Beowulf the poet: a deconstruction of narratives

Abstract

The Anglo-Saxon scop was the historian and chronicler of great heroes and deeds. The scop advanced a well-defined code of heroic conduct, to which kings and retainers aspired; the manifestation of such conduct was invariably violence and vengeance. The Beowulf Poet was aware of his role as the cultural conduit for a social order founded on warfare and retribution. Beowulf 's self conscious style and internally verifying structure mark it as a sophisticated exposition of the ethics and mechanics of the heroic tradition. The poem is more than a deconstruction of ideology however. It is a critique of the nature and process of traditional art in a changing society; a discussion of poetic art is the defining feature of the poem's structural and thematic construct. Beowulf functions as a microcosm of the broader heroic aesthetic and its ethical contradictions. The Beowulf Poet discusses the transmission of information through poetry by adhering to the formulaic and idiomatic norms of his inherited tradition, which he develops as the critical apparatus to deconstruct poetry's role in perpetuating heroism. The Poet questions the transmission of heroic ethics through poetry, and reveals how a distinctly subjective artistic reinterpretation and transmission attenuates narrative information that defined heroic convention and engendered action. To demonstrate this, I discuss the literal and metaphoric transfer of narratives through the poem, and show how the Poet interweaves the narrative and formulaic threads of his own voice with that of Beowulf 's to form a sustained ironic conceit.

Date of Award	2001
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Wales, Bangor
Sponsors	University of Wales, Bangor
Supervisor	Margaret Locherbie-Cameron (Supervisor)