paganbeo Pagan Aspect of Beowulf Essay -- Epic Beowulf essays

The Pagan Aspect of Beowulf      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In Beowulf the pagan aspect is revealed through many passages and many heathen rites or customs in which the form of expression or the thought suggests pagan usage or beliefs.    â€Å"The poet’s heroic age is full of men both ‘emphatically pagan and exceptionally good,’ men who believe in a God whom they thank at every imaginable opportunity. Yet they perform all the pagan rites known to Tacitua, and are not Christian† (Frank 52). Certainly the pagan element seems to be too deeply interwoven in the text for us to suppose that it is due to additions made by scribes at a time when the poem had come to be written down. The pagan element had to be included by the original poet. Another scholar considers the paganism of the poem:    Both the poet and his audience knew well that sixth-century Scandinavians were heathens. And lest it be thought that Anglo-Saxons tended to forget the heathenism of the Scandinavians as time wore on, we should recall that, in the Chronicle, charters, poems, and saints’ lives, Old English haethen (as well as Latin paganus) was virtually a synonym for Dene (i.e. â€Å"Scandinavian†). Indeed, the association between heathenism and Scandinavians became ever so stronger in Anglo-Saxon England as the centuries passed. The vaguely pious heroes of Beowulf, then, would not have been mistaken for christians by an Anglo-Saxon audience (Robinson 82).    The extent to which the pagan element is present varies in different parts of the poem, but is present throughout from beginning to end. The pagan element is unequally distributed between the speeches and the narrative, favoring the narrative.    Catholic missionaries to Britain in the early ce... ...by Lewis E. Nicholson. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963.    Bloom, Harold. â€Å"Introduction.† In Modern Critical Interpretations: Beowulf, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.    Chadwick, H. Munro. â€Å"The Heroic Age.† In An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, edited by Lewis E. Nicholson. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963.    Chickering, Howell D.. Beowulf A dual-Language Edition. New York: Anchor Books, 1977.    Frank, Roberta. â€Å"The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History.† In Beowulf – Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.    Robinson, Fred C. â€Å"Apposed Word Meanings and Religious Perspectives.† In Beowulf – Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.