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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2017
The account of the destruction of the giants in the flood presented in lines 1689b–93 of Beowulf is probably the commentary of the narrator and not part of the inscription on the hilt. It is addressed to the audience, and it completes our understanding of the significance of Beowulf's victory beneath the mere. Hroðgar's extended gaze at the hilt before he begins his speech is a sign that he is also reaching toward a new understanding of the eotenas who have plagued his people. Regardless of whether he is able to read the runic inscription on the hilt, he can read the hilt itself against Beowulf's account of his struggle. The presence of the hilt in his hands implies an extensive social nexus for his apparently solitary enemies, who are now revealed as the enemies of God as well. Hroðgar knows nothing of the biblical stories of Cain and Abel or the flood, but his understanding of the meaning of Grendel's attacks now tracks that of the audience fairly closely. Although his “sermon” is not a direct response to the brief account of the flood, this account provides us with a context for understanding his speech.
1 All quotations from Beowulf are taken from Fulk, R. D., Bjork, Robert E., and Niles, John, eds., Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed. (Toronto, 2008)Google Scholar.
2 Osborne, Marijane, “The Great Feud: Scriptural History and Strife in Beowulf ,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 93 (1978): 973–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 This distinction has been carried to one possible logical conclusion by Fred C. Robinson, who distinguishes not only between what the audience and the characters know about the descent of Grendel but also between the god(s) that the audience and the characters recognize and worship. See his Beowulf and the Appositive Style (Knoxville, 1985), 29–59 Google Scholar.
4 Orchard, Andy, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Cambridge, 1995), 67 Google Scholar; Shippey, T. A., Old English Verse (London, 1972), 41 Google Scholar; Irving, Edward, A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, 1968), 147 Google Scholar. See also Orchard's remarks in his A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2003), 158–59Google Scholar. In contrast, Frantzen, Allen J., Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990), 88 Google Scholar, invites us “to suppose that these two texts diverge and that Hrothgar's speech contradicts the text on the hilt.”
5 Osborne, “The Great Feud,” 978; Robinson, Appositive Style, 33.
6 Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley, 1959), 119 Google Scholar.
7 Robinson, Appositive Style, 26.
8 The foundation for the reading of Hroþulf as a traitor was laid by Sarrazin, Gregor, “Rolf Krake und sein Vetter im Beowulfliede,” Englische Studien 24 (1898): 144–45Google Scholar, and, at much greater length, by Olrik, Axel, The Heroic Legends of Denmark, trans. and rev. in collaboration with the author by Lee Hollander (New York, 1919), 49–74 Google Scholar. Sisam, Kenneth, The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965), 36–37 Google Scholar, raised the first skeptical challenge to this reading. He has since been followed by a number of critics, of whom the most recent and thorough is Cooke, William, “Hrothulf: A Richard III, or an Alfred the Great?” Studies in Philology 104 (2007): 175–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Klaeber's Beowulf, 177, note to lines 1017–19, for a list of critics who agree with Sisam.
9 Liuzza, R. M., “Iron and Irony in Beowulf ,” in Beowulf at Kalamazoo: Essays on Translation and Performance, ed. Schulman, Jana K. and Szarmach, Paul E. (Kalamazoo, MI, 2012), 50–68, at 60–61Google Scholar.
10 For a similar approach, see Donahue, Charles, “Beowulf, Ireland and the Natural Good,” Traditio 7 (1949–51): 263–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, “Beowulf and Christian Tradition: A Reconsideration from a Celtic Stance,” Traditio 21 (1965): 55–116 Google Scholar; Hill, Thomas. D., “The Christian Language and Theme of Beowulf ,” in Companion to Old English Poetry, ed. Aertsen, Henk and Bremmer, Rolf H. (Amsterdam, 1994), 63–77 Google Scholar; Cain, Christopher, “ Beowulf, the Old Testament, and the Regula Fidei ,” Renascence 49 (1997): 227–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cronan, Dennis, “‘Beowulf,’ the Gaels, and the Recovery of the Pre-Conversion Past,” Anglo-Saxon 1 (2007): 137–80Google Scholar; and Russom, Geoffrey, “History and Anachronism in Beowulf ,” in Epic and History, ed. Konstan, David and Raaflaub, Kurt A. (Malden, MA, 2010), 243–61, at 256–57Google Scholar.
