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Structural Features
General overview
Line 26: the Shield Sheafson funeral. Pagan funeral yet he goes
to heaven.
Line 50: a contradiction on one hand, a pagan ritual is described.
They don't know what happens to the dead. On the other hand, the
narrator knows.
Christians left the originals in the text for two reasons:
1. To make sense
2. To leave the original anxiety of "what happens when I die" for
the Christian approach to make sense.
Christian Narrator keeps the pagan rituals in the text to imply that
now we are smarter.
Shield Sheafson = Hrothgar = Center of Society.
Line 65: introduction to Hrothgar and Heorot.
Hrothgar was successful in war and he decided to build heorot.
Good deeds = Goods from Hrothgar.
The narrator attributes the goods as given by god.
Line 86: The narrator inserts the story of the creation in order to
explain where Grendel and his mother come from. It is Hrothgar
who tells the story of the creation.
Grendel is portrayed as the descendant of Cain. He receives a
biblical history.
Heorot is the symbol of creation.
Line 189: Beowulf knows he's the only one who can save them
(being the hero that he is). Once he reaches the Danes, they
recognize his strength and nobility.
Once he arrives, he introduces himself and tells Hrothgar he plans
to fight bare handed.
The act of fighting bare handedly takes the militaristic aspect out of
the story. It's strictly a battle of good against evil. This means the
victory doesn't depend on Beowulf, but depends on God who uses
him as an instrument.
Heorot has a major significance in the story- when the people inside
it get attacked, the hall is depicted as the harmed one. Heorot is a
symbol of the world. When Beowulf wins, the people celebrate
inside it.
Hero fighting a supernatural being- Anglo-Saxon motif. This helps
the audience to follow the story.
Story within a story- tells us how the story of Beowulf was once
told.
A circular structure: a threat, a battle, the death of the beast and a
celebration.
During the celebration they tell the story of Beowulf and Sigemund,
another hero. The story of Sigemund helped researches date the
story of Beowulf.
The narrator assumes we know who Sigemund is.
Sigemund is an analogy to Beowulf.
Introduction to British Culture: Beowulf