Why do we read beowulf

And yet Beowulf is still read and serves as an inspiration. What is the secret of this poem that has kept it quintessential to the English literary canon? To this question there must be many answers, perhaps as many as there have been hearers or readers of the poem.

But certainly common to every experience of Beowulf is the sense that its poetry reaches, somehow like lightning, to the core of what we understand about ourselves stripped to basics, even amid the twentieth century world of central heating and computers.

The struggles the poem depicts are of the good against evil: strength of sinew, heart and spirit, truth and light, pitted against dark power that gives no quarter as it shifts from shape to shape. That the darkness be it Grendel, a dragon, or treachery, greed, and pride is familiar only renders it more frightening — and the more instructive. And yet, although the poem ends with the death of its hero and the prophecy of extinction for his people, Beowulf is not a gloomy work, and our experience of it does not incite despair.

That is because, like Beowulf himself, the poem never backs away but greets what comes with courage. Students respond to the lack of falsifying sweetness that would gloss over a world that they recognize as basically an image of our own.

Beowulf joins us to our ancestors — whoever they might have been, in whatever far country — at the top of their game, as we would like to imagine them, and as we dearly hope those who come after will someday envision us.

Robert F. Yeager is a professor of literature and language at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Tags: beowulf beowulf reading e4. Skip to content E4-Resources. Why Read Beowulf? By Robert F. Yeager Beowulf , the rousing Old English poem of man and monster, has been a classroom classic for generations.

Like this: Like Loading It is a story about sharing your gifts, and striving to be the best, and the values important to a culture long ago. It has both aesthetic and historical value. I have my students read Beowulf not as an act of torture but because it is a good story and if we read this very first piece of English literature and move from there we can see how our language shifts and melds and becomes the language we use today.

We can see our language as changing, as alive, rather than static and oppressive. These are the things I hope for every semester as we embark on this journey. Great literature has a lot to vie with these days. The problem is Beowulf is a poem. Poems are difficult; they are murky and open to interpretation and thus lend themselves to confusion and frustration.

Throw the Beowulf film starring Angelina Jolie into the mix and you have yourself some real issues. They usually snicker. Maybe in a few years when her brood of children become teenagers. One can hope. The word poetry is enough to build walls of resistance and prevent any and all understanding from seeping in. This showed his great loyalty to Hrothgar and his people. In conclusion, Beowulf is my hero because of his outstanding fighting skills, his great strength, and finally his great loyalty.

Is Grendel Beowulf's son? Heardred Despite Beowulf's support, the young king, son of Hygelac and Hygd, is killed in a feud. Beowulf then becomes king of the Geats. Grendel A descendant of the biblical Cain, the enormous ogre despises mankind's joy. He menaces Hrothgar and the Danes for 12 years before facing Beowulf in battle.

What is the first word of Beowulf? What is the literary style of Beowulf? Beowulf is written in Old English alliterative verse, the characteristics of which include alliteration the repetition of consonant and vowel sounds ; kennings nouns combined to create an image—whale-road for the sea; glee-wood for a harp ; hemistiches lines broken into two parts ; and Germanic diction the verb in.

What is the story Beowulf all about? Beowulf is an Old English story by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet. The poem tells a story of a strong and brave warrior Beowulf who defeats monsters and goes on to become King. Beowulf's first major battle was against Grendel, a monster that had been terrorizing the Scyldings.

YouTube Movies. View all posts by Stacey Koch. I have always loved reading the different translations and watching the different films. I think it is great to see other peoples perspectives. Great writing. Like Like. Reading this made me think. A symbolic image of nationhood.

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