11 Robinson, Appositive Style, 31.
12 Davis, Craig, Beowulf and the Demise of Germanic Legend in England (New York, 1996), 180–81Google Scholar.
13 Robinson, Appositive Style, 86, n. 28 suggests that it may have been impious and shocking to name the pagan gods. Even if this observation is true, the absence of a referent for what he sees as a pagan meanings of the words for “god” is an obstacle to his argument for apposed meanings in these words. On 10–11 he points out that the poet has included references to only the least offensive pagan practices.
14 Cavill, Paul, “Christianity and Theology in Beowulf ,” in The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England: Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching (Cambridge, 2004), 15–39, at 25Google Scholar.
15 Ghosh, Shami, Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative (Leiden, 2016)Google Scholar, detects a similar reduction of the differences between the barbarian past and the Christian present in Latin histories such as the De origine actibusque Getarum of Jordanes, Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum, and Isidore's Historia Gothorum. See esp. chapters two and four.
16 “The wise lord, ruler of the heavens controlled victory in battle; he easily decided it rightly, after he [Beowulf] got up again.”
17 “‘I barely survived the combat under water with my life, I engaged in the work with difficulty; the battle would have ended immediately if God had not protected me. I was not able to accomplish anything at battle with Hrunting, although that weapon is good; but the ruler of men granted that I saw a beautiful, immense, ancient sword hanging on the wall; he speedily guided the one deprived of friends, so that I drew the weapon. Then, when I had the opportunity, I slew the guardians of the house in that conflict.’” In this translation I follow the emendation of oftost in line 1663b to ofost in Klaeber's Beowulf; see 211 for the note on this line, and also n. 2 on p. cxc of the introduction, which explains that, while two of the editors had agreed on this emendation, one of the two later had second thoughts. Despite this change of mind, the emendation was made in response to multiple irregularities in the verse, as the note to lines 1663b–64a explains. The unemended text in Klaeber's third edition produces a parenthetical statement, “he has very often guided those deprived of friends.” Even though this statement is a general observation about the help that God gives to many who find themselves alone in difficult situations, this observation is presented as a commentary on the guidance that God gives Beowulf beneath the mere, and it is clear from the text that the hero sees the sword and then draws it because of this guidance. Although the emendation produces a more explicit statement, the unemended text likewise attributes both the sight and the use of this sword to God's guidance. So, while the expression of the meaning changes, the meaning itself is essentially unchanged.
18 Robinson, Appositive Style (n. 2 above), 45.
19 For an approach to speech in Beowulf as a gift, see Bjork, Robert E., “Speech as Gift in Beowulf ,” Speculum 69 (1994): 993–1022 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 “Hroðgar spoke, he examined the hilt, the old heirloom. The origin of ancient strife was inscribed upon it; afterwards a Flood, a rushing sea, killed a race of giants — they fared terribly; that was a people estranged from the eternal Lord; the Ruler granted them a final payment through the rushing water. Thus it was marked in the right way on the plates of shining gold by means of runes, set down and told for whom that sword, the best of iron blades [and] the twisted hilt with serpentine decoration was first made. Then the wise one, the son of Healfdene, spoke; all were silent.”
21 For a brief discussion of the meaning and connotation of maðelian, see Robinson, Appositive Style, 66–67. For more extensive discussions of the use of this verb, see Rissanen, Matti, “ Maðelian in Old English Poetry,” in Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred. C. Robinson, ed. Baker, Peter S. and Howe, Nicholas (Toronto, 1998), 159–72Google Scholar, and McConchie, R. W., “The Use of the Verb Maðelian in Beowulf ,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 101 (2000): 59–68 Google Scholar.
