Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Compare and contrast hrothgar and beowulf
Role of women in beowulf
Role of women in beowulf
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Compare and contrast hrothgar and beowulf
Comparing Events and Characters of Beowulf and The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki
There are so many similarities between the events and characters in the poem Beowulf and The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, an Iceland saga representing 1000 years of oral traditions prior to the 1300’s when it was written. These similarities are so numerous that they cannot be attributed solely to coincidence.
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature states that the hero of the poem Beowulf may be the same person as Bodvar Biarki, the chief of Hrolfr Kraki’s knights (v1, ch3, s3, n13). George Clark in “The Hero and the Theme” mentions: “The form of Beowulf taken as a whole suggests both the ‘Bear’s Son’ folktale type (especially as we find it in Scandinavia) and the ‘combat myth’. . . .” (286). The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki would be both of these. Jesse Byock says: “the earliest accounts of the characters in Hrolf’s Saga come from Anglo-Saxon England, where writing in Roman letters had been adopted in the seventh century, several centuries earlier than in Scandinavia” (Byock xxiv).
Beowulf opens with a short account of the victorious Danish king Scyld Scefing, whose pagan ship-burial is described. His body was carried on board a ship, piled up with arms and treasures: the ship passed out to sea. The reigns of Scyld’s son and grandson, Beowulf and Healfdene, are mentioned, and we then meet Hrothgar, the son of Healfdene. In The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki we also meet a Hrothgar, but his name is abbreviated into Hroar. Hroar is a notable figure, just as in Beowulf, ruling over the northern English kingdom of Northumberland until forced into a disastrous conflict. King Hrothgar builds a splendid hall, call...
... middle of paper ...
...men and the gentlest, the kindest to his people” (3181).
The Iceland saga, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, written in the 1300’s, represents about 1000 years of oral traditions. The remarkable similarities between this saga and Beowulf are just too astounding to dismiss as mere coincidences.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chickering, Howell D.. Beowulf A dual-Language Edition. New York: Anchor Books, 1977.
Clark, Gorge. “The Hero and the Theme.” In A Beowulf Handbook, edited by Robert Bjork and John D. Niles. Lincoln, Nebraska: Uiversity of Nebraska Press, 1997.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, translated by Jesse L. Byock. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, translated by Jesse L. Byock. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker burst upon the American Southwest in the Great Depression year of 1932. At the time of Clyde’s first involvement with a murder, people paid little attention to the event. He was just another violent hoodlum in a nation with a growing list of brutal criminals, which included Al Capone, John Dillenger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barker Gang. Not until Bonnie and Clyde joined forces did the public become intrigued. The phrase “Bonnie and Clyde'; took on an electrifying and exotic meaning that has abated little in the past sixty years.
Beowulf. Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Expanded Edition Volume 1. ED. Maynard Mack et al. New York: Norton, 1995. 1546-1613.
The Maya relied largely on the replenishment of water in their reservoirs for their water supply. Seasonal rain was vital for the Maya to maintain a sustainable water reserve. Water was their most valuable element and most crucial resource. In Global Warming Focus, “the rise and the fall of the Mayan civilization is an example of a sophisticated civilization failing to adapt successfully to climate change” (“The Collapse,” 2012, p.220),
Beowulf. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume A. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 34-100.
Beowulf is an anonymous poem that takes place in Denmark and Geatland, the modern day Sweden. It tells the tale of a kingdom in Denmark, ruled by King Hrothgar, which is in peril and how a hero comes to save it. Beowulf was estimated to be written in the 8th to 11th century during the Anglo-Norman period making it the oldest surviving epic poem in historians’ possession. Though parts of the original manuscript were destroyed in a fire, around 1731, the work has still proven useful to scholars and researchers today. It was first translated in 1818 by Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin, J. M. Kemble wrote the first modern English translation in 1837. It has been a great influence to modern writers, like J. R. R. Tolkien (Snell).
Clyde Barrow was a trouble maker from an early age. His life in the nineteen twenties consisted of cracking safes, robbing stores, and stealing cars. It was not long after that when he met an innocent waitress, Bonnie Parker, at a mutual friend’s house. Their attraction was instantaneous (20th Century History.) They began robbing together, along with their gang whose membership was constantly changing. Together they would be nearly unstoppable. When Clyde would be put in jail, Bonnie was right there to aid him in escaping. This was the very beginning of the dynamic duo.
Clyde and his acquaintances explore the possibilities of girls, and drinking alcohol. Eventually, these people steal a car, and Clyde runs away to keep himself from being apprehended by the police. His entire life has been changed because he has made a few bad decisions. Things turn worse and worse for Clyde as he progresses through the next few months, and he feels exactly the opposite.
Diamond, Jared M. (2005) "The Maya Collapses.” Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 157-77.
Both Bonnie and Clyde are criminals, and they are chaos and go against society, which leads society to fight back and win in the end. Becoming more reckless which gives their journey two separate ends, it can either end with their captures or their death. Since they both go against the social norm, whereas society is all about having everything be in its place. Clyde is seen as an asexual, due to the fact that he shows no sexual attraction for Bonnie. Where as Bonnie is considered to be more of a transgressive character, who must be punished, for going against social norms. The reason why the audience is rooting for criminals to get away from the police is because, both Bonnie and Clyde do it for the people, and target only certain people.
To sustain their large and ever expanding population, a populace that approximated 2 million inhabitants around the time of the prolonged drought’s commencement, the Mayan people employed an extensive array of agricultural practices that enabled them to amass wealth and food (Armstrong, 3). The Mayan people developed an extensive network of canals across the Yucatan peninsula to drain and elevate infertile wetlands to produce arable land that was previously inaccessible to them (Wylie, 8). Furthermore, the Mayan civilization employed slash and burn tactics to produce arable land that could be utilized for agricultural subsistence, contributing to extensive deforestation in the process (Wylie, 8). Although such agricultural practices effectively served the Mayan people before the shift of climate, primarily because the fertility of the land was refurbished by frequent and extensive rainfall, the droughts of the ninth and tenth centuries swiftly diminished necessary agrarian yields (Armstrong, 4). The environmental degradation brought about by Mayan agricultural practices amplified the consequences of the drought (Armstrong,
Beowulf is an epic poem telling the story of Beowulf, a legendary Geatish hero who later becomes king in the aforementioned epic poem. While the story in and of itself is quite interesting, for the purpose of this paper it is important to look at the character more so then his deeds, or rather why he did what he did.
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907-21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000 http://www.bartleby.com/215/0816.html