The Characterization of Beowulf

Reading Fred C. Robinson's essay parsing the textual evidence for Beowulf's "monstrosity" was a bit of a chastening experience. After all, I spent a good deal of my previous post holding forth on just this theme: Beowulf as Other, the monster needed to defeat the monster, and so forth. Robinson splashes a healthy dose of cold, linguistic water on these feverish speculations. Before honing in on the nuances of Old English diction, he sketches in his opening paragraph the ways in which the pathos and power of the poem depend on Beowulf's humanity. Reading all of this gave me a chagrined feeling of having cut myself off from my own moorings, because this "humanistic" interpretation of Beowulf, focusing on the poem as a story about being in the world, was (especially as articulated by J.R.R. Tolkien in his "The Monsters and the Critics" essay) one of my own personal and interpretative touchstones as an undergraduate. So, mea culpa.

Anyway, confessions and self-flagellations aside, I am not willing to retract all of my previous assertions. Nor do I think Robinson's essay is itself beyond all criticism. The piece, for example, opens with what I can only hope is a self-conscious use of Anglo-Saxon litotes: the breathtaking understatement that "Examples of the marvellous are not uncommon in Beowulf." Robinson goes on to describe "some of the fabulous wonders that the poet has admitted to his story." I may be over-reading, but formulation makes it sound as if the inclusion of these "fabulous wonders" was, or should have been, grudging and half-hearted. The poet reluctantly let Grendel, his mother, and the dragon gate-crash what would otherwise have been a poem about men fighting other men; the monsters and monstrous elements are extrinsic, not intrinsic. On the contrary, it seems to me that the monsters are not "admitted to" Beowulf, but that Beowulf is constructed around them.

Robinson maintains that "in general the wonders are carefully restricted to the devil's party" - fair enough. But as thorough and convincing as his textual reconsideration is, I still feel that Beowulf, recurrently throughout the poem and particularly in the eyes of others, is more than "only a strong man." Robinson nowhere engages with the use of aeglaeca as a term for Beowulf (and his fellow dragon-slayer Sigemund). Even in the sense of "awe-inspiring creature" or other such generic formulation rather than "monster" per se, this word still carries an elemental, uncanny connotation that elevates its referents above (or perhaps alienates them from) the human norm.

I wrote previously that, in the poem, only a monster can overcome a monster. This isn't true, and even if it is we shouldn't desire it, because where does that leave the human beings in the middle? But I still think that many people within the poem, like the Danes, and more particularly Hrothgar himself, believe it is true and construct Beowulf accordingly. I still point to the fact that the first thing Hrothgar says about Beowulf (after having known him when he was a boy) is that he has the strength of thirty men, and furthermore, that this quality immediately makes Hrothgar believe that Beowulf has come "as I would hope" to fight Grendel (379-384) - nothing that has been reported to Hrothgar about Beowulf and his band states or even implies this. Persistently thereafter, Hrothgar idolizes Beowulf, conspicuously honors and glorifies him, singles him out, others him - that is, when he is not lecturing him to "defend yourself from wickedness" (1758 - Hrothgar, throughout the poem, comes off as moody, mercurial, and temperamental, in pointed contrast to Beowulf's even temper). This habit drives Hrothgar into making a couple of ill-considered and politically sensitive remarks, such as adopting Beowulf as his son (946-947) or implying that he deserves to pre-empt Heardred in the Geatish royal succession (1850-1851 - although Hygd feels the same way and tries to convince Beowulf to do it).

Beowulf, to his credit, repeatedly resists Hrothgar's tendency to set him above and apart from the rest of humanity, both by admitting his near-defeats and personal dissatisfactions with the results of his monster fights and by sharing the credit and connecting himself with others: "Freely and gladly have we fought this fight" (958, emphasis added). He also passes on all of the lavish gifts he received from Hrothgar to Hygelac and Hygd, as a way of very self-consciously integrating himself into a human community, affirming kinship, and counteracting his "othering"; at the same time, his statement to Hygelac evinces his progressive isolation and the fragility of his human ties: "I have few / close kinsmen, my Hygelac, except for you" (2150-2151).

