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the significance of christianity in beowulf,
the significance of beowulf
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Beowulf and Caedmon’s Hymn
In Beowulf the Christian element, which coexists alongside the pagan or heathen, may have originated in part from the works of Caedmon.
The Christian element in Beowulf had to be included by the original poet or by minstrels who recited it in later times because it is so deeply imbedded in the text. The extent to which the Christian element is present varies in different parts of the poem. While the poet’s reflections and characters’ statements are mostly Christian, the customs and ceremonies, on the other hand, are almost entirely heathen/pagan. This fact seems to point to a heathen work which has undergone revision by Christian minstrels.
The Christianity of Beowulf is of a vague type. The minstrels who introduce the Christian element probably had but a vague knowledge of the faith, and on top of that they were under pressure from the audience to give them the interesting old pagan stories. At the beginning of the poem, there is the account of the pagan funeral rites of Scyld Scefing, and at the close of the poem we see the heathen rites of burial for Beowulf himself, including cremation, deposition of treasures and armor, etc. with the corpse in the burial mound overlooking the sea. Including such heathen rites enables the poet to “communicate his Christian vision of pagan heroic life.”(Bloom 2).
The minstrels’ catechesis seems poor because their allusions to the church and to the Bible are quite indistinct, vague, indefinete. In the whole poem there is possibly one half-hearted paraphrase of a Scriptural passage, in lines 1743ff:
Too sound is that sleep,
bound up in cares; the killer very near
wh...
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...ersity of Notre Dame Press, 1963.
Bloom, Harold. “Introduction.” In Modern Critical Interpretations: Beowulf, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Chickering, Howell D.. Beowulf A dual-Language Edition. New York: Anchor Books, 1977.
Collins, Roger and McClure, Judith, editors. Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People; The Greater Chronicle; Bede’s Letter to Egbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Frank, Roberta. “The Beowulf Poet’s Sense of History.” In Beowulf – Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
The Holy Bible, edited by dom Bernard Orchard. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1966.
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
...McClure, Judith, editors. Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People; The Greater Chronicle; Bede’s Letter to Egbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
It is common opinion that Beowulf was written by a Christian poet. This was probably true because at the time when it was written, most of the few people who knew how to read and write were in the clergy. There are various references within the poem to elements of the Christian religion. However, the story is about Pagan people and certain aspects of their culture are even glorified. The ambiguity of Beowulf’s religious content has caused confusion as to what significance religion had in inspiring the author and in what manner the author meant to inspire or influence his audience. I do not think that Beowulf is a Christian allegory because Beowulf had very little in common with the Biblical figure of Jesus Christ. I think that religion was not the primary thematic concern of the writer. Although there are discrepancies between the two styles of thinking, Beowulf seems to praise values which were considered moral and good among all humanity, both Christian and Pagan.
Beowulf was written around 700 A.D. by an unknown author. While it is a part of English Literature, it does not take place in England. Instead, it tells the reader events that happened in Sweden and on the Danish island of Zealand. The pagan and Christian references suggest that the poem is most likely written about the time that the Anglo-Saxon society was converting from paganism to Christianity. Monasteries provided a place for learning and they also saved some of the manuscripts, such as the story Beowulf. Christianity does eventually replace pagan religion as far as Anglo-Saxons are concerned. Although the unknown author of Beowulf develops the main protagonist to represent both paganism and Christianity, the ideals conflict create a unique epic poem.
Phillips, James. In the Company of Predators: Beowulf and the monstrous descendants of cain. Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. Vol. 13, No. 3, 2008. 41-51. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.
Unknown. "Beowulf."The Norton Anthology of English Literture. 8th Eddition. Volume 1.Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Etal. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006
The Christian element seems to be too deeply interwoven in the text of Beowulf for us to suppose that it is due to additions made by scribes at a time when the poem had come to be written down. The Christian element had to be included by the original poet or by minstrels who recited it in later times. The extent to which the Christian element is present varies in different parts of the poem, from about ten percent in the first part to much less than that throughout the rest of the poem. The Christian element is about equally distributed between the speeches and the narrative.
Anonymous. “Beowulf.” Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Seamus Heaney, trans. New York: W.W. Norton &Company Ltd. 2001. 2-213. Print.
Tolkein, J.R.R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Beowulf: The Donaldson Translation Backgrounds and Sources Criticism. Tuso, Joseph F. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1975. Print.
...hem greatly. The Beowulf poet makes sure to include small but meaningful references to the paganistic background of the epic poem. There are too many pagan symbols scattered throughout the work to be ignored, and too many rules of the Christian religion are broken by the characters of the poem for an argument to be made against the paganism of Beowulf. Also, we must not forget that ideas such as fate and revenge, which are shunned in Christianity, are two of the main themes in this story. Consequently, even though the Beowulf poet may have been Christian, as for the poem itself, all signs point towards paganism.
Christian symbolism in Beowulf is extremely obvious and prominent throughout the entirety of the poem. The author utilizes the Christian religion to symbolize the elements of good and evil and Heaven and Hell to help the spread of understanding of the religion throughout time.
Robinson, Fred C. “Apposed Word Meanings and Religious Perspectives.” In Beowulf – Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Shippey, T.A.. “The World of the Poem.” In Beowulf – Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987..
Abrams, M.H., ed. Beowulf: The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
Beowulf has been estimated to have been written over twelve hundred years ago. According to The Norton Anthology Of English Literature, “It is now widely believed that Beowulf is the work of a single poet who was a Christian and that his poem reflects a well-established Christian tradition,” (37). This conclusion was likely drawn by accounting for the time at which Beowulf was written and factoring in most people in the area of where it was believed to be written had already been converted to Christianity. In a way, this provides the best explanation for why Beowulf contains a high level of Christian influences for the story to have taken place when it did. Dr. J. Michael Stitt of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas says that, “Much of this epic poem is dedicated to conveying and exemplifying the heroic code which values such attributes as strength, courage and honor. Conflicting with this ideology are other factors such as Christianity, and these tensions affect the lives and decisions of the narrative's characters.” If the one of the main focuses in Beowulf is the heroic code and the heroic code convicts with the authors beliefs than why did he write it? This is not to say that authors do not write about things that they ...
Beowulf was written in the time when the society was in the process of converting from Paganism to Christianity. In this epic poem, these two religions come through the actions of its characters. The acceptance of feuds and the courage of war are just a few examples of the Pagan tradition, while the Christian mortalities refrain from the two.