The Condemnation of Heroism in the Tragedy of Beowulf

The Condemnation of Heroism in the Tragedy of Beowulf
Author: Fidel Fajardo-Acosta
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1989
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

This study in the characterization of the epic poem interprets Beowulf as a disconfirmation of the heroic type. It argues that the poem is the vehicle of a strong anti-militaristic, anti-heroic, pacifist wisdom that is the essence of epic literature.

Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf

Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf
Author: Scott Gwara
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2009-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047425022

Readers of Beowulf have noted inconsistencies in Beowulf's depiction, as either heroic or reckless. Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf resolves this tension by emphasizing Beowulf's identity as a foreign fighter seeking glory abroad. Such men resemble wreccan, "exiles" compelled to leave their homelands due to excessive violence. Beowulf may be potentially arrogant, therefore, but he learns prudence. This native wisdom highlights a king's duty to his warband, in expectation of Beowulf's future rule. The dragon fight later raises the same question of incompatible identities, hero versus king. In frequent reference to Greek epic and Icelandic saga, this revisionist approach to Beowulf offers new interpretations of flyting rhetoric, the custom of "men dying with their lord," and the poem's digressions.

A Critical Companion to Beowulf

A Critical Companion to Beowulf
Author: Andy Orchard
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2003
Genre: Beowulf
ISBN: 9781843840299

This is a complete guide to the text and context of the most famous Old English poem. In this book, the specific roles of selcted individual characters, both major and minor, are assessed.

Beowulf - The Tragedy of a Hero

Beowulf - The Tragedy of a Hero
Author: Keld Zeruneith
Publisher: U Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2023-03-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 8793890508

Beowulf may be the most important work in Old English literature, but the poem takes place in Denmark and southern Sweden. And it is Denmark where the poem was first published, and where some of the earliest literary criticism of the work saw the light of day.

Beowulf in Contemporary Culture

Beowulf in Contemporary Culture
Author: David Clark
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2019-11-29
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1527544060

This collection explores Beowulf’s extensive impact on contemporary culture across a wide range of forms. The last 15 years have seen an intensification of scholarly interest in medievalism and reimaginings of the Middle Ages. However, in spite of the growing prominence of medievalism both in academic discourse and popular culture—and in spite of the position Beowulf itself holds in both areas—no study such as this has yet been undertaken. Beowulf in Contemporary Culture therefore makes a significant contribution both to early medieval studies and to our understanding of Beowulf’s continuing cultural impact. It should inspire further research into this topic and medievalist responses to other aspects of early medieval culture. Topics covered here range from film and television to video games, graphic novels, children’s literature, translations, and versions, along with original responses published here for the first time. The collection not only provides an overview of the positions Beowulf holds in the contemporary imagination, but also demonstrates the range of avenues yet to be explored, or even fully acknowledged, in the study of medievalism.

Klaeber's Beowulf, Fourth Edition

Klaeber's Beowulf, Fourth Edition
Author: R.D. Fulk
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 1273
Release: 2008-04-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442692898

Frederick Klaeber's Beowulf has long been the standard edition for study by students and advanced scholars alike. Its wide-ranging coverage of scholarship, its comprehensive philological aids, and its exceptionally thorough notes and glossary have ensured its continued use in spite of the fact that the book has remained largely unaltered since 1936. The fourth edition has been prepared with the aim of updating the scholarship while preserving the aspects of Klaeber's work that have made it useful to students of literature, linguists, historians, folklorists, manuscript specialists, archaeologists, and theorists of culture. A revised Introduction and Commentary incorporates the vast store of scholarship on Beowulf that has appeared since 1950. It brings readers up to date on areas of scholarship that have been controversial since the last edition, including the construction of the unique manuscript and views on the poem's date and unity of composition. The lightly revised text incorporates the best textual criticism of the intervening years, and the expanded Commentary furnishes detailed bibliographic guidance to discussion of textual cruces, as well as to modern and contemporary critical concerns. Aids to pronunciation have been added to the text, and advances in the study of the poem's language are addressed throughout. Readers will find that the book remains recognizably Klaeber's work, but with altered and added features designed to render it as useful today as it has ever been.

