Beowulf : The First English Epic

Sibaprasad Dutta
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Beowulf, whose authorship is not known and which is the most ancient epic, has a
story that, by common consent, is considered to be heroic. Beowulf is the earliest epic in
English although the theme of the poem is not English, but Scandinavian. It is believed
that the Scandinavian invaders brought the story to England, which was written down
at a later date by a Christian cleric. Still, it authorship is shrouded in uncertainty and it
was found in Sir Robert Cotton’s collection of manuscripts.

The Angles brought the story of Beowulf to England in the 6th century, and there
somewhere about 700 A.D., the poem was made into English. This was about seventy
years after the death of Mahomet and in the same age as the beginning of the great Tang
dynasty in China. Three hundred years later, about the year 1000, the manuscript, which
still survives, was written down. What happened to it for the next seven hundred years
is unknown. In 1706, it was recorded as being in Sir Robert Cotton’s library. Only
twenty-six years later a disastrous fire broke out in the library, but the Beowulf
manuscript (MS) narrowly escaped. The charred edges of its leaves can still be seen in
the British museum. Two fragments of another poem Waldere were found about 1860 in
the binding of a book in the Royal Library at Copenhagen.

The hero and setting of Beowulf, the first long poem in English running over 3182 lines,
have nothing to do with England. The MS text is divided into a prologue and 43 fits.
Though the Angles brought the story to England, it is not even about the Angles but
about the Scandinavians. The German tribes, though they fought with each other, and
with any one else within reach, had a ‘free trade’ in stories. Their poets, at least, believed
in ‘Germania’, the single German people. So it is that the first English poem is a
Scandinavian story, brought over by the Angles, and made into a poem in England.

The story summarily runs like this : Beowulf, with some valiant Geats, comes to the help
of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose palace of Heorot is ravaged by the nightly attacks
of Grendel, a sea monster of the race of eotons, or giant ogres, the issue of Cain. Every
night Grendel emerges from his lair in the marshes beneath the cliffs, in order to seize
and devour one of the king’s companions. In a terrible hand-to-hand struggle, Beowulf
tears off an arm of this monster who is mortally wounded and then flees to his den to
die. The victory and deliverance is celebrated amidst song, feast and dance.
But Grendel’s mother tries to avenge the death of her son. She renews the attacks on
Heorot, and Beowulf resolves to go forth to fight her in her home. Diving after her into
the waters of a baleful lake, he meets her in a combat in the cave in which she dwells
beneath the waters. When Beowulf is all but worsted, he seizes a magic sword which
hangs on the wall, and plunges it in the body of the fearful beast, and then, when the
Danes fear the worst he returns to Heorot in triumph, bearing Grendel’s gigantic head
severed from his torso.

In course of time, Beowulf becomes the king of the Geats and reigns over them
gloriously for 50 years. But some jewels are stolen from an ancient treasure guarded by a
dragon who furiously attacks the king’s realm, burning with his flaming and pestilential
breath all that lies in his path. Beowulf slays the dragon and saves his people, but he is
himself mortally wounded during the encounter by the monster’s venomous tooth, and
he dies nobly, consoled by the thought that he is bequeathing to them the incomparable
treasure which has been in the dragon’s treasury. He is, however forsaken during the
fight by all his thanes who flee to the nearest wood out of fear but one, Wiglaf, and great
evils are prophesied for the Geats now bereft of their valiant king.

Beowulf has an epic canvas, almost as vast as the traditional epics of Homer. It is also a
primary epic like Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, the labours of Beowulf
are far from attaining to the ingenious (resourceful, innovative) variety of those of
Hercules. All the monsters he meets in combat are equally fearful, and their mysterious
features and the sinister places they inhabit produce the horror. And the actions chiefly
take place in the nights, which adds a symbolic undertone to the danger in which the
Danes live. The description of the marshes in which Grendel’s mother dwells is perhaps
the most famous passage in the poem. A gloomy imagination and the sadness of a
northern landscape unite to paint this fertile picture. But the sadness is not confined to
the references to nature alone; it is diffused throughout the poem, being never absent
from it although it is basically a tale of heroism. It recurs in elegiac form in the episode
of the origin of the treasure, which was buried by the last survivor of a proud family,
and came into the dragon’s possession. Even in the furious tempo of the fierce battle and
of the hero’s victory, a sombre tone is perceptible.

