20. Online.

 

“The Seafarer”. The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Ed. Kevin Crossley-Holland.        Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2009. 53-56. Print.

Sharma, Manish. “Heroic Subject and Cultural Substance in The Wanderer”.                      Neophilologus, 2012. Vol 96: 611-629. Online.

[1] Perhaps elevation would be a better term. An individual’s enlightenment causes him to see himself in a better state than that of the prisoners in the cave (Plato 281).

[2] ‘The anxiety of meaninglessness…is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings’ (Beaston 126)

[3] See Sharma 621, Champion 197, and Empric 23.

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.

Beowulf and the Aristotelian Tragic Hero

In this paper I argue that the titular character of Beowulf is, in accordance with Aristotle’s perspective, a tragic hero. I will apply Aristotle’s ideas from the Poetics into the plot and characterisation of Beowulf. I will first look into the definition of a tragedy in Chapter 6, and proceed to examine the idea of the tragic hero in Chapter 13. Therefrom I will work with the overall plot and structure of Beowulf, then direct my attention specifically towards the character Beowulf. My essay and criticism draw ideas from the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Emmett Finnegan, Seamus Heaney, Arthur Brodeur, Frederick Klaeber, et al. I will also take to consideration the culture and ideals of the Anglo-Saxon audience to which the author of Beowulf wrote, observing how they might identify with the hero and the circumstances that affect him.

In setting the ground for us to expound on Aristotle’s idea of a tragic hero, it is of chief import to know and understand first the definition of a tragedy. Aristotle explains the essence of a tragedy in Chapter 6 of his Poetics:

Tragedy is…an imitation of a noble and complete action, having the proper magnitude; it employs language that has been artistically enhanced by each of the kinds of linguistic adornment, applied separately in the various parts of the play; it is presented in dramatic, not narrative form, and achieves, through the representation of pitiable and fearful incidents, the catharsis of such pitiable and fearful incidents.

…In addition to the arguments already given, the most important factors by means of which tragedy exerts an influence on the soul are the parts of the plot, the reversal and recognition[1].

In Chapter 13, we have the definition of a tragic hero, defined thus: “This would be a person who is neither perfect in virtue and justice, nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity; but rather, one who succumbs through some miscalculation”. We are then equipped with the proper elements of tragedy: the catharsis, reversal, recognition, and suffering – and the hero who succumbs because of Hamartia.

Trying to incorporate Aristotelian ideas into Beowulf presents us with a minor, solvable problem. It is uncertain whether the author of Beowulf, whoever he may be, had any knowledge of Aristotle’s Poetics. Although he was most likely a cleric (O’Donohue 11), knowledgeable in Latin[2], possessing “a considerable learning in native lays and traditions” (Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics 26-27), and thus was a learned man. In any case, there is no evidence in the text that he was interested in purposely trying to assimilate Aristotelian ideals into his work. This does not mean, however, that they are not present in Beowulf. Rather, being elegiac in tone, we can find it rife with elements of a tragedy.

How, then, is Beowulf a tragedy? As an “imitation of a noble and complete action, having the proper magnitude”, the story depicts the actions of King Hrothgar, Ruler of the Danes, descendant of the Shieldings[3], and, more importantly, those of Beowulf, Géata dryhten, Ruler of the Geats (l. 2576). In style, it is written in Old English alliterative verse, abounding with kennings such as hron-ráde (10) and different names for mythological creatures such as eotenas, ylfe, orcneas, gígantas (112-113); “a product of thought and deep emotion” (Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics 20). Beowulf, moreover, depicts plenty of pitiable and fearful events (and the catharses of such) regarding the Danish and Geatish people.

We hear first of the desolation caused by Grendel’s gúð-cræft (127). What had started as a celebration of God’s creation actually brought about the attention of Grendel:

…sé þe in þrýstrum bád,

þæt hé dógora gehwám    dréam gehýrde

hlúdne in healle (87-89).

