hey everyone welcome to travel through stories my name is sean and today i want to talk about beowulf and this video is going to be a bit different than uh most of my previous videos which are heavily scripted in which i kind of make you know a a bit more cohesive of an argument about a single text that i read and liked um this video i'm going to talk about beowulf in more of a rambly way this there is no script i'm not going to edit this as much as i usually do to cut out all my um's and my stutters so i recommend speeding this video up to you know 1.25 speed or so and just kind of going along for the ride if you want to essentially the reason why i'm doing this video is because i'm teaching beowulf i'm very fortunate to be able to teach i'm teaching beowulf um this week and next week so i've prepared you know three full classes worth of beowulf talk so i figured it'd be good to kind of come on here and kind of share that information with you i think beowulf is a text that a lot of people have a lot of opinions on a lot of people don't like it because they read it in high school and you know i love high school teachers but a lot of high school teachers don't know beowulf they haven't studied old english they haven't had the opportunity to study old english or to study anglo-saxon england in an in-depth way and i think beowulf is just a fantastic text i think it's a lot of fun i think it's very enjoyable if you allow yourself to enjoy it so what i do in my classes is i don't lecture so this is obviously going to be kind of more of a lecture because well you can't respond to me right now um but in my classes i set this up as a discussion in which the students kind of lead the discussion i guide them to the points in the text that i think are most interesting or most important but i allow them to talk about what they want to talk about so this in this video i'm going to kind of use my my notes for those classes and i'm going to kind of walk through the text in the way that i would do in a class and again sort of the reason why i'm doing this is because college classes are insanely expensive and i don't think that that should prohibit people who want to learn about beowulf and want to learn about this old stuff to have the opportunity to learn about it if they want to so i'm trying to kind of share this this knowledge because because i've again been fortunate enough to study anglo-saxon or old english or whatever you want to call it um and i've been fortunate enough to study you know the history of of the language the history of the literature the history of the history of these people and i've studied beowulf in depth you know in my bachelor's degree in my master's degree and now uh in my phd degree i've read beowulf countless times in the original and every translation that you can think of and this isn't to say that i'm an expert on behalf by any means beowulf is one of those texts that there are countless scholars who dedicate their lives to this text i haven't done that and i'm not going to do that i like way too many other texts to only focus on beowulf but i have been fortunate enough to get some of the language expertise that is needed to really i think approach beowulf in the most thoughtful and most interesting way that it can be approached and the way that i think it really should be approached so for the purpose of this video i'm going to focus on tahini translation of beowulf this isn't my favorite translation i'll admit straight up um probably my favorite translation is the um rm louisa uh translation published by broadview it's a bit more close to the old english um louisa is a an old english scholar where shemezhini you know studied the did study the language but he's he's a famous poet but that's actually why i like teaching the sheamus heaney version because while it is quite different i think than the original text it is more poetically beautiful in a lot of ways it does have its own uh poetic merit by itself and i think it's a bit more approachable than a lot of other translations one of the translations i want to mention though before we start is um maria devonna heedley's translation which just came out i think last year at the end of the summer of 2020 which is really good and she takes some um i mean to even call this a translation is probably a bit inaccurate it's more of an adaptation um but an adaptation in the most interesting ways and i'll actually bring this up in just a minute when we start talking about grendel because i think she does some really interesting things with grendel in ways and she does some things that sheamus heaney i think kind of misses the opportunity to do so we'll come back to this in just a minute and the last thing i want to mention before we get going is if you're interested in studying the old english version of it i mean you can get the the standard edition um in old english is the claber edition i think there's four editions out now i think the fourth edition is the newest one and obviously the most full um this is the text in old english you know with some notes at the bottom um but i would actually recommend if you're just learning old english or you know you're not super familiar with it this student edition edited by george jack i'm actually not sure how easy it is to get this edition but it's really good because it kind of comes with a full glossary or a more or less full glossary so it's really good to read through on your first read-through if you're reading it in old english it really makes it quite easy but okay let's jump into beowulf i like to kind of just jump into it i like to give my students a little bit of background information on things like alliteration things like kennings you know kind of this diction that we can use to talk about the poem but i'm going to kind of skip that here because i think we're going to jump right into the first opening line and i'll talk about it a little bit as we move through it because it's easier that way but so beowulf opens um and i'll read it i'll read this part in the old english and the rest of the video i'll mainly focus on the translation of course with references to the uh the old english um but the opening to beowulf is so famous and so good um and i mean i memorized it it's uh it's very very good so the opening reads so very famous opening uh beginning with the very famous huat which opens up uh this poem that shematini translates at so it could be translated as shut up listen it's basically a call to attention that's really like in um he leaves translation she translates it as um as bro right when you're about to tell a great story you begin bro you have to listen to this um but really importantly in these opening lines we learn quite a bit and i mean this sets up the poem really effectively obviously it's the opening of the poem but we begin right we begin talking about these spear danes these gardena just means spear right that's where the word garlic comes from because it's a spear-shaped leek and we're talking about these spear danes in days gone by in yer dagum right in yeah it's kind of where we get the word like in in days of yore