Beard 1 Abigail Beard Medieval to Modern: Intertextuality in Beowulf

Beard 1 Abigail Beard Medieval to Modern: Intertextuality in Beowulf and Tolkien’s The Hobbit Intertextuality, the influence of literary works on others and the reflection of the original work in the latter, is widely discussed in academic and pop-culture environments. Yet when considering the greatest authors of the 20th century, some readers often opt to adhere to ideas of complete originality, believing authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien created their lore and fiction solely out of their own thought and genius. Intertextuality emphasizes authors’ appreciation for ancient literature, their ability to understand the value of thematic elements, and their creative capacity to weave them into their own stories as we observe with Beowulf and Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Initially, much of the intertextuality in The Hobbit stems from a variety of cultures across the British Isles and Western Europe. Each individual culture in England contains its own specific myths and legends influenced by language, of which Tolkien employs fragments of a few throughout his stories. His name Middle-Earth references the Norse word miðgardð (middangeard), correlating to line 75 of Beowulf in which the poet terms the world “middle- earth” (Ryan 51, Liuzza). Dimitra Fimi of Folklore analyses the similarities between the Welsh language and the language of the elves, or “Fair Folk” in Tolkien’s lore, asserting that Tolkien incorporated at least two cultures—Welsh and Anglo-Saxon—into his novels (157). These instances are merely two examples of cultural intertextuality in Tolkien’s novels. When people consider the characters in The Hobbit and Beowulf, they tend to compare the dwarf king Thorin with the character of Beowulf because of their respective kingships; however, another character, Beorn, bears significant resemblance to the Anglo-Saxon hero Beard 2 beyond superficial kingships. According to Marjorie Burns, Beowulf receives his name from a kenning meaning bee-wolf, or one who eats honey, meaning plainly, a bear (54). Beorn, Tolkien explains, “is a skin-changer” who shifts forms between that of a “huge black bear” and “a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard,” describing him as a “very great person” which implies Beorn’s prowess and his powerful stature (126-127). Likewise, the poet of Beowulf emphasizes Beowulf’s physical appearance and specifically the strength of his arms and his hands. He writes that Beowulf’s “hand was too strong, / he … overtaxed every blade / with his mighty blows” (Liuzza 2673-75). Their might and power in battle vastly surpass mere mortals and allows those characters to assume the presence of their names, whether through physical manifestation as in Beorn, or through their battle-frenzies. As men, Beowulf and Beorn lead relatively peaceful lives governing their kingdoms, Beorn over his animals, and Beowulf over the Geats; they live to protect and to shelter. When they shift into their bear and berserker hides, their internally harbored anger emerges and allows them to rage. This aspect of Beorn relates to the Viking berserkers of Norse and Anglo-Saxon cultures from which Beowulf originates (Ryan 48, Burns 51). In The Hobbit, Tolkien’s character Gandalf says of Beorn that “as a bear, he ranges far and wide” and that Gandalf “heard him growl in the tongue of bears: ‘The day will come when they will perish and I shall go back!’” implying a vengeful streak flowing through the bear’s veins that exists in opposition to the peaceful nature of the man (128). After Beowulf suffers loss, his internal ire burns, and the poet notes that this attitude is unusual for the man, indicating a shift from man to something animalistic. …his breast within groaned with dark thoughts—that was not his custom. Beard 3 …. … for that the war-king, … devised revenge. (Liuzza 2331-36) While peaceful sometimes, Beowulf and Beorn harbor deep rage inside that emerges when they fight. Beorn literally assumes the visage of a wild and predatory creature, while Beowulf caters toward a traditional Norse Berserker fighting style. Due to their shared berserker-like blood frenzies, Beowulf and Beorn stand among the severed limbs and gore of their enemies following a fight. Burns remarks that Beorn’s shifting or skin-changing abilities draws immediately from traditional Norse berserkers, an idea Tolkien evidently entertained by creating Beorn (Burns 54-56). Arriving late to the final battle beneath the Mountain: [Beorn] came alone, and in bear’s shape; and he seemed to have grown almost to giant-size in his wrath. The roar of his voice was like drums and guns; and he tossed wolves and goblins from his path like straws and feathers. He fell upon their rear, and broke like a clap of thunder through the ring … his wrath was redoubled, so that nothing could withstand him, and no weapon seemed to bite upon him. (Tolkien 313-314). In