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During the twenty years that have passed since the publication of J. R. R. Tolkien's famous lecture, "Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics" interest in "Beowulf" as a work of art has increased gratifyingly, and many fine papers have made distinguished contributions to our understanding of the poem as poetry and as heroic narrative. It is scarcely too much to say that Tolkien has given a new and significant direction to literary scholarship. Much more, however, remains to be done: we have still no systematic and sensitive appraisal of the poem later than Walter Morris Hart's "Ballad and Epic", no thorough examination of the poet's gifts and powers, of the effects for which he strove and the means he used to achieve them. More than enough remains to occupy a generation of scholars.
It is my hope that this book may serve as a kind of prolegomenon to such study. It makes no claim to completeness or finality; it contributes only the convictions and impressions which have been borne in upon me in the course of forty years of study of the poem.
I have tried to supply sufficient evidence to support my conviction that "Beowulf" is the work of a great artist, a work carefully planned and organized, excellent in form and structure, and composed with a sense of style unique in the poet's age. It will appear that I regard the work as composed in writing, and the author as trained in the art of the scop and educated as a cleric. In him the best of pagan antiquity and of the Christian culture of his time had fused; and we have in his work an achievement unequaled in English poetry before Chaucer.
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T H E A R T OF B E O W U L F
T H E ART OF
B E O WU L F by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur
UNIVERSITY
OF C A L I F O R N I A P R E S S
B E R K E L E Y , LOS A N G E L E S , LONDON
I97I
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright 1959 by
The Regents of the University of California Fourth Printing, /97/ ISBN: 0-520-01512-6 Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 58-12828 Designed by Ward Ritchie Printed in the United States of America
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A L V A R. D A V I S DISTINGUISHED GREAT
SCHOLAR
ADMINISTRATOR AND
GENEROUS
FRIEND
PREFACE During the twenty years that have passed since the publication of J. R. R. Tollmen's famous lecture, “ Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics” interest in Beowulf as a work of art has increased gratifyingly, and many fine papers have made distinguished contributions to our understanding of the poem as poetry and as heroic narrative. It is scarcely too much to say that Tolkien has given a new and significant direction to literary scholarship. Much more, however, remains to be done: we have still no systematic and sensitive appraisal of the poem later than Walter Morris Hart’s Ballad and Epic, no thorough exami nation of the poet’s gifts and powers, of the efiects for which he strove and the means he used to achieve them. More than enough remains to occupy a generation of scholars. It is my hope that this book may serve as a kind of prolegomenon to such study. It makes no claim to completeness or finality; it con tributes only the convictions and impressions which have been borne in upon me in the course of forty years of study of the poem. It may seem all too incomplete: it w ill be noticed, for example, that I have
PREFACE
said little of the poet’s use of understatement, and that my study of his style is largely restricted to the single figure of variation. This was deliberate: in the matter of litotes l have nothing substantial to add to the excellent study, “ Understatement in Old English Poetry,” pub lished in /937 (T M LA , L ll, pp. 915-934) by Dr. Frederick Brache