and dogwoom is just you know dog german tag right for day um it's just in the the dative plural um and then we're introduced to one of these spear danes shield shaving who is we learn shaytan monagum and i think uhini translates as well he's a scourge of many tribes a wrecker of mead benches rampaging among foes so shield shaving is this conqueror but keep this idea in mind the fact that he's a wrecker of mead benches that he is right a destroyer of mero settlers um because we're going to meet someone very soon who if you've read this one before you know exactly what i'm talking about um who also destroys need benches um so it's really quite interesting that this first hero that we are introduced to shield shaving is a wrecker of need benches and he's a scourge of many tribes right we even see this alliteration um that i think is quite nice um you know on either side of this half line right this is kind of how old english poetry works you it doesn't have an end rhyme because end rhyming in germanic languages is actually quite difficult it's much easier in the romance languages but here we have uh this alliteration and this is again old english poetry has it's usually split into two half lines we have the first half line second half line and you have this they're kind of separated by a sora this split and we have here basically the rule is you have to alliterate on a front on a front consonant um usually twice in the first half line and once in the second half line so you have the s sound here of course right off shield shading but there is this link right of shield shaving to this word that he is translating as scourge which is quite interesting again because one thing that i think this poem does really well is really kind of problematize the boundaries between hero and monster i think people often read beowulf as this big bad tough guy who goes around killing monsters but i think this poem actually does a really interesting job of if we read it the right way i think we can kind of read it as not sympathizing with the monsters but showing how a lot of the heroes are in a way also kind of monstrous it seems like the the author of this poem is a bit um tepid at the idea of some of these heroes and we'll see this a lot with beowulf later on that he seems kind of you know fascinated by beowulf and he seems very interested in beowulf but he seems a bit nervous about beowulf in a way and we'll get to that in a little bit but so we get you know this this nice opening um you know shield shaving conquers all these lands and these people begin to pay tribute to him and tribute is a really important uh idea in this poem and paying tribute is really important because kind of how kingship worked in in this in this day in this age and of course this ends with a you know pretty famous line that even if you have no old english you can absolutely understand fat was good that was a good king and this phrase again we'll also come back to later in the poem as other people are called a good kuning that are important so we get this long opening that isn't about beowulf at all and in fact the beowulf isn't even a spear dane as we'll find out soon this whole beginning part is setting up um the kind of main king in the poem whose name is hrothgar but really quick before we get to hrothgar who is a descendant of shield shaving if we go back really quick i'll try to go through this quickly but i just really like this whole scene because we get this whole um you know this whole kind of life of shield shaving of him being a good king and then it goes quickly to his funeral and they get this really nice funeral where they put all these treasures on a boat and kind of send him off into the sea you know kind of a you know what we kind of colloquially refer to now as a viking funeral but it's quite interesting because you know it notes that they decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone over the waves it's kind of this moses imagery going on here that shield shaving as a child was put in like a basket and sent down the waters uh since you know sent down the river and this is kind of how he ends his life as well but anyways there's a lot to talk about with shield shaving and this funeral scene but we'll just kind of move ahead because what we get here is we get one of his descendants right we go from um shield shaving to his son beowulf who isn't our beowulf this always confuses my students there's beowulf shielding that is not our guy this is the son of shield who he then has a son right uh aerogar and hrothgar and then it kind of goes on and so hrothgar is the descendant of of the shield shaving uh uh tribe right he is he is one of the gardener the spear danes and we get this great passage that just again i think just a beautiful passage that we'll really go through quickly um of them building a krathgar building heyarat which is this great hall that becomes very important we get all this great um religious imagery um but most importantly we get this hall and it stood there finished and ready in full view the hall of halls heyarth was the name he had settled on it whose utterance was law nor did he renege but doled out rings and torques at the table the hall towered its gables wide and high and awaiting a barbarous burning that doom abided but in time it would come the killer instinct unleashed among in-laws the bloodlust rampant i mean that's a bit of foreshadowing right um there is this tendency of both old english poetry and old norse poetry to really have a kind of fatalistic philosophy behind it um and that we always kind of see alongside creation is destruction we see this in old norse for instance in the palm volus where we learn about the creation of the world and then we very quickly learn about ragnarok right in the exact same poem creation and destruction are kind of the same thing in a way in that they're always very closely related but very importantly we learn here that this hall is awaiting a barbarous burning the killer instinct unleashed among in-laws right among either which just kind of means like father-in-law son-in-law um this is something that we don't necessarily see in this poem this isn't really a spoiler this this is something that happens kind of outside of the realm of this poem what we're going to see very quickly and again if you've read this poem you know we're going to see this monster come named grendel he doesn't burn down the hall he doesn't burn down hair rod he attacks it but he isn't the one who burns us down so this is this note right here is about the infighting that's going to take place much later on but it's worth keeping but it's worth keeping that in mind as we go through all of these monsters that our heroes and these should all be kind of scare quotes are going to face but at the end of the day our narrator notes right off the bat that this hall is going to tower gables wide and high i love that ascendance between those two right wide and high and awaiting a barbarous burning that's going to happen from in-laws so we get this beautiful creation this um very kind of ominous foreshadowing of destruction and then immediately