II. PAGAN EPIC POETRY

1. Germanic epic poetry

For didactics' sake we speak of Pagan and Christian literature written in the Anglo-Saxon period. Since they wrote nothing down until they had become Christianized, and since in many respects Christian ideals and heroic ideals are difficult to reconcile, it is natural that very little poetry has survived that is surely pre-Christian in composition. However Beowulf, the greatest Germanic epic poem, contains much evidently pre-Christian material, even though the author of the particular form of the poem that has come down to us was a Christian who refers to events of the Old (but not the New) Testament. Several other short pieces or fragments also seem to reflect the pagan period without Christian colouring. Yet the vast bulk of Old English poetry is specifically Christian, devoted to religious subjects.

BEOWULF

2. Beowulf: A Literary Work.

Beowulf survives in only one version, in a manuscript now in the British Museum. It is not known when the poem was composed, or by whom. The dating of this copy of Beowulf 's manuscript is still a matter of controversy: some scholars put it as early as 700 others think it was probably made by scribes of about the year 1000, and the language is the "classical" late West-Saxon of the Wessex of Ethelred and Aelfric. We know that Beowulf was admired in the ninth century by King Alfred. The poem, first called Beowulf in 1805, was first printed in 1815. Burton Raffel's translation of Beowulf contains a prologue and 43 numbered sections; other translations do not divide the text into numbered sections. It is composed of 3,182 lines, which make it the longest Old English poem. Beowulf's literary composition is traditionally placed in the Northumbria of the age of Bede, who died in 735, though recently the less well documented Mercia of King Offa, who reigned from 757 to 796, has found its supporters.

3. The Plot of the Poem and its Structure.

The central hero of the poem is Beowulf, and its main stories are Beowulf's fights against two monsters, a male and a female, Grendel and Grendel's mother, and a dragon. The poet also introduces a lot of incidental stories and digressions. On the whole the poem tells two stories, the youth and old age of Beowulf, unified by the presence of Beowulf who is the hero of both. According to the major events in the life of Beowulf, the hero of the Geats, the poem can be divided into two parts.

First Part

In the first part Beowulf is in his youth and achieves glory in a foreign land by fighting and killing first Grendel, a monster who has been attacking Heorot, the hall of the Danish King Hrothgar, and then Grendel's mother, who comes the next night to avenge her son, in an underwater cave. The fight in the subterranean cave is fierce, both sides evenly matched in strength, until Beowulf sees a giant sword on the cave wall which he uses to kill the monster and cut off Grendel's head, after which the sword-blade melts. Beowulf returns triumphant with the sword-hilt and Grendel's head.

Second Part

In the second part, Beowulf is in his old age, having ruled his country well for fifty years, after the deaths of Hygelac and his son Heardred. Tragedy strikes again and Beowulf goes to fight a dragon who is destroying his people and his realm. The dragon has guarded an ancient warrior's treasure until a fugitive slave robbed the hoard in order to gain the favour of his lord. Beowulf decided to fight the dragon alone and has a fireproof iron shield made. At the end of the fight Beowulf, after being mortally wounded and helped by his kinsman Wiglaf, kills the dragon. The poem ends with Beowulf's funeral and a prophecy of disaster for his people, the Geats.

The fight against the dragons is not like the tribal feuds the warriors were involved in because, according to their social code, they had the special duty of vengeance; Grendel and Grendel's mother are not part of that social order: they represent fatal evil and Beowulf's unknown destiny. Fighting against Grendel Beowulf chooses the heroic way of life and tests Fate. Beowulf puts himself in a position from which he cannot withdraw. Doom ultimately claims him, but not until he has fulfilled to its limits the pagan ideal of a heroic life.

4. Features, Themes and Criticism

"Beowulf, - writes M. Alexander, - is a typical heroic poem not only in its central figure but also in its world and its values. The warriors are either feasting or fighting, they are devoted to glee and glory." However, the poem presents a variety of features and the student should focus his attention on some its most important aspects, such as:

1) Old English, the language used by the Beowulf-poet;
2) Nordic and Germanic Elements;
3) Heroic Legend;
4) Historical Elements;
5) Pagan and Christian Elements;
6) Allegorical Elements;
7) Beowulf as an epic.

