Beowulf (5 page)

While the
Beowulf
poet-singer-narrator may have given oral performances, he may also have committed the epic to writing or performed it for some scribe who did. Such a written version would contain forms designed for oral performance, and this version could have passed through several hands before being copied by the scribes of the surviving manuscript. But we really do not have clear evidence to solve this perplexing problem. So, we may ask, what difference does it make to us as modern readers whether we see features of orality in the poem or not? The point here is that there are some elements of the poem that can be more readily explained if we see them as part of, or at least derived from, oral tradition.

Consider the references to various traditions that are evoked as parts of the cultural memory of both poet and audience. We have already looked at some of these, including references to the near-mythical Sigemund and the references to Christian religion. Let us now consider the numerous references to the Swedish-Geatish wars that occupy much space in the latter part of the poem. These references should not be considered historical in the modern sense of the term. Rather, they are presented in the epic as recollections of historical events. In other words, it appears to have been important for the culture that produced
Beowulf
to maintain these legends in its cultural memory. For out of these legends, as well as others in the poem, this culture constructed its identity—its imagined origins, with the representation of a Heroic Age in which great warriors and their lords fought extraordinary battles against one another, and against monstrous foes and the forces of darkness, only to fall themselves after their moment of glory. Seen in this light, the legends of the Swedish-Geatish wars are by no means the “facts” of history, but they do present facts about the cultural memory and imagination of the poet and audience of
Beowulf.

In order to see the relevance of oral theory for the ways these legends are used in the epic, we must now turn to the question of their constructions as narratives. The first thing we may note about them is their seeming lack of coherent development, and that may be accounted for by assuming that they derive from some larger traditional narrative in which they do have coherence. Orally developed plots may follow a main narrative line, while constantly interrupting that line with allusions to, or fragments from, other narratives that seem, to the teller and audience alike, related to the main line and to one another. In other words, these allusions to, and fragments of, “other” narratives outside the main plot are, by tradition, taken to be related to the main narrative line. Even so, they are also parts of independent narratives that could be told independently of the “main” plot in which they are currently embedded or to which they are currently attached.

For example, the “singer of tales” could relate the story of Sigemund by itself and, presumably, in its entirety. Yet since such narratives in
Beowulf
generally appear in allusive, fragmentary, elliptical, recursive, nonsequential forms characteristic of scattered recollections, they presuppose a narrative already known, more or less, by the teller and audience. And while that larger narrative may never be fully related in a given context, it remains a necessary condition enabling the teller and audience to see coherence where there would otherwise seem to be only bewildering bits and pieces. We may appreciate the necessity of that condition when we consider how difficult it is for us to comprehend these allusive and fragmentary narrative bits, even with scholarly apparatus and time for reflection, and then consider how much more a listening audience would require at least some prior knowledge of the larger narratives of which these bits are parts.

But enough of theoretical abstraction. Let us now turn to
Beowulf
and analyze a typical set of such narrative bits, which are set in the main plot of the poem, yet presuppose a coherent narrative of their own for full comprehension. The narrative of Geatish-Swedish relations appears in eight allusions or fragments spread throughout the last third (or so) of the poem. In order to demonstrate the problem for interpretation, we may first consider these eight in the narrative order of the poem and then reconstruct them in a chronological sequence.

1. When Beowulf went to report to Hygelac on his Danish expedition, the Geatish king was described with the epithet “the slayer of Ongentheow” (line 1968), an old king of the Swedes. (However, as we learn later, Hygelac did not actually kill him, though he led the attack in which Eofer, one of his warriors, killed Ongentheow.)

2. After Hygelac’s death, his son King Heardred was killed by invading Swedes, thus bringing Beowulf to the throne (lines 2200-2210).

3. After Hygelac’s death, Queen Hygd offered the throne to Beowulf, who deferred to Heardred. Heardred supported Eanmund and Eadgils, sons of Ohtere, in their feud against their uncle Onela, the Swedish king. The Swedes attacked and killed Heardred, whereupon Beowulf became king and subsequently supported Eadgils’ retaliatory attack in which Eadgils appears most likely to have killed Onela and then to have become Swedish king (lines 2369-2396).

4. Beowulf’s recollection of Haethcyn killing Herebeald, his older brother, in an archery accident (lines 2435-2443).

5. Beowulf’s recollection that when Hrethel died, Haethcyn succeeded him and was attacked by Ohtere and Onela, the sons of the old Swedish king, Ongentheow. When Haethcyn retaliated, he was killed, but he was avenged when Eofor, a warrior under Hygelac’s command, killed Ongentheow (lines 2472-2489).

6. Seeing Beowulf suffering alone in the Dragon fight, Wiglaf seized the sword of his father Weohstan (apparently a Swede), which had belonged to Eanmund when Weohstan slew him. Weohstan won Eanmund’s sword and war gear in his service to Onela, the Swedish king, who remained silent about the killing of Eanmund, his nephew as well as his enemy. Weohstan later gave the sword and other war gear to his son Wiglaf while then among the Geats (lines 2610-2625).

7. After Beowulf’s death, Wiglaf forecast the Geats’ total loss because of their shameful flight from their lord in need, making them vulnerable to their enemies (lines 2884-2891).

8. Sent by Wiglaf to the other Geats, the Messenger then forecast doom from Franks and Frisians to the south for Hygelac’s earlier raid in Frisia (where Hygelac was killed), as well as from Swedes to the north for the Ravenswood battle where Ongentheow killed Haethcyn and pursued the Geats until Hygelac saved them with a relief force; whereupon Ongentheow retreated to his fortification, was pursued, struck down the Geatish warrior Wulf, whose brother Eofor then killed Ongentheow. Hygelac richly rewarded both brothers, but gave Eofor the greater gift of his only daughter in marriage. The Messenger predicts, in greater detail than Wiglaf, the coming fall of the Geats for Ongentheow’s (un-avenged) death (lines 2900-3027).

