ENGL1000

INTRODUCTION TO BRITISH LITERATURE

Some key sections:

Prologue: importance of history; grandness of Heorot (see also 991ff for the rebuilding of Heorot).

Grendel's bitterness: 86ff, and 728ff.

Introduction of Beowulf: 194ff; 247-249; 343

His self-promotion: 419ff, 530ff, 1652ff, 1987ff, 2069ff, 2510ff

The role of the poet: 696-702; 837; 1195; 2163; 2687; 2341-2343; 2573ff

Battle scenes: Beowulf and Grendel 662ff; Beowulf and Grendel's mother 1497ff; Beowulf and the dragon 2542ff

Problematisation of warrior culture and revenge culture: 1069 ff; 2029 ff

Think about, and be prepared to discuss, five of these questions. Check any words you don't understand in a dictionary or glossary of literary terms.

The questions in bold will be addressed in lectures; the others in tutorials.

1. How does the poem regard heroes and heroism? Does heroic behaviour involve conflict in the poem?

2. What do you understand to be the relationship between a warrior and his lord? Why is it central to this narrative?

3. What is wergild and what is its relation to a culture of revenge?

4. How are we to read Beowulf's boasting?

5. How is evil represented in Beowulf? Are there villains and what is their function?

6. To what extent is the narrative elegiac? (Have a look at "the last survivor's speech" [2247-2269] and Beowulf's death speech [2794-2820].

7. How are women represented? What roles seem to be available to them in this culture? Does the heroic exclude them?

8. Who tells the story? Why is it told with the patterning that it has?

9. What is the text's view of history? How does the text view destiny? Fate?

10. How does God function in the poem? Are Christianity and the heroic code incompatible?

11. In his translation, Heaney from time to time mirrors the alliteration that is so important in the Anglo-Saxon poem. Choose a group of at least three consecutive lines where he does this. Why might he have chosen to alliterate the particular lines you've chosen?

12. Check a glossary such as M.H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms (PN44.5A2 1999) for characteristics of literary epic, and list three of these that can be found in Beowulf. (Abrams may be found in the High Use area as well as in the stacks.)