Beowulf (the book)

[Kutan]

I've never read the book but has anyone here read it? I know the (CG) movie is coming out soon.. :clock:

[freeztar]

I read it about 13 years ago. It was required reading at my high school.

 

I remember it being an arduous read as it uses archaic language (old english).

I haven't heard of the movie, but the storyline is decent enough to use in a film.

[Pyrotex]

I had to read it (well, most of it) as an assignment in my Junior year at the University of Alabama in 1968. Tough read, as you say. But once I got over the dialect and arcane word stitching, the story itself was fascinating. I remember reading it late one night during a thunder storm and scaring myself silly.

[CraigD]

I’ve read several version of Beowolf. In high school, I memorized (roughly, leaving room for improvisation) most of it, from a late 19th century “high Elizabethan” (a literary form that, oddly, didn’t really come into its own until centuries after the reign of the queen for whom it’s named) version, for telling around campfires (for which the story’s really intended).

 

The first and most important thing to get about Beowolf is that it wasn’t “written” in the sense that books have been written for the last couple of centuries, or the plays of the ancient Greeks or Romans. It was a bardic tale, a story told, learned, and retold for several centuries by people who couldn’t write. There were likely lots of these stories, the tellers mixing and matching characters and scenes from them, and recasting them to agree with the politics, religion, and references to ancestors of local rulers and heroes of whatever audience it was being told. The tales were likely partially sung, partially spoken, with or without instrumental accompaniment and sound effects. The line likely rhymed – important not only for the audience, but, as with song lyrics today, to aid the memory of the singer/teller. They likely used “stunts”, such as planned and spontaneous noises, shouts, and cheers from the audience.

 

The stories come from after the fall or Rome and before the rise of the Church as a cultural “glue” of the European world – from the heart of the dark ages. As the church began to bend such tales to agree with their moral lessons, most of them lost their original feel, and either faded from memory, or became incorporated into mainstream legends and religious scripture. Beowolf doesn’t appear to have survived this fate because it was the best or most indestructible of these stories, but because a couple of English speakers who could write – almost certainly clerics of some sort – wrote it in a collection that included mostly religious scripture that didn’t make it into any protestant versions of the Bible, and one or two that made it into Catholic and Orthodox version of it – the Nowell Codex. Later people translated from this version into Latin, and much later, modern English and other languages, sticking as closely as they could to the original. In the 20 Century and later, various writers retold the story more liberally, including some interesting tellings from the point of view of lesser characters, as well as Grendel (the original story’s main villain, AKA “that foe of mankind”), and even his mother (and even worse foe of mankind). It’s been used as a close or lose template in all sorts of other stories, including some hard science fiction.

 

The latest movie (I think this will be the second feature-length, made-for-the theatre screenplay – there have been some arguably OK made-for-TV versions, too) has a screenplay by multimedia superstar Neil Gaiman and veteran action/noire/horror screenplay writer/director/producer Roger Avery. It may be great, or awful – how exactly Angelina Jolie can be made to work as Grendel’s mother, I’ve a hard, bizarre time imagining.

 

In short, when reading Beowolf, keep in mind you are reading a Beowolf, not the Beowolf. In a real sense, there is no authoritative Beowolf, just a series of retellings. IMHO, the best way to experience Beowolf is the old way – learn it from someone telling it, in the woods, at night, then teach it to others the same way. Keep in mind it should be both uplifting, encouraging, and mortally terrifying – essentially a dark ages horror story – not a dry exercise in reading archaic English.

[freeztar]

not a dry exercise in reading archaic English.

 

Indeed I did not give credit to the Bardic attributes of the tale. In fact, reading your post, Craig, was a refreshing rehash of my earlier learnings.

 

I now feel guilty that I referred to it as a "decent enough storyline". It's akin to calling the Odyssey "a nice story". :hihi:

 

I'd love to EXPERIENCE the story, properly told in the woods, but alas...