Sunday
morning, before the sun and birds and breakfast smells, I’m awake, lying in bed
in the middle of all that soft gray stillness and listening to the rain come
down, making tinny sounds on the gutters, a mellower putputput against
the roof. I haven’t gotten up yet to turn the radio alarm off, but the volume
is turned low so that the song floats behind the watery pattering of the rain
like a whisper, a memory. Moon River, wider than a mile: I’m crossing you in
style some day… [Johnny Mercer,
1961]
Beowulf
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| The Barrow of Skalunda, a likely spot for Beowulf's own mound. |
1. Read and take at least 10 notes from each background link:
- Beowulf's Background; read (at least) part 1, "The Poem."
- Dr. Leithart on the Germanic Background
- J. R. R. Tolkien's "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936); read (at least) pp. 245-250.
2. Get your book...and read it.
- Seamus Heaney's Translation of Beowulf.
- Please only read the editions below if your book is ordered or will soon be ordered:
Beowulf (example)
- You can also get this on your iPad.
- Other editions (not as good...but free until yours comes in): Francis B. Gummere's 1910 Version for Harvard Classics (not as good as Heaney's, but nice for comparison)
3. Look up and define the following key terms. This link will provide most of what you need. Others will be provided in class:
Terms:
- Kenning
- Epithet
- Periphrasis (Circumlocution)
- Litotes
- Thane
- Scop
- Alliterative Verse
- Accentual
- stich
- hemistich
- Caesura
- Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?
"Where are those who were before us?" - Wergild, man price
- Comitatus: Wiki: "the comitatus is the bond existing between a Germanic
warrior and his Lord, ensuring that the former never leaves the field
of battle before the latter. The translation is as follows:
Moreover, to survive the leader and retreat from the battlefield is a lifelong disgrace and infamy"
- Wyrd
Key Characters:
Hrothgar: King of a Danish realm terrorized by a monster. He presides at Heorot, a great mead hall. Heorot
Wealhtheow: Hrothgar's wife and queen.
Grendel: Monster that terrorizes Heorot.
Grendel's Mother: Monster that retaliates after Beowulf defeats Grendel.
Dragon: Monster that goes on a rampage in the land of the Geats.
Wiglaf: Warrior who helps Beowulf fight the dragon.
Hygelac: King of the Geats in Sweden. He is Beowulf's uncle.
Hygd: Hygelac's wife and queen.
Heardred: Son of Hygelac.
Ecgtheow: Beowulf's father.
Unferth: "Mar peace": Danish warrior who envies Beowulf.
Breca: Childhood friend of Beowulf.
Aeschere: Counselor to Hrothgar.
Freawaru: daughter of Hrothgar and Wealhtheow
Scyld Scefing: Onetime King of Denmark and great-grandfather of Hrothgar. He is mentioned in the epic but does not take part in the action.
Verse Format (from Michael J. Cummings)
"Beowulf is written in unrhyming verse, without stanzas, with a caesura (pause) in the middle of each line. The lines contain caesuras to represent the pauses that speakers normally use in everyday speech. Thus, each line is divided into two parts. Each part is called a hemistich (HEM e stick), which is half a line of verse. A complete line is called a stich. Each hemistich contains two stressed (accented) syllables and a varying number of unstressed (unaccented) syllables."
Journal Assignment
Review Questions. Please answer each question in (at least) one brief paragraph (3-5 sentences):
1. What basic facts do we know about the background of Beowulf?
2. What is the Beowulf author doing by including a bunch of tales with the larger tale? Tell me why you think they may have been included.
2. What is the Beowulf author doing by including a bunch of tales with the larger tale? Tell me why you think they may have been included.
3. Beowulf employs contrast or juxtaposition (day and night, youth and age, etc.). What are three of the
most important contrasts or juxtapositions in the piece that you see? How does each one you identified relate to a significant theme?
4. What is the Beowulf author's view of the goodly king? A goodly thane (warrior)? Is there a difference between the two? What is it?
5. How is Beowulf a tale that attests to a world in religious transition (from pagan to Christian), and what might the author be saying about it?
6. The code of chivalry was formed much later in Europe (12th century). However, you do find aspects of chivalric behavior in this Anglo-Saxon take on a Geatish legend. Identify and explain at least three behaviors which are chivalric.