The Germanic Hero

The Germanic Hero
Author: Brian Murdoch
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 199
Release: 1996-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1441174656

In this study, the author looks at the role the warrior-hero plays within a set of predetermined political and social constraints. The hero if not a sword-wielding barbarian, bent only upon establishing his own fame; such fame-seekers (including some famous medieval literary figures) might even fall outside the definition of the Germanic hero, the real value of whose deeds are given meaning only within the political construct. Individual prowess is not enough. The hero must conquer the blows of fate because he is committed to the conquest of chaos, and over all to the need for social stability. Even the warrior-hero's concern with his reputation is usually expressed negatively: that the wrong songs are not sung about him. The author discusses works in Old English, Old and Middle High German, Old Norse, Latin and Old French, deliberately going beyond what is normally thought of as "heroic poetry" to include the German so-called "minstrel epic" and a work by a writer who is normally classified as a late medieval chivalric poet, Konrad von Wurzburg, the comparison of which with "Beowulf" allows us to span half a millennium.

Hero-ego in Search of Self

Hero-ego in Search of Self
Author: Judy Anne White
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2004
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780820431154

In Hero-Ego in Search of Self, Judy Anne White offers a perceptive explanation for continued interest in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. Building upon the earlier work of Jeffery Helterman and John Miles Foley, she argues that the sum of all confrontations between hero and monster in Beowulf equals the process of individual psychological development identified by Carl Jung as individuation. Dr. White's study proposes that the hero's struggle is the universal struggle towards self-knowledge - and that Beowulf thus resonates for the contemporary reader as it did for the poet's original audience.

The GERMAN HERO: POLITICS & PRAGMATISM

The GERMAN HERO: POLITICS & PRAGMATISM
Author: Brian Murdoch
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 199
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1852851430

In The Germanic Hero Brian Murdoch looks at the role the warrior-hero plays within a set of predetermined political and social constraints. the hero is not a sword-wielding barbarian, bent only upon establishing his own fame; such fame-seekers (including some famous medieval literary figures) might even fall outside the definition of the Germanic hero, the real value of whose deeds are given meaning only within the political construct. Individual prowess is not enough. The hero must conquer the blows of fate because he is committed to the conquest of chaos, and over all to the need for social stability. Brian Murdoch discusses works in Old English, Old and Middle High German, Old Norse, Latin and Old French, deliberately going beyond what is normally thought of as 'heroic poetry' to include the German so-called 'minstrel epic', and a work by a writer who is normally classified as a late medieval chivalric poet, Konrad von Wurzburg, the comparison of which with Beowulf allows us to span half a millennium.

The Art and Thought of the "Beowulf" Poet

The Art and Thought of the
Author: Leonard Neidorf
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2023-01-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501766929

In The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet, Leonard Neidorf explores the relationship between Beowulf and the legendary tradition that existed prior to its composition. The Beowulf poet inherited an amoral heroic tradition, which focused principally on heroes compelled by circumstances to commit horrendous deeds: fathers kill sons, brothers kill brothers, and wives kill husbands. Medieval Germanic poets relished the depiction of a hero's unyielding response to a cruel fate, but the Beowulf poet refused to construct an epic around this traditional plot. Focusing instead on a courteous and pious protagonist's fight against monsters, the poet creates a work that is deeply untraditional in both its plot and its values. In Beowulf, the kin-slayers and oath-breakers of antecedent tradition are confined to the background, while the poet fills the foreground with unconventional characters, who abstain from transgression, display courtly etiquette, and express monotheistic convictions. Comparing Beowulf with its medieval German and Scandinavian analogues, The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet argues that the poem's uniqueness reflects one poet's coherent plan for the moral renovation of an amoral heroic tradition. In Beowulf, Neidorf discerns the presence of a singular mind at work in the combination and modification of heroic, folkloric, hagiographical, and historical materials. Rather than perceive Beowulf as an impersonally generated object, Neidorf argues that it should be read as the considered result of one poet's ambition to produce a morally edifying, theologically palatable, and historically plausible epic out of material that could not independently constitute such a poem.