22 See Klaeber's Beowulf, 208, note to line 1557 for other possible translations of “on searwum.”
23 “Violence arose for the race of men ever since the earth swallowed Abel's blood … They engaged in the strife of weapons far and wide throughout the earth, they devised and hardened the injuring sword.” Maxims I is cited from Krapp, George P. and Dobbie, Elliott V. K., The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York, 1936)Google Scholar.
24 Irving, Rereading Beowulf (Philadelphia, 1989), 138 Google Scholar; so also Davis, Beowulf and the Demise (n. 12 above), 104.
25 Lerer, Seth, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Lincoln, NE, 1991), 164 Google Scholar.
26 Dobbie, Elliott V. K., ed., Beowulf and Judith, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 4 (New York, 1953)Google Scholar sets off line 1690a, frecne geferdon, as a parenthesis, a use of punctuation that emphasizes that this verse is narratorial commentary. See also his note to lines 1689–93.
27 Davis, Beowulf and the Demise, 132, takes the opposite approach from mine and assumes the involvement of amphibious giants, like Grendel, who survived the Flood. He suggests that the defeat of the giants could have been depicted in order to serve as a rallying point, a sort of “Remember the Alamo” reminder in the struggle against divine order.
28 See the note to lines 1688f in Klaeber's Beowulf, and Cronan, Dennis, “The Origin of Ancient Strife in Beowulf ,” in Germanic Studies in Honor of Anatoly Liberman, ed. Goblirsch, Kurt Gustav, Mayou, Martha Berryman, and Taylor, Marvin, North-Western European Language Evolution 31/32 (Odense, 1997), 57–68 Google Scholar. Although the conjunction siðþan can sometimes be translated as “when,” this translation is appropriate only when two events are described as occurring in rapid succession so that they occur at more or less the same time. The second event nonetheless occurs after the first, and “afterwards” is the basic meaning of the conjunction in such contexts.
29 On the connection between these phrases and the conventions of commemorative rune carvings in Scandinavia, see Lerer, Literacy and Power, 167–72.
30 “Also giants, who contended against God for a long time; he paid them a requital for that.”
31 On ring composition in the poem, see Niles, John D., “Ring Composition and the Structure of Beowulf ,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 94 (1979): 924–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bartlett, Adeline, The Larger Rhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry (New York, 1935)Google Scholar, termed such structures “envelope patterns.”
32 Shippey, T. A., Beowulf (London, 1978), 21 Google Scholar.
33 On the meaning of swa, see Cronan, “The Origin of Ancient Strife,” 64. See Klaeber's Beowulf, 212, note to lines 1688f, for a concise summary of arguments for a runic inscription versus a combination of a graphic illustration accompanied by runes.
34 Lerer, Literacy and Power, 167–72. On 171 he concludes that “Hroðgar may read the hilt; but what he reads are the memorial conventions of the rune master.” IIIMcNelis, James I., “The Sword Mightier Than the Pen? Hrothgar's Hilt, Theory, and Philology,” in Studies in English Language and Literature; “Doubt Wisely”: Papers in Honour of E. G. Stanley, ed. Toswell, M. J. and Tyler, E. M. (London, 1996), 175–85, at 175Google Scholar questions what he refers to as Lerer's “assumption” that the text on the hilt consists of runes without images. But Lerer does more than simply assume the presence of runes, and to my mind he presents a convincing argument for such an inscription. Although I adopt here Lerer's conclusions about the runes, my own argument would work just as well if the inscription consisted of a mixture of runes and images.
35 It is for this reason that I regard Schrader's argument that the insciption is in Hebrew as irrelevant to our consideration of this passage. Schrader, Richard J., “The Language of the Giant's Sword Hilt in Beowulf ,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 94 (1993): 141–47Google Scholar.
36 Although the Christian audience of the poem would presumably be able to associate the hilt with the forging of iron and bronze implements by Tubalcain, Cain's descendant, in Gen. 4:22, Hroðgar would be unable to make this association.
