Critical Views of Beowulf

Beowulf Critical views One of the oldest and close to principal(prenominal) remains of the Anglo-Saxon literature is the desperate poem of Beowulf. Its age is unmapped but it comes from somewhere between the 7th and the 10th centuries. It is like a piece of ancient armour rusty and battered, and yet strong. The style of the epic poem is likewise simple- perhaps one should say, austere. Beowulf is indeed the most lucky Old English poem because in it the elements, language, metre, theme, structure, are both most nearly in harmony.The author seems mainly bent upon telling us how his Sea-Goth slew Grendel and the Fire-drake. The poem opens with an account of forefathers of Hrothgar the Scylding, king of Danes. He is the builder of Heorot, the residence where Beowulf contends with Grendel. The poem begins with the burial of Scyld, from whom the dynasty of Scyldings take its name. In ancient days, so ran the legend, scyld when he was baby bird, was drifted in an open boat to the sh ores of Danes.When coming thus out of the privy(p) of the Sea the bark touched the land, the folk found the naked child equivocation asleep in the midst of arms and gems and golden treasure, took him up and hailed him king. As he came alone and mysteriously out of the sea, so he passes away alone and mysteriously into the sea, and the introduction of the poem describes his burial. With as many another(prenominal) treasures he brought, with so many they send him away when he died. And as the poem begins with this burial, so it ends with the burial of Beowulf.His burial is nothing mythic, nothing immunity surrounding it. Beowulf, dead after his fight with the dragon, and his gray hair lying around his hair, is borne to the top of the great cliff that everyplacelooks the sea. The cliff has its own name, titans Ness. The epic is divided into trio chief episodes. Yet these three episodes are well wrought and well diversified. They are not repetitions, incisively there is a chang e of wrestling with Grendel in the night at Heorot and the descent underwater to encounter Grendels mother while the perspective of the Dragon is different again.But the great beauty, the real value, of Beowulf is in its dignity of style. The enounce Grendel, as Lawrence points out, can be associated with the Old English grund, i. e. ground, bottom, or reeking depths that we find the lurking-place of Grendel and his mother. SIMILARITY WITH OTHER WORKS Frederick Panzer in 1910 published the results of a careful study of over 200 folk-tales which have elements of resemblance to the Grendel story. These tales with all their variations of outline have enough in common. One of these is the tale of The patronages Son.From the varying versions of The Bears Son, something like a central frame, or outline, can be reconstructed. An aged king builds a hall or house which is nightly haunted by a demon. The elder sons of the king are unable to overcome the invader, but the youngest son, one time held in little esteem, wrestles with the monster and wounds him. The fight of the demon is marked by a trail of blood. An episode follows in which the hero fights in an underground lair of monsters often against a male and a female.His victory over them, sometimes by a use of a magic sword, frees wrapped maidens who return to the upper world. But the hero is abandoned by unfaithful companions, and must without aid contrive means of escape from the monsters home. The tale often ends with the punishment of the traitors, and the marriage of the hero with one of the carry through maidens. Similarities in this outline to the Grendel episodes of the Beowulf are, of course, general rather than precise. But it seems clear that Panzer is proper in claiming that a relationship exists.