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What do Beowulfs men do when they see the dragon is about to defeat him?

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Dragon from the Beowulf poem

The final act of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf includes Beowulf'south fight with a dragon, the third monster he encounters in the ballsy. On his render from Heorot, where he killed Grendel and Grendel'south mother, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and rules wisely for fifty years until a slave awakens and angers a dragon by stealing a jewelled loving cup from its lair. When the aroused dragon mercilessly burns the Geats' homes and lands, Beowulf decides to fight and kill the monster personally. He and his thanes climb to the dragon's lair where, upon seeing the creature, the thanes flee in terror, leaving only Wiglaf to boxing at Beowulf'southward side. When the dragon wounds Beowulf fatally, Wiglaf attacks it with his sword, and Beowulf kills it with his dagger.

This delineation indicates the growing importance and stabilization of the modern concept of the dragon within European mythology. Beowulf is the first piece of English language literature to present a dragon-slayer. Although the Beowulf dragon exhibits many existing motifs common to Germanic tradition, the Beowulf poet was the offset to combine features and present a distinctive burn down-breathing dragon. The Beowulf dragon was adjusted for Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien'due south The Hobbit (1937), one of the forerunners of modern high fantasy.

The dragon fight, near the end of the poem, is foreshadowed in earlier scenes. The fight with the dragon symbolizes Beowulf's stand against evil and destruction, and, as the hero, he knows that failure volition bring devastation to his people subsequently many years of peace. The dragon itself acts as a mock "gilt-king"; 1 who sees attacking Beowulf's kingdom equally suitable retribution for the theft of but a single cup.[1] The scene is structured in thirds, ending with the deaths of the dragon and Beowulf.

Story [edit]

After his battles confronting Grendel's mother and Grendel, Beowulf returns domicile and becomes rex of the Geats. Fifty years pass with Beowulf in charge, when a local dragon is angered when a slave enters its lair and takes a loving cup from its treasure. The creature attacks the neighboring towns in revenge. Beowulf and a troop of men leave to find the dragon's lair. Beowulf tells his men to stay outside, that this fight is his lonely, merely the dragon proves besides potent and mortally wounds Beowulf. Meanwhile, his kinsman Wiglaf scolds the other members of the troop for not going in to help, before coming to Beowulf's help. He cuts the dragon in the abdomen to reduce the flames, and Beowulf deals the fatal blow. In his death-speech, Beowulf nominates Wiglaf every bit his heir and asks for a monument to exist built for him on the shoreline.

Background [edit]

Beowulf is the oldest extant heroic poem in English and the offset to present a dragon slayer. The legend of the dragon-slayer already existed in Norse sagas such as the tale of Sigurd and Fafnir, and the Beowulf poet incorporates motifs and themes common to dragon-lore in the poem.[2] Beowulf is the earliest surviving slice of Anglo-Saxon literature to characteristic a dragon, and information technology is possible that the poet had admission to similar stories from Germanic legend.[3] Secular Germanic literature and the literature of Christian hagiography featured dragons and dragon fights.[4] Although the dragons of hagiography were less fierce than the dragon in Beowulf, similarities exist in the stories such as presenting the journeying to the dragon'south lair, cowering spectators, and the sending of messages relaying the outcome of the fight.[5]

The dragon with his hoard is a mutual motif in early on Germanic literature with the story existing to varying extents in the Norse sagas, just it is most notable in the Völsunga saga and in Beowulf.[six] Beowulf preserves existing medieval dragon-lore, almost notably in the extended digression recounting the Sigurd/Fafnir tale.[2] Notwithstanding, comparative contemporary narratives did not have the complexity and distinctive elements written into Beowulf 's dragon scene. Beowulf is a hero who previously killed two monsters. The scene includes extended flashbacks to the Geatish-Swedish wars, a detailed description of the dragon and the dragon-hoard, and ends with intricate funerary imagery.[7]

Beowulf scholar J. R. R. Tolkien considered the dragon in Beowulf to exist one of only two real dragons in northern European literature, writing of it, "dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare. In northern literature in that location are simply two that are pregnant ... we take but the dragon of the Völsungs, Fáfnir, and Beowulf's bane."[viii] Furthermore, Tolkien believes the Beowulf poet emphasizes the monsters Beowulf fights in the poem and claims the dragon is every bit much of a plot device as annihilation. Tolkien expands on Beowulf 'south dragon in his ain fiction, which indicates the lasting impact of the Beowulf verse form.[2] Inside the plot structure, however, the dragon functions differently in Beowulf than in Tolkien'south fiction. The dragon fight ends Beowulf, while Tolkien uses the dragon motif (and the dragon's beloved for treasure) to trigger a chain of events in The Hobbit.[9]

Label [edit]