then a powerful demon a prowler through the dark nursed a hard grievance we're introduced to this powerful demon this ellen demon or that's kind of where we get the word ghost from but importantly right the first time we're introduced to grendel he's referred to as ellen geist we've heard that word before in the opening lines when we were talking about the garden the the gardena we hear hutha ethelengas ellen we have heard of those prince's heroic campaigns so ellen means you know heroic powerful something like that it's just kind of interesting connection that is connecting uh the introduction of shield shaving and his descendants with grendel so what's grendel's grievance right we learn that it harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall the heart being struck in the clear song of a skilled poet telling with mastery of men's beginnings how the almighty had made the earth a gleaming plane girled with waters in his high splendor he set the sun and the moon to the earth's light lanterns for men and filled the broad lap of the world with branches and leaves and quickened life and every other thing that moved so the thing that's annoying grendel is that he has really loud neighbors who are hanging out in their hall every night and they're all singing songs right they're partying but interestingly the songs they're singing about are about creation again as we saw with with the hall there's a lot of kind of talk about like capital c creation and we see it here that what grendel's mad about are that they're singing this song these songs about god and about creation and this sort of begins a very odd and i won't get into this too too much but a very odd positionality between the characters in the poem and christianity because beowulf the story beowulf takes place sometime in the 6th century we know this because while beowulf himself isn't a historical figure shill shaving certainly is and hrothgar certainly is and a lot of the other characters in this this poem are historical figures that we can date to the sixth century so they're certainly not christian but in the poem a lot of them talk as if they are christian and it kind of has this interesting quality of you know are they noble pagans are they christians do they know about god they kind of seem to know about god in some way i mean they'll often invoke his name while the same time the characters remain pagan it's a very interesting dichotomy but so this you know christian imagery as much as a lot of people want to think that beowulf is just this you know poem from the pagan past you can't escape the christian imagery of this poem and to do so i think would just be a complete mis-service complete disservice to um to this poem which is almost certainly written by a monk a christian monk whether or not it's an older story that was adapted by this christian monk is another story that people will probably continue to debate for another 200 years because they've already been doing it for about 200. but very importantly we get a frame for understanding this ellen guest this grendel figure who was named right here in christian terminologies again right so he is a fiend out of hell right a found on hella who began to work as evil in this world grendel was the name of this grin this grim demon haunting the marches marauding around the heath and the desolate fence he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters cain's clan whom the creator had outlawed and condemned his outcasts for the killing of abel the eternal lord had exalted a price cain got no good from committing that murder because the almighty made him anathema and out of this curse of his evil their sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms phantoms and the giants too who strove with god time and again until he gave them their reward so immediately we're introduced to grendel and the first thing we learn about him other than the fact that he is you know a fiend out of hell he's a he's a a i love this this word he's a merkstapa a march stepper the marches being kind of the boundary areas right march is kind of out there and he is a march stepper and we're going to hear that kind of phrase again later him being a stepper of different areas and he dwells in these fins right in these kind of unlivable places but most importantly what we learn here is that he is a kin of cain kane of course if you're familiar with genesis is the guy who committed the world's first murder right he killed his brother abel and the narrator here and narrators um you know throughout the midrash and biblical exegesis often associate monsters and monstrosity with kane that from kane descended the uh descended all of these monsters right his progeny is monstrous and again progeny is very important to this poem right we began with this long list of kind of names right these these heroes or these this this clan of kings the progeny of grendel is also just as important and we'll come back to what exactly this means that he bears the mark of cain that he's one of kane's clan we'll come back to that in just a little bit but you know we see all these monsters that sprang from him right we get um um giantas that just means giant but that's where uh jr tolkien gets his word for ends um right the ants are just giants and ill of us that's also where he gets the word orc which just kind of means like a evil spirit evil phantom or something like that right so we're introduced to grendel and again immediately put into this christian framework and that's something that is really important and we'll come back to um when grendel and beowulf clash but so we get these long descriptions of grendel attacking hayarot and they're really i mean for my money it's really well written you know he goes into here up and he grabs 30 men and he just devours them like he literally eats some of them and just destroys them all keep in mind the fact that he grabbed 30 men i think that number is actually important um and you know he keeps going into hey era and destroying all of this uh uh all these people and killing people and no one can stop them right king frothgar um can't do anything so grendel ruled the defiance of right one against all anna with a alum with in old english means against the word for with comes from is meth m e f so anna with a alum one against all until the greatest house in the world stood empty a deserted wall stead for twelve winters right twelve so grendel is king of this house this this big hall that they just built right this beautiful beautiful hall named hayarot which the name by the way just means um that's where we get the word for heart like h-a-r-t like the the deer um but so grendel kind of rules this place right the shieldings have to live under just tremendous horror and terror as there is this reign of terror every single night grendel comes back and just kills people and he eats people and does all sorts of kind of heinous things so grendel waged his lonely war inflicting constant cruelties on the people atrocious hurt he is on ganga a one-goer ganga just just means like goer or walker right it's like in uh in the german doppelganger