5. Old English

Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, was used by the Beowulf-poet. The Old English Beowulf-poet enjoyed using poetic diction, often old-fashioned words, with frequent use of metonimy (when the part of an object stands for the whole), compound adjectives, compound-nouns, and the popular kenning, a condensed simile, usually in the form of a compound word. A large number of compound words are found in Old English verse, but many of these are originally coined by the Beowulf-poet. Old English vocabulary collects groups of meanings as the word is repeatedly heard in different context. Words like Wyrd, "Fate", "Providence", or dom, "glory", "reputation", have a lot of associations, pagan and Christian alike. The most common poetic device in Beowulf is variation, a word or expression is repeated, not identically, and each repetition adds a new quality to the concept. For example, King Hrothgar is called by Beowulf, "son of Healfdene", "guardian of the people", "glorious hero", "Shepherd of the Danes", and each title adds another quality to Hrothgar. The Old English poets also used the so called interlacing technique which allowed the poets to weave together simple statements to create a complex, poetic picture of the event they were narrating. Another expression to explain is the "word hoard" the Beowulf-poet talks about. The Old English poets refer to their "word-hoard", which indicates a stock of verse formulas, expressions, often half-lines, which would suit the particular matter on a particular occasion.

6. Nordic-Germanic Elements

The Beowulf-poet found most of his material in Nordic-Germanic folklore, heroic legends, historical traditions and biblical sources. Specific resemblances exist between Beowulf and certain Scandinavian sagas. The action of the poem, that is Beowulf's three struggles 1) with Grendel and 2) Grendel's mother in the first part, 3) and the dragon in the second part, has its source in folklore. Beowulf's youth is typical of the folklore hero. The poem contains two songs, "The Lay of Sigemund" and "The Lay of Finnsburg," that show a likeness and between these two stories and and the Middle High German epic poem The Nibelungenlied (written about A.D. 1200). In the Nibelungenlied there culminated a tradition of heroic poetry reaching back to the sixth or fifth century A.D. in the lands of the Germanic peoples. The allusive nature of the references in the Sigemund lay to the heroic exploits of Sigemund and to his victory over a dragon, indicate that the poet was able to assume aquaintance on the part of his readers with the primitive material from which the Volsungasaga, the dramatic northern legend to which the Nibelungenlied has relationship.
The alliterative verse form that the Beowulf- poet used is another indication of the Nordic-Germanic tradition.

7. Heroic Legends

The heroic legends dealt with in Beowulf are sometimes fused with historical elements and folklore. Sometimes a historical figure is disguised in legends which the Beowulf-poet uses to set off a character, such as the legend of Scyld himself, supposedly the founder of the Danish throne, a hero who established an example of strong king. His name is associated with the legend of a child arriving in a boat with a sheaf of corn.

8. Historical Elements

The youthful heroism and the last battle and death of Beowulf, even if rooted in the primitive material of folk-tale, is skilfully projected against a background of history and chronicle. The name of Hrothgar is recorded in the Danish Chronicles (written in Latin) and mentioned by other poets of later dates. The civil war alluded to by Beowulf, was well known to the Beowulf audience, who also knew about the attack on Heorot by the Heathobards under Ingeld. In general the allusions in Beowulf have to do with the civil dissensions, the tragic and bitter feuds, which characterize the chronicles of the Geats and the Danes. In this epic narrative the two principal figures are Beowulf and Hrothgar who were respectively of Geatish and Danish blood. The bishop Gregory of Tours (c.540-94), in his Historia Francorum, records Hygelac's obsessive raiding against the Franks. In about 516 Hygelac himself lost his life, when he embarked upon an expedition against the Franks. In the poem there are passages which deal with the chronicle of the Geats and their constant and bitter wars with the Swedes. Hystory also supports the Geats' fear of being annihilated by the fact that they seem to disappear from history during the sixth century. Onela is a historic figure whose authenticity has been proven by archeological finds.