The Beowulf dragon is the earliest instance in literature of the typical European dragon and first incidence of a fire-breathing dragon.[10] The Beowulf dragon is described with Old English terms such every bit draca (dragon), and wyrm (reptile, or serpent), and every bit a creature with a venomous bite.[eleven] Likewise, the Beowulf poet created a dragon with specific traits: a nocturnal, treasure-hoarding, inquisitive, vengeful, burn down-breathing creature.[12]

The fire is likely symbolic of the hellfire of the devil, reminiscent of the monster in the Book of Task. In the Septuagint, Job's monster is characterized every bit a draco, and identified with the devil.[10] Task'southward dragon would have been accessible to the author of Beowulf, as a Christian symbol of evil, the "peachy monstrous antagonist of God, man and beast alike."[13]

A study of German and Norse texts reveals three typical narratives for the dragonslayer: a fight for the treasure, a battle to save the slayer'due south people, or a fight to free a adult female.[14] The characteristics of Beowulf 'southward dragon appear to exist specific to the poem, and the poet may have melded together dragon motifs to create a dragon with specific traits that weave together the complicated plot of the narrative.[12]

Importance [edit]

The 3rd act of the poem differs from the commencement two. In Beowulf's two before battles, Grendel and Grendel's mother are characterized as descendants of Cain: "[Grendel] had long lived in the country of monsters / since the creator cast them out / every bit the kindred of Cain"[fifteen] and seem to be humanoid: in the poet's rendition they can exist seen as giants, trolls, or monsters. The dragon, therefore, is a stark contrast to the other ii antagonists.[xvi] Moreover, the dragon is more overtly subversive. He burns vast amounts of territory and the homes of the Geats: "the dragon began to belch out flames / and fire bright homesteads".[17] [18]

Beowulf'due south fight with the dragon has been described variously as an act of either altruism[19] or recklessness.[xx] In contrast with the previous battles, the fight with the dragon occurs in Beowulf's kingdom and ends in defeat, whereas Beowulf fought the other monsters victoriously in a state distant from his domicile. The dragon fight is foreshadowed with before events: Scyld Shefing'southward funeral and Sigmund's death by dragon, every bit recounted by a bard in Hrothgar's hall. Beowulf scholar Alexander writes that the dragon fight likely signifies Beowulf's (and by extension, society'south) battle against evil.[21] The people'southward fate depend on the effect of the fight between the hero and the dragon, and, as a hero, Beowulf must knowingly face death.[22]

Wiglaf is the single warrior to return and witness the expiry of the hero. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, 1908

Beowulf'south eventual death from the dragon presages "warfare, expiry, and darkness" for his Geats.[23] The dragon's hoard symbolizes the vestige of an older society, now lost to wars and famine, left backside by a survivor of that period. His imagined elegy foreshadows Beowulf's expiry and elegy to come.[24] Earlier he faces the dragon, Beowulf thinks of his past: his childhood and wars the Geats endured during that period, foreshadowing the future. At his death, peace in his lands will end, and his people will again suffer a period of war and hardship.[25] An embattled gild without "social cohesion" is represented by the avarice of the "dragon jealously guarding its gold hoard",[26]and the elegy for Beowulf becomes an elegy for the entire culture.[27] The dragon'southward hoard is representative of a people lost and antique, which is juxtaposed against the Geatish people, whose history is new and fleeting.[28] As king of his people, Beowulf defends them against the dragon, and when his thanes desert him, the poem shows the disintegration of a "heroic society" which "depends upon the honouring of common obligations between lord and thane".[29]

Wiglaf remains loyal to his king and stays to confront the dragon. The parallel in the story lies with the similarity to Beowulf'due south hero Sigemund and his companion: Wiglaf is a younger companion to Beowulf and, in his backbone, shows himself to exist Beowulf's successor.[30] [31] The presence of a companion is seen as a motif in other dragon stories, but the Beowulf poet breaks hagiographic tradition with the hero's suffering (hacking, called-for, stabbing) and subsequent death.[5] Moreover, the dragon is vanquished through Wiglaf'due south deportment: although Beowulf dies fighting the dragon, the dragon dies at the hand of the companion.[29]

The dragon battle is structured in thirds: the grooming for the boxing, the events prior to the battle, and the battle itself. Wiglaf kills the dragon halfway through the scene, Beowulf'south expiry occurs "after two-thirds" of the scene,[32] and the dragon attacks Beowulf iii times.[33] Ultimately, equally Tolkien writes in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936), the decease by dragon "is the correct end for Beowulf," for he claims, "a man tin but die upon his expiry-solar day".[34]

Critical reception [edit]

Before Tolkien [edit]