As a sidenote, and by way of extending my earlier interpretation about material culture and the role it plays in delineating the Self as opposed to the Other, we can observe how all human interactions in the poem are explicitly material. Beowulf is far from the only character who receives and passes on artifacts as a way of affirming solidarity and a shared sense of selfhood. Indeed, material culture - cups, rings, banners, as well as implements of battle - represent the terms, the signifiers, by which a communal sense of Self is constructed. An Other (an outlaw or slave the one who pillages the dragon's hoard) can be reintegrated, cease to be othered, by giving treasure; wergild is the same kind of thing. Material culture, made things, are so important for defining identity that death, for Beowulf, is described as a force coming to steal "his soul's treasure" (2422). Yet the dragon considers his hoard just as precious. The poem repeatedly portrays how, as a means of defining and organizing human society, material culture is ultimately useless. Weapons can prove as unreliable as men; Beowulf's sword glances off the dragon and his comrades flee. The great hoard over which Beowulf and the dragon fight seems to be fundamentally inhuman, dug out of the earth by an ancient people (2248-2249); possessing it "does [the dragon] no good" (2277), yet after Beowulf's death the liberated treasure remains "as useless to men as it was before" (3168).

To conclude my discussion of Beowulf as man or aeglaeca, the combat with the dragon brings this internal dynamic into high relief. Beowulf evokes his reputation for superhuman strength again by boasting of how "I slew Daeghrefn, champion of the Hugas, / with my bare hands" (2501-2502) and asserts that he would not "bear a sword / or weapon" (2518-2519) in this encounter if he could help it but that circumstances require him to carry "shield and byrnie" (2523). As with the earlier fights with Grendel and his mother, different circumstances bring different aspects of Beowulf to the fore: among humans in a human environment he can be "monstrous," but against and among monsters he must be human. Yet Beowulf then explicitly others himself, as he had anticipated by "scorn[ing]" (2345) to take his full army against the dragon, by dismissing his thanes from fighting alongside him: "It is not your way, / nor proper for any man except me alone, / that he should match his strength against this monster" (2532-2534). Rather than chalking this up to pride or hubris alone, we might better describe this decree (which seems to me to absolve the other Geats of some of the blame for running away) as a resolution by Beowulf to act the part of the aeglaeca which he may think they want and need him to be. Closing in combat, he and the dragon both become "great creatures" (aeglaecan, 2592), whereupon all of the thanes but Wiglaf abscond from the field.

The intervention of Wiglaf simultaneously restores Beowulf's humanity and enables him to overcome the dragon - a fascinating and moving paradox which permanently does away with the idea that only a monster can defeat a monster. Wiglaf's loyalty is part of "his nature" (2696), that is, not inspired or motivated by Beowulf's ring-giving; materialistic exchange, the poet seems to imply, will not foster a communal sense of selfhood unless predicated upon a deeper sense of kinship or simple kindness. When he enters the fray, he and Beowulf become, almost literally, one body, one person: "now sword and helmet, / byrnie and battle-dress, shall be ours together" (2659-2660). Once again, the material culture of battle limns humanity, in this case a common humanity of Beowulf and Wiglaf, over against the monstrous. Yet when, with the dragon killed, Wiglaf removes Beowulf's helmet, it constitutes not an othering gesture but a humane one. Finally and decisively, Beowulf becomes not an aeglaec or a superhuman hero but a dying old man.

In a poem as complex and finely balanced as Beowulf, it can probably be all too easy to tip the scales one way or the other, towards the monstrous or the human. Robinson, in his essay, may tilt too far towards the human, to the point of implicitly writing off the monstrous and marvellous as extrinsic interpolations. Yet his piece was, on the whole, a useful corrective to the opposite extreme. Although he can and often does become othered, even almost monstrous, under the pressure of circumstances or the expectations of his fellows, Beowulf ends the poem fully and wrenchingly human.