TOLKIEN AND BEOWULF: The Superficiality of the Critics
Many people may not associate one of the most remarkable storytellers of the twentieth century, J.R.R. Tolkien, with Beowulf, the first great heroic poem in English literature. But as a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, he probably taught it every year of his working life, culminating with his supporting and now-famous paper, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics."1 Through this landmark essay, Tolkien expressed his very adamant view that Beowulf is a poem and not, as other commentators had often suggested, merely a jumble of confused literary traditions, or a text for academic examination. This unique individual, in contrast with the majority of his colleagues, initiated a new era as he began the daunting task of transforming how the poem was valued and appreciated by taking it from merely a text to be studied to a grand work of art, literary genius, and prime example for archetypal sites of fear.Beowulf2 was written in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) sometime between the middle of the seventh and end of the tenth century. The poem takes place in an ancient pagan Germanic society governed by a heroic code of honor and valor-a world where a name for w
Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and some forgot even the stones. It is this archetypal feeling of fear that is injected into Beowulf so perfectly that adds to its distinction as a work of art. He said:A dragon is no idle fancy. " But they also said (after pushing it over): "What a muddle it is in!" And even the man's descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: "He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion. Beowulf is begged to rid the kingdom of this monster and thus follows her back to her lair beneath the murky mountain water. He believed it was absolutely ridiculous for people to negate Beowulf as heroic poetry just because it was about monsters and a dragon. In off the moors, down through the mist bands / God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping. arrior skills among living overwhelms any concern about where the soul ends up in the afterlife. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building.
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Acceptance Essays
