Remember that your Paper #1 assigned is due in class on Tuesday. We will discuss our various approaches and consider the value of knowing the context of Tolkien's scholarship when reading his work. Does it actually challenge The Hobbit as a children's novel when we see the Anglo-Saxon works behind it? Is The Hobbit itself a kind of riddle, which he used to answer some ideas about who the Anglo-Saxons were? Or is it a sort of key to unlock the mysteries of this culture?
On Thursday, there IS a chance of snow and ice, so ECU might cancel classes (we'll have to wait and see). If so, I'll give you a question to respond to over the weekend to bring to class on the following Tuesday. But until then, let's assume we have class, so read Beowulf from page 43 to 77 (to where the story breaks off to leap into the future, where Beowulf is now king and an old man).
Here are some questions to consider as you read:
* We've talked about the philosophy of life that emerges in the previous Anglo-Saxon poems, particularly in regard to fate and vanity. What general philosophy of life does the poem seem to embody? Where in the text can you read or sense this? Is it explicit--does the poet come out and say this? Or is it more implicit, built into the story itself?
* On page 48, when everyone is celebrating the death of Grendel and the libration of Hrothgar’s hall, the poet writes: “fate they knew not grim, appointed of old, as it had gone already forth for many of those good men, so soon as evening came...” Based on the logic of the poem (and the values of the poet’s day), why does wyrd/fate continue to ‘punish’ the hall if God wanted Beowulf to destroy Grendel? Why are they afflicted by Grendel’s mother as well?
* The only real description we get of Grendel and his mother occurs on page 52, when Hrothgar says “Of these was one, in so far as they might clear discern, a shape as of a woman; the other, miscreated thing, in man's form trod the ways of exile, albeit he was greater than any other human thing." Though the poet often claims that they are the spawn of Cain, evil incarnate, some critics suggest that the poet invests them with a subversive humanity. Where might we see this in the poem? How might the poet make us question a strict good/evil reading of the poem?
* Though Beowulf is quite a ‘manly’ poem, four women appear briefly in its pages: Grendel's Mother (technically a woman), Wealhtheow (Hrothgar’s wife), Hygd (wife of Beowulf’s chief, Hygelac), and Modthryth (the ‘evil’ wife of Offa). Assuming that Beowulf is somewhat culturally accurate, what view of women does the poem offer us? What was their role in society? Related to this, what role do they play in the poem?
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