To get ourselves in the right frame of mind for W5 (which is still two weeks away, I know, but we're doing the big Bee-wulf, so I'm stoked), maybe we should discuss a bit about what makes (or doesn't make) Beowulf an epic, in either broad or narrow senses.
Beowulf is often said to be sui generis in English: one of a kind - and it is. But it's always been an assumption that there is a great lost epic tradition in Old English and the Germanic languages that never made it into writing, or if it did, was largely lost. We have the fragmentary "Fight at Finnsburgh," a sketchy version of which was incorporated into the text of Beowulf. We also have the Old Saxon "Heliand," which is a versification of the Gospels told in heroic-epic poetry. And we have Old Norse sagas, both prose and poetry, but the evidence for this is late (ca. 1300). We have conjecture, and the reports of ancient historians like Tacitus who recounts the Germans singing songs about their gods/heroes "Tuisto" and "Mannus." The fragmentary evidence notwithstanding (remember we do not have consensus on when , by whom, or for whom Beowulf was written), how does Beowulf stack up with our self-defined criteria for epic:
- Invokes a mythical or distant past to say something about the present
- Uses poetry and storytelling as a search for origins, and thus identity, of a specific community
- The story often involves a community under threat, and its salvation, or destruction.
- The story contains multiple points of view, which can tend to highlight moral and ethical ambiguities.
More than that, how does Beowulf compare to Virgil or Homer; did the Beowulf poet know classical epic (Virgil)?
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