Old English Literature and Beowulf

Core Idea

Old English literature is the writing in English from roughly the fifth-century Anglo-Saxon settlements to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Its poetry uses a line of two half-lines joined by alliteration rather than rhyme, and it compresses images into kennings such as "whale-road" for the sea. *Beowulf*, the longest surviving Old English poem at 3,182 lines, tells of a Geatish hero who fights the monster Grendel, Grendel's mother and, fifty years later, a dragon. It is the usual starting point of the British literature survey.

How It's Best Learned

Listen to a recording of the opening lines in Old English while following a facing-page translation, and mark where the alliterating sounds fall on each side of the pause. Then collect kennings and instances of understatement from a translation and say what each one adds. Finally, read the hero's last fight and the funeral that ends the poem, and ask what the poem values and what it mourns.

Common Misconceptions

• *Beowulf* is set in England and its hero is English. (The action takes place in southern Scandinavia, among the Danes and the Geats. The poem was composed in England in Old English.)
• Old English is an older spelling of the English we speak today. (It has different grammar, inflections and much vocabulary, and modern readers need study or a translation to read it.)
• Old English poetry rhymes like later ballads. (Its structure rests on stress and alliteration. Each line has two half-lines divided by a caesura, usually with two stresses in each half.)

Explainer

English has changed so much that its earliest literature has to be translated for modern readers. Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, was spoken and written from about the fifth century until the Norman Conquest of 1066 brought French into the courts. Most of its poetry survives in only four large manuscripts, and *Beowulf* survives in just one, copied around the year 1000.

Start with the sound. An Old English line splits into two half-lines with a pause, the caesura, between them. Each half usually carries two strong stresses, and the stressed syllables alliterate across the gap. Seamus Heaney's 1999 translation echoes this pattern in modern English, and reading a few of his lines aloud shows how the beat drives the verse. There is no rhyme scheme. The poetry is built for the voice, and it grew out of oral performance by a singer called a scop.

Next, the language. Poets packed images into kennings, compound names such as "whale-road" for the sea or "bone-house" for the body. They also used litotes, understatement that states something by denying its opposite. Calling a deadly night raid "no good exchange" means it was a disaster.

The story of *Beowulf* is set among the Danes and Geats of Scandinavia. The Danish king Hrothgar has built a great hall, Heorot, but the monster Grendel raids it at night. Young Beowulf crosses the sea and wrestles Grendel bare-handed, tearing off the monster's arm, a fatal wound. He then dives into a mere and kills Grendel's mother. Fifty years later, as an old king, he fights a dragon and dies of his wounds. The poem closes with his funeral and the fear of his people, who expect enemies now that their protector is gone.

The poem joins two worlds. Its heroes value loyalty between lord and warrior, generous gift-giving and fame after death. Its narrator is Christian and places Grendel among the descendants of Cain. J. R. R. Tolkien's 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" argued that the monsters are central to the poem's meaning, not a distraction from it. Shorter poems such as "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer" share the same mood of loss and endurance.