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Beowulf and Material Goods 12462 Views


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Description:

The characters in Beowulf knew the importance of bling. Watch the video to learn more about the place of material goods in the wonderful world of Beowulf.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:04

Beowulf a la Shmoop

00:06

Material Goods

00:09

If you haven't noticed yet, there's a lot of things -

00:12

material wealth and stuff - in Beowulf.

00:14

Beowulf recovers items from Grendel's mother's lair.

00:17

Hrothgar rewards him handsomely multiple times.

00:21

And now we have a big trove of treasure

00:23

guarded by - what else? - a dragon.

00:25

So, question - talk to us

00:27

about the importance of material goods in Beowulf.

00:30

What are they? How do they function?

00:32

And how do they get discovered?

00:35

Are their mines that they're digging in?

00:37

And, you know, how does all that work?

00:39

Material stuff has been cropping up, you know,

00:41

throughout this whole story.

00:43

We see goblets all over the mead hall.

00:46

You know, this is the equivalent of, you know,

00:50

having -- what do you call it when you have the gold...?

00:51

- Grill. - The grill! There we go.

00:53

Yeah, Ryan Lochte.

00:53

The equivalent of having a grill is having goblets

00:55

all over your mead hall.

00:56

The men have these, you know,

00:58

tons of armor all blinged out.

01:00

The women are wearing tons of jewelry.

01:01

When Beowulf kills Grendel,

01:03

Hrothgar, you know, in addition to these gnomes

01:06

that we talked about, gives him

01:08

so many things. He gives him horses.

01:10

He gives him a kingly saddle.

01:12

He gives him a sword and a shield

01:15

and all this stuff.

01:17

So, clearly, it's important.

01:18

And again, it reflects the cultural values of the time.

01:22

We look at this and we're like,

01:23

"Oh, they were greedy. Theme of greed in Beowulf."

01:26

But, like, it's not.

01:28

That's just how things worked back then.

01:30

Having these material goods

01:32

were a sign of your success and your wealth.

01:34

Now, if you walked into someone's house

01:36

and they had goblets everywhere,

01:38

you might -- Or like in this case, you know,

01:40

dollar bills, like, making it rain.

01:42

You might think, "Oh, you know. They're greedy."

01:45

But that's not what we're supposed to think.

01:47

We're supposed to think, "Oh, they're successful."

01:49

It's a good thing. It's respected.

01:50

Why do you think that's the case?

01:52

You know, when I think about this era,

01:54

I think about resources.

01:56

Just living, having food reliably,

01:59

and water reliably available,

02:01

and protection from the elements and disease

02:03

and God knows what else,

02:04

it was like an achievement.

02:05

Like blowing out your birthday candles

02:07

was something that came

02:09

because life was so hard. And that was only

02:10

a couple of hundred years ago that tradition started.

02:12

That you still had breath strong enough

02:14

to blow out your candles so you celebrated another year

02:16

of life.

02:17

In this era, my goodness,

02:19

it must have been very hard.

02:20

So I get the materiality mattering.

02:23

And it wasn't dollar bills,

02:23

it was like goblets for water.

02:25

Right. And the materiality matters

02:28

and you have to remember that, again,

02:29

we're not talking about everyday people,

02:31

we're talking about kings here, right?

02:32

So things like a goblet or a sword

02:36

or, you know, jewels,

02:38

were a way for a king to, say,

02:40

make an alliance. Instead of just kind of like

02:42

shaking someone's hand and saying like,

02:44

"Yes. We're good. Gentleman's agreement."

02:46

Like, we don't do that today either.

02:48

We sign contracts.

02:49

And, you know, the way that they did it to have alliances

02:53

was to give gifts among each other.

02:54

Give material things instead of just saying, like,

02:57

"Yeah, we're good."

02:57

And it was important to kind of have that,

02:59

as you brought up earlier,

03:00

that symbol of a connection.

03:02

But, in Beowulf, there's a tension.

03:04

Because, you know, again, reflecting cultural values,

03:07

material things being good and respected.

03:09

But, when the story was written down,

03:11

the Christian values had really come into play.

03:14

And, as we know from the Bible,

03:17

you're not supposed to value worldly things.

03:19

You're supposed to, you know, value the other-worldly,

03:22

not the worldly.

03:23

And so we do see this tension.

03:25

Some of the gnomes that Hrothgar says to Beowulf

03:30

are about, you know, "value eternal life."

03:32

Kind of, "you can't take it with you" idea.

03:35

So we do see the tension,

03:36

and if you're, you know, if you're confused

03:38

while you're reading Beowulf, you're supposed to be.

03:40

Because there is a tension between pagan and Christian values.

03:44

Valuing what's worldly and what's material

03:48

versus completely pushing all that aside

03:51

to value the other-worldly.

03:55

What are some of the material goods talked about in Beowulf?

03:59

What's the purpose of the display of wealth and all the glitzy gifts?

04:04

Why is there a tension between materiality and immateriality in Beowulf?

04:09

How is this tension shown in reading the story?

04:15

Yes, we're good.

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