7. Identify, copy, and comment on three biblical allusions you find in Beowulf.
8. What does Tolkien say is the problem with literary criticism of Beowulf up to his own day?
9. How do you think the Anglo-Saxon scribes affected the Beowulf narrative?
The Beowulf Manuscript: A Timeline
Between A.D. 500 and 700: The Fictional Events in Beowulf Take Place
Between 650 and 1000: Anonymous Author Composes Beowulf (oral)
About 1000: Monks Write Down the Anonymous Author's Story, Store in a Monastery (written)
1563: Englishman Laurence Nowell Acquires Scribes' Manuscript, Probably From a Catholic Monastery Demolished by Henry VIII
Between 1585 and 1631: Sir Robert Cotton Acquires the Manuscript for His Library
1700: Cotton's Grandson Donates Library to British Government
After 1700: Library Moved to Essex House, Then Ashburnham House, in London area
1731: Ashburnham House Burns. Manuscript Saved After Water Damages It and Fire Chars the Edges
1753: British Museum Established; Manuscript Becomes Part of Its Collection
1753-Present: Manuscript Preserved, Translated by Various Writers, Published
1999: Seamus Heaney's translation published
Essay Prompt Examples
1984. Select a line or so of poetry, or a moment or scene in a novel, epic poem, or play that you find especially memorable. Write an essay in which you identify the line or the passage, explain its relationship to the work in which it is found, and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness.
- Write in pen
- Format your header in MLA
- Single space
- Write only on one side of each sheet of paper
- You may use your notes from your binder
What's in a word?
- Reconsidering the first word of this poem: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/article/?id=11000.
The CWP Assignment
AP English Literature
CWP: Creative Writing Portfolio
College Essays: In Media Res and Mother Watsonville (Ms. Silva)
Tell us about the neighborhood that you grew up in and how it helped shape you into the kind of person you are today.
College Essays: Santa Clara (Mr. Cameron)
Assignment: Marginalia
Take notes on the sentence style (types? punctuators? length? style?) and word choice (simple? academic?)
What kind of personality are you meeting here?
What makes this narrative compelling? Look for rich reversals of expectation.
What makes this narrative a good choice for a college essay (i.e. why do you think an admissions counsellor would want to add this student to their incoming freshman class)?
College Essay from Santa Clara (Mr. Cameron)
Prompt: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Bullying is an interesting dilemma: on one hand there are the psychologists and behavior therapists trying to find the root of the issue, trying to find someone to blame; on the other hand there are the administrators desperately trying to convince parents it's fine to send their children to school, as the problem is under control. And on no hand in particular there was eleven-year-old me, and a bully was my problem. His name was Jim, a smooth talking 2nd-generation Korean with a history of soccer and non-competitive gymnastics. He had four inches on me and a mean streak a quarter mile long. His methods were by no means unorthodox, a dumped out backpack here, a shove and a name called there. I knew the three rules for dealing with bullies, they had been taught to my entire graduating third grade class: 1. Tell a yard duty, 2. stay with a friend, 3. never egg them on. This miracle cure did little to fix my predicament. California school budgets were on a steady landslide, and the yard duties weren't the most motivated arbiters. I was the new kid in town, that meant people avoided me like a plague doctor in Western Europe, and the fact that the resident bully had turned his eye on me meant that I was going to hold that title for quite some time. The mere idea that a bully is egged on is completely contrary to the idea of a bully: one who pushes, not because he has found a response, but because he is seeking a response. To this day, I am not sure who these rules were written for, but it is clear that they were not written for me.
“Just bust his head open,” my fourteen year old brother suggested nonchalantly, as my mother drove us to Boyscouts one evening. Now I was a very scrawny child growing up: the doctors said that I was underweight, undertall, and none-too-athletic. The idea that I could bust anyone's head open was outright preposterous. My dear mother chimed in, almost on cue, with the ever so cooing motherly response that fighting was never the answer and that I should try working things out with him. Now it was true that I had no inclination to fight him, and while the advice certainly would make sense a priori, I was finding out very quickly that talking to a bully only shows them that they are getting through.
