Beowulf (4 page)

In the meantime, it is also important to note that metaphors other than organic unity have proved fruitful in the quest to understand the structure of this kind of narrative. The medievalist John Leyerle has proposed an analogy with the intricate interlace patterns of Anglo-Saxon visual arts, which survive in manuscript illuminations and sculptures, though they may be found in other Northern art, from Ireland to Scandinavia. It seems plausible that both the verbal and visual arts would exhibit similar patterns, deriving from a common cultural imagination. But it is also critical that we bear in mind that the argument for interlacing in
Beowulf
is based on a metaphor that has its own limitations. For while the eye may travel through the intricate paths of a picture, it can also see the design all at once, as a whole. The same is not quite true of verbal arts, since they can only be experienced in some temporal sequence, and the effort to see a poem as a whole is an abstraction quite different from seeing a picture as a whole. Even so, the metaphor continues to provide fascinating suggestions about Anglo-Saxon poetry and the other arts.

Another metaphor is that of ring-patterns in the narrative, which has been quite fully developed by John D. Niles and others. There are numerous repetitions in
Beowulf,
and often one account or reference to an event appears to circle back to an earlier account or reference to the same event. For example, there are several points at which Beowulf’s fight with Grendel is recounted, sometimes at length and sometimes in brief allusion. If we look at the narrative in linear terms, these recountings seem to be mere “repetitions” and therefore further evidence of the looseness of plotting in the work as a whole. But if we look at such patterns as rings in which the narrative circles back on itself in such instances, then it would appear that we have come rather closer to grasping the compositional principles that the poet-narrator is employing. Beyond that, once we recognize such ring patterns, we also begin to see that there are rings within rings, or even rings within rings within rings, in complex relations to one another. The figure of the ring is attractive in part because of the prevalence of literal rings and ring-giving throughout the story, but also because it provides an insight into the artfulness of the kind of narration that we find in
Beowulf.
Once again, we must face the fact that the epic does not always conform to the expectations of at least some modern readers. It was composed in another cultural milieu, according to artistic traditions different from ours, yet there are great rewards for us in discovering and appreciating this very “otherness” of the poem—as understood on its own terms.

Just as
Beowulf
employs narrative forms expressive of Anglo-Saxon culture, so also will we find poetic forms here that are characteristic of almost all poetry in Old English, but which are rare in poems written since that time. First of all, the poetic line typically consists of two verses, or half-lines, marked by a caesura, or pause, and linked by alliteration. Consider the following example: When Beowulf gives one of his many speeches, it is generally introduced with the line,

Setting aside for the moment the formulaic nature of the line, we may note here that the line actually consists of two half-lines, or verses, separated by a caesural pause. For that reason, most editors of the original Old English put a blank space between the two verses:

Also, the sound of the “b” in the first verse is repeated, as alliteration, in the second verse (though not in the translation given above, where “s” is used). This pattern of alliteration thus joins the two verses, or half-lines, into a whole line. (In this system, vowels can alliterate as well as consonants.) Moreover, the verses and whole lines do not follow the kinds of meter we are accustomed to in later poetry—for example, in that of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and many others. They employ instead stress patterns, with alliterating syllables typically receiving strong stresses, and also marking the most important points in the meaning of the line: here, that Beowulf is identified as a son. As long ago as 1885, the great scholar Eduard Sievers described the various patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in this poetry, and despite several attempts to provide new models, the patterns worked out by Sievers are still fundamental for any study of Old English versification.

Less technical, but also more apparent to most readers, are the kinds of poetic figures commonly used in the poem. The figure that is perhaps most characteristic of this poetry is the kenning. A kenning is typically a compound of two nouns, with the qualities of each now united to create a new metaphor. Examples include “whale’s road” or “swan’s road” for the sea, “heath-stepper” for a stag, “battle-flasher” for a sword, and “sea-garment” for the sail “worn” by a ship. On the other hand, something like “blade-biter,” though certainly a poetic figure, would not be a kenning, since the blade is literally the part of the sword that makes it a sword in the first place. Kennings abound in
Beowulf
and throughout Old English poetry, making creative use of one of the resources of Germanic languages, the almost endless possibilities for joining words in compounds. Some are traditional and formulaic, though others seem more puzzling, perhaps as a sign of the Northern people’s love for puzzles as a form of entertainment.

Litotes is another figure that Old English shares with other Northern literatures. The characteristic quality of litotes is understatement, generally ironic and sometimes even humorous, using negatives or double-negatives. We may hear in one case that a warrior is “unready for fighting” when we know that he is actually sleeping, or that a monster is “not unused to ravaging the people.” Readers of Old Icelandic sagas will recognize such instances of understatement as a common feature in the Northern imagination. Yet even more pervasive is the use of metonymy. While a metaphor designates something that literally does not exist, a metonym works by association, so that an object can be linked to another object or person and comes to stand for that other object or person. Thus, a king can be “the shield of the people,” and we will recognize that what is being designated is the king, even if he is not mentioned in so many words. Throughout
Beowulf,
warriors are associated in this way with weapons, rulers with the gifts they give loyal followers, and monsters with such lairs as the mere or the hoard. Indeed, metonymy is so pervasive that it is tempting to extend the usual sense of the poetic figure to a principle of composition, as in the larger and smaller narrative structures we looked at in the previous section.