Grendel’s “powers of destruction were plain” (Heaney 127) “as dawn brightened” (Heaney 126). Thus we are presented with the story’s first example of peripeteia, anagnorisis, and consequently of suffering. Hrothgar himself admits to believing

…þæt ic mé ænigne

under swegles begong                  gesacan ne tealde.

Hwæt mé þæs on éple                  edwenden cwóm

gyrn æfter gomne,                        seoþðan Grendel wearð,

eald-gewinna,                               ingenga mín (1772-1774).

Herein comes Beowulf, our tragic hero; and along with him, the audiences’ realisation of what is meant to be a foreknown beleaguering of Hrothgar’s hall by Grendel. Hrothgar and Heorot do not appear only in Beowulf, but in a few other sources as well, most noteworthy of which is Widsith. R.W. Chambers remarks: “The chief value of the references to Heorot in Widsith lies in their correcting the impressions which we get from Beowulf” (79). By this he meant that “the poet meant Beowulf to stand out in contrast to the masters of Heorot, a house of heroes second to none in all northern story, but tainted by incest and the murder of kin[4]” (84).

We are thus given a very ironic picture of Heorot, which is furthermore intensified with the introduction of Unferth in the story. Unferth, whose name means Unpeace or Quarrel (Tolkien, Beowulf 209), is guilty of sifjaslit[5], the murder of kinsmen. “Þéah ðú þínum bróðrum tó banan wurde, / héafod-mægum” (587-588). And yet he is one of Hrothgar’s trusted men, his þyle.Being accused of sifjaslit was not something to be taken lightly in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian societies. The death of the beloved god Baldr was caused by the betrayal of Loki, his kin. This triggered the events which would eventually lead to Ragnarök.

The same grievous offence is charged against Grendel’s clan, where God himself made them outcasts and set a curse upon their kin (ll. 107-114). It comes as no surprise, then, that a monster representative of kin-slaying would lay waste to a tribe whose roots are tainted with the same sin. Only a hero endowed with módgan mægnes, Metodes hyldo (670) would reasonably be able to defeat Grendel. The only reason why Beowulf won the battle, as the poet puts it, was because God’s favour was upon him – Beowulf’s might was a gift from God:

…hwæþre hé gemunde                 mægnes strenge,

gim-fæste gife,                             ðe him God scealde,

ond him tó An-waldan                 áre gelýfde,

frófre ond fultum (1270-1273).

It is the same favour that grants Beowulf victory in his battle against Grendel’s mother. Hrunting, Unferth’s sword, offers him no offensive nor defensive prowess against her. As Robert Emmett Finnegan puts it, “the defenses Beowulf’s society affords him against the evils of the mere are insufficient for victory….Even so, the poet attributes the hero’s ultimate salvation to God” (49). Beowulf himself exclaims:

Ic þæt unsófte                  ealdre gedíge,

wigge under wætere,       weorc genéþde

earfoðlíceæ                       ætrihte wæs

gúð getwæfed,                 nymðe mec God scylde (1555-1558).

And so Beowulf lives many years thereafter to become king of the Geats, where we “find the young proud Beowulf so much like Hrothgar so soon as the Link or Interlude of his return home is over (Tolkien, Beowulf 312). But it is in his rule here as king of the Geats where we will see his final and tragic encounter with the dragon.

Upon hearing about the dragon, Beowulf became “restless hastening toward death: the fate very nigh indeed that was to assail that aged one, to attack the guarded soul within and sunder life from body – not for long thereafter was the spirit of the prince in flesh entrammelled” (Tolkien, Beowulf 84). He had erstwhile not known how he would die (Tolkien, Beowulf 102), and so he “disdained with a host and mighty army to go against that creature flying far abroad. For himself he did not fear the contest, nor account as anything the valour of the serpent, nor his might and courage” (Tolkien, Beowulf 81-82). Too late does he realise that “the defences he brings against the beast are essentially those of his society, and are therefore essentially flawed” (Finnegan, 54).