My mother was forced to begin work early so that she could get off in time to pick me and my brother up from school, so I spent countless mornings over the years sitting in the office waiting for school to begin. Now the day prior my bully felt it was time to kick his bullying up a notch with new complex insults and fake out jabs meant to induce flinching, and my anxiety was mounting. I was no Hercules, yet there I sat in the waiting room of Hades, watching the moments tick by until my oppressor would arrive, with naught but the steady clack of the receptionist's acrylic nails upon a keyboard to calm my nerves. Flimsy advice from the previous night buzzed in my head. After what felt like an eternity, the school bell rang, and I shuffled to my home room. We met in the hallway, his knowing smile to my grimace told me he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I'll see you at lunch time,” and that was all he needed to say. By this time my fear had manifested itself into sheer panic, and my brain was mentally check-listing all of my options. My last attempt at being sent to the nurse's office had been unsuccessful. The first break came and went with no sign of my tormentor. Lunch passed quickly until a wrong turn in an empty hallway brought me face to face with my villain. “Hello Scotty the potty,” he said intimidatingly, employing the latest of his nicknames. I did not run, I could not run, but I could fall, and fall I did. I stumbled over my feet as I turned to escape and landed flat on my face. This, my bully seemed to find quite hilarious, and he could not contain his laughter. It was not the cruel mocking laughter I had grown accustomed to hearing from him, it was a genuinely funny chuckle. I immediately recognized my impossible chance and fell again, this time on purpose, topping it off with a somersault and a funny face. “Better not touch me,” I said, “I'm a potty and I stink!” My impromptu tactic seemed to be working, and before long my antagonist and I were in hysterics, hopelessly late for class. We would grow to be good friends, and the differences we had assumed in each other turned out to be nothing more than assumptions. So I defeated my bully, or at least befriended him, which upon reflection was a great deal more rewarding than what conventional wisdom teaches would have been the solution.
But what did I learn? My bully was not the only one who was guilty of wrongs against his fellow man. I learned that his hostility towards me was due, in part, to my shyness upon our first meeting, which he interpreted as animosity. I subconsciously categorized him as a fool and an intimidator, in less polite terms, and considered him someone to be avoided at all costs. I adhered to my judgment in every one of our subsequent meetings; he did not start out as a bully, I made him into one through my disdain. My reluctance to listen to the advice of my mother was, until that point, a recurring theme despite my Christian upbringing. This blatant flaw in my own personal understanding was made painfully clear to me through the undeniable outcome of my ordeal. I also discovered within myself the latent ability to make milk come out the noses of young children, a skill that has garnered me a great deal of popularity among the cub scouts that I preside over on Wednesday evenings. Here I am today: smarter, more outgoing, slower to judge, and far more blessed, both in friendship and family than I could have ever been without my bully and dear friend.
College Examples: Hugh Gallagher, the Legendary Liar
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I
have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making
them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic
slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time
efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
College Essay Example: Eductational Experience and Berkeley (Ms. Nelson)
I never learned how to blend in; following the crowd was not an option without a crowd. Until I attended high school as a freshman, I had never gone to a day of school in my life. Though I rarely thought about it while growing up, homeschooling was the best gift my parents could have given me (besides having me in the first place). Not only did it instill me with a love of learning and a strong sense of self-reliance, it allowed me to shape my personality without facing the judgment of my peers.
College Prompts from the Past
College Admission Essay Topics
Best in Show: 15,16,98,99, 101, 105, 106, 109, 110
Old England in Brief: Origins to 1000, Mnemonics
- Inhabitants of British Isles (from Mr. Reno) - ICRAVN ("I see raven" . . . or "I craven" a snack). This is the "bird's eye" overview of the Isles' inhabitants from time immemorial to the Norman invasion of 1066.
- Iberians - from Spain-Portugal
- Celts - the "Irish" peoples
- Romans - from Italy
- Anglo-Saxons - from Germany (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)
- Vikings - from Scandinavia (Denmark and Norway)
- Normans - from France (originally from the north; that's why it's Nor(th)man)
- Anglo-Saxon Centuries (from Prof. Michael Drout, an Old English scholar at Wheaton College) - MCGVR (a mnemonic based on the old television show MacGyver)
- Migration (500-600 AD) - the Germanic tribes invade as Rome was packing up and backing out. The Teutonic peoples were swarming all over Europe before and during this era. Several of them--Angles, Saxons, and Jutes--decided to venture across the English Channel and liked it, so they stayed.