The last feature of style that we shall explore here is rooted in the grammatical structures of the poem, what linguists usually call parataxis (literally, placing one thing alongside another) or what is called coordination (versus subordination) in traditional grammar classes. Parataxis entails a series of parallel constructions strung together, one after another, by the use of a coordinating conjunction such as “and ” Thus, what we hear is a series of actions—“Beowulf did X, and then Beowulf did Y, and then Beowulf did Z”—without making one action subordinate to another, as “When Beowulf did X, he was forced to do Y, because he had already done Z.” (Such subordination is technically called hypotaxis, which literally means placing one thing under another or making it dependent on another.) Closely related to the parallelism in a series of statements is the use of one or more appositives, which provide further information about the person or object or event presented first in a statement. Thus, to use an earlier example, we may see in “Then Beowulf spoke, the son of Ecgtheow” that the second part of the statement provides, in what grammarians call an appositive, further information about the person introduced in the first part. But enough of the grammar lesson. We may well ask what this all has to do with the poetic style of
Beowulf.

The answer lies in the maneuver usually called variation. Even the most casual reader will recognize the following pattern as occurring throughout the poem:

A more prosaic account might simply have said that Beowulf and his men sailed in their ship from Denmark home to Geatland. But what would be lost, of course, would be the poetry, and poetry of a very special kind. After the initial half-line, the next two lines give variations on what was first described. In one sense, those two lines could be struck out, leaving us with
which would make perfect sense and would make the description appear more economical. But that is not the economy of Old English poetry. The poet-narrator, and presumably his audience as well, relished the device of variation used here. It is not enough to present the ship in motion, but that motion is enriched by the image of the spray from the neck of the boat cutting through the waves, with that neck suggesting the figure of a beast often seen on the prows of Viking ships, plus a reminder that they are traversing a mighty deep, plus a further description of the way the neck image is produced by the binding of boards together, plus the pitching of the boat in the sea.

Note also how the seamen, as they near their homeland, see “the high cliffs of the Geats” as “the well-known headland.” As with metonymy, this parallelism involves a process of association, with one image suggesting another that becomes associated with it. There are so many instances of this kind of variation in
Beowulf
that to quote further examples would almost involve quoting the entire poem.

 

Since the 1950s, much attention has been paid to the question of oral composition in
Beowulf.
In order to understand that question, we may turn to the theory developed first by Milman Parry and carried on by his student and colleague in research, Albert B. Lord. Parry was a classical scholar who became interested in the fact that Homer’s epics are filled with epithets and other expressions that seemed to him to be formulaic. Athena is frequently introduced as “gray-eyed Athena,” Achilles as “swift-footed Achilles,” and so on with other characters. Parry suggested that the epic poet using such formulas did not have to invent the description of, say, Athena each time she was introduced because there was already in the tradition a made-up phrasing for this purpose. He cited numerous such cases in Homer and concluded that these formulas were essential functions of traditional oral poetry.

Parry and Lord gradually formulated a hypothesis that poets working in oral tradition, without written texts, would create their narratives, even very long narratives, in the very act of performing before an audience. Such “singers of tales” would not have to memorize their narratives word for word, which in most cases would be virtually impossible, but rather would have been trained by accomplished oral poets in the traditional plots and formulaic expressions for describing people, buildings, gods, weapons, and the like. In order to test this hypothesis, Parry and Lord sought out traditional oral poets, whose art had been passed down into modern times. They found such poets among Serbo-Croatian singers, and their research among these singers confirmed their earlier findings and allowed them to extend and refine their theory of oral composition-in-performance.

In 1953 Francis P. Magoun published a famous study of oral-formulaic poetry in Anglo-Saxon England that quickly drew other scholars to apply the theory to
Beowulf
in detailed analyses. Immediately, a controversy erupted. The main issue appeared to be the question of originality and artistry on the part of the
Beowulf
poet. If the poem consisted largely of traditional formulas, then what kind of originality or artistic mastery did the poet exercise in its creation? Or, what could “creation” even mean in such a case? And if the work of artistic creation in
Beowulf
were so substantially reduced, what would happen to claims that it was a literary masterpiece? These questions were especially crucial to those who adhered to Romantic and Post-Romantic conceptions of the poet as an individual genius creating works of art that were nothing if not original. But gradually the initial passion of the debate subsided as the very definition of “formula” proved less and less clear, and both proponents of oral theory and proponents of the masterful artistry of the poem sought some middle ground. For clearly there is evidence here both of traditional oral poetry and of a very high level of artistry working within traditional forms. Let us look at some of that evidence.

First of all, there are formulaic expressions in many places in
Beowulf.
As we saw earlier, a speech by the hero is generally introduced by the expression,
And so on. Such expressions unmistakably follow a formula for introducing speakers, and the poet-singer-narrator needs only to insert the proper names for the speaker and for his father into the slots that are already there for that function.

Yet there is no denying the artistic skill with which style and structure are developed, even working with traditional phrasing—as in the example of variation in the description of the Geats sailing home (see above). While we do not know who the poet was or how he composed his poetry, it seems from such evidence that he was thoroughly familiar with traditional forms that were no doubt still being used in oral performances by “singers of tales” in his own time. He also showed an artistic subtlety that we usually associate with writing. Likewise, the audience was probably made up of both literate and nonliterate Anglo-Saxons, and, of course, there may have been several different audiences for the same poem, or even different performances that were shaped by the makeup of different audiences. For example, such a skillful poet would surely have made adjustments in performing the poem for, say, a monastic audience as distinguished from a more secular court audience—or for audiences that mixed individuals of different backgrounds, classes, or education.