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Isolation and Community in the Hero's Life in Beowulf Mary E. Ziehe, MA

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Isolation and Community in the Hero's Life in Beowulf Mary E. Ziehe, MA ABSTRACT “Alone in the Front”: Isolation and Community in the Hero’s Life in Beowulf Mary E. Ziehe, M.A. Thesis Chairperson: Jeannette K. Marsh, PhD. This project seeks to clarify the paradox suggested by ana on orde (“alone in the front”) and to show how it plays out on both the narratorial and verbal levels of Beowulf. Ultimately, I suggest reading Beowulf using the two sides of this paradox (held in tension with each other) as an interpretive lens. My approach focuses on linguistic and literary analysis of the words ana and ord. I first provide background material on topics of Beowulf scholarship relating to my analysis. Then, I trace the uses of ana and ord in Beowulf’s “pre-battle speeches.” Third, I analyze their use throughout Beowulf. Finally, I look at how they and their cognates are used in the poetry of Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German in order to see how the Beowulf poet uses the phrase ana on orde in comparison to other literature in his larger literary and cultural milieu. Copyright © 2012 by Mary E. Ziehe All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iv Dedication v Epigraph vi Chapter One: “Introduction: Foundations of ‘Alone in the Front’” 1 Part I: Genesis and Description of the Project 1 Part II: Background of the Poem 5 Anglo-Saxon History and Culture: Germanic Paganism and Latin Christianity 6 Date, Place, and Method of Composition; Some Characteristics of the Poet 10 Notes on Structure, Theme, Tone, and Genre 12 Ana on Orde as an Interpretive Lens 19 Chapter Two: “Ana on Orde: The Paradox of Heroism in Beowulf’s Pre-Battle Speeches” 20 Rehearsing the Death-Song: Beowulf’s Pre-Battle Speeches 23 The Pre-Grendel Speeches (ll. 405-55, 631-8, and 675-87) 27 The Pre-Dam Speeches (ll. 1383-96, 1473-91) 28 The Pre-Dragon Speeches (ll. 2417-2509, 2510-15, and 2516-37) 30 Words and Deeds: Ana on Orde in the Monster Fights 34 Ana Elements 37 Ord Elements 38 Element X: God/Fate 40 Conclusion: The Paradoxical Hero’s Life 41 Chapter Three: “Expanding Ranges, Layering Meanings: The Use of Ana, Ord and Their Cognates in Beowulf and the Poetry of Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German” 45 Process and Linguistic Data 47 Uses of Ana and Ord Within Beowulf 50 Ana in Beowulf 54 Ord in Beowulf 60 A Note on Formulaic Usage 66 Conclusions 69 Uses of Ana and Ord (and Their Cognates) in the Poetry of Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German 70 Ana and Ord in Old English Poetry 73 Eno and Ord in Old Saxon Poetry 80 Eino and Ort in Old High German Poetry 84 Conclusions 87 Appendices 92 Appendix A: “Beowulf’s Pre-Battle Speeches” 93 Appendix B: “Ana and Ord in Beowulf” 102 Appendix C: “Ana and Ord in Old English Poetry” 103 Appendix D: “Eno and Ord in Old Saxon Poetry” 109 Appendix E: “Eino and Ort in Old High German Poetry” 110 Bibliography 112 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As I near the completion of this project, I find myself more and more overcome with gratitude to the vast array of people who made it possible, and who were constantly on my mind as I thought and wrote. They were the community that made my scholarly isolation not only bearable, but richly meaningful. My heartfelt thanks goes first of all to my family (related by blood, friendship, or both); especially Mom and Dad, Lisa and Paul, Jeremy and Julian. Thank you for teaching, questioning, pushing, and cheerleading; thank you for safe havens, spirited discussions, and belly laughs; thank you most of all for constant, steadfast love. Jeannette, thank you for teaching me Old English (and eventually tossing me feet-first into several other languages), for encouraging me to pursue a somewhat ‘unorthodox’ project, and for being the kind of scholar I aspire to become. Professor Gamgee, thank you for Rachmaninoff, the infamous E.T. paper, lots of coffee, and the sharing of the Road that all of these imply. Elen sila lumenn’, Elf-friend. Professor Tolkien, thank you for first interesting me in Anglo-Saxon and the North, years before I was old enough to analyze the thrill I got every time you offered glimpses of them in your stories. Then when I was, thank you for also providing a doorway into an intellectual world that gets larger the longer I live in it. And to my students: thank you for your curiosity, your passion, and your patience with your ‘absent-minded professor.’ You have taught me more than I think I could ever teach you; you keep me humble, and you also keep me sane. Finally, I want to thank you, the Beowulf poet—whoever you are—for giving a shining vision of heroism to an all-too-often dark and difficult world. Lixte se leoma ofer landa fela. iv DEDICATION To everyone who loves hero stories. My hope is that in reading about Beowulf, you learn a little more what it means to be the hero of your own story. v He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you. --Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil IV.146 CHAPTER ONE Introduction: Foundations of “Alone in the Front” Part I: Genesis and Description of the Project It has been well over a hundred years since the German Romantics helped return the Old English Beowulf to its place in the literary canon. Since then, there has been so much written about the poem that it has provoked a minor trend among literary scholars to begin their work on it with an apology for adding to the mass. In the foreword to his 2003 Critical Companion to ‘Beowulf’, Andy Orchard notes that since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the principal areas of scholarly inquiry into Beowulf remains substantially the same, although the sheer number of dedicated publications has become somewhat bemusing. Whereas in 1936 J. R. R. Tolkien [in a seminal address to the British Academy entitled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”] could humbly [admit that] he had not been ‘a man so diligent in [his] special walk as duly to read all that has been printed on, or touching on, this poem,’ it might fairly be said that none of his successors in this ‘special walk’ would now dream of doing so. (3) And yet, the stream of publications remains steady. Despite the high volume of material, the apologies for continuing scholarship are unnecessary. The poem’s ability to withstand so much critical scrutiny and not lose its mystery or its power to inspire new thinking in successive generations of audiences is certainly one reason that Beowulf is a classic of English literature. No matter how much scholars from diverse disciplines have delved into this poem, they have not exhausted its possibilities, and no one perspective in any field of Beowulf interpretation can claim undisputed authority. In the discipline of literature, some of the most vexed questions include place and date of composition, unity of authorship (and the characteristics of the poet), and method of composition—all issues that complicate the task of literary analysis. For now, let it be said that the fact that these questions have not been, and in some cases will never be, firmly settled has the distinct advantage of requiring that literary analysis of Beowulf pay close attention to the poem itself. 1 This has not been the case universally, a concern addressed by Professor Tolkien in 1936: “It has been said of Beowulf itself that its weakness lies in placing the unimportant things at the centre and the important on the outer edges. I think it profoundly untrue of the poem, but strikingly true of the literature about it. Beowulf has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art” (14). Still, in the years since that lecture (and at least partly because of it), Tolkien’s request that literary scholars direct their criticism “to the understanding of a poem as a poem” has borne much fruit (14, emphasis mine). The abundance and quality of the continuing scholarly interest in Beowulf indicates that this is a piece of literature that not only invites, but also rewards, such investigation. Beowulf is a far from easy text for a modern reader, even one with some knowledge of the language and culture of Anglo-Saxon England, but then again, it was not a simple poem to begin with. The unknown poet has interwoven his1 surface-level narrative of a monster- fighting hero with a rich backdrop of historical, biblical, and mythical material, refuses to be bound by a strictly chronological structure, and expresses his tale in masterfully compact, allusive language wrought to a high poetic sheen. While the initial impression gives great pleasure to an audience with tastes at all compatible to its style and subject matter, Beowulf is like any other great, complex work of art: the more one studies it, the more one sees. The challenge, then, for new Beowulf scholarship is not so much that of making revolutionary discoveries as it is of bringing fresh perspectives to the text that help to expand and refine current ones. That is what I have attempted in this project. Genesis of the Project “What is it to be a hero?” The single best piece of advice given to me as a young scholar is that all good research begins with a good set of questions.
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