Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition
Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition by John D. Niles
English | 1983 | ISBN: 0674067258 | 310 Pages | PDF | 16.5 MB
English | 1983 | ISBN: 0674067258 | 310 Pages | PDF | 16.5 MB
This book develops a view of the first great work of English literature as a poem whose methods are grounded in an oral tradition, whose style is formal and nonrepresentational, and whose values reflect those of the Anglo-Saxon aristocrats who patronized songs of this kind.
In Part I, I discuss the poem's oral, traditional background, chiefly in a chapter on the art of the early Germanic singers; in Part II, its formal artistry; and in Part III, its aristocratic and community-oriented values. Looking at Beowulf this way can be likened to three ways of looking at a blackbird: in its landscape, of wide horizons; under a lens, with attention to its fine anatomy; and as a living thing, with a potential for song, and unlike anything else.