There is, of course, much here that is very confusing to a modern reader, but this is the order in which
Beowulf
presents the narrative of the Swedish-Geatish wars. As the summary shows, each piece of the narrative is a fragment of some larger story, and we are never given that larger story within the epic as it stands. Moreover, these fragmentary references are generally separated by considerable lengths from one another, and they are not presented in chronological order. If we want to make clear their chronological order, we would have to rearrange the eight fragments as follows: The sequence would begin with fragments 4, 5, and 8 (which also partially explains the sense of fragment 1), and then proceed with fragments 2 and 3 together with some details explained by fragment 6, followed by fragment 7 and the last part of fragment 8. (Readers who do not wish to try this exercise will find full explanations of the action of the poem in the notes to the main text.)

If the audience were listening to an oral performance, its members would have to rearrange this sequence in their heads, which would only seem possible if the poet and audience already had a larger traditional narrative in their cultural memory that put all the fragments in meaningful order. Thus, the poet-narrator can “recollect” events from that legendary history to insert in the main plot, whenever allusions to them seem appropriate to him—generally, by the process of association characteristic of oral composition that we considered earlier. It would not be very helpful to postulate instead an audience of readers, since these readers would have the same problem. Unless they were scholars with the professional interest in carrying out the sort of analysis given here, which is extremely unlikely for a secular epic such as this, these readers would also have to have access to the same kind of cultural memory that a listening audience would need. Even if
Beowulf
were presented in a monastic refectory, it would have been read aloud or otherwise performed for the audience, and that audience could not follow large parts of the narrative if they heard them in this epic for the first time. Still, there certainly are learned references in the poem and, especially in the case of religious references, these imply familiarity with textual traditions. And so, when all things are considered, there does seem good reason to see
Beowulf
occupying a borderland somewhere between oral tradition and the world of the book—probably at some time when both lived side-by-side.

Finally, we hear a second side to oral composition in
Beowulf,
as we are constantly reminded that the narrative is fundamentally
aural.
Again and again, the poet-singer uses some variation of the formula, “I have heard,” or “I have heard it told,” or “I have heard the tale sung.” In other words, this is a culture in which what is said must first of all have been heard. And so, in such a culture there is less a boundary between “author” and “audience,” than there is a threshold over which hearers of tales may pass to become tellers, and tellers are worth hearing to the extent that they themselves have become creative hearers. And so, while we may never know exactly how
Beowulf
was composed, we can see—or rather hear—in this dialectic of the
oral
and the
aural
yet another manifestation of the artistic complexity of our earliest epic in the English language.

John McNamara
is Professor of English at the University of Houston, where he teaches the early languages and literatures of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with a special focus on their oral traditions. He has published numerous articles in those areas, and with Carl Lindahl and John Lindow he co-edited
Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs,
2 vols. (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2000), which is now in a revised edition published by Oxford University Press (2002). He has twice won the University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award, and he has also been designated Master Teacher by his college. He lives in the Houston area with his wife Cynthia Marshall McNamara, a specialist in rhetoric and modern British literature, surrounded by their large family.

I owe my first and greatest debt to my students in graduate seminars in Old English Language and Literature, and especially in the seminar on
Beowulf
and the Art of Translation. Their insightful questions have made them my teachers, and I have learned much from them. I am also grateful to my table companions in our Old English/Old Icelandic Reading Group, especially Laurel Lacroix, Hilary Mackie, Cynthia Green, and Michael Skupin. In my efforts to catch something of the poetic quality of
Beowulf
I have had the wise counsel of poets Robert Phillips and James Cleghorn, whose suggestions about tone and audience have been invaluable. Hovering over all has been the presence of my late friend and fellow scholar Jeanette Morgan.

I wish to thank George Stade, consulting editorial director for the Barnes & Noble Classics, for inviting me to undertake this project. I am especially grateful to Jeffrey Broesche, general editor for this series, for his constant attention and his unstinting encouragement.

Finally, it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the tremendous debt I owe to my friend and colleague Carl Lindahl and, of course, to my wife and colleague Cynthia, who has made all possible.

The translation for this edition is based on the authoritative text produced by Friedrich Klaeber, which has been the standard text for citation by scholars for decades, but other editions have been consulted as well. In recent years, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the problems with reading the manuscript, some of which are paleographical—establishing what certain characters and words actually are—and some come from damage to the manuscript. The unique manuscript, dating from around the year 1000, was partially burned in a fire, and other forms of deterioration have occurred through age and the ways the manuscript has been handled. Some of the characters, words, and even whole verses have been reconstructed with the use of various technologies, the most recent being the digitizing of the manuscript for the British Library under the direction of Kevin Kiernan. Even so, if we turn pages in Klaeber’s or other modern editions, we will be struck by the number of cases in which editors have enclosed their emendations in square brackets. Most of these are single letters, but in a few cases whole lines have been reconstructed according to the best surmises of modern scholars, based on either linguistic or poetic considerations. Therefore, any translator must consult not only the Klaeber text, but also the work of Kiernan, Bruce Mitchell, Fred C. Robinson, and perhaps others. Since I have also used the excellent student edition of George Jack in courses for graduate students in the early stages of learning Old English, I have also benefited from his work as well. Important work on the text of
Beowulf
continues, as in the research of R. D. Fulk.