One of the main differences between The Song of Roland and Beowulf (a point I've touched on in a previous post), is that in Roland there is only one class of opponent; the enemies only come from one direction, and they combine aspects of the otherworldly Monstrous with the merely human Other. Admittedly, Ganelon springs his treason from the very heart of Frankish society, but his sins exclusively involve showing the Paynims where and how they can do the most damage. In his own person, Ganelon is not a threat and harms nobody directly.
In Beowulf, by contrast, we get a persistent sense of a war being waged on two fronts - and here is where the geography of Othering enters in. The poem often speaks of its world as lying "between the two seas" (858, 1685). R.M. Liuzza glosses this as referring to "the North and Baltic seas," but I think there is more to the expression than this. Beowulf contains two directions of danger, two frontiers that must be guarded. One "sea" is that which Beowulf and his fellow Geats cross on the way to Hrothgar's court, the sea that separates the Danes from the human Other and that the Danish coast-guard patrols against "enemies with fleets and armies" (242) - which the Geats seem heretofore to have been. The other "sea" is Grendelsmere, "the seacliff" (1420) to which Beowulf and his party come when tracking Grendel's mother as well as the ocean in which Beowulf went swimming with Breca: the world of the inhuman Monstrous. Crossing over from this world into the human world of the poem, Grendel and his mother appear as "great march-stalkers..., / alien spirits" (1348-1349). After describing his victory over Grendel's mother, Beowulf tells Hrothgar, "you need fear nothing, / from that side" (1674-1675). The qualification is significant: the monster-frontier may now be secure, Beowulf implies, but you should still look to the border with your human enemies - the Heathobards, for example, who will ultimately burn down Heorot Hall, or even Hrothgar's potentially treacherous nephew Hrothulf.
(Incidentally, that second sea, the one from which monsters emerge, is also the one from across which Scyld arrives as a foundling and to which he is committed again after his death. Scyld's providential mission from outside is only time something good and tangible, rather than monstrous, penetrates the boundary of the poem.)
King "Shield" provides a good segue into the question of material culture and its role in defining the Self and the Other in this poem. Beset by Grendel, the Danes in desperation pray "that the soul-slayer might offer assistance" (177). From the poet's perspective, at least, if not necessarily their own, they are invoking a devil to fight a devil, evincing an awareness that only a monster can defeat a monster. The human "monster" who comes to their assistance is Beowulf. "He has thirty / men's strength, strong in battle, / in his handgrip" (379-381), says Hrothgar before intuiting, apparently on the basis of such superhumanity, that Beowulf has come to fight "against Grendel's terror" (384). As a corollary to possessing such inhuman strength, Beowulf typically disdains the human material culture of battle: "I too will scorn....to bear a sword or a broad shield" (435, 437). Admitting him and his troop into Heorot, Hrothgar makes them leave behind their armor and weaponry; it's all the same to Beowulf, of course, but this measure also marks him out as an Other, the monster who will defeat the monster.
Beowulf, of course, then goes on to best Grendel in weaponless combat and rip off his arm barehanded. However, the key to this success is that Beowulf fights within Heorot, the heart of the human world. Heorot embodies the whole of "middle-earth" between the two seas, the "bright and shining plain, by seas embraced" (93) which is sung about within it. Fighting inside this human creation in all its firm and beautiful physicality, Beowulf needs no other way to reassert his humanity against the Monstrous. His inherent "otherness" is constricted and channeled by the architecture surrounding him.
Venturing out of this human domain, though, requires very different measures. Beowulf fought and killed the monsters on his swimming ordeal with a sword and describes how "my coat of armor offered help" (550) in those encounters. Similarly, before seeking out Grendel's mother in her lake, "Beowulf geared up / in his warrior's clothing" (1441-1442), and twice in the ensuing battle "his armored shirt offered him help" (1552). The world of the monstrous, as opposed to the human world embodied by Heorot, is, from the human perspective, a place where all boundaries are abolished and all otherness collapses; as Hrothgar describes it, fire burns on the lake and water and sky combine. In such an environment, Beowulf now needs the individual demarcation, the sense of integrality and selfhood, which only helmet and armor can provide.
The final twist to all of these matters occurs when, reaching the bottom of Grendelsmere, Beowulf discovers a weird mirror of Heorot and the human world above: "he was in some sort of battle-hall / where no water could harm him in any way, / and, for the hall's roof, he could not be reached / by the flood's sudden rush - he saw a firelight, / a glowing blaze shining brightly" (1513-1517). We learn that the monsters, creatures of indefiniteness and flux in human eyes, actually define their own boundaries and structure their own existence. The light appearing suddenly in this scene echoes, in a sense, the light described in the creation poem associated with Heorot. Moreover, in this luminous and structured environment, the monsters possess a material culture of their own. Grendel's mother sets upon Beowulf with a knife, and although the sword he brought from his own world proves useless here, he finds a new weapon of inhuman provenance with which to finish her off.
In Beowulf, as in The Song of Roland, geography and material culture provide a framework with which to physically define the Self, the Other, and the Monstrous, but once this framework is shattered, bypassed, or surmounted, such structures of difference seem far less rigid and entrenched.
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2 comments:
I really liked your analysis of the physical or geographic war in ‘Beowulf,’ where the realms of ‘monstrous’ and ‘human’ collide. Yet, to add to this analysis, I would also add that this ‘war,’ on one level, is being waged on a spiritual front as well. Beowulf and Grendel becomes representative of the Christian idea of ‘good versus evil’; they appear to be polar opposite, and one can argue that Beowulf exists figuratively as God or Christ, and in contrast, Grendel is the devil or Satan. On page fifty-six, Grendel becomes associated with ‘Cain’s race’; he can be seen as the man ‘falling from grace and into sin’ who is associated with Satan, the devil, and becomes known as ‘God’s adversary.’ In addition to this, he is described as an ‘unholy creature,’ as an ‘alien spirit,’ and lives in an underworld similar to Satan’s hell. In contrast, Beowulf can be seen as a Christ like figure not only because he possesses a ‘generous spirit (Page 61), and exhibits fairness (page 66), but because he literally ‘saves’ the Danes. In order to survive Grendel’s attacks, the Danes need a savior, and Beowulf, can be seen as a Christ like figure by the way he exhibits his desire to end their suffering, and ‘save’ them from Grendel. Moreover, if Beowulf is seen as encompassing this Christian idea of ‘good,’ when he defeats Grendel, he is carrying out God’s work; one could view Beowulf’s superhuman strength as coming from or facilitated by God so that he can carry out ‘God’s anger.’ Despite this, and if one were to examine Beowulf’s character closely, he seems to encompass both Pagan and Christian elements, as well as the ‘monstrous’ and the ‘other,’ supporting your argument that asserts the instability within ‘structures of differences.’ Perhaps the narrator or writer of ‘Beowulf’ is exhibiting his inability to sustain these differences, while trying to promote Christian ideology?
Taken together, Max's post and Ines's comment point to the comparatively more complex, interstitial nature of _Beowulf_ as against the simpler world of _The Song of Roland_, whose boundaries are more rigidly defined. With respect to the centrally humanizing role of Heorot, it's very true that the world of nature was viewed with (often justifiable) fear by medieval persons, even without the threat of Grendelkin or dragons. But it's also true, in this poem that loves to confuse categories, that the most inhuman of the monsters, the dragon, is also described as a kind of hall-guardian who is also, like so many of the people in the poem, very attached to finely-wrought products of human craftwork. Almost every place and thing participates at once in the world of humankind and the world of monsters.
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