In 1918, William Witherle Lawrence argued in his article "The Dragon and His Lair in Beowulf" that the fight between Beowulf and the dragon tends to receive less disquisitional attending than other portions of the verse form, commenting that "Grendel and his dam take, as information technology were, become more than dear of the commentators".[35] Conversely, Kemp Malone writes in "The Kenning in Beowulf" that Beowulf's fight with the dragon receives much critical attention, merely that commentators fail to note that "the dragon was no fighter. Non that it refused to fight when challenged, only that it did not seek out Beowulf or anyone else. Information technology left Beowulf to do the seeking out".[36] In his 1935 work Beowulf and the Seventh Century, Ritchie Girvan writes that Beowulf should be seen as having some caste of historical accuracy despite the presence of a dragon in it; he argues that "Tales of dragons likewise every bit a conventionalities in dragons survived till recent times, and the popular mind is apt to accept with credulity stories of water-monsters. The stories, moreover, are often attached to real persons and localized precisely in time and place. The habit is then well known that examples are superfluous".[37] Raymond Wilson Chambers, in his Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Verse form with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn, says that Beowulf 's dragon acts like "the typical dragon of Erstwhile English proverbial lore" considering he guards treasure.[38] Westward. P. Ker criticized the inclusion of Beowulf's fight with the dragon and his subsequent death in the verse form, writing "It is equally if to the end of the Odyssey there had been added some later books telling in full of the onetime age of Odysseus, far from the sea, and his death at the hands of Telegonus".[39]

Tolkien, 1936: The Monsters and the Critics [edit]

In his 1936 lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, J. R. R. Tolkien noted that the dragon and Grendel are "constantly referred to in language which is meant to recall the powers of darkness which Christian men felt themselves to be encompassed. They are 'inmates of hell', 'adversaries of God', 'offspring of Cain', 'enemies of flesh'....And so Beowulf, for all that he moves in the world of the primitive Heroic Age of the Germans, nevertheless is almost a Christian knight".[40]

Subsequently Tolkien [edit]

Peter Gainsford noted in the article "The Deaths of Beowulf and Odysseus: Narrative Time and Mythological Tale Types" that "In the twenty-beginning century Beowulf does not lack for commentators to defend the literary merit of the dragon episode".[39] Adrien Bonjour opined in 1953 that the dragon's "ultimate significance in the poem" remains a "mystery".[41]

The poet Seamus Heaney, author of a major translation of Beowulf, suggests that Beowulf's attitude towards fighting the dragon reflects his "chthonic wisdom refined in the crucible of experience", that is in that location is already a "beyond-the-grave aspect" to his resoluteness.[42] As Beowulf dies from his fight with the dragon, despite defeating it, James Parker of The Atlantic writes that "In that location is no transcendence in Beowulf, and no redemption [...] kill the dragon—but the dragon volition get you anyway".[43] Joan Acocella states in The New Yorker that "unlike Grendel and his mother, [the dragon] is less a monster than a symbol."[44]

Legacy [edit]

In From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy, Matthew Dickerson and David O'Hara fence that the Beowulf poet added the figure of the dragon to "the pot...that is ladled out of past most mod fantasy writers"; they argued that both numerous works with villainous dragons, too as literature with benign dragons like the My Father's Dragon books and the Pern serial by Anne McCaffrey, were influenced by Beowulf 's dragon. Dickerson and O'Hara further elaborated that through its dragon, Beowulf turned the "notion of having a monstrous evil (and not mere human being foes) as the enemy" into "a hallmark of modern fantasy" present in C. Due south. Lewis' Narnia books, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, and the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen Donaldson.[45]