Moreover, the blessing of God, which was present in Beowulf’s battle against Grendel and his mother, is alarmingly absent in his fight against the dragon. It may well be that it was not the “Almighty’s will” (Heaney 192). Or it may be wyrd that goes ever as it must (Tolkien, Beowulf, 243)[6].

Where, then, can we find Beowulf’s hamartia? “Is Beowulf’s decision to fight the dragon imprudent?”… “Wiglaf criticises Beowulf’s retaliation, and the retainers, Wiglaf testifies, tried to dissuade Beowulf from the attack” (Gwara 243). “Should the hero have accepted help?” (Gwara 267) Perhaps he should have, as Hrothgar would have advised (1771-1784). Had he more retainers with him when he fought the dragon, the outcome would of course be vastly different. However, the poet comments: “Appointed was it that the prince proven of old should find now the end of his fleeting days, of life in this world” (Tolkien, Beowulf 81). Finnegan explains his situation:

…as the hero becomes increasingly entrammeled in the meshes of the society of which he is a part, the victory becomes harder, as in the struggle with Grendel’s mother, until it finally becomes impossible. With the failure of the best of men of his time to overcome the dragon, the society which he as king represents is judged and found wanting (54).

Beowulf’s pagan society is ultimately found defenceless without the help of God. As the poet has lamented in lines 183-186:

Wa bíð þæm ðe sceal

þurh slíðe níð                    sáwle bescúfan

in fýres fæþm,                  frófre ne wénan,

wihte gewendan!

A more positive yet similar expression may be found in the last lines of The Wanderer:

Wel bið þam þe him are seceð,

Frofre to fæder on heofonum,     þærus eal seo fæstnung stondeð.

Beowulf as a Northern hero trusted in his own might, not in God’s power – nor could he, for he knew not God. Thus to be simply himself, the ideal hero, would yet be lacking, and the ideals and the values which he represents, though noble, are “found wanting”. And though this be so, the poet deals with the characters with reverence, and not with condemnation, as he epitaphs Beowulf with

manna mildust      ond mon-ðwærust,

leodum líðost       one lof-geornost (3181-3182).

[1] In Chapter 11 of the Poetics, Aristotle furthermore says, “these are the two parts of the plot, reversal and recognition, and there is also a third part, suffering”; a statement which we will add to his definition.

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

[3] The Shieldings (Skjöldungs) themselves are descended from the Norse god Odin (Sturluson, Prose Edda 7).

[4] “Equally with the poet of Widsith, the poet of Beowulf cannot mention Hrothulf and Hrothgar together without foreboding evil” (Chambers 83).

[5] See Snorri Sturlusson’s “Gylfaginning”, Chapter 51.

[6] Gæð á wyrd swá hío scel (l. 455)

Works cited:

 

Chambers, R.W. Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend. Cambridge: University Press, 1912. Print.

Finnegan, Robert Emmett. Beowulf at the Mere (and elsewhere). Winnipeg: University of  Manitoba Press, 1978. Print.

Gwara, Scott. Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2008.

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

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

2014. 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Consulted:

1979. and E. Keary. The Heroes of Asgard. New York: Mayflower Books, 1979. Print.

Anlezark, Daniel. Myths, Legends, and Heroes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Print.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Beowulf, Updated Edition. New             York: Infobase Publishing, 2007.

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

—. The Prose Edda. New York: American Scandinavian Foundation, 1916. Print.

Byock, Jesse. The Prose Edda. London: Penguin Books, 2005. Print.

Chambers, R.W. Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend. Cambridge: University Press, 1912. Print.

Crossley- Holland, Kevin. The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2009. Print.

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

Earl, James. Thinking About Beowulf. California: Stanford University Press, 1994. Print.

Finnegan, Robert Emmett. Beowulf at the Mere (and elsewhere). Winnipeg: University of  Manitoba Press, 1978. Print.

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

Gwara, Scott. Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2008.