just means double walker um but he he takes over hayarot and of course he was the lord's outcast and actually really quick before we move on i want to quickly look at how maria devonna heatly introduces grendel because i think she does a really interesting job and she does something that seamus heaney doesn't really emphasize but we know in the heaney translation and in the old english that grendel has this evil progeny right this this evil uh heritage of being a defense descendant of kane i think one thing that healey does really interesting when she introduces him he uh she writes and uh pardon my language grendel was the name of this woe walker unlucky by faith he'd been living rough for years ruling the wild the mere the fen and the fastness his kingdom his creation was cursed under the line of cain the kin killer and then goes on to retell the story of cain and abel but this is really interesting that here grendel's you know his free will his his his actions are sort of more governed by the fact that he is well by fate um that his creation was cursed that grendel is cursed therefore how much can you actually blame him for doing the things that he does i think that's an interesting idea to keep in mind while reading beowulf because every translation you read of the poem the translator has a different approach to grendel sheamus heaney in my opinion is a bit too pro beowulf and a bit too anti the the monsters right and i think there is some slippage going on and that i think in some ways we're supposed to kind of feel bad for for grendel um right there's that great book by john gardner called grendel in which he retold this whole story but from the perspective of grendel um just something to keep in mind just something to think about i i think it's quite interesting this goes on for a long time right we get this long passage um of how no one knows what to do no one knows how uh to stop grendel they pray to all these different gods and finally 200 lines in were finally introduced to beowulf um so again this poem is named beowulf it's not named beowulf in the manuscript it just starts with what way garden and yardagum um we call it beowulf because that's what we like we we like stories about a single person um but this is the first time we hear about beowulf and again he's he's not named which is important when he had heard about grendel he lacks thane was on home ground over in gitlan beowulf is first introduced as heloc's thane he's not introduced as an individual he's introduced as a relation to this person named heolock who is very important and a historical figure but importantly we learned that beowulf isn't from denmark right he isn't um in the land of the spear danes he is from gitland which is over in sweden right it's across the water um the spirit danes are in denmark essentially kind of in yetland um uh on like the island new zealand and stuff like that but so beowulf here is about this terror that's happening across the swans road right across the uh swan that's one of those kennings right we saw one of those again in the opening where it said just means railroad right but here it goes over the swan road and he hears of this thing he gathers um 14 men gets on a boat and sails off to help they have this great sea journey that i i just love i might i always love um just like the the the the journeys that characters take in medieval poems that was like the way they're described because i think they're always really well written they arrive in denmark um or at least kind of denmark um the way it's described is kind of weird that those seafarers cited land sunlit cliffs sheer crags and looming headlands the landfall they sought it doesn't really sound like denmark to me denmark is notoriously flat but we'll take it so they arrive in denmark and they then they encounter this coast guard it's like literally a coast guard he's just a guy watching the coast um who's very bad at his job because by the time he gets down to interact with them um beowulf and his men have already landed they already have all this you know there was a clash of mail and a thresh of gear they're already fully armed in the land which is quite interesting and we get these series of speeches between this coast guard character and beowulf because this coast guard i think fairly recognizes beowulf and his men as a threat right he immediately runs out flourishing his spear what kind of men are you who arrive rigged out for combat and coats of mail sailing here over the sea lanes and your steep hole boat you know i had been stationed as a lookout on this coast for a long time it keeps going on right um you know he starts saying like never before has a force under arms disembark so openly not bothering to ask if the centuries allowed them safe passage or the clan had consented nor have i seen a mightier man in arms on this earth than the one standing here unless i am mistaken he is truly noble which of course he's referring to beowulf here i'm assuming beowulf you know stands ahead taller than all of his men and he just sees uh you know beowulf standing in the back um you know massive in his armor but again very importantly i think beowulf is first interpreted perhaps misinterpreted but interpreted as a threat and we're going to keep that in mind as we go through this whole poem because i think hrothgar also indicates some of these same feelings that beowulf is in some ways threatening right um so this guy immediately thinks he's a threat and he explains you know basically who are you what are you doing and beowulf responds right he unlocks his word horde which is just one of those great images from from old english poetry you know the words the uh thesaurus in in english the greek word thesaurus just means like treasure or treasury or kind of a storeroom and the same thing's kind of going on here i think actually looking at these speeches through the lens of rhetoric is actually very important because the rhetoric here is very very dense and there's kind of a lot going on in between what they're actually saying right the things that they're actually saying aren't necessarily represented by the words um there's kind of a lot more going on here but we won't get too much into that because i'll go on way too long but importantly beowulf introduced himself we belong by birth to the geet people and oh allegiance to lord heloc again beowulf doesn't name himself as individual he names himself based on his relations and he goes on right he explains that you know i've heard that you guys are having this problem with this guy keep or this monster keeps coming in and killing everyone and he explains you know i can show the wise hrothgar a way to defeat this enemy and find respite the coast guard basically just says yeah we're desperate come on in um i'll guide you to hair to hair rot and so they go in their way that's all this great description i think and they get to hay rot and they just kind of um hang out outside you know they take off some of their armor and they put their weapons aside and then they're again immediate they're again met by another um another warrior right another proud