routledge+history+of+literature+in+english

12 Old and Middle English 600–1485
definitely known to have written two poems in The Exeter Book and two
in another collection, now in the chapter of Vercelli in Italy, known as
The Vercelli Book. This is a collection of prose as well as poetry on
exclusively religious themes. Cynewulf’s poems are all on religious themes,
such as stories of saints, The Fates of the Apostles, and Christ’s Ascension.
LONG POEMS
The ruinous deeds of the ravaging foe
(Beowulf)
The best-known long text in Old English is the epic poem Beowulf.
Beowulf himself is a classic hero, who comes from afar. He has defeated
the mortal enemy of the area – the monster Grendel – and has thus
made the territory safe for its people. The people and the setting are
both Germanic. The poem recalls a shared heroic past, somewhere in
the general consciousness of the audience who would hear it.
It starts with a mention of ‘olden days’, looking back, as many stories
do, to an indefinite past (‘once upon a time’), in which fact blends with
fiction to make the tale. But the hero is a mortal man, and images of
foreboding and doom prepare the way for a tragic outcome. He will be
betrayed, and civil war will follow. Contrasts between splendour and
destruction, success and failure, honour and betrayal, emerge in a story
which contains a great many of the elements of future literature. Power,
and the battles to achieve and hold on to power, are a main theme of
literature in every culture – as is the theme of transience and mortality.
The language of Beowulf is extremely rich and inventive, full of
imposing tones and rhythms: there are a great many near synonyms
for ‘warrior’; many compound adjectives denoting hardness; many
images of light, colour, and blood; many superlatives and exaggerations
to underline the heroic, legendary aspects of the tale.
It is, at the same time, a poem of praise for ‘valour and venturous
deeds’, a tragedy, since the hero inevitably dies, and an elegy, since it
recalls heroic deeds and times now past. Beowulf dies at the moment
of his greatest triumph – ‘Beowulf, dauntless, pressed on to his doom’
– fifty years on from the killing of Grendel, but then has to face the