bear form, Beorn, vicious and invulnerable, shreds his victims to pieces akin to his Viking berserker predecessors that, according to legend, flew into blood furies on the battlefield, transforming from man to monster in seconds. The inspiration from those warriors is evident in Beorn and in Beowulf. During the fight with Grendel in lines 786-788 of Beowulf, Beowulf seizes the beast by the arm and wrenches the limb from socket with metahuman strength incited Beard 4 by the thrill of battle (Liuzza). Besides the dragons, the similarities between Beorn and Beowulf are perhaps where the intertextuality between Beowulf and The Hobbit begins to emerge. The Hobbit and Beowulf both include the presence of man-eaters; Grendel and the creature Gollum awake and devour people from the villages in the dark of night before returning from their pillaging to the safety of their caves. The poet of Beowulf describes Grendel as a “great ravager” who “lurk[s] and [strikes] / old and young alike (Liuzza 159, 160-161). Under the blanket of darkness, Grendel descends upon the race of men to devour their flesh and drink their blood, similarly to how the creature Gollum slink in the darkness to prey on weaker creatures, humans, dwarves, goblins, and hobbits alike. Also, Gollum and Grendel share the same twisted internal and external states. In Beowulf, the poet describes Grendel as “a bold demon who waited in the darkness / wretchedly suffer[ing] all the while,” a description that accurately suits Gollum equally well as it does Grendel, for Gollum lurks in the darkness, residing deep beneath the mountains of Middle Earth, outcast from society and in ownership of the One Ring—the manifestation of harvested evil that corrupts the handler (Liuzza 86-87, Tolkien 80). Tolkien writes Gollum as a wretched demon-type creature who suffers due to his possession of evil, and who exists as a scourge upon all living beings he contacts. As sin and evil devour both Grendel and Gollum, so they devour other purer and holier beings such as men and hobbits. This theme of evil consuming characters in Beowulf and The Hobbit serves as a Christian metaphor representing to readers the nature of sin in order to emphasize themes of redemption that appear later in the Lord of the Rings and near the end of Beowulf. In Beowulf and The Hobbit, dragons occupy barrows (or tombs) and jealously hoard the treasure within; the threat of their blazing ire, even lying dormant beneath the earth, terrifies the people of the surrounding villages into silent submission. Beowulf’s dragon discovers the barrow Beard 5 already a tomb. Of the tomb, Beowulf’s poet notes that “… In earlier times / death had seized them all…” and that a lone survivor of that nation stowed away the treasure to honor his countrymen in the afterlife, implying that long before the dragon appeared, the barrow was a tomb for the dead (Liuzza 2237-38). On the other hand, in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug transforms the Mountain into a barrow at the time of his occupation (Callahan 5). Smaug “destroy[s] most of the warriors” of Dale and “route[s] out all the halls” of the Mountain until “there [are] no more dwarves left alive inside, and he [takes] all their wealth for himself” (Tolkien 28). Regardless of minor technicalities, both dragons assume power in a tomb—the dragon in Beowulf happens upon the trove of an already-dead nation, while Smaug transforms the Mountain into a tomb during his claiming of the treasure. One of the boldest manifestations of intertextuality between Beowulf and The Hobbit appears in the presence of the dragons. As mentioned before, they occupy barrows—or transform a living city into a tomb—and reside there, imbuing the treasure with their jealousy and selfish dreams. The first mention of Smaug in The Hobbit, while vague, instills a sense of foreboding of the “darker” evil lurking in the “hollow halls” of the Lonely Mountain (Tolkien 17). It hints of the spiritual, physiological, and metaphorical curse surrounding him. Tolkien uses dragons to represent the prominent and antagonistic evil in our world, and Smaug embodies darkness and all the facets of sin; Tolkien and his predecessor, the Beowulf poet, clearly iterate the moral and humanistic evil of their firedrakes (Ryan 47). Tolkien states that Smaug “[is] a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm” on page 27; the poet writes that “in the dark nights a dragon began his reign,” where darkness again denotes an absence of light or moral good in the world (Liuzza 2211). If dragons symbolize evil, it is natural, then, that the physical manifestations of sin and selfishness of gold lure them. Beard 6 Several passages of Beowulf and The Hobbit explain dragons’ propensity to acquire and hoard treasure, and how they seek vengeance upon trespassers by becoming a scourge to the countryside; Tolkien’s descriptions bear frequent similarities with those of the poet.

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