Beowulf

Heaney´s Introduction to Beowulf; Three main points that atraccted my attention.

Firstly I woluld like to say that I enjoyed the reading because it made feel closer to the poem. The lenguage used is not complicated and adding Heaney´s style to write about Beowulf with such proximity to our generation made the reading not only interesting but very entraitaining. The points that I found mostinteresting were: Why it seems difficult for us to relate to Beowulf , understanding cycles and the gold and the dragon as symbols.

Why it seems difficult to aproach Beowulf

The thrird paragraph of the introduction is about the way Beoulf was read before J.R.R. Tolkien`s Beowulf:The Monsters and the Critics, it was seen as a mere set book of syllabic analisis. This due to the tratment givento the text over the years by undregraduates and scholars who paid more attention on the genaealogy and in the way the Christian undersanding of the world could be related to the poem. I agree with Heany when he writes that the poem “ posseses a mythic potency” because of the human caracteristics of the characters, because even now when societiy has changed a lot, we still die, and we still havetimes is our lifes when we feel the world as we know it ends. I think that if we have had an earlier aproach as we have with the greek myths, Beowulf would work on us as the greek myths do.

Apart from the fact that Beowulf has not been into our conciousnes long enough for us to well understand it in a first direct reading. The rythm, as Heany wrote “Just when the narrative seems to be ready totake another step ahead into the main Beowulf story, it sidesteps”, this makes a contemporary narrator lose track of the story, beacuse we are not used to thise kind of interruptions in literature, but when we know the purpose of them they even seem escential to the narrative.




Cycles in the old wolrld

The maner in which Heany starts explaining why it took so long to aproach Beowulfreally made me think in all the old Literature, because the language really becomes a barrier. When we don`t undersand the lenguage or the style of any writng we start looking for the context and the structure, and I think that it is logical that many years of prossesing the text in this way passed before because now we are ready to understand and appreciate other values of the poem.
I am atracttedto this beacause I hadn`t thought about it when I first read the text, but in class I realized how clear it is that this is one of the themes of the poem. Beowulf is a young man who fights his batles and grows old, but also represents all the people around him, he is not alone, most of the time. The destiny of all the people around him depended on him just as Heany writes “ the little nationsare gathered around their lord, the grater nations spoiled for war and menace little ones, a lord dies defencelessness ensues, the enemy strikes... the wheel turns, the gerenratios tread and tread”, it must have been a difficult time to live in, because nowadays we still rely on our families at some point, in our governemts, but if that fails we can always make it on our own. For those people lifewas not like that they had to pay respects to their leaders, to the people that were over them in the social structure, because if they didn`t their life was at stake.

In Beowulf there`s allways a tread, and Heany mentions, “security is only temporary”, Beowulf fights Grendel and defets it when he is young and he is very self assuered about winning but then when he fights Grendel`s mother wenow he is not in that condition anymore, he has to get out of his element and fight under water, in the beast`s territory, and even his friends loose faith in him going back to the surface, he is haf- abandoned, and at the very end when he fights the dragon he is sure he will die, he is almost completley abandonded. I think life is like that, we may not depend in our lords anymore, but we still...