Let’s Talk About Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon Poetry Conventions
The main issue when dealing with texts as old as Beowulf is that English has evolved too a point where the average speaker would neither be able to talk to diverse group of English a millennium ago or be able to read any documents presented to them. Nevertheless, alliteration is still present in the translated versions, reminiscent of the story’s oral origins. Heavy letters and sounds, specifically e, h, and g, and to a lesser extent s and d, are present in the majority of the lines, often overlapping with one another. Part of the reason behind this is because may of the names mentioned within the story start with these letters. One of the densest areas that is sound heavy is the decree that Beowulf and company are coming to save Heorot and her inhabitants from Grendel, stating that “Now Holy God/ has, in His goodness, guided him here/ to the West-Danes, to defend us from Grendel,” (Beowulf, lines 381 – 383). When said out loud, the sentence becomes a type of song, all that is missing is an appropriate beat.
As music is a universal trait found across time and cultures, the beat would have had to been simple enough that it could be repeated without complex orchestras, but still catching enough that the audience would be inclined to listen to the full performance. Using the same lines presented before, 382 and 383 can be given a basic template to demonstrate the presence of the four-beat line and a caesura. The first part of the line should be said in a tone that gets higher in pitch, while the ending of the line decreased in pitch. Since each line is roughly eight syllables, there is an extremely minor pause after the fourth syllable, followed by the lower pitch, and finally another break at the end of the sentence or line, depending on how the story is being recited. The rests allow the speaker to breath and the beat allows the audience to join along if desired, tapping their feat or hands to keep the rhythm.
Since the Cotton manuscript is the only surviving copy of Beowulf, it is difficult to determine what portions of the larger myth and performance are missing. The translations that we do have now, however, all lack end rhymes. The primary story, the Volsung Saga, and the Finnsburg Episode, would appear to be a long-winded folk tale to those unfamiliar with Beowulf. A vital thing to note is that it is a folk tale, but chances are that because it was written down when so few were, it must have been a major, and possibly overlapping, myth to a past society. Without end rhymes to assist the speaker in retelling the story, the plot points that appear in Beowulf must have been central to the narrative. The periods between the major events may have been more prone to oral editing. Without end-line rhymes, modern readers face the same problem when trying to recount the story when analyzing said story.
As mentioned previously, Beowulf is a story that has been translated for modern readers. Modern authors have the privilege of instant thesauruses to heighten their creations. Oral traditions have a different set of standards for the use of words, largely because many come from a period before modern language and spelling standards. Beowulf’s audience must constantly be aware of sections and phrases that wouldn’t be found in modern English. The most famous example of these kennings is the whale-road and “swan-road,” both named for bodies of water, as well as ring-giver and a various assortment for the act of dying and death (line 200). Kennings are essential tool and theme of Anglo-Saxon poetry, working as a plot device for both modern readers and old listeners alike.
The most important literary device in Beowulf, and all myths, are the various hyperboles. From classical Greco-Roman myths of demigods to comic book heroes, all are found to contain strength beyond the ordinary limits of man, as well as the honor in battle against supernatural beasts and the importance of genealogy. Beowulf is no different. He is descended from a line of mighty warriors, has fought various eldritch horrors, and basically is a miniature army even in his waning years. Humans like to exaggerate. Few want to hear of a person banging pots and pans to ward off a fat raccoon so that the greedy bugger stops stealing bird food, but make those pans divinely blessed drums and superglue wings on the raccoon, and voila, a story that people will remember being completely horseshit, but a remembered story nonetheless.
To slightly diverge from the original topic, humans have always created monsters, and while one can dismiss Grendel, his mother, and the dragon with other creatures as pre-industrial fiction, our era’s monsters target the same fears of the unknown world outside our bubbles of locality. We may not have a Bigfoot coming into our hometown and destroying the local pub, but we most certainly have government men in black suits with nondescript features coming to whisk us away, our relatives knowing better than to question our disappearance. Our heroes are average people who have the courage to stand up to formidable foes.
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