There are constant illusions to nothingness of life, of courage and glory, and although
Beowulf is in every point a hero, the ideal of an active force serving good and
triumphing over evil, the poem does not convey that effect of fortifying energy, which
might be expected of it. This poem, which is a glorification of bold enterprise, leaves a
bitter taste, or at least an impression of universal melancholy. It makes life seem sad, and
effort vain. The reason for this must be sought in its atmosphere. It takes one into a dark
place where the sun’s clear light does not penetrate, where fogs and unwholesome
vapours are never quite dispelled by sun’s rays. A certain joy in life is needed to make a
work of imagination healthy, but Beowulf, or rather the poet who narrates his
adventures, has introduced the Christian idea of earthly life among his gloomy scenery,
has plumbed the emptiness of mortality, and found it of little worth at the very moment
at which he celebrates mortal glory. This is indeed a poem which has come out of a cold
cell in a Northumbrian cloister. – Legoius & Cazamian. It breathes the air of the tomb.
Still in its portrayal of Beowulf’s valiant character and superhuman exploits it ultimately
proves itself to be a heroic poem.

The theme of the poem is continental Germanic (Scandinavian), and it is likely that it
was the subject of lays long before the extant version was composed. It should be kept in
mind that there is no mention of England in this poem, and Beowulf himself is the king
of ‘Geatas’. Though there is much in the poem which can be considered ‘pagan’ and
which suggests the original pagan nature of the poem, the copy that exists was clearly
written by a Christian for the Christian note that is discernible in the poem not mere
veneer or gloss. Modern scholars in the main now look upon it as a reworking of older
material by a Christian and not simply as a collection of tales strung together by one
hand. The dialect of the text is West-Saxon though there is clear evidence that it was
written in some Anglian dialect, but whether Mercian or Northumbrian is uncertain. –
Albert

It is probable that it grew up in the form of ballads among the ancestors of the English in
Denmark and South Sweden, that in this form it was brought by invaders to this
country, and that it was here fashioned into an epic, perhaps by some Northumbrian
poet, about eighth century. Manifestly heathen in origin, it stands out as the work of a
Christian writer. Vivid pictures of life in war and peace among the remote forefathers of
the English nation add greatly to the value of a fine old poem. – Hudson.

An epic or a heroic poem is a long narrative in verse on a serious subject, told in a

formal or elevated style, and centred on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions
depends the fate of a tribe, a nation or as in the case of Milton’s Paradise Lost of the
whole human race. Epics are of two types – Primary and Secondary. The primary epics
or folk epics are those which passed from one generation to another by words of mouth,
and written down at a later stage. To this category belong the Iliad and the Odyssey of
Homer; the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf; the French Chanson de Roland and the Spanish
Poema del Cid and the German epic Nibelungenlied. The literary epics were written
compositions in imitations of the traditional or primary epics. Of this kind is Virgil’s
Aenid, the chief model of Milton’s Paradise Lost. This indicates that Beowulf is a
primary epic, the first one in English.

Beowulf as an epic fulfils the general criteria of an epic poem. First of all, Beowulf , the
eponymous hero is a hero in the true sense of the term, and the poem tells the story of
his heroic exploits against the sea-monster Grendel, and his mother . The poem also
upholds him as a saviour of the Geats. Although he is killed at the end, his is a heroic
life, and he is a man who caring little for his old age bravely dares Grendel’s mother. He
succumbs to the injuries left on his person by the fire-spitting dragon, but his death,
though sadly mourned by his men, is a portrayal of the ennoblement of human valour.
Secondly, the setting is also quite large encompassing the sea and land, and the time
spans over a period of fifty years or so. Thirdly, the action involves superhuman battles,
Beowulf fighting out the sea-monster Grendel and saving the overseas nation of the
Danes. The adventure of Beowulf also accommodates a perilous journey as we see in the
Odyssey as Beowulf crosses the turbulent sea in a country boat only with thirty
comrades. Fourthly, although gods and superhuman characters, called the machinery in
the neo-classical age, is absent, the confrontation between Beowulf and the demons is
enough to spread out the canvas beyond the terrestrial limit, then conceived. Lastly
comes the question of style, which ought to be sonorous and dignified in keeping with
the heroic theme. “The literary method,” says Compton-Rickett,” is massive and
sweeping, rather than subtle and varied. The poem is akin to the old sagas, and like
them excels in broad effects, and in impressive directness of speech. The crude savagery
of the original legends has been transmuted through the various minds, (before being
dealt with in the poem) into a fine appraisement of Beowulf’s goodness of heart and
unselfish devotion to others. He is not merely a man of great physical strength; there is a
moral splendour about his character. Nor is this sight ever lost sight of.” And ultimately,
the superhuman heroism of Beowulf establishes the daring spirit of man that wins glory
even in his fall. Like all Anglo-Saxon poems, it is written with a long line. The lines do
not rhyme, but each line has alliteration, and the poet has a special and extensive
vocabulary. He uses ‘picture names’ for the things and people he has to describe, so the
‘sea’ is the ‘swan’s road’ and the ‘body’ is the ‘bone house’. Let us have a look at the
lines (3137- 49) which describe the funeral rites of Beowulf at the end of the poem:

