blog #3

Quote/statement - "In the study of Beowulf, the character of the hero and the theme of the poem seem both to require and to resist separate analyses. Edward B. Irving Jr. makes theme and character one when he claims that "to write of the hero in Beowulf is to write of everything in the poem." Peter Clemoes concurs: "in an important sense, the hero IS the poem." In contrast, Kathryn Hume separates the poem's representation of the hero and its essentail meaning: "were the poem centered on Beowulf himself, we would expect to learn something about him as a person." She claims that the poem gives us Beowulf's deeds and public speeches but no "private thoughts or personal hopes or misgivings," not even "characterizing features," save for "extraordinary strength." Similarily, John Niles argues that the poem's audience "cannot really identify itself with Beowulf the man...He outdistances us and becomes part of the marvelous machinery of the plot, like Grendel or the dragon. We know too little of his everyday humanity, his normal human feelings, to be able to see him as an extension of ourselves."

response- I agree with Edward B. Irving Jr.'s and Peter Clemoes' statements in that Beowulf IS in fact the poem. I agree because without Beowulf, there would be no poem, and with no poem, there would be no Beowulf. But I mainly agree with this because I disagree with the argumentative statements by the critics. John Niles’ statement that the reader can’t sympathize with Beowulf is not a sufficient argument either. I think we weren’t meant to sympathize with Beowulf due to the fact that he is superhuman and fights monsters, like the dragon. Obviously we normal people don’t deal with that in our everyday lives, or at all in our lives for that matter, because dragons don’t exist, so it would be impossible for us to see him as an extension of ourselves due to the fact that basically the whole poem is about fantasy. Kathryn Hume’s statement that Beowulf has no soliloquies or even a physical description of himself is true. However, those things are obviously not needed in the poem since it is regarded as a classic and is world famous.

quote/ statement - "Despite the possibilities, few critics have set out to examine Beowulf as an imagained person. the most influential critical essay on the poem, Tolkien's "Beowulf: The monsters and the critics" left no room for the project. Tolkien foreground the monsters and the monstrous, thereby leaving Beowulf at the poem's periphery. For Tolkien, theme, the the character of the hero, is central and the poem's theme is the threat to human order posed by the monstrous, as illustrated in the hero's battle against Grendel and the dragon. For Tolkien, the poem is about the onslaught of the monsters-not quite allegorized into transparent representations of Christian notion of evil-against mankind, whose champion is an everyman without personal qualities or human contexts, a hero with "no enmeshed loyalties, nor hapless love"-"He is a man that for him and many is sufficient tragedy." Tolkien's Beowulf is "something more significant than a standard hero, a man faced with a foe more evil than any human enemy...is before us" Tolkien's Beowulf is significant and signifies but has no character at all."

Response- I believe that Beowulf is an imagined person. I agree with Tolkien in this because, like I said earlier, he has superhuman strength and fights dragons. Now, there have been other characters throughout other literary works with these characteristics and attributes, such as Superman and Harry Potter (in the Goblet of Fire), respectively, and both of those people are imaginary. Also, like Tolkien says, “Beowulf is significant and signifies but has no character at all.” This is true because, like stated by Hume, we get no insight on his “private thoughts or personal hopes or misgivings,” so, to the reader, Beowulf has hardly any character.