warrior who again questions beowulf where do you come from carrying these decorated shields and shirts of mail these high-hinged helmets and javelins again this guy also feels threatened right we learned his name later his name is wolfgar which is a cool name it just means wolf spear which i always like but he is again threatened and i think we see and will continue to see this these levels of security that beowulf needs to get through before he can actually talk to hrothgar this is the second of hrothgar's men who stopped beowulf and went this guy looks threatening i need to talk to him before i let him in to see my lord beowulf responds and he finally names himself right we are retainers from heloc's band beowulf is mean nama ayolf is my name finally names himself wolfgar the guy who is a wendell chief again not a not a spear dane he's a wendell which is against a different tribe there's a lot of like um there's a lot of like honestly this term's kind of loaded now but a lot of like multiculturalism going on in this in this poem if we keep track of um who is ethnically who um we start to see that there's a lot of kind of crossover there's a lot of kind of coexistence um perhaps not just coexistence it's kind of a bit more deeper than that but we'll see this much later at the very very end where one of where one of um one of beowulf's men isn't um ethnically a part of beowulf's tribe but we'll get there wolfgard agrees to go tell hrothgar this message that he's here and he goes and explains to them right people from guitland or yeah have put ashore and explains it to him now listen to this hrothgar who is just talking to wolfgard his own man right beowulf and all of his guys are outside crossguard responds and i just i just love this response i used to know him when he was a young boy his father before him was called edge theo i think hrothgar here is doing a couple things one he's i mean he's noting that yeah i know this guy i know beowulf um but i feel like there's also like this weird kind of patronizing tone to this you know like when you meet like one of like your parents friends um when you're older and they immediately go oh hey i remember you i remember you when you were this small it's kind of like diminutizing in a way and i think it's kind of funny i think he's well we'll see roth rothgar's politics in just a minute but i think it's really interesting and he explains you know he knew edustail who was babel's father this man is their son here to follow up an old friendship so again ejau beowul's father and hrothgar used to be friends back in the day and we'll learn a lot more about their friendship in just a second because he goes okay yeah let's let them in let's um see what they got we'll you know recompense them with rich treasure if they can defeat grendel and so they they let them in and beowulf comes into the hall obviously they make them lose their weapons first in their armor um and they come in and beowulf speaks right again greetings to hrothgar i am hello skinsman once again beowulf is naming himself in his relationships and then beowulf goes on in this very braggadocious way at least i think it's braggadocious you might um disagree um i find beowulf to be a bit odd at times which i'm sure you if you've picked up on so far and uh you'll pick up on more as we go on but beowulf goes through all of these battles that he's won right they have seen me bob bolted boltered in the blood of enemies when i battled and bound five beasts raided a troll's nest in the hot in the night sea slaughtered seabirds he goes through all these all of these things that he's done that are all really cool right he's killing all these troll beasts um which is pretty sick and then he comes and explains you know now i mean to be a match for grendel settle the uh settle the outcome in single combat and so he requests that he be allowed to fight grendel and importantly we get here a note of how beowulf intends to defeat grendel he says i have heard moreover that the monster scorns in his reckless way to use weapons therefore to heighten heloc's fame and gladden his heart i hereby renounce a sword and the shelter of the broad shield the heavy war board hand to hand is how it will be a life and death uh fight with the fiend so not only is beowulf going to fight grendel he's gonna fight him without a sword and without a shield he's gonna fight him in hand-to-hand combat he's gonna wrestle him which when we see the fight we'll we'll get into a bit more detail but this is this is a bit crazy right no one has been able to defeat grendel for 12 years and grendel just keeps killing everyone beowulf comes in and says not only will i defeat him i'll defeat him in hand-to-hand combat why that's a question we need to ask why does beowulf want to defeat grendel in hand-to-hand combat why doesn't beowulf if beowulf is just here to help hrothgar like he says he is why doesn't he just defeat grendel in any way that he possibly can why handicap himself on purpose it's a good question and one we'll definitely come back to in just a bit um and you know we get this whole speech and it ends with just this line that i really like um that is um fate goes ever as ever as sorry fate goes ever as fate must again there's always this kind of fatalistic um fatalistic tone to these poems in old english on this very famous line in the poem the wanderer which i hope you can see there that i just wrote down that i always like and just it means like fate is um kind of inexorable fate is fully um inexorable so we get this faith this fatalism but so krothgar agrees right he's like okay dude if you want to fight him on hand-to-hand combat i mean i guess we'll give it a try and no one else been able to do anything about it so he agrees right they get this long speech saying he'll he'll um he'll let beowulf do the thing um but this speech is actually incredibly important again i think we start to see hrothgar's politics here so beowulf says i'll do it and this is how hrothgar responds again read between the lines here beowulf my friend reena mean beowulf you have traveled here to favor us with help to fight for us there was a feud one time begun by your father with his own hands he had killed hethelof or haitalof who was a wolf thing so war was looming and his people in fear of it forced him to leave he came across then over rolling waves to the south danes here the sons of honor i was then in the first flush of kingship establishing my sway over the rich strongholds of this heroic land for aragor my older brother and the better man also a son of half danes had died finally i healed the feud by paying i shipped a treasure trove to the wolfings and edge they out acknowledged me with oaths of allegiance so what is hrothgar saying here why is rothgar responding in this way well he's reminding beowulf after beowulf goes to this whole long speech about how he's going to kill this guy the the this monster grendel beowulf you have traveled here to favor us with help to fight for us you're serving me is what he's saying and then he reminds beowulf that beowulf's father one time started this giant feud and