37 Beowulf's report gives the impression that the blood that melted the sword, hatost heaþoswata, “the hottest of battle-blood” (1668a), belonged to both Grendel and his mother, huses hyrdas, “guardians of the house” (1666a). Paz, James, “Æschere's Head, Grendel's Mother, and the Sword That Isn't a Sword: Unreadable Things in Beowulf,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 25 (2013): 231–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 245 points out that although there is some ambiguity about just whose blood melts the blade, the connection of this melting to the blood of “the one who died therein” (se þær inne swealt, 1617b), suggests that it is the blood of Grendel's mother. Yet the sword does not melt until after Beowulf beheads Grendel. Since Grendel managed to drag his wounded body home to his den, he apparently “died therein” as well.
38 Near, Michael R., “Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 108 (1993): 320–32, at 324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Paz, “Æschere's Head,” 247.
40 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. Green, R. P. H. (Oxford, 1995), 1.4–5, 2.1–7Google Scholar.
41 See n. 4 above.
42 Irving, Reading (n. 4 above), 153, observes that “of course Beowulf does not need this sermon, but the poet needs it, one may assume, as an explicit statement of values found implicitly everywhere in the poem.” So also Shippey, Old English Poetry (n. 4 above), 41, states that “Beowulf needs the old king's speech neither as warning for the future nor reprimand for the past.” Other critics, however, partially root their criticisms of the hero's decision to fight the dragon alone in the words of Hroðgar's sermon, arguing that this decision is driven by Beowulf's pride. So, for example, Leyerle, John, “Beowulf the Hero and the King,” Medium Ævum 34 (1965): 89–102, at 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldsmith, Margaret E., The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf (London, 1970), 200–201 and 224–44Google Scholar; Stanley, E. G., “Hæthenra Hyht in Beowulf ,” in Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Greenfield, Stanley B. (Eugene, OR, 1963), 136–51, at 147–51Google Scholar; Bliss, Alan, “ Beowulf lines 3074–3075,” in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. Salu, Mary and Farrell, R. T. (Ithaca, NY, 1979), 41–63, at 58–63Google Scholar; Orchard, Andy, A Critical Companion to Beowulf (Cambridge, 2003), 260 Google Scholar. Goldsmith, Stanley, and Bliss argue that he is guilty of greed for the dragon's treasure as well. Gwara, Scott, Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf (Leiden, 2008), 220–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Hroðgar must see a potential for destructive oferhygd in the hero, “otherwise, the entire sermon seems otiose as a ‘general’ caution against ‘pride.’” The sermon, however, is not a general caution against pride; it is instead focuses exclusively upon how pride can grow in a king who ignores his debt to God, leading to avarice and the failure to distribute gifts to his people, thus breaking reciprocity and undermining social bonds.
43 Hansen, Elaine Tuttle, The Solomon Complex: Reading Wisdom in Old English Poetry (Toronto, 1988), chap. 2Google Scholar. Hansen explicitly links the maxims elsewhere in the poem to Hroðgar's sermon. Other discussions of maxims include Burlin, Robert B., “Gnomic Indirection in Beowulf ,” in Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciations for John C. McGalliard, ed. Nicholson, Lewis E. and Frese, Dolores Warwick (Notre Dame, 1975), 41–49 Google Scholar, and Shippey, T. A., “Maxims in Old English Narrative: Literary Art or Traditional Wisdom?” in Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium, ed. Bekker-Nielsen, Hans et al. (Odense, 1977), 28–46 Google Scholar.
44 Although Hroðgar does not explictly predict in his sermon that Beowulf will become king of the Geats, in his last speech the king does declare that if Hygelac were to die the Geats would have no better choice for king than the hero (1845b–53a).
45 Klaeber's Beowulf (n. 1 above), 257, note to line 2820b, which includes a review of the scholarship.
46 Hill, T. D., “The ‘Variegated Obit’ as an Historiographic Motif in Old English Poetry and Anglo-Latin Historical Literature,” Traditio 44 (1988): 101–24, at 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Klaeber's Beowulf, 247, note to line 2469b.
