For two centuries, Beowulf has been celebrated as epic literature, a praise poem for Beowulf, a paragon of prowess, valor, and loyalty. Tonight’s performance challenges that view: Beowulf is neither an epic praise poem nor an elegy to a lost heroic world. It is, instead, a labyrinth of interlacing riddles posing as an epic.
A significant feature of Beowulf’s enigmatic design is the mirroring relationship between the monsters and the heroes. The Anglo-Saxon narrator excoriates the poem’s Hell-bound monsters as they wreck mead halls, seek revenge, and lust for gold, all the while praising “good” Scandinavian kings and heroes who do precisely the same. To make sense of this contradiction, we need only recall that the distance between the Beowulf poet and the poem’s heroic characters is vast, encompassing national identity, culture, manners, and religion. The world of the poet is Christian and Anglo-Saxon; the world of the characters is Norse and pagan. From this vantage, the genre of heroic praise and fame begins to unravel, to reveal a scathing critique of heroic violence—a landscape of fire and ice, of treachery and double-dealing, a borderland where nothing can be trusted, where all beauty and civility are doomed, a world of eloquent brutality.
Yet the depravity of the poem’s Nordic heroes extends far beyond the monstrous impulses of pillage, revenge, and gold lust. Most startling is the subtle web of clues hinting at the heinous crime of kin-killing beneath the gilded surface. King Hrothgar’s rise to power is shadowed by intimations of his brother’s proxy murder—his house is haunted by Cain’s offspring, after all! And Beowulf’s allure will prove the false front of a criminal mastermind who slays his king, orchestrates the murder of his prince, and misleads his countrymen to their deaths— even as he continues to mislead the poem’s readers to this day.
AAN EPIC ENIGMA. The Anglo-Saxon narrator denounces Hell-bound monsters who wreck mead halls, seek revenge, and lust for gold—all the while praising Scandinavian warriors who do exactly the same. When we recognize the mirroring between Hell-bound monsters and Scandinavian heroes, the genre of epic praise begins to unravel. To make sense of heroic monstrosity, we need only recall that a narrative is not necessarily the sum of its appearances, nor do its characters necessarily reflect the author’s worldview. The distance between the Beowulf poet and his Scandinavian characters is vast, encompassing national identity, culture, manners, and religion. The world of the poet is Christian and Anglo-Saxon; the world of the characters is Norse and pagan. In that remarkable space breathes the poem. Most startling, however, is the web of clues hinting at the crime of kin-killing beneath the gilded surface. Hrothgar’s rise to power is shadowed by intimations of his brother’s proxy murder and Beowulf’s allure will prove the false front of a criminal mastermind who slays his king, orchestrates the murder of his prince, and misleads his countrymen to their deaths—even as he continues to mislead the poem’s readers to this day.AN EPIC ENIGMA. The Anglo-Saxon narrator denounces Hell-bound monsters who wreck mead halls, seek revenge, and lust for gold—all the while praising Scandinavian warriors who do exactly the same. When we recognize the mirroring between Hell-bound monsters and Scandinavian heroes, the genre of epic praise begins to unravel. To make sense of heroic monstrosity, we need only recall that a narrative is not necessarily the sum of its appearances, nor do its characters necessarily reflect the author’s worldview. The distance between the Beowulf poet and his Scandinavian characters is vast, encompassing national identity, culture, manners, and religion. The world of the poet is Christian and Anglo-Saxon; the world of the characters is Norse and pagan. In that remarkable space breathes the poem. Most startling, however, is the web of clues hinting at the crime of kin-killing beneath the gilded surface. Hrothgar’s rise to power is shadowed by intimations of his brother’s proxy murder and Beowulf’s allure will prove the false front of a criminal mastermind who slays his king, orchestrates the murder of his prince, and misleads his countrymen to their deaths—even as he continues to mislead the poem’s readers to this day.AN EPIC ENIGMA. The Anglo-Saxon narrator denounces Hell-bound monsters who wreck mead halls, seek revenge, and lust for gold—all the while praising Scandinavian warriors who do exactly the same. When we recognize the mirroring between Hell-bound monsters and Scandinavian heroes, the genre of epic praise begins to unravel. To make sense of heroic monstrosity, we need only recall that a narrative is not necessarily the sum of its appearances, nor do its characters necessarily reflect the author’s worldview. The distance between the Beowulf poet and his Scandinavian characters is vast, encompassing national identity, culture, manners, and religion. The world of the poet is Christian and Anglo-Saxon; the world of the characters is Norse and pagan. In that remarkable space breathes the poem. Most startling, however, is the web of clues hinting at the crime of kin-killing beneath the gilded surface. Hrothgar’s rise to power is shadowed by intimations of his brother’s proxy murder and Beowulf’s allure will prove the false front of a criminal mastermind who slays his king, orchestrates the murder of his prince, and misleads his countrymen to their deaths—even as he continues to mislead the poem’s readers to this day.