- Conversion (600-700) - In 597 Gregory the Great sends St. Augustine (not of Hippo) as an official emissary of Rome to convert the Angles or what he considered "Angels." Ireland already had been in the process of converting the Anglo-Saxons, so the more "home-grown" Christianity of St. Patrick's Ireland (432) had to work with the "official" Christianity brought from Rome by St. Augustine.
- Golden Age (700-800) - wherever Christ comes, cultures blossom; thus did the Anglo-Saxon culture after the conversion of the tribes. The newly erected monasteries beat the Anglo-Saxon swords into pens, ushering in the sanctification of the imagination and the creation of some first rate poetry, Beowulf included.
- Viking Raids (800-900) and the destruction of Anglo-Saxon culture - Scandinavian vikings (Denmark and Norway) began doing what pirates do: thy plundered and pillaged the peace-loving monasteries, eventually overthrowing all but one English kingdom: Alfred the Great of Wessex (871-899).
- Reform (900-1000) and the rebuilding of Anglo-Saxon culture - After Alfred the warrior-poet sent the vikings packing, England began rebuilding what the pillagers had torn down. Even before his passing, Alfred the Great established the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and translated Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy (a Latin work) and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Race into Old English (Anglo-Saxon), all of which first marked English as a "world language."
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| Sutton Hoo Burial Site |
Anglo-Saxon Riddles
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| Bilbo and Gollum (Smeagol) Riddle Jousting |
Why did Anglo-Saxons love riddles, word games? Perhaps because hunting for treasure was in their blood, as was beautifully wrought treasure itself. Poetry is a kind of riddle, a word-treasure to admire, and in the struggle for and discovery of its meaning doth its beauty shine forth ; )
As you try your hand at these Anglo-Saxon riddles below, keep in mind that the answers to these riddles are generally concrete things (a bird, a castle, an egg) as opposed to abstract ideas (like love, joy, hate).
Enjoy!
Cædmon's Hymn
![[St.+Caedmon.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOv75n3RqFlE22NfK0NIMaq_0__Y05QEfrnID7RQbjVvi9q786XUN_Bcq2bhoKXvgcqjbrVmVswl7vK2x63AecH4qMmbdejl9OKMLkEqA485pB7oSJ6ifZVsDwqpq4pGP9Do-fut_uiZ8o/s1600/St.+Caedmon.jpg) |
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It is meet that we worship the Warden of heaven, The might of the Maker, His purpose of mind, The Glory-Father's work when of all His wonders Eternal God made a beginning. He earliest stablished for earth's children Heaven for a roof, the Holy Shaper; Then mankind's Warden, created the world, Eternal Monarch, making for men Land to live on, Almighty Lord!
For this Text in Context St. Caedmon, 1st named poet in English, monk Died c. 680 at Whitby, Yorkshire North Riding Bede (AD 672-735) give this account: He was, this man, settled in a worldly life until the time he was of old age, and he never learned any poetry. And therefore, often in beership, when there was deemed cause for bliss, that they should all sing in succession with the harp; when he saw the harp nearing him, he then arose from the feast out of shame and went home to his house. When he did that one time, such that he abandoned the house of the beership and was going out to the animals' shed, the keeping of which he was charged with that night, he then at a fitting time settled his limbs in rest and slept. Then some man stood over him in a dream and hailed and greeted him, and called him by his name: "Caedmon, sing me something." Then answered he and said, "I cannot sing; and because of that I went out of the beership and departed hither, because I could not sing." Then spoke he who was with him (he was speaking): "However, you could sing to me!" Then he said, "What shall I sing?" Said he, "Sing to me of the Creation." When he received this answer, he began at once to sing in praise of God the Shaper these verses, and those words of which he had never heard, of which the order was this:[the song above] ![[St.+Caedmon+Stone.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTF30VXlDv5J3l80QVOg5pyijxqoBFL2XToCorI1xJp-70Y-zuAqnafLNiFYDDOvfUDy7maWz1GpGAYEVLEU2cZttx4_Ie8FNb6tmg5yyvBQsWA98rOXODzWlcvvJNmAvdKdUAgVF6CQm8/s1600/St.+Caedmon+Stone.jpg) 
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