you know who solved that feud hrothgar hrothgar helped beowulf's father so in a way beowulf owes hrothgar beowulf has to pay back hrothgar for um hrothgar helping his father with this with this oath with this feud so this is really quite something that in the midst of this heroic boasting by beowulf krothgar reminds beowulf that no no beowulf you owe me anyways because i helped your father one time he's kind of rakaar is very aware of what it looks like to be a king um in an age where might equals right most often um in an age where he can't defend his own people he can't defend himself this strong young man comes in and offers to help but hrothgar is very aware that this doesn't look good so he's trying to change the kind of framing of this whole issue and saying oh no no beowulf's here to help me because he owes me i helped him with something it's really quite something and i think that um krothgar often doesn't get enough credit for being like a politicking man that he is he's very he's very aware of all this stuff um and so again this goes on they explain um and then he invites them right they have all the strings uh they get drunk um we get this really cool scene in my opinion where another of frothgar's men challenge beowulf right this guy named unfirth whose name by the way um firth or frith um means peace so un unfirth means unpeace but he immediately challenges beowulf again right this is now the at least third person if we're not even counting hrothgar to challenge beowulf and he challenges beowulf bikes by saying aren't you the beowulf who took on becca in a swimming match on the opening c risking the water just to prove that you could win it was sheer vanity made you venture out on the main deep and he explains this time that when beowulf was younger he challenged this guy named becca to this swimming match bail the great swimmer and we'll see this again again and one brother is basically saying yeah that was bold headed and stupid you you almost died um you almost died just to prove just to prove that you could do it right it's kind of like a vainglory a kind of overly prideful moment an arrogant moment and unfortunately calling out for this and he explains right this goes on and bail responds with just some of the funniest lines in the whole poem in my opinion i don't think they're meant to be funny i just find them very funny where he says well friend unfirth you have had your say about breca and me but it was mostly beer that was doing the talking right immediately calling unfurther drunk then then beowulf goes through and corrects the story saying that yeah we were just being children and we were being stupid but i killed all these cool monsters right he explains that he had all this all this armor on right he was wearing chain mail while swimming in the ocean which i can't imagine is easy if even possible um but it goes on right and he explains this whole thing that he no he actually won the swimming contest he killed all these monsters and then he goes and says and then he goes and says now i cannot recall any fight you entered on first that bears comparison i don't boast when i say that neither you nor becca were ever much celebrated for swordsmanship or for facing danger on the field of battle you killed your own kith and kin so for all your cleverness and quick ton you will suffer damnation in the depths of hell good lord beowulf i always just find this just such a crazy turn that he's being basically basically being called you know too prideful too arrogant and beowulf just reminds unfirth hey buddy you killed your brother and for that you're going to rot in hell it just seems like quite the escalation in my opinion but it's a really interesting interaction again another one of these just levels of security that beowulf needs to get through and beowulf in many ways is fighting a rhetorical battle against um hrothgar's men in all these ways so he's proving himself physically in this fight against grendel that he's going to do and we're going to turn to right now but he's also proving himself rhetorically and politically in all of these encounters with these men who are questioning beowulf's um validity his intentions and all this different stuff no one trusts beowulf and for good reason right he has the strength of 30 men he's a massive guy and their kingdom clearly can't even stop one monster from hurting them so hrothgar's queen wealthy comes out and starts giving them them drinks we'll talk about wealthy out in the next video because she becomes very very important again in the politics of heyrot in the next part but she's a really interesting character they will boast again right but how he's gonna do all this cool stuff he's gonna kill all this guy he's gonna kill beowulf uh he's gonna kill grendel he renounces the use of weapons again and um hrothgar and all of the spear danes leave the hall right they entrust the the danes hall to to beowulf so beowulf and his men take up the hall and so again this great hall that they built that we looked at earlier crossguard now has given it up bailson controlled the hall at least for this night and so they go down um and and and they sleep in the hall right they sleep in here they remove their armor which um seems a bit silly but again beowulf said he would fight grendel without armor or with a sword you know he again renounces the fact that he's going to use weapons and they lay down to sleep and and then we just get for my money just one of the coolest scenes in the whole poem again i i think this rivals any any like modern horror story um the way grendel then comes out of the night and attacks harrah i think it's like just superbly well written right then out of the night came the shadow stalker right the shaya duganga again there's that uh you know he was a a a merkstapa an anahan genga now he's a shayardu ganga a shadowgoer so cool then out of the night came the shadow stalker stealthy and swift the hall guards were slack asleep at their post all except one anum this is really important everyone's asleep except for beowulf keep that in mind for just another minute it was widely understood that as long as god disallowed it the fiend could not bear them to his shadow born one man however was in fighting mood awakened on edge spoiling for action again we're reminded one man is awake everyone's asleep one man's awake obviously it's beowulf but keep in mind that he's awake because this is a bit odd um we get this just just stellar uh description of of grendel striking right he he comes in off the moors down the mistbands god cursed grendel right gordas it's kind of a weird translation because it kind of just means grendel came bearing god's ire right he's bearing god's ire again i think the heedly translation in this newer translation does a much more interesting job of kind of depicting grendel as cursed as bearing god's anger and again we just get this this whole thing is just so good right the iron brace door turned on its engines uh when his hand touched it then his rage boiled over he ripped open the mouth of the building maddening for blood pacing the length of the pattern floor