1. This observation is supported by the many and widespread analogues of
Beowulf to be found throughout other Germanic materials dating from the early Christian
era, many of which feature correspondences to the three battles with the monsters, figures who
naturally continued to evince strong
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connotations of the pagan worldview. See especially
Grettis saga and the Völsunga saga, as well as Beowulf and its
Analogues, ed. G. N. Garmonsway, Jacqueline Simpson, and H. R. Ellis Davidson (London,
1968).
2. This definition of myth relies in part upon that of Bruce Lincoln, who defines a myth
as
a narrative that exhibits three crucial traits: the initial assertion of truth-claims, and the subsequent
achievement of first credibility and then authority. See Discourse and the Construction of
Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual and Classification (New York, 1989), pp.
24-26.
3. Paul Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic
Culture (Amherst, 1982), p. xvii.
4. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, ed.
Christopher Tolkien (London, 1983), p. 5.
5. Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics, p. 31.
6. Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," in Myth: A Symposium,
ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Bloomington, 1958), p. 64.
7. John Leyerle, "Beowulf the Hero and the King," Medium Ævum 34
(1965), 89.
8. J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son," in The
Tolkien Reader (New York, 1966), p. 23.
9. All citations of Beowulf will be given parenthetically by line number from
Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Frederick Klaeber, 3rd ed. (Lexington, 1950).
10. Margaret E. Goldsmith, The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf (London, 1970),
p. 239.
11. Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf
Manuscript (Cambridge, 1995), p. 167.
12. Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, pp. 170, 171.
13. H. L. Rogers, "Beowulf's Three Great Fights," in An Anthology of Beowulf
Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Notre Dame, 1963), p. 251.
14. Rogers, "Beowulf's Three Great Fights," p. 251.
15. Respectively, these phrases, referring to Grendel, Grendel and his mother, or
Grendel's kin, the etins or giants, are translated as "God's adversary" (786a and 1682b),
"He bore God's anger" (711b), "he was hostile toward God" (811b), "fiend in hell" (101b),
"Cain's kin" (107a), and "Those who have fought against God for a long while" (113b-114a).
16. See especially Bauschatz, Well and the Tree, p. 28, and Bertha S. Phillpots,
"Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought," in Interpretations of Beowulf,
ed. R. D. Fulk (Bloomington, 1991), p. 1.
17. Bauschatz, Well and the Tree, p. 87.
18. One of the most thorough attempts to do so is found in Raymond P. Tripp, Jr.,
More About the Fight With the Dragon: Beowulf 2208b-3182, Commentary, Edition, and
Translation (New York, 1983); see especially pp. 13-17. Tripp's argument revolves around a
reconstruction of the Beowulf manu-
start of page 14
script (which is heavily damaged in the area of the
dragon-fight episode) that is at severe variance with most accepted emendations, such as
Klaeber's. The end result of Tripp's emendations is that the dragon, the last survivor, and the
thief are all one and the same character, and that it is this character who actually stole a treasure
from Beowulf, thereby triggering the feud between them. Needless to say, the majority of Tripp's
hypotheses are neither being considered nor adopted in this paper. Other critics, such as Klaeber
(Beowulf, note to lines 2231 ff.) and H. R. Ellis Davidson ("The Hill and the Dragon,"
Folklore 4 [1950], 181), have, however, suspected that such a story, in which the solitary
and greedy guardian of a vast hoard transforms into a dragon in order to guard his treasure, lies
behind the identity of Beowulf's dragon. The most important examples of this motif are
from Iceland, the most famous being Fáfnir, either a giant or man who assumes the form
of a dragon after his nefarious acquisition of an accursed hoard.
19. Edward B. Irving, Jr., A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, 1968), p. 209.
20. Of course, in the extant Germanic legends it is Sigurðr, the son of King
Sigemund, and not Sigemund himself who slays the dragon Fáfnir at the bidding of the
smith Regin. Nevertheless, most critics have chosen to gloss over this discrepancy. Tolkien, for
example, neatly sidesteps the issue by referring to the slayer of the dragon only as "the
Wælsing" (Monsters and the Critics, p. 12). This paper will adopt a similar
approach, taking as the important points of correspondence the elements of the hero, the dragon,
and the hoard of cursed gold.
21. See the entry for nið in Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An
Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898; rpt. Oxford, 1972).
22. Elsewhere in Beowulf the word wrecca is used twice to refer to
characters who are clearly in a state of exile. The first is Hengest, a king who longs to return
home following a disastrous battle but is forced to dwell as an exile in the court of his enemy Finn
during a long winter (1137b). Later, it is used again for Weohstan the father of Wiglaf, who lived
as a "friendless exile" ("wræccen wineleasum" 2613a) before his deeds in battle in the
service of Onela, King of Sweden.
23. See his note to line 2287, which he translates as "strife arose which previously did
not
exist" (Beowulf, p. 210).
24. Goldsmith, Mode and Meaning, p. 140.
25. In full the relevant passages are as follows: "Swa ða drihtguman dreamum
lifdon,
eadiglice, oð ðæt an ongan fyrene fremman feond on helle" (99-101) (So those
retainers lived with joy(s), happily, until a certain hellish fiend (lit: fiend in hell) began to perform
crimes); "syððan Beowulfe brade rice on hand gehwearf; he geheold tela fifting
wintra wæs ða frod cyning, eald eþelweard oð ðæt an ongan
deorcum nihtum draca ricsian" (2207-11) (Afterwards, a broad kingdom passed into the hands of
Beowulf; he
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ruled (it) well for fifty winters--that was a wise king, the old guardian of the
nation--until a certain dragon began to rule in the dark nights).
26. John Leyerle, "The Interlace Structure of Beowulf," Interpretations of
Beowulf, ed. R. D. Fulk (Bloomington, 1991), p. 157.
27. John M. Hill, The Cultural World in Beowulf (Toronto, 1995), p. 56.
28. Laurence N. DeLooze, "Frame, Narratives, and Fictionalization: Beowulf as
Narrator," Interpretations of Beowulf, ed. R. D. Fulk (Bloomington, 1991), p. 245.
29. It is also interesting to note that these two instances of conflicting obligations are
central themes in the Völsunga saga and Grettis saga, important Norse texts
that have already been mentioned several times.
30. DeLooze, "Frame, Narratives," p. 244.
31. Irving, A Reading, p. 236.
32. While this term, which also has the form gist, is difficult to distinguish at
times
from gast or gæst with a stressed vowel, in which case the proper translation
would be "spirit," "sprite," "demon," Klaeber in this case and the other relevant occurrences leans
toward the definition chosen here. Also, the entries for these terms in Bosworth and Toller's
dictionary unequivocally choose the sense of "guest" or "stranger" over that of "ghost" or
"spirit."
33. Beowulf is labeled a gist in line 1522b and a selegyst in line 1545a.
34. For one occurrence, Klaeber offers a duplicate interpretation; see his note to line
1512. In the passage describing Beowulf's descent into the pool of Grendel's mother, Klaeber
feels that aglæcan could refer to either Beowulf or the monsters assailing him. He
decides on grammatical grounds, however, that the latter choice is the more likely and that
Beowulf is therefore the implied object of the sentence.
35. Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 5th ed.
(Oxford, 1995), p. 302.
36. Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 33.
37. Irving, A Reading, p. 20.
38. Goldsmith, Mode and Meaning, p. 142.
39. Irving, A Reading, p. 243.