Hall, John. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.          Print.

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

Jones, Gwyn. Kings Beasts and Heroes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Print.

Jónsson, Guðni. Fornaldar Sögur Norðurlanda. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðjan Edda, 1950. Print.

Jónsson, Finnur. Sæmundar-Edda. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja D. Östlunds, 1905. Print.

Jónsson, Guðni. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Reykjavík: Prentfell, 1949. Print.

Klaeber, Frederick. Beowulf. Toronto: University of Toronot Press, 2008. Print.

Larrington, Carolyne. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Mitchell, Bruce. An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell          Publishers, 1995. Print.

Mitchell, B. and Robinson, F. A Guide to Old English. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd,           2012. Print.

New International Version. Caloocan: Image Builders Services and Publishing Foundation,           1984. Print.

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

2014. Print.

Portnoy, Phyllis. The Remnant: Essays on a Theme in Old English Verse. London: Runetree         Press, 2005. Print.

Stitt, J. Michael. Beowulf and the Bear’s Son. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. 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.

Tripp, Raymond P. Jr. More about the Fight with the Dragon. Lanham: University Press of            America, 1983. Print.

Zoega, Geir. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.        Print.

Beowulf: The Anglo-Saxon Thor

Any student versed in both Norse and Anglo-Saxon literatures may immediately recognise similarities between the Norse god Thor and the Anglo-Saxon hero, Beowulf. The text of Beowulf, it may be observed, suggests all throughout many parallelisms not only in the stories of the two characters, but also in the contexts in which both are situated. I would argue that Beowulf not only exemplifies aspects of Thor, but that, moreover, it is in the Beowulf poet’s intention to represent in Beowulf the human figure of the god himself. It is important to recognize this perspective especially in Beowulf’s final battle with the dragon, in order for us to be able to observe how the poet, with beautiful, elegiac undertones, wistfully celebrates Northern heroism.

It is a widely accepted fact in Beowulf’s readership that the author was a Christian writing for a Christian audience. Heather O’Donohue specifically implies that the author was most likely a cleric: “Anglo-Saxon authors were Christians, perhaps mostly clerics, and clerical culture dominated literary production” (11). J.R.R. Tolkien gives the clerical identity of the author more clarity as he expounds on him thus:

…he brought probably first to his task a knowledge of Christian poetry, especially that of the Caedmon school, and especially Genesis. He makes his minstrel sing in Heorot of the Creation of the earth and the lights of Heaven….Secondly, to his task the poet brought a considerable learning in native lays and traditions: only by learning and training could such things be acquired (Monsters and the Critics 26-27).

This blending of the old and new[1], the Christian and the pagan, is a possibility construed from the conditions of the poet’s native land. Harold Bloom thus describes a firmly Christian nation that has “established control of a mixed and somewhat turbulent Anglo-Scandinavian society” (37). It can then be asserted that Beowulf’s author was supplied with enough materials from the past and a sufficient understanding of his present time to be able to compose a poem that could recount the old days with a certain novelty. Furthermore, it can be said of Beowulf (and indeed of any Anglo-Saxon poetry) that the poems “concerned themselves with the resigned but wistful recreation of a distant and faded past, and meditations on ends and beginnings” (O’Donohue, 11).

The antiquarian author of Beowulf artfully draws forth some themes in Norse literature that may not be too apparent at first glance[2]. The principal of these – and my chief concern – is the insinuation of Thor’s characteristics and background into Beowulf. One of the first similarities that arises is the presence of the necklace of the Brosings. Beowulf receives it as an award after killing Grendel (1197-1201). Thor as well wears it in a quest in Þrymsviða:

Létu und hánum

hrynja lukla

ok kvenváðir

of kné falla,

en á brjósti

breiða steinna,

ok hagl ga

of höfuð typðu (19).