with his low some tread with a baleful light flame more than light flared from his eyes he sees all these men sleeping and his glee was demonic picturing the mayhem and once more the third time were reminded mighty uncanny he locks kin kinsman was keenly watching for the first move the monster would make nor did the creature keep him waiting and we get the description of grendel uh attacking this one man right and he started that he grabbed and mauled a man on his bench bit into his bone laughings bolted down his blood and gorged on him in lumps leaving the body utterly lifeless eaten up hand and foot the fact that he eats the hand and the foot always kind of creeps me out because hands and feet are the things that make us human right they're the things that kind of really separates us from most animals so beowulf we've been told now three times that bale is awake grendel just walked in grabbed a man and ate him alive bit into his bone lappings eats him hand and foot and beowulf is watching this whole time does that not strike anyone else it's kind of weird that beowulf just sacrificed one of his men just to kind of get a glimpse for how grendel fights to get some sort of tactical advantage it seems like something that um it doesn't really seem like something that a king should be doing like a noble person should be doing he just sacrificed one of his own men but anyways it goes on right um beowulf finally after watching one of his men be eating alive he finally attacks and they grab each other um right he was bearing in with open claw when the alert heroes come back and arm lock forstalled him utterly the captain of evil discovered himself in a hand grip harder than anything he had ever encountered in man on the face of the earth so now they're fighting hand-to-hand combat and we keep getting these references to beowulf's hand strength or his grip strength um this poet loves hands there's so much hand imagery going on right grendel eats eats this guy's hand they're in this hand grip they're wrestling it keeps going right uh fingers were bursting right uh fingers bursting uh the monster backtracking the man overpowering and they're just grappling with each other um again with note with no weapons they're breaking down the hall um and these two mod these two people i just had a freudian up there these two beings beowulf and grendel kind of like i don't know they kind of like become one in my opinion in this scene they kind of meld together as they're basically just hugging right they're like and i i imagine them like doing like judo or something like like greco-roman wrestling um but they're kind of like becoming one as they're smashing through the hall you kind of become a singular unit as they just start destroying this hall um right and it goes on right they start destroying mead benches again which i asked for you to remember that shield shaving was the wrecker of mead benches right so grendel is a record of meat veggies as well but here beowulf has also kind of transformed into a wrecker of meat benches in quite an interesting way in my opinion the danes or not not the danes the the geets all kind of wake up apparently they're still sleeping and they start helping right they start attacking with their swords but they realize that um they kept they kept striking out but when they joined the struggle there was something they could not have known at the time that no blade on earth no blacksmith's ark could ever damage their demon opponent he had conjured the harm from the cutting edge of every weapon but his going away out of out of this world and the days of his life would be agony to him and this alien spirit would travel far into fiends keeping why can't swords harm grendel well we're not told of this until right now and no one in the story knows this um so again this doesn't really account for why beowulf decided not not to use weapons because it's clearly says they could not have known at the time but if you've read your genesis you've read your bible you know that when cain killed abel he was given the mark of cain which meant that no um no other person on earth could harm cain so kane had to wander around like an exile and he could never be killed by anyone so grendel bears this mark of cain and he can't be hurt by weapons so it's almost kind of good luck that beowulf decided to fight him hand to hand because they keep grappling and eventually helox kinsmen kept him helplessly locked in a hand grip as longer as long as either lived he was hateful to the other the monster's whole body was in pain a tremendous wound wound appeared on his shoulders sinews split and the bone lappings burst beowulf was granted the glory of winning grendel was driven under the fen banks fatally hurt to his desolate lair his days were numbered so basically beowulf rips off grendel's arm and grendel escapes out of hayrot and runs um and hides in a uh well he goes back home to his mom essentially we'll talk about that home next time but beowulf rips off his arm and he hangs up the arm in the hall right clear proof of this could be seen in the hand the hero displayed high up near the roof the hole of grendel's shoulder and arm his awesome grasp again there's all this hand and arm imagery they even hang up grendel's arm uh you know above the door or something like that in here up and display it so this is the fight scene right they grapple and beowulf rips off his arm and grendel flees and grendel is fatally wounded and it's pretty clear that he's fatally wounded and in fact they even have a bunch of the men uh not beowulf but a bunch of the other men who go and they follow grendel they chase him out and they see him um you know dive into this mirror into this swamp um and uh then they come back but we even see right with his death upon him he had dived deep into his marsh den drowned out of his life and his heathen soul hell claimed him there fair him on fang right there hell on thing grabbed or took or claimed him and these guys these retainers right these things of hrothgar followed him out there and then they start coming back and this again this is just interesting from like a narratological perspective that beowulf just did this thing and we're immediately immediately cut to these other men chasing down grendel and then we hang out with them for a bit as they're they start walking back to hair rot right we're not really in here rot anymore um you know this war band that uh followed grendel start start to come back and we immediately get this really interesting passage that again a lot of my students often just kind of forget about because it kind of comes out of nowhere and then it just disappears but we get this this moment where meanwhile a fan of the king's household a carrier of tales a traditional singer deeply schooled in the lore of the past linked a new theme to a strict meter the man started to recite with skill rehearsing beowulf's triumphs and feats in well-fashioned lines entwining his words so we get this this shop um right this scald essentially it's the same word um skald is the old norse um and chope is the old english just like a you know like a troubadour almost who starts basically begins composing this song about how great beowulf is this great feat that he just did but what he does this show this singer what he does is he is he links a new theme to a strict meter and he and he can good lord the cats are going crazy um he links this new theme to this this meter and he connects what beowulf just did to grendel with siemens exploits he told what he'd heard repeated in songs about siemens exploits all of those feats and marvels the struggles and wanderings of whale son things are known to anyone except to fatella and then we we get this this passage that um machine or the editor puts puts in quotes and this is kind of a song about siemens and we learn right that after his death siemens glory grew and grew because of his courage when he killed the dragon the guardian of the horde under grave stone he had dared to enter all by himself to face the worst without fatella but it came to pass that his sword plunged right through those radiant scales and drove into the wall the dragon died of it his daring had given him total possession of the treasure horde his to dispose of however he liked so this siemen that is that they all being compared to is actually um in the old norse tradition his name is sigford or sigurd depending which which which which uh translation you're reading right he's usually called sigurd in old norse and sigford in in the german tradition but he's the guy in the saga of the volsungs who kills um the dragon fafnir right he's called sigurd fafnir's bomb so you're the bane of fafnir the dragon um but what's interesting here is that not only i mean not only is it interesting that we're getting this reference to this other text that we get um you know in old norse in the i think the 14th century or the 13th century but specifically with sikh with siemens again his name siemen here for fair for you know it's unclear if it's because the author just didn't know um the name or if the name and the tradition was different i think he might also just making a pun because siemens in old english shia means victory and mund means hand so this guy's name is literally victory hand this is the guy that this show is connecting to beowulf who just defeated grendel in hand-to-hand combat i think they might be making a joke but the reason why i i delve so deeply into this digression is because of this one word in old english aglaka interesting here and this is one of the reasons why the shane mckinney translation i think um does a disservice to some of the um some of the issues surrounding heroism and monstrosity is sheamustini just just ignores the word aglaka means something like awesome one powerful one or monster and in fact we've seen this word quite a bit in this poem already every time referring to every time referring to grendel right when grendel and beowulf were fighting we got lik saurogyabad atoll aglaka which seamus translates as the monster's whole body was in pain so he translates aglaka here as monster and again we see it earlier where fat for his one hidden web i have heard moreover that the monster scorns in his reckless way to use weapons he translates it again here as monster and then here in the scene that we're looking at with siemens he just translates it as i mean his right he just kind of gets rid of it um a better translation of this would just be like the powerful one the monster whatever um had given him total possession of the treasure horde but this is really important and we'll come back to this next time and the time after that because this single word is always translated in here when it refers to the monsters as monster but importantly it also refers to siemens and later on the narrator calls beowulf aglaka so how do we translate this word uh which is which is again used to describe i think five characters in this poem grendel siemens grendel's mother the dragon and beowulf really really quite interesting um but anyways just to finish this up because this has gone way too long my god um we get this other digression about a king named haramud and this one's much more kind of didactic and moralizing um but we don't really need to get into it um and the danes come back to hayarot and krothgar obviously has this very long speech where he thanks beowulf profusely and very importantly says so now beowulf i adopt you in my heart as a dear son so he basically adopts beowulf as a son in his heart whatever that means um but this is really important this is going to be very important for the politics of hayarot in the next part of of of beowulf of the poem um and of course you know beowulf responds just kind of reliving it just loving the moment as he retells the story not for the last time he retells this story about his fight with grendel like two more times in the poem it's kind of funny and every time he like embellishes it in different ways it's really interesting to look at but you know he retells this story and everyone just you know enjoys it right there was less tampering and big talk than from unfirst the boaster less of his blather as the hall all things eyed the awful proof of the hero's prowess the splayed hand up under the eaves beowulf or grendel's hand just hanging on the wall above the door and yeah i think we'll stop there for now at line nine eight um this is really kind of the first section of beowulf i think this introduces us very effectively to to hrothgar and the spear danes um to heyrot to beowulf and this first monster that he fights who is grendel of course since we're very interested in feuds in beowulf as we mentioned quite a bit beowulf just killed grendel and i hope grendel doesn't have anyone at home who wants to seek to revenge grendel's death and avenge grendel's death but we'll have to wait until next time to find out if grendel has anyone who uh wants to take up that tall order and try to get revenge and kill beowulf or hrothgar or anyone else but yeah so that's the first almost 1000 lines of beowulf do let me know what you think about this i mean this video is way too long i expected this to be closer to 40 minutes not an hour so i apologize profusely for that god bless you if you stayed through the whole thing but do let me know if you thought this was helpful because i could do the rest of beowulf if this gets like a positive reception um and i could also just do this honestly for the rest of my syllabus which includes the middle english poem straight guy in the green knight the middle english poem star orpheo and then we jump ahead to modern kind of contemporary american literature where we look at corn corn mccarthy's blood meridian jasmine ward singh and buried sing and yuri herrera's signs preceding the ends of the world and i could do something very similar for each of those classes as well i think we spend like seven classes on blood meridian so i could kind of summarize um you know what we talk about into each of those sections if that was of interest to you if this is just horribly boring and no one cares about this then so be it but we'll finish up beowulf at the end of this week and next week as well but for now thanks for watching