J. R. R. Tolkien used the dragon story of Beowulf as a template for Smaug of The Hobbit; in each case, the dragon awakens upon the hoard beingness disturbed by one stealing a beaker and goes into a wrathful binge until slain past some other person.[46] Aia Hussein of the National Endowment for the Humanities has written that the fight between Harry Potter and the Hungarian Horntail in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) by J. M. Rowling was influenced by the confrontation between the dragon and the title character in Beowulf.[47]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Nitzsche, Jane Chance. "The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel'south Female parent". Poetry Criticism, vol. 22. 1999. p. 290.
  2. ^ a b c Evans 2003, pp. 25–26
  3. ^ Rauer 2003, p. 135.
  4. ^ Rauer 2003, p. 4.
  5. ^ a b Rauer 2003, p. 74.
  6. ^ Evans 2003, p. 29.
  7. ^ Rauer 2003, p. 32.
  8. ^ Tolkien 1936, p. 4.
  9. ^ Evans 2003, p. 30.
  10. ^ a b Brown, Alan K. (1980). "The firedrake in Beowulf". Abstruse from Neophilologus. Springer Netherlands. 64 (3): 439–460. doi:ten.1007/BF01513838. S2CID 162080723.
  11. ^ Rauer 2003, pp. 32, 63.
  12. ^ a b Rauer 2003, p. 35
  13. ^ Rauer 2003, p. 52.
  14. ^ Evans 2003, p. 28.
  15. ^ Alexander 2003, p. 6.
  16. ^ Mellinkoff, Ruth. "Cain's monstrous progeny in Beowulf: role I, Noachic tradition" Anglo-Saxon England (1979), 8 : 143–162 Cambridge University Press.
  17. ^ Heaney 2001, p. 157.
  18. ^ Rauer 2003, pp. 74–75.
  19. ^ Clark 2003, p. 43.
  20. ^ Crossley-Holland 1999, p. xiv.
  21. ^ Alexander 2003, pp. xxiv–xxv.
  22. ^ Alexander 2003, pp. xxx–xxxv.
  23. ^ Crossley-Holland 1999, p. seven.
  24. ^ Crossley-Kingdom of the netherlands 1999, p. xvi.
  25. ^ Crossley-Kingdom of the netherlands 1999, p. xvii.
  26. ^ Crossley-Holland 1999, p. xix.
  27. ^ Crossley-The netherlands 1999, p. xxvi.
  28. ^ Clark 2003, p. 289.
  29. ^ a b Alexander 2003, p. xxxvi
  30. ^ Crossley-Holland 1999, p. xviii.
  31. ^ Beowulf and some fictions of the Geatish succession by Frederick M. Biggs.
  32. ^ Rauer 2003, p. 31.
  33. ^ Alexander 2003, p. xxv.
  34. ^ Tolkien 1936, p. xiv.
  35. ^ Lawrence, William Witherle (1918). "The Dragon and His Lair in Beowulf". PMLA. 33 (four): 547–583. doi:10.2307/456981. JSTOR 456981.
  36. ^ Malone, Kemp (July 1928). "The Kenning in Beowulf". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 27 (3): 318–324. JSTOR 27703161.
  37. ^ George, Jodi-Ann (2010). Beowulf . Macmillan. ISBN978-1137098016.
  38. ^ Chambers, Raymond Wilson (1921). Beowulf . Cambridge University Press. p. 349. Retrieved September xviii, 2017. typical dragon.
  39. ^ a b Hinge, George (1921). Classica et Mediaevalia vol. 63. Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 247–248. ISBN9788763540643 . Retrieved September 18, 2017.
  40. ^ Fulk, Robert Dennis (1991). Interpretations of Beowulf: A Critical Anthology . Indiana University Press. p. 25. ISBN9781587431333.
  41. ^ Bonjour, Adrien (March 1953). "Monsters Crouching and Critics Rampant: Or the Beowulf Dragon Debated". PMLA. 68 (1): 304–312. doi:ten.2307/459922. JSTOR 459922.
  42. ^ Heaney, Seamus (4 November 1999). "A New 'Beowulf'". The New York Review of Books . Retrieved 17 September 2017.
  43. ^ Parker, James (April 2017). "Beowulf Is Dorsum!". The Atlantic . Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  44. ^ Acocella, Joan (2 June 2014). "Slaying Monsters". The New Yorker . Retrieved 17 September 2017.
  45. ^ Dickerson, Matthew; O'Hara, David (2006). From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy . Brazos Printing. pp. 124–125. ISBN978-1587431333.
  46. ^ Clark 2003, p. 31.
  47. ^ Hussein, Aia (14 June 2011). "Onetime English, New Influences". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 17 September 2017.

Sources [edit]

  • Alexander, Michael (2003) [1973]. Beowulf: a verse translation. London: Penguin. ISBN978-0-14-044931-0.
  • Clark, George (2003) [1998]. "The Hero and the Theme". In Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D. (eds.). A Beowulf Handbook. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN978-0-8032-6150-ane.
  • Crossley-Holland, Kevin (1999). O'Donohue, Heather (ed.). Beowulf: The fight at Finnsburh. Oxford University Printing. ISBN978-0-19-283320-4.
  • Evans, Jonathan (2003) [2000]. "The Dragon-Lore of Centre-earth: Tolkien and Old English and One-time Norse Tradition". In Clark, George; Timmons, Daniel (eds.). J.R.R. Tolkien and his literary resonances: views of Middle-earth. Greenwood Press. ISBN0-313-30845-four . Retrieved 2010-05-xviii .
  • Heaney, Seamus (2001). Beowulf: A New Poetry Translation . Norton. ISBN978-0-393-32097-8 . Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  • Rauer, Christine (2003). Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. Cambridge: Brewer. ISBN0-85991-592-i . Retrieved xviii May 2010.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (25 Nov 1936). "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". Sir Israel Gollancz Lecture 1936. Archived from the original on 3 November 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2010.

External links [edit]

parkerhimmenting76.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dragon_%28Beowulf%29

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