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Beowulf a la Shmoop

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Historical Context

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Let's dive right in to our first lesson here -

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Welcome to Anglosaxon England.

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And, Deb, give us a little bit of sense of the context

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in which Beowulf was written.

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You mentioned that it was written

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over the course of centuries

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or edited over the course of centuries.

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Run us through the process.

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How was it, you know,

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kind of literary stone soup

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that people contributed to over long periods of time?

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This is a story that was told

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before it was written down.

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Like almost all stories coming from that time period

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and periods before it.

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But there's really three cultures,

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three different kind of time periods at play here.

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First, there's the people that the story's about.

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The story takes place

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in, kind of, pre-fifth century CE.

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That's when, you know, Beowulf and Grendel are living.

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And these people are the descendants,

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the Scandinavian descendants,

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of the folks who were then telling the story.

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So, the first culture is, you know, who it's about.

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Fifth century Scandinavian.

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Then, we have the people who originally told the story.

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This is more like eighth-century.

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So, you know, several hundred years later.

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And these people are telling a story about their past,

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about their descendants

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before they came to England.

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Or, you know, before they became the Anglo-Saxons that they are.

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Then, we have the folks who actually wrote down the story.

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And that happened in around the twelfth century.

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And were these, like, professional scribes?

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You know, I think of monks as being

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the people who actually wrote down a lot of stories.

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- Like, the church sort of sponsored -- - Yeah, not everyone could

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read and write back then.

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So it's, you know, one guy who happens to know

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how to - well, many guys - writing down --

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And, of course, what we have today has,

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you know, gone through, like -- Got burned down

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and, you know, lost, and this, that, and the other,

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and put back together.

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And the writing of it, just to clarify, was like

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I don't know, octopus ink on lamb skin, or something,

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- with a feather? Basically. - Yes. That's exactly right.

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[ laughs ]

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Yeah, it's not -- You know, they didn't have computers to type this out,

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so it took really a really long time to put it together.

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Which means that, even if someone, you know --

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You imagine someone was told the story,

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so now they're writing it from memory.

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And then, on top of that, they can't do it all in

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one sitting, because imagine how long it would take.

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And then we lose pieces and everything.

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So, when we're reading something this old,

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we can't really --

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We know that what we're reading is different than

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the original story in at least some ways if not

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- many ways. - Understood.

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And I can't imagine someone unbiasedly

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writing things down. I'd be bored;

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- I'd wanna throw in all kinds of monsters - Oh yeah.

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with four heads and whatever.

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- Maybe that's how we got Grendel. - To spice things up. Yeah, exactly.

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- All right, keep going. - So, we've got

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the people who are writing it down in the twelfth century,

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and what's important to remember about them is that

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this is post-Norman conquest.

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And Christianity has really seeped into the culture

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a lot more at this point.

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So, we -- The original story was being told

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about people who, you know, we'd consider pagan.

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And then, the people who were telling the story,

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you know, weren't super Christianized.

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By the time it was written down,

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we're in a very Christianized world.

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Which means there's a big conflict

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between the pagan and the Christian values.

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And we'll look a little bit more into that later.

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And were the Normans Christian? Pagan?

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- Yes, the Norman conquest brought a lot of Christianity with it. - Christian doctrine?

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Exactly.

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And the pagans at this time,

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like, who were they?

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I'm thinking this is Holgar Schmoe and the people who celebrated Halloween.

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This is, yeah, this is Holgar Schmoe, yeah.

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That's, uh, Beowulf, Grendel, Hrothgar,

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all the characters in the -- In Beowulf are

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these pagan -- Basically, pagan just, at that time,

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and, I mean, still, we kind of use it today,

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means anything that's not Christian.

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Got it. Okay. Fair enough.

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And that's about all we know about the context

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of who wrote Beowulf.

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If you guys have videos from the eighth century,

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you can send it to us.

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We'll post it in a second.

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Who told Beowulf? Who wrote it? And who is it about?

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How might Beowulf be considered a literary "stone soup"?

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That's one of my favorite books.

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What religious did the Norman conquest bring to England

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and how might they have affected Beowulf?

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Like who were they?

Full Transcript