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. The passage in Beowulf that remarks of the dragon that “it is his nature to find / a hoard in the earth, where, ancient and proud, / he guards heathen gold, though it does him no good” corresponds with that in The Hobbit, which says that “Dragons steal gold and jewels…wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically forever unless they are killed)” (Liuzza 2275-77, Tolkien 27). Both authors comment about how dragons naturally seek out treasure to claim wherever they might locate it. The piles of forgotten gold entice Beowulf’s bane to seize the vacant barrow while the treasure lures Smaug down from the North to lay waste to the Lonely Mountain. Even basic descriptions of the dragons in The Hobbit and Beowulf parallel them as literary equals, and the intertextuality linking the two beasts continues to the end of their lives.

In Beowulf and The Hobbit, dragons occupy barrows 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. The Beowulf dragon discovers the barrow 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). In Beowulf, the barrow was a tomb for the dead long before the dragon discovers it. 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 Beard 7

“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.

The treasures are imbued with the curse of selfishness, a desire of the lone survivor in

Beowulf and in Thorin’s ancestor in The Hobbit, who yearned to hoard his treasure in the mountain, safe from anyone else and inducing the accumulation of wealth and therefore power

(Callahan 5-6). The poet of Beowulf describes the gold as being “deeply enchanted” and

“gripped in a spell so that no man in the / world would be able to touch” the gold except those who found favor with God, according to the poet (Liuzza 3051-57). The curse over the gold punished selfishness by “harr[ying]” “that…man who plunder[s] that place” “by hostile demons,” which Tolkien wrote into his novel by burdening Thorin and afflicting his mind with the dragon-sickness (Liuzza 3071-72). Likewise, the dwarves in The Hobbit sing of “the pale enchanted gold,” and later when they enter the Mountain and reside there for a time, Tolkien writes that “the lust of [the treasure] was heavy on [Thorin],” indicating how the enchantment, or dragon-sickness, influences the mind and causes a person to obsess over it and lose their sanity

(Tolkien 17, 286). The generosity of the king Thorin and Beowulf as they lay dying breaks the curse of selfishness over the gold (Callahan 11). Beowulf bestows the gold to his people to

“attend / to [their] needs” in lines 2800-01, and Thorin mends his friendship with Bilbo, apologizes, and says that “‘If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world’” (Liuzza, Tolkien 312). These passages indicate that the kings recognize and repent of their individual transgressions in similar sequences of events. Even in Beard 8 something as insignificant as treasure and gold, the intertextuality between Beowulf and

Tolkien’s literature appears strong and consistent.

Throughout the passages introducing the dragons, Tolkien and his predecessor reiterate the jealousy and ire of the firedrakes regarding their hoards before allowing readers to later witness the complete extent of their rages when they discover a thief among their treasure. Of

Smaug, J.S. Ryan writes that he “guards the hoarded treasure he has seized from the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, by means of fire and by such means (even as the Beowulf dragon) he would burn the city of…men” (50). Again, the influences of Beowulf impress upon The Hobbit.

In Beowulf, a thief “snatche[s] a jeweled cup,” while in The Hobbit, Bilbo, as the company’s hired burglar, steals a “great two-handled cup” (Liuzza 2231, Tolkien 234). Enraged at discovering that someone violated their hoards, the dragons burst forth upon helpless citizens, unleashing flames from their mighty maws and inflicting terror on those below, and again, the passages maintain the parallelism between the two wyrms (Liuzza 2308-15, Tolkien 236).

Jealousy encourages them both to action, and they engage every capacity granted to them as firedrakes to spew flames upon the nearby towns of men in parallel plot points that denote the influence of intertextuality.

These incidences of intertextuality—two bear-like fighters, two man-eaters, two dragons, two cursed treasure hoards, two stolen chalices, and two cities rendered to ash—argue for

Beowulf’s inspiring of The Hobbit. Ancient literature and authors influence those of the modern day without exceptions As a professor of Old English and Old Norse literature, Tolkien incorporated a vast array of ancient British and Celtic, Norse and Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon cultures into his novels to such an extent that some critics believe The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are Tolkien’s attempt at creating a universal British mythology. By writing The Lord of Beard 9 the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit, and related stories, Tolkien possibly endeavored to create a unified mythology for the entirety of Great Britain, using intertextuality to weave together scattered elements from those various cultures and produce a tapestry of legend and lore (Fimi

160). Through intertextuality, Tolkien’s infusion of centuries-old mythology into his writings leaves his tales assuming an essence that surpasses the passage of time.

Beard 10

Works Cited

Bonjour, Adrien. “Monsters Crouching and Critics Rampant: Or the Beowulf Dragon Debated.”

PMLA, vol. 68, no. 1, 1953, pp. 304–312. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/459922.

Burns, Marjorie. “J. R. R. Tolkien: The British and the Norse in Tension.” Pacific Coast

Philology, vol. 25, no. 1/2, 1990, pp. 49–59. JSTOR, JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/1316804.

Callahan, Patrick J. “Tolkien, Beowulf, and the Barrow-Wights.” Notre Dame English Journal,

vol. 7, no. 2, 1972, pp. 4–13. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40066567.

Fimi, Dimitra. “‘Mad’ Elves and ‘Elusive Beauty’: Some Celtic Strands of Tolkien's

Mythology.” Folklore, vol. 117, no. 2, 2006, pp. 156–170. JSTOR, JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/30035484.

Liuzza, R. M. “Beowulf.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Edition,

edited by Don LePan, 3rd ed., A, Broadview press, 2017, pp. 81–127.

Ryan, J. S. “German Mythology Applied. The Extension of the Literary Folk Memory.”

Folklore, vol. 77, no. 1, 1966, pp. 45–59. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1258920.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit (or There and Back Again). Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.

Beard 11

Works Consulted

Helterman, Jeffrey. “Beowulf: The Archetype Enters History.” ELH, vol. 35, no. 1, 1968, pp.

1–20. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2872333.

Hunter, John C. “The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Critical Mythology and ‘The Lord of the

Rings.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 29, no. 2, 2006, pp. 129–147. JSTOR,

JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3831796.

Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” The Proceedings of the British

Academy. Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, 25 Nov. 1936, London, England, Oxford

University.