Beowulf: The Culture Of The Anglo-Saxon Warriors

While the development of Western civilization was the product of numerous influences over three millennia, the coming together of three major phenomena is most responsible for its unique character. You have already studied two of them: the tradition of rationalism and political sophistication represented by classical Greece and Rome and the Judeo-Christian theology of a monotheistic God who acts in history. Beowulf asks us to think about the third important strand: the contributions of the Germanic warrior culture that replaced the Romans as the dominant force in Western Europe beginning in the fifth century AD. Germans in Central Europe, Franks who settled in Roman Gaul (modern France), Visigoths who conquered Spain, ancestors of the Vikings who settled Scandinavia, and Anglo-Saxons who conquered the British Celts all belonged to this culture. Just as the plays of Aristophanes helped us gain insight into fifth-century BC Athens, so too Beowulf can help us get into the mind of these medieval Germanic warriors and the culture they created.

The contrasts between Aristophanes’s Athens and the early medieval Europe of Beowulf’s time are obvious and telling. Athens was urban, cultured, diverse, literate and politically sophisticated. Its people created and appreciated great art, music, poetry, and literature. Early medieval Europe was rural, decentralized, illiterate, endlessly violent, and tribal. The places where the works were performed are telling as well. Aristophanes’s plays were performed from written scripts, under a warm Mediterranean sun in outdoor theatres holding thousands of people many of them foreign traders from places hundreds of miles away. Epics and myths like those set down in Beowulf would have been performed by an illiterate bard who had memorized them. His audience would have consisted of a local “lord” (who was typically nothing more than a head man of a small tribe) and his retainers, sitting in a large, drafty wooden barn that served as his hall. The audience, perhaps none of whom had ever traveled more than a few miles from their birthplaces and none of whom could read, would be gathered around a fire built in the middle of the hall with the smoke escaping from a hole cut in the roof. In winter this hall would have been dark and cold, and it smelled of wood smoke, unwashed bodies, and the manure of farm animals that lived with the humans for protection and for the heat their bodies contributed. This is the primitive world both of Beowulf and of the people who listened to tales like it during the medieval period. Yet from this world would spring, among other things, remarkable achievements like the English legal and political culture with its emphasis on personal liberty and the rule of law.

In a four-page paper you are to explore this strange, but in many ways familiar, society. First, very briefly describe the plot of the poem. Then analyze and describe the major characteristics of medieval warrior society it describes. What was important to these people? How were men supposed to act? What motivated them? What kinds of characteristics did they value and why? What kind of character traits do they disdain and why? What made for a good leader in this society? What role did women play in this poem? What does that tell us about their position in early medieval society? Always support your observations by specific reference to the text of the poem. In what ways would a society organized around the principles described in Beowulf be hindered from developing the kind of sophisticated society characterized by ancient Greece? You must provide specific examples from the text to support your analysis and all references to the text must be accompanied by specific line (not page) citations. Failure to do so will result in zero credit for the paper.

Your essay is to be four or more pages long, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and paragraphs separated by one double space only. Make sure your essay is well organized, well written, and has a proper introduction and conclusion. Your essay should be free of typographical errors and spelling mistakes. Use twelve-point font size (preferably Courier or Times New Roman). Be sure to consult the style guidelines for paper writing you received at the beginning of the course. No cover sheets please.

Seamus Heany version please