Kennings In Beowulf

There are two sides to every story. The events may be the same, but the tone in which the story is told shapes the reader’s understanding of the events. This idea is never more evident than through the disparity between Burton Raffel’s translation of Beowulf and John Gardner’s Grendel. Both novels are based on the idea of Beowulf killing Grendel. However, the two different points of view telling the story create vastly different novels. Beowulf highlights the heroic and positive world in which Beowulf lives. Whereas Grendel elucidates on the miserable life that Grendel is circumscribed to. The consistent variance in tone skews the events in two completely different directions. The tone between Beowulf and Grendel differ in

Imagine a slimy swamp like place where only the most horrid monsters with the most disgusting features live, this is the fen. Now imagine A wonderful bright beautiful hall that’s almost castle like, these are the two elements of the story Beowulf a New Telling.

In Heaney’s translation, he uses a kenning to describe the Danes whereas Raffel uses simple wording to get the same story across. Heaney calls The Danish people “Ring-Danes” to get his translation to be closer to the Anglo-Saxon’s style of literature. This use of a kenning causes the

Beowulf: A New Telling by Robert Nye is about a character named Beowulf who has to fight evil by using strength, but by also using cleverness. Beowulf’s name means “bee hunter” and Beowulf loved bees. In the story a hall is built it is called Hall Heorot. “By day it towered above men’s heads like a second sun, so bright were it’s walls and roofs”(p. 5). Once the hall is made, a monster comes and eats people at night.

The Old-English epic poem of Beowulf, officially written down somewhere around the year 1066 by the Beowulf poet, is one where you are persistently kept of the edge of your seat due to its superior use of vivid phrases and imagery. In the Anglo-Saxon period in which the story takes place bravery, heroic deeds, and loyalty to one another is paramount. Beowulf, a tenacious scandinavian warrior, is the savior of a neighboring kingdom due to his aptness to slay the treacherous monsters such as the nefarious Grendel and his mother. A truly remarkable feat is how the words and actions of this poem are put to life in the movie. Though remarkable, the cinema didn’t exactly correlate with the poem. In fact the integrity of the poem almost seems diminished

       From 1805 until the present there have been introduced an abundance of paraphrases, translations, adaptations, summaries, versions and illustrations of Beowulf in modern English and in foreign languages due mostly to two reasons: the desire to make the poem accessible, and the desire to read the exotic (Osborn 341). It is the purpose of this essay to present a brief history of this development of the popularity of the poem and then compare some of the translations with respect to some more difficult passages in the poem Beowulf.

Beowulf is influenced by the Anglo-Saxon time period as it has several characteristics of an epic poem. A characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon time period is the use of alliteration and kennings. This is used in the text to bring attention to certain areas of the poem. An example can be found on page 39, “as they willed, and you struggled seven long nights to survive,” (Raffel). This expression brings about the attention of the reader that Unferth was not as strong or manly as Beowulf. Similarly, the author uses kennings to make his writing colorful, thus attracting his readers. An example in the text is “light-of-battle” meaning sword. Another characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon literature is the epic hero.

Second, Webster does an amazing job at backing up her information. After she states a point or introduces a subject, she presents the information about that subject and backs it up with facts. For example, she introduces the topic of helmets. Once she does this, Webster starts to talk about how helmets came from the Germanic warrior. She does this throughout her whole article. This helps the readers to understand where exactly all the information they are reading about is coming from. This also brings a whole other aspect to Beowulf in that it shows the readers where everything came from. The poem Beowulf was written so long ago and by an unknown author; therefore, having all this information helps the reader to understand what is happening in the poem and really shows the reader where what they are reading about is coming from. Another example of her providing this information is when she is talking about the mail-coats and how they originated around the tenth century.

The purpose of Beowulf shines through it’s Old English roots. While reading the novel, the reader may notice the use of Old English on the left side pages. Although this may be confusing to some, to others it connects the book to the original ancient story that was portrayed in song form long ago. This connection to the past creates a sense of urgency to the new writing, as if the Old English writing, though meaning the same thing as the new writing, has importance to the overall story as a whole. Without the use of Old English in the novel, the overall purpose and importance of the story that was once told hundreds of years ago would begin to fade. The use of Old English also brings a seriousness to the novel, as though to remind those who read it that the words were once true to those who believed the stories. Thus leading the reader to believe that the story of Beowulf was made and explained out of honesty and made to inform the people that it was told to.

During the Anglo-Saxon time period, individuals wrote poems about achievements, deaths, emotions, and adventures taken by certain individuals. There were many popular poems during this era including, “Beowulf” translated by Burton Raffer and “The Wanderer” translated by Charles W. Kennedy. Although both these poems were written during this era, “Beowulf” was an epic poem and “The Wanderer” was an elegiac poem. However, both of these pieces shared certain characteristics related to the culture and values of the Anglo-Saxon culture. Many attributes that make up this culture are related to both Pagan and Christian beliefs. This includes many ideals relating to fate and God. The culture and values of Anglo-Saxons through “Beowulf” and “The Wanderer”, suggest that along one’s quest emerges an individuals outlook on ways of life.

A kenning is a metaphorical circumlocution, signifying a person or thing by a characteristic or quality (Skill, 10). It is used quite often in Anglo Saxon poetry and is used to great length in Beowulf. The language of Beowulf has use of four-beat alliterative line and this allows the use of a variety of kennings.

  There is not unanimity among Beowulf translators concerning all parts of the text, but there is little divergence from a single, uniform translation of the poem. Herein are discussed some passages which translators might show disagreement about because of the lack of clarity or missing fragments of text or abundance of synonyms or ambiguous referents.

The Anglo-Saxon poem “Beowulf” takes the reader back into a time long past; one of family, fate, and fealty. Beowulf offers a glimpse of a society struggling between two different paths, one path being the assimilation into the new Christian traditions and the other is the fast fading past of glorified warriors and family ties. In the poem, the reader can see the attempts of the poet to convey the values and stories of Judeo-Christianity in a society of Anglo-Saxon paganism. The poet illustrates the infiltration of the Christian teachings and how they might have appeared within the lives of the people through the literary devices of symbolism, allegory, and allusion.

The epic tale of Beowulf was written sometime after his death. In other words, a long time ago during the Anglo-Saxon period. Today, directors in Hollywood did not keep from creating their own rendition of this epic poem As a result, plenty of modern interpretations of Beowulf, such as Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel, have been released. Naturally, the cultural values that might be reflected in modern Beowulf renditions will demonstrate a clash with those of the original fifth century Beowulf literature. One reason for this is that in the modern age we value characters with profound characteristics, characters that change due to the challenges they experience; characters that we as the audience can attach to. Flat characters like those of the original Beowulf text are difficult to empathize with since they are not realistic enough for our standards. Due to these differences in culture and values, the Beowulf and Grendel from the original Beowulf text possess definite contrasts when compared with their Beowulf and Grendel counterparts.

The issues inherent in authorizing medieval manuscripts occur because the text has crossed hundreds of years and who knows how many hands. Since medieval times, the notion of the author has changed. Plus, manuscripts were subject to the idiosyncrasies of the copyist who sometimes subjected their reproductions to “errors of commission and omission” (Grant 51). Likewise, translators make choices about how to best translate the text in order to be faithful to the original, but also compelling to a contemporary audience. These matters create textual instability and can be further explored through examining the epic Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowolf.