Though it is often viewed both as the archetypal Anglo-Saxon literary work and as a cornerstone of modern literature, Beowulf
has a peculiar history that complicates both its historical and its
canonical position in English literature. By the time the story of Beowulf
was composed by an unknown Anglo-Saxon poet around 700 a.d., much of
its material had been in circulation in oral narrative for many years.
The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples had invaded the island of
Britain and settled there several hundred years earlier, bringing with
them several closely related Germanic languages that would evolve into
Old English. Elements of the Beowulf story—including its setting
and characters—date back to the period before the migration. The action
of the poem takes place around 500 a.d. Many of the characters in the
poem—the Swedish and Danish royal family members, for
example—correspond to actual historical figures. Originally pagan
warriors, the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian invaders experienced a
large-scale conversion to Christianity at the end of the sixth century.
Though still an old pagan story, Beowulf thus came to be told by a Christian poet. The Beowulf
poet is often at pains to attribute Christian thoughts and motives to
his characters, who frequently behave in distinctly un-Christian ways.
The Beowulf that we read today is therefore probably quite unlike the Beowulf
with which the first Anglo-Saxon audiences were familiar. The element
of religious tension is quite common in Christian Anglo-Saxon writings (The Dream of the Rood,
for example), but the combination of a pagan story with a Christian
narrator is fairly unusual. The plot of the poem concerns Scandinavian
culture, but much of the poem’s narrative intervention reveals that the
poet’s culture was somewhat different from that of his ancestors, and
that of his characters as well.
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