9. Pagan and Christian Elements

Christian and biblical elements are evident in the poem. Some critics believe that Beowulf was composed by a pagan poet, and that the presence of the Christian material is to be explained by subsequent excision of pagan, and interpolation of Christian, passages. Others have argued that the Christian elements represent the work of a poet with vague and general knowledge of the faith, or merely nominal adherence to it. Most critics tend to think that the original Beowulf-poet was a Christian who included both Christian and pagan elements at the time of writing and that the Christian elements are not the work of a reviser or interpolator. The primitive material of Beowulf derived from pagan folk-tale, chronicle and legends emerged at last as a Christian poem, stresses M. Alexander. "This mutation, moreover is not a matter of altered phrases, or interpolated references to the Christina faith, but is a deeply pervasive infusion of Christian spirit coloring thought and judgment, governing motive and action, a continuous and active agent in the process of transformation." However there are pagan elements that resist change, or that are only partially subdued by the influence of the Christian spirit.
We know that the ideas of right living, of loyalty and good kingship were also deeply rooted in the early Germanic and pagan societies, so not a all of these ideas can be attributed to Christian ideals. Many ideas of rightliving, such as loyalty and generosity, were derived from the concept of "comitatus", and the relationship between lord and thane. When the Beowulf-poet speaks of praise, the word does not have the Christian connotation suggested by the concept of "heavenly praise". The Beowulf-poet speaks about the praise of one's peers, praise which the warrior must gain in order to be remembered by future generations. The concept of "hell" was known to the pagans, and the Beowulf-poet makes reference to "hell" as the destiny of Grendel.
Another important concept in Beowulf is "Fate", or "Wyrd". In the Anglo-Saxon world Christianity and paganism existed simultaneously but in the Old English vocabulary there were only pagan terms with which Anglo-Saxons would embody Christian concepts. It was an incomplete fusion of pagan and Christian, which is reflected in the parallelism of reference to the blind and inexorable power of "Wyrd", or Fate, and to the omnipotence of a divine Ruler who governs all things well. Sometimes "God and Wyrd are brought into juxtaposition in such manner as to imply control of Fate by the superior power of Christian divinity." However, even in survivals of pagan material the modifying influence of Christian thought is often evident.

10. Allegorical Elements

The presence of Christian elements in Beowulf has led many critics to view the poem as an allegory of salvation. Among the many examples the Allegorists illustrate there is the scene at Grendel's pool, when Beowulf prepares to descend into its watery depths. The pool is seen as hell (but in the dark and misty atmosphere, the pagan too would see the place as hell, for he too knew about hell). Allegorists point to Beowulf's preparation for descent as though he were preparing for death, forgiving his enemies before descending, and not mourning for life. The descent is very much like a military campaign against the Powers Below, and upon Beowulf's victory, a light penetrates the scene beneath the waters. Beowulf returns with his trophies, and the atmosphere signals the end of winter and the return of spring. Some critics interpret this episode as containing parallels to the death of Christ, his harrowing of hell, (Christ's delivery of the souls of patriarchs and prophets), and his resurrection.
The Christian story of salvation is the most common referent for the allegorists. Beowulf is seen as the saviour of the Danes, who are being afflicted and terrorized by Grendel. Like Satan, jealous of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Grendel is jealous of the joy and happiness in Heorot. Because Grendel is associated with the powers of darkness and evil and because Beowulf has many attributes of Christ, the allegorists see the hero of the poem as an allegorical Christ, bringing salvation to the world.
Grendel is also seen as a man-eating ogre having kinship with the devil, but he remains an ogre, since he is not a "soul-destroying monster." Others see Grendel strictly as a monster, he is simply a descendant of Cain, as the Beowulf-poet states.
According to allegorists, the salvation story is repeated three times: 1) after the fight with Grendel, 2) the second being Beowulf's descent into the pool, 3) and the third being Beowulf's struggle with the dragon. In his last struggle with the dragon, Beowulf gives his life for his people, just as Christ gave his life for humanity. The allegorical interpretation is an open question. Most readers and critics recognize the Beowulf-poet's references to the Old Testament, but few are able to find direct references to the New Testament.