• Techniques: alliteration; kenning; boasting; litotes (understatements); interlacing (digression) story; epic
• Themes:   the transience and the potentiality--or inevitability--of sudden attack, sudden change, swift eath is omnipresent in    Beowulf. There is little hope to escape--the strong sense of doom.
• Feud: the tragic waste--the system of revenge repeated in the poem  feud peace feud …
• Wars settled by Beowulf peach kept Beowulf's death feud going on again the contest /eternal conflict between dark and light, good and evil
• Fate: "fate often saves the undoomed man when his courage is good." "God often saves the man when his  courage is good."  Fate: God's will and one's own courage together (p. 40) Courage is the quality that can perhaps influence Fate.
• But Beowulf himself is chiefly concerned not with tribal feuds but with fatal evil that threatens to the security of the lands. Because the evil monsters are outside the normal order of things, they require of their conqueror something greater than normal warfare requires. Unlike Beowulf, the old Hrothgar lacks this quality that later impels the old Beowulf to fight the dragon. Hrothgar is not the kind of man to develop his human potential to the fullest extent that Fate would permit: that is Beowulf's role.
• Boasting:  a warrior's tradition--a way of forcing oneself to achieve a higher level, to find the best.  When one boasts, he is choosing the heroic way of life. One's boast becomes a vow; the hero has put himself in a position from which he cannot withdraw.
• Treasure:Beowulf gives the gift received from Hrothgar to Hygelac, his king (p.55)--a gesture of good will, a gesture of generosity. These gifts are proof of Beowulf's value/worth as a warrior. p.40
• Understatement(to say less than might be said; a typical way of speaking in old English)
• Stories of Sigmund and Heremod told by a scop (bard) seem to be material outside the epic--digression(sth. not to the point)--stories of earlier heros--but actually not.
• Interlacing (weaving things together)
  • Ex.  Unferth tells the story of Beowulf's swimming contest with Breca (p. 33) which leads to the story of Beowulf's fight with water monsters. This story is repeated later as Beowulf fights with Grendel's mother.
• Grendel's mother's revenge: A simple story told in complicated way to make it rich. The seeming digression is actually interlacing (a way oo understatement, too) --for comparison and contrast.  ex. Unferth & Beowulf
  • Unferth (a false hero; lost his name for valor)  Beowulf (a real hero; glory and fame)Beowulf (a good king: comfort to his people)  Heremod (a bad ruler, proud, brutal, cruel) p.49
• the basic contradiction in social fabric of the time:

• a warrior taking risk to become greatest possible hero, to get glory and protect his people. But sometimes these two values (to get fame and to protect people) cannot be reconciled just like Beowulf at the end who dies after fighting with the dragon and leaves his people leaderless, unprotected. ( --to develop heroism to the highest as a hero =/= --to protect his people)
• the problem of feud (tragic waste): the system of revenge brings no long peace to avenge one's kinsmen's death yet lead constant fighting. Sometimes the king's daughter is used as peace bringer; manprice--wergild--a way to end feud Grendel's mother's revenge & dragon's revenge

• the society in Beowulf:  quite high civilization, not primitive,  have good manner
• Beowulf: an epic, not as complete as Homer's epics more elegy than epic: a poem honoring Beowulf: his heroic exploits and his death-- the past hero--honoring the past way of life
• The poet honored the hero and the end of a cultural group far earlier in the old English period to take the past of old culture that is coming to an end and a good start of new Christian culture.  The poem ends with Beowulf's death: the old society, something beautiful has passed away Human--mortality

 

(external) English Literature I: the Medieval Period / English Literature and CultureFrom Medieval Period to the Eighteenth Century