Review: Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero by Heather O'Donoghue
An excellent introduction to the one of the most famously forbidding works in English literature
Beowulf is a poem steeped in mystery and otherness. It survives in only one manuscript, the Nowell Codex, named for its owner in the 16th century. The manuscript itself was fortunate to survive a fire that engulfed the library that housed it in 1731. Its edges are still charred and flaky: that’s how close it came. At over 3,000 lines, Beowulf is vastly longer than any other surviving work of Anglo-Saxon poetry, but there is no reference to it in any other text, nor any indication that a work like it – or other works comparable to it in achievement – ever existed. It was essentially unread, beyond a mere handful of scholars, for 900 years.
The poem’s author is unknown. That solitary manuscript, which is the work of two scribes, is evidently a copy, which probably dates to the early years of the 11th century. Scholars disagree on the date of the poem itself. One of the characters, the Geatish king Hygelac, from southern Sweden, who was almost certainly an identifiable historical figure, died in the sixth century in just the manner that the Beowulf poet describes, in a raid on the Franks. A theoretical date range of c. 550 to c.1015 is alarmingly wide, therefore, although dates at either extreme seem unlikely. Some scholars, meanwhile, have challenged the idea that there was a single author at all, arguing that the surviving text is simply one version of a poem that evolved in an oral culture over a long period of time and with many contributory voices.
For students of English literature, however, and readers more generally, the mystery has often been why they should be expected to read Beowulf at all. Woody Allen spoke for many when, in Annie Hall, he advised Diane Keaton never to take any course where they make you do so.
Thank you for the review. I've previously enjoyed Heather O'Donoghue's work on Old Norse-Icelandic literature and its influence; she's a good explainer. I'm glad to know this Beowulf book is out there.
Oh dear. I had no idea Beowulf - the work, not the man - struck terror in so many hearts. In my last year of primary school our teacher read us what must have been a heavily abridged version. I was on Grendel's side from the get-go. The despised outsider, peeking into the meadhall to watch a bunch of self-congratulatory party-goers: small wonder he wanted to rip their heads off. I felt for his mother, too. Then I read it at university as part of our Anglo-Saxon course, and added the Dragon to my much-wronged list. And of course I liked John Gardner's 'Grendel' - though I was peeved that I hadn't thought of telling Grendel's side of the story. Now I want to read it again, though these days I wouldn't have a show of doing it in Anglo-Saxon. I might try Seamus Heaney's translation.