Monsters in Beowulf

Résumé du document

The Beowulf poem is one of the most important heritages from the historical sources of the Middle-Ages. Unfortunately we still don't know who wrote it, maybe was he a poet in a royal court or an erudite monk-poet. Moreover, we cannot date the text more precisely than between the seventh and the tenth centuries because we don't have any original copies but only copied versions that were available after a long oral tradition. It is a major epic poem which notably promoted the monotheism in an era where England was practicing Christianity. The Beowulf's scenes take place in Denmark and Sweden in Celtic and Germanic traditions, especially in the monstrous foes where Beowulf meets and fights in his adventure. He saves a friendly king from two monsters (Grendel and his mother) who killed a lot of soldiers at night. Fifty years later, a huge dragon who ravages his kingdom after being stolen. They both die of this battle. This monstrousness reinforces the heroism of the main character. Without these monsters, Beowulf would just have been a barbaric warrior of battlefields.

Extraits

[...] Last comment: We can literally bring closer together Beowulf (the Bee-Wulf) and the Grendel's mother who is several times called “sea-wulf”. A monster's way of life (opposite to a warrior's and a woman's one) Their lives are totally opposite to a common warrior or a woman's way of life. The two monsters live in the depths of a hellish lake in a cold, dark and lonely universe, in opposite to the Hrothgar‘s Hall. They are quite exiled from the society, hidden, in their underwater cavern. [...]

[...] On the contrary, the dragon is the guardian of a fabulous hoard; he is very jealous of his gold in spite of the fact that he can't enjoy it in his underground kingdom. In Germanic tradition, the wealth is made to circulate in order to make everyone take advantage of it. The fight between these two neighboring lords is unavoidable. Each one has to defend their own estates and their own goods. They also have to take revenge and to claim justice. That explain what they are both fiery to fight but that reveals as well that they are quite afraid by each other. [...]

[...] And when one is killed, many others come over and over again. The guarding treasure dragon Portrait of the horrible creature He's the only monster which appears to us as a real monster, even though the dragon was considered as a real animal because of the bible references. The dragon is the creature with the most physical details, but not enough for a complete portrait. He's fifty feet long (about fifteen meters long). He gets a reptilian aspect with a thick scaled skin except on the gorge's area, venomous fangs and a slithering way to move. [...]

[...] The Beowulf's scenes take place in Denmark and Sweden in Celtic and Germanic traditions, especially in the monstrous foes Beowulf meet and fight in his adventure. He saves a friendly king from two monsters (Grendel and his mother) who killed a lot of his soldiers at night; before he faces, fifty years later, a huge dragon who ravages his kingdom after being stolen. They both die of this battle. This monstrousness reinforces the heroism of the main character. Without these monsters, Beowulf would just have been a barbaric warrior of battlefields. [...]

[...] They only exist one for the other and by their massacres. The other sea-monsters We briefly meet them throughout the poem, and more precisely, only in the first part of the epic story. First, when Beowulf introduces himself to Hrothgar and when he displays a kind of a monsters killer's CV, but without the specifics of the fights. He becomes more precise in the second allusion to these water monsters in reply to Unferth's skepticism about the swimming race against Breca. [...]