The Anglo-Saxons: Beowulf
British Literature · 12th grade
Where British literature begins
Today: British literature, in this course, is the writing of Britain from the Anglo-Saxons to 1930, read in the order it was written; it begins with *Beowulf*, a poem in Old English about Danes and Geats, kept in one manuscript; and Gummere's translation keeps the old poem's sound, a line of four strong beats in two halves tied together by the same first sound.
About 40 minutes to teach
Teach the idea
This course reads the writing of Britain from its beginnings to 1930, in the order it was written. It starts with the Anglo-Saxons, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who crossed from what is now northern Germany and Denmark and settled in Britain in the 400s and 500s. Their language, Old English, is so far from ours that a reader today needs study or a translation to follow it.
Beowulf survives in one manuscript, copied by two scribes around the year 1000 and kept today in the British Library. A library fire in 1731 scorched its edges, and some words are lost. No one knows who made the poem or exactly when, so the course calls its maker the poet. The story is set not in England but in Scandinavia, among the Danes and the Geats, a people of what is now southern Sweden. The poet was a Christian telling of pagan heroes, and a careful reader reads both the Christian lines and the pagan altars as what those people believed.
Old English verse does not rhyme. Each line has two halves with a pause between them, two strong beats in each half, and the halves are tied by alliteration, strong words that begin with the same sound: "praise of the prowess of people-kings." Francis B. Gummere kept that pattern in a translation of 1909. Gummere's old words, like "athelings" for princes and "welkin" for the sky, are the translator's choices, not the poet's, so a careful writer quotes "in Gummere's translation."
Gavin reads:The first lines and the last
122 words
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kingsof spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,awing the earls. Since erst he layfriendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,till before him the folk, both far and near,who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,gave him gifts: a good king he!
…
Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland,for their hero's passing his hearth-companions:quoth that of all the kings of earth,of men he was mildest and most beloved,to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise.
Do it together
1. Ask Gavin what a reader gains from meeting a book in the order its writers lived, and what a reader might miss by starting with the newest one.
2. Point to the line that calls Scyld a good king, and ask Gavin what the poem has praised Scyld for by the time it says so: the battles, the gifts, or the way the far peoples heard the king's word.
3. Ask Gavin whose words "athelings" and "welkin" are, the poet's or Gummere's, and why that matters when an essay quotes them.
4. Then go on to the activity together, with a pencil ready for circling the sounds.
Activity
Together: Hear the beat. You read the first eleven lines aloud, slowly, leaning on the strong words. Gavin reads them a second time and circles, in each line, the words that begin with the same sound, such as "praise", "prowess" and "people-kings". Then Gavin reads the last five lines aloud. Talk it over: what do the first lines praise in a king, and what do the last lines praise? Finish with one question: why might a poem made to be heard in a hall tie its lines together by sound and not by rhyme? For the parent, about this unit's reading: *Beowulf* is a poem of monsters and war, and it tells its killings plainly. Grendel carries off sleeping warriors from the hall and eats them; in the first fight one sleeping Geat is seized and eaten in a few lines, and Grendel's arm is torn off at the shoulder and hung in the hall as a trophy. Grendel's mother kills Hrothgar's counselor Aeschere, and the Danes find Aeschere's head by the lake; Beowulf kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword and cuts the head from Grendel's body. In the last part a dragon burns the Geats' homes, Beowulf dies of the dragon's wound, and the body is burned on a funeral fire. The lessons tell these deaths in a sentence and leave out the eating and the wounds; the passages printed are plain. A few lines speak of a feud in which one brother killed another by accident, of a son hanged on the gallows, of a bad king who murdered companions at table, and of war between peoples, with a messenger's picture of ravens and wolves feeding on the slain. The poet was a Christian telling a story of pagan Danes and Geats: the poem speaks of God, of Cain and Abel and of the Creation, and it also shows the Danes praying at pagan altars; both are read as what those people believed, never as the family's own faith. Nothing sexual.
Tip If the old words slow Gavin down, read each line once for the beat and once for the sense, and gloss a word only when the line stops making sense without it. If Gavin moves quickly, ask which line of the first eleven would lose the most if it were put into plain modern prose.
On paper
Worksheet
Where It Begins
The worksheet, as it prints
British Literature · Worksheet
Where It Begins
Answer each question in complete sentences, quoting the translation where it asks.
Name: Gavin
Score: ____ / 7
1. What is Old English?
2. Where and among which peoples is the poem's story set?
3. What is alliteration in an Old English line?
4. Copy the first line of the poem and circle the words that alliterate.
5. Copy the four words with which the first part of the passage praises the Danes' first king.
6. Copy the words in the last line that praise Beowulf, and say which of them names a want rather than a kindness.
7. What would happen to a listener's sense of the poem if it began with the hero's funeral and ended with the founder's? Answer in a paragraph of four to six sentences.
This took Arbor about a minute
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