An excerpt from JRRT's lecture
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. Before this lecture, virtually no Beowulf scholars had looked at the poem as
an actual work of literature. It seems obvious now, but it certainly wasn't at the time.
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I have not been a man so diligent in my special walk
as duly to read all that has been printed on, or touching on, this poem. But I have read enough, I
think, to venture the opinion that
Beowulfiana is, while rich in many departments, specially poor in
one. It is poor in criticism, criticism that is directed to the understanding of a poem as a poem. It has
been said of
Beowulf itself that its weakness lies in placing the unimportant things at the centre and
the important on the outer edges. This is one of the opinions that I wish specially to consider. I think
it profoundly untrue of the poem, but strikingly true of the literature about it.
Beowulf has been used
as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art.
It is of
Beowulf, then, as a poem that I wish to speak; and though it may seem presumption that I
should try with swich a lewed mannes wit to pace the wisdom of an heep of lerned men, in this
department there is at least more chance for the lewed man. But there is so much that might still be
said even under these limitations that I shall confine myself mainly to the monsters—Grendel and
the Dragon, as they appear in what seems to me the best and most authoritative general criticism in
English—and to certain considerations of the structure and conduct of the poem that arise from this
theme.
Nearly all the censure, and most of the praise, that has been bestowed on
Beowulf has been
due either to the belief that it was something that it was not—for example, primitive, pagan,
Teutonic, an allegory (political or mythical), or most often, an epic; or to disappointment at the
discovery that it was itself and not something that the scholar would have liked better—for
example, a heathen heroic lay, a history of Sweden, a manual of Germanic antiquities, or a Nordic
Summa Theologica.
I would express the whole industry in yet another allegory. A man inherited a field in which was
an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in
building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest
he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to
climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed
the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to
discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting
a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This
tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And
even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been
about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to
build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.'
But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.
I hope I shall show that that allegory is just—even when we consider the more recent and more
perceptive critics (whose concern is in intention with literature). To reach these we must pass in
rapid flight over the heads of many decades of critics. As we do so a conflicting babel mounts up to
us, which I can report as something after this fashion. '
Beowulf is a half-baked native epic the
development of which was killed by Latin learning; it was inspired by emulation of Virgil, and is a
product of the education that came in with Christianity; it is feeble and incompetent as a narrative;
the rules of narrative are cleverly observed in the manner of the learned epic; it is the confused
product of a committee of muddle-headed and probably beer-bemused Anglo-Saxons (this is a
Gallic voice); it is a string of pagan lays edited by monks; it is the work of a learned but inaccurate
Christian antiquarian; it is a work of genius, rare and surprising in the period, though the genius
seems to have been shown principally in doing something much better left undone (this is a very
recent voice); it is a wild folk-tale (general chorus); it is a poem of an aristocratic and courtly
tradition (same voices); it is a hotchpotch; it is a sociological, anthropological, archaeological
document; it is a mythical allegory (very old voices these and generally shouted down, but not so
far out as some of the newer cries); it is rude and rough; it is a masterpiece of metrical art; it has no
shape at all; it is singularly weak in construction; it is a clever allegory of contemporary politics
(old John Earle with some slight support from Mr. Girvan, only they look to different periods); its
architecture is solid; it is thin and cheap (a solemn voice); it is undeniably weighty (the same voice);
it is a national epic; it is a translation from the Danish; it was imported by Frisian traders; it is a
burden to English syllabuses; and (final universal chorus of all voices) it is worth studying.'
It is not surprising that it should now be felt that a view, a decision, a conviction are imperatively
needed. But it is plainly only in the consideration of Beowulf as a poem, with an inherent poetic
significance, that any view or conviction can be reached or steadily held. For it is of their nature that
the jabberwocks of historical and antiquarian research burble in the tulgy wood of conjecture,
flitting from one tum-tum tree to another. Noble animals, whose burbling is on occasion good to
hear; but though their eyes of flame may sometimes prove searchlights, their range is short.
None the less, paths of a sort have been opened in the wood. Slowly with the rolling years
the obvious (so often the last revelation of analytic study) has been discovered: that we have to deal
with a poem by an Englishman using afresh ancient and largely traditional material. At last then,
after inquiring so long whence this material came, and what its original or aboriginal nature was
(questions that cannot ever be decisively answered), we might also now again inquire what the poet
did with it.