For him the people of the Geats made ready

A splendid funeral pyre on the earth
Hung around with helmets. Battle-shields,
With shining corselets, as he requested;
 Then they laid in the midst of it the illustrious prince,
The weeping warriors, the beloved lord,
Then the warriors began to kindle on the cliff
The greatest of funeral fires: the wood-smoke rose up
Dark above the fire, the roaring flames,
Surrounded by lamentation – the tumult of the winds subsided –
Till it had completely crushed the body,
Hot in his breast. Sad in mind
They complained of the sorrow of their hearts, the death of their liege-lord.

It can be observed that the language is forceful and expressive, conveying with the
economy words the picture of the funeral pyre on the cliff top and the lamentation of the
warriors for their old king. The language is direct, shorn of rhetorical figures but has the
force of magnificent lyricism that melts the heart. The use of the compound words
should be noted especially, together with that of the kenning, which skillfully handled
took on the form of a compressed vivid statement of highly original language. Another
feature of the style is the use of repetition and variation.

The story of the poem belongs to the pagan life of the Germanic tribes, but the poem
itself was set down after the conversion of the English to Christianity, The new worship
and the old heroic virtues are found in unison in the poem. But the values of the poetry
belong to an earlier pagan age, with a sense of endurance, of fate, and of unfailing
courage revealing a spirit that is never completely recaptured in any later period. The
heroic spirit painted in Beowulf can be seen in the short poem ‘Maldon’, written soon
after the Battle of Maldon in 993:

Thought must be harder: the heart, the keener.

Courage shall be greater as our strength grows less.

Beowulf’s character is an ample demonstration of this courage that grows while health
fails. Nothing in Old English Literature can compare with Beowulf ; it has the size and
dignity of a classical epic. Possibly its author whose handiwork the present poem is had
read Virgil, or some of the later Latin epics.

The Origin of the poem has remained a very tickling issue. It has been suggested that
the poem is in its basis a Scandinavian saga. The poem, however, though Scandinavian
in its setting contains no Scandinavian words or phrases. Earle believes that the story of
Beowulf was a piece of the pre-historic folklore of which a fresh edition was made in
Merovingian Gaul. From Gaul, the story, latinized by some Frankish scholar, passed
over to England and was worked up into an epic. The subject is still debated by scholars
and this is an explanation of the visible inconsistencies in the poem.

The picture of social life depicted in Beowulf is essentially primitive – to fight

vigorously, to eat and drink well, to be soothed by music after the day’s labour and then
– to sleep. The men described are men of few words; brave and loyal where their
affections are concerned, but cruel and implacable otherwise. There is no gaiety about
them although they engage in occasional feasts, songs and dance. This is plainly because
the people, deprived of technological assistance, had to fight hard in order to continue to
live. Life to them was a sombre business; the melancholy of the North permeated their
soul.. Great emphasis is laid upon the splendour of court life. In that way, it is a
commentary on the aristocratic society in Saxon times. * The scenic background is well-
suited for such men. It is bleak and cold, and rough and rugged land swept by storms.
We realize here “the wind that would be howling at all hours.” Whether on sea or land,
Nature is always in her blackest and fiercest moods. There is no sentiment, no
tenderness, to relieve the gloom. Fierce animal spirits dominate. But even if sombre,
there is an austere grandeur about the poem, and a fine stoical resignation. The scenes
and the people are Scandinavian, but the one great, vital figure is Beowulf. He stands
before us as the early English ideal of virile courage and nobility. What Achilles is to the
Greek, Romulus to the Roman, Charlemagne to the French, Beowulf is to the
Englishman. Beside him, King Arthur is but a shadowy figure.

Beowulf like the medieval French epics like the Song of Roland had placed more
emphasis on the story, the characters and the episodes. There was no exactness of detail.
C. M. Bowra observes: “What Homer does again and again, Beowulf does in the sinister
and uncanny passages on the monster Grendel, and the Song of Roland (does) in such
austere sublimities as Roland’s death and the supernatural darkness which portends
it…. The heroic actions in Tasso or Milton are more complex and more ingenious than
their precedents in Homer.” – Rama Nair. Beowulf neither sets a tradition nor follows
one. It is a class by itself. We call it an epic because of our inclination to include the work
into a specific genre.
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