O‘Donohue additionally recounts three other common exploits of the heroes. “Both Thor and Beowulf, when young, contend with a sea monster or monsters, out in the ocean, and best their companion; their safe return is carefully noted….Both Thor and Beowulf wrestle with an old woman….Finally, both Thor and Beowulf have a close encounter with a giant’s glove”(20).

I observe two more relevant and related events. Both Beowulf and Thor have a final battle against a serpentine or dragon-like creature about to lay their kingdoms to waste. These occasions have been foreshadowed in the Völuspá for Thor and in the story of Sigemund (ll. 898-915) for Beowulf. The heroes eventually succeed in slaying the dragons, and likewise both die from the battle wounds. It is from these encounters that the heroes achieve their most praiseworthy deed. Tolkien may add:

…as far as we know anything about these old poets, we know this: the prince of the heroes of the North, supremely memorable – hans nafn mun uppi meðan veröldin stendr – was a dragon-slayer. And his most renowned deed, from which in Norse he derived his title Fáfnisbani, was the slaying of the prince of legendary worms (Monsters and the Critics 16).

He also mentions that Beowulf’s first major fight – the one against Grendel – makes for a perfect balance when contrasted against the climactic battle against the wyrm, the dragon[3]. Finnegan observes this buildup thus: “as the hero becomes increasingly entrammeled in the meshes of the society of which he is a part, the victory becomes harder, as in the struggle with Grendel’s mother, until it becomes finally impossible[4]” (54). There is here a sense that is deeply connected with Beowulfian and Viking society, where “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 39).

Seamus Heaney further emphasizes the importance and full meaning of the dragon in Beowulf. “He [the dragon] lodges himself in the imagination as wyrd [fate/destiny] rather than wyrm, more a destiny than a set of reptilian vertebrae” (xix). So represented then is the power of Fate – “Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel”, Fate goes ever as she must (line 445).

Fate in Beowulf is directly linked to God, who is oftentimes referred to in the poem as Metod (in line 180, for example), which is also a word for fate. It is he who decides ultimately the fate of the hero Beowulf. It may be said that his divine blessing is what gives Beowulf protection in his first two major encounters. In his fight with Grendel the poet declares thus:

Ac him Dryhten forgeaf

wig-speda gewiofu,         Wedera leodum,

frofor ond fultum,            þæt hie feond heora

durh anes cræft                ealle ofercomon,

selfes mihtum.                  Soð is gecyþed,

þæt mihtig God                manna cynnes

weold wide-ferð (696-702).

Here God is described as a seamster of fate who rules over mankind, weaving victory for the “Weather-Geats”. In Beowulf’s battle against Grendel’s mother, the poet notes that “halig God / geweold wig-sigor” – “holy God decided the victory” (1553-1554). These blessings are alarmingly absent in Beowulf’s final clash. Thus the hero, boastful – as a Northern hero is wont to be – in his own strength and might, is left to pay the final wages of his heroic endeavours: “the wages of heroism is death” (Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics 26). Finnegan notes that “the dragon fight, particularly when compared with the Grendel battle, is more overtly pagan in tone” (53). Recalling its connections with Thor’s encounter with the Midgard Serpent, this last battle indeed brings with it certain elements from Norse mythology.

What is interesting here is the silence of the poem about God’s actions; neither the poet nor any of the characters speak of God at this point. What the readers see instead is an unfolding of events taken right from the story of Thor’s fight with Jörmungandr. God’s actions are either suspended or withheld, and the pagan clash is allowed to take place without restraint. The aftereffects, as the poet presents them, are plaintively devastating. The gold that Beowulf fought for proves to be useless[5]. Beowulf’s death, moreover, signifies the end of his Geatish kingdom (O’Donohue 22-23).

