Eureka! Summer 2004 Workshops

Emblazoned in Beowulf: Queens and Creatures, Kings and Kennings

Leader: Dr. Steve Glosecki

Date: Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Time: 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Place: Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA)

Presentation Overview
Generally, my goal in this workshop is to address issues arising when we try to fathom the only primary epic extant in our language (indeed, Old English is our language, albeit fixed at an earlier phase).

Aside from the manuscript itself, so much about Beowulf is unique. It is the first significant narrative to survive in a European vernacular after the fall of Rome. It is the only clear literary reflection of rich archaeological finds like boar helmets and ship burials. It is the only English source that transmits coherent folk memories of the Migration Age (c. 450-600). It is rich in hapax legomena (nonce words,e.g., orc). It is the only insular source of a fully drawn merewife or sea-witch, a familiar figure in continental Germanic folklore.

Beowulf also offers the only coherent account of the monster Grendel, whose name does appear, cryptically, elsewhere in the corpus. Moreover, by linking the creature to Cain, the poet provides the only English version of a widespread Christian myth, which held that Cain (rather like Fafnir, the Norse dragon) degenerated into a full-scale monster himself. Further, the epic preserves an early portrayal of the Northern European dragona striking icon that reaches us from an age before redundant depiction wore the beast down to a dull cliche.

No other English source displays such ambiguous religious syncretism, as Fred Robinson shows in his landmark study, Beowulf and the Appositive Style (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1985). No other Anglo-Saxon tale yields so many insights into queenship, kingship, throneworthiness, and other matters conducive to dynastic strife. Few English sources reflect such arcane beast lore, however subliminal it may sometimes be. And few Old English poems achieve such a high level of prosodic achievement.

Now, in our workshop it will not be feasible to address all these issues, a fraction of those generated by the epic. But I will look forward to fielding any and all questions participants may care to bring.

I note that Beowulfs three great fights are anthologized in the standard secondary-school text, Elements of Literature: Sixth Course: Literature of Britain with World Classics, ed. R. E. Probst, et al. (Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000). Therefore I plan to aim the workshop at these passages, though others need not be excluded. However, since I cannot countenance the Raffel translation, I recommend that workshop participants prepare by reading one of the more faithful renderings, available in the following texts (in descending order of accuracy): Those interested in the original Old English can consult the Heaney book, which, in facing-page format, reprints C. L. Wrenns edition. Other good editions can be found in the following texts, too (Jacks is most heavily glossed and least expensive):
Main Points of the Presentation
We will begin the workshop with slides depicting outstanding treasures from Anglo-Saxon England; beast imagery will be emphasized, especially that on regal ornament. Thence we will proceed to the poem itself.

Working from text and handout, I will open our conversation by addressing the matter of Anglo-Saxon queenship. Next, we will move to the monster fights.

I recommend that participants bring the Heaney text, if possible, to facilitate comparing Old with Modern English.

Time permitting, we will explore ideas of throneworthinessas reflected in the epic. (Consider that five separate kings claimed and, however briefly, held the Anglo-Saxon throne during that last fateful year; then the dynastic tension in Beowulf seems almost tame, vis-a-vis actual events).

Before closing, I plan to highlight aspects of classical Germanic prosody -- the kenning among them -- with reference to my own translation projects (see my article Skalded Epic [Make It Old],Old English Newsletter: Subsidia 31 [2002], 41-66).
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