It seems fitting to say that the poet is weaving the ending into a sombre celebration of Beowulf’s death. Victorious he was indeed, as was Thor, in ridding the world of the evil wyrm, but the poet laments the godlessness of the characters in Beowulf and perhaps the vanity of the heroes’ deaths. Hrólfs Saga Kraka ends in a similar, yet more outspoken note. Master Galterus, seemingly randomly inserted into the final passage of the saga, voices out what I believe to be a remark that Beowulf’s poet only hints at: “Sagði meistarinn Galterus, at mannligir kraftar máttu ekki standast við slíkum fjanda krafti, utan máttr guðs hefði á móti komit, — ‘ok stóð þér þat eitt fyrir sigrinum, Hrólfr konungr, at þú hafðir ekki skyn á skapara þínum’” (Förnaldar 104)[6].

It will feel even more woeful when the readers keep in mind that Heorot, the Great Hall of Hrothgar, a symbol of Valhalla transfigured into the mortal world[7], has been at this point burnt down by the dragon. We may say that it is a representation that helps the poet’s “resigned but wistful recreation” of the past (O’Donohue 11). Likewise, Beowulf’s dirge brings us back to the melancholic tone of an elegy, mourning the loss of a great leader beloved by all.

So the sole might and power of the Thor-like Beowulf, lacking the aid of the Almighty, equates to nought upon facing his Fated doom. Yet here also he finds his glory, his most renowned deed – a licence which in a more ancient time would have given him full permission to enter Valhalla. Fate and Metod have set aside this time for Beowulf, a king beloved and a warrior valiant, to receive lof, the fame, which he, as a Northern hero (right down to the marrow), seeks most eagerly and deserves indubitably.  Thus hans nafn mun uppi meðan veröldin stendr.

[1] Alluding to Tolkien’s quote in The Monsters and the Critics, p.20

[2] O’Donohue notes that we “can only expect carefully meditated allusions at best”. (11) The author has indeed put some careful meditation and deep thought into weaving the story of Beowulf together.

[3] See The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p.32

[4] Finnegan states that the armor is “symbolic of the defenses his society can afford him in the battle” (49)

[5] As Finnegan notes in p. 54

[6] In essence: “Human strength cannot stand such fiendish power, unless the strength of God is employed against it” (Byock)

[7] James Earl suggests this relationship between Heorot and Valhalla in Thinking about Beowulf, pp. 115-116

Bibliography/ Works Consulted:

1979. and E. Keary. The Heroes of Asgard. New York: Mayflower Books, 1979. Print.

Anlezark, Daniel. Myths, Legends, and Heroes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Print.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Beowulf, Updated Edition. New             York: Infobase Publishing, 2007.

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

—. The Prose Edda. New York: American Scandinavian Foundation, 1916. Print.

Byock, Jesse. The Prose Edda. London: Penguin Books, 2005. Print.

Crossley- Holland, Kevin. The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2009. Print.

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

Earl, James. Thinking About Beowulf. California: Stanford University Press, 1994. Print.

Finnegan, Robert Emmett. Beowulf at the Mere (and elsewhere). Winnipeg: University of  Manitoba Press, 1978. Print.

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

Gwara, Scott. Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2008.

Hall, John. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916.          Print.

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

Jones, Gwyn. Kings Beasts and Heroes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Print.

Jónsson, Guðni. Fornaldar Sögur Norðurlanda. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðjan Edda, 1950. Print.

Jónsson, Finnur. Sæmundar-Edda. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja D. Östlunds, 1905. Print.

Jónsson, Guðni. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Reykjavík: Prentfell, 1949. Print.

Larrington, Carolyne. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Mitchell, Bruce. An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell          Publishers, 1995. Print.

Mitchell, B. and Robinson, F. A Guide to Old English. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd,           2012. Print.

New International Version. Caloocan: Image Builders Services and Publishing Foundation,           1984. Print.

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

2014. Print.

Portnoy, Phyllis. The Remnant: Essays on a Theme in Old English Verse. London: Runetree         Press, 2005. Print.

Stitt, J. Michael. Beowulf and the Bear’s Son. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. 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.

Tripp, Raymond P. Jr. More about the Fight with the Dragon. Lanham: University Press of            America, 1983. Print.

Zoega, Geir. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.        Print.