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Friday 9 February 2018

Beowulf -A Mega Post YOU Demanded!

Okay, okay YOU may not have demanded it but someone did.  Honest.

It was either Beowulf or Hercules -or my favourite, Samson- to be a follow-up to that epic Gilgamesh posting and I opted for Beowulf.  Samson says he can wait. 

Beowulf, as it is simply known, is an heroic poem, said to be the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest Europeanvernacular epic. The story deals with events taking place in the early 6th century and is believed to have been composed between Anno domini 700- 750. 


Above: Beowulf preparing to cut off the head of the monster Grendel, illustration from Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race (1910) by Maud Isabel Ebbutt (I have a copy).
                                                __________________________

Originally the tale was untitled, but it was later named after the Scandinavian hero Beowulf -his exploits and character providing its connecting theme. Although, rather like King Arthur or Robin Hood, there is no evidence of a historical person named Beowulf, some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be historically verified. The poem or ballad, whichever you want to use to describe it, did not appear in general print until 1815 and the original is preserved in a single manuscript that dates to circa 1000 that is known as the “Beowulf manuscript

Above: First page of Beowulf in Cotton Vitellius A. xv
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It has been suggested and even argued that the 1000 A.d. story may have just been the first (known) written account of a much older heroic tale and if you want to get really confused then check out Wikipedia’s entry on the character and the number of explanations for his name and meanings! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_(hero)


Beowulf was was a prince from Geatland and the Geats were a North Germanic tribe who inhabited Götaland, what is now part of modern Southern Sweden. The story breaks into two parts and opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar’s (Hroðgar) splendid mead hall, Heorot, has been ravaged for 12 years by nightly visits from an evil monster, Grendel, who carries off Hrothgar’s warriors and devours them. It is now that, out of the blue, that young Beowulf arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to cleanse Heorot of its monster.


 Above: Queen Waltheow and Beowulf at Hrothgar's court. Illustration by H. J. Ford from "The Red Book of Animals
                                          ___________________

King Hrothgar is astonished at the little-known hero’s daring but this was an age when adventure, battle honours and rewards were a young warrior’s reason for living! And so, Hrothgar welcomed him and after an evening of feasting which involved not just much courtesy but also some discourtesy, Hrothgar retires and leaves Beowulf in charge.

 Above:Grendel at work, chomping away.
Below: Beowulf ripping off an arm.  Grendel was quite armless after this....oy!
         _________



Feasting and drinking was followed by tired travellers and the household falling asleep.  And that very night Grendel came from the moors, tore open the heavy doors, kills and devours one of the sleeping Geats. Beowulf goes into action and Grendel’s mistake is then to grapple with Beowulf, whose powerful grip he cannot be escaped. In desperation, Grendel wrenches himself free, tearing off his arm, and leaving mortally wounded. Grendel’s arm is hung from the wall as a trothy.


Above: Grendel's Mother Drags Beowulf to the Bottom Of The Lake. Illustration by H. J. Ford (a favourite artist) from Andrew Lang’s (a favourite writer) “The Red Book of Animal Stories” 1899.
                                          _______________________________



Naturally, the next day is one of rejoicing in Heorot because the young hero has put an end to the monster but it was not going to be that easy an end to things.  at night as the warriors sleep, Grendel’s mother comes to avenge her son, killing one of Hrothgar’s men. Beowulf was sleeping in a different building and so he could not stop her.  In the morning he decided to go out into the bog to track and to kill her.

Beowulf seeks her out in her cave at the bottom of a mere and kills her with the aid of an enchanted giant sword stolen from the lair's plundered wooden box.  He then cut the head from Grendel’s corpse and returns to Heorot and the Danes rejoice once more. Hrothgar makes a farewell speech about the character of the true hero, as Beowulf, enriched with honours and princely gifts, returns home to King Hygelac of the Geats.
 
Above: the aged Beowulf deserted by all but one of his retainers prepares to meet his fate. Illustration by J. R. Skelton from  Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’s Stories of Beowulf (1908)
                                                     ___________________________

The second part of the story quickly covers King Hygelac’s subsequent death in a battle (of historical record) as well as the death of his son and Beowulf’s succession to the kingship and his peaceful rule of 50 years. By this time a fire-breathing dragon had begun to ravage his land and the aging Beowulf seeks it out and confronts it in battle. The fight is both long and terrible and indeed a painful contrast to the battles of his youth.  There is no honour for his retinue who desert there King in battle -except for his young kinsman Wiglaf. The battle continued but its end is inevitable: Beowulf kills the dragon but is, himself, mortally wounded.


 Above: The death of Beowulf. Illustration by H. J. Ford from “The Red Book of Animals
                                                                  __________________________

The poem ends with the funeral rites for Beowulf and a lament, of course.


Above: "He knew his days upon this earth were past".  Wiglaf speaking to Beowulf after his battle with the dragon. Beowulf is mortally wounded. Illustration by J. R. Skelton from  Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’s Stories of Beowulf (1908)
                                           _________________

Beowulf belongs metrically, stylistically, and thematically to a heroic tradition grounded in Germanic religion and mythology –a part of the broader tradition of heroic poetry.  Many incidents are familiar motifs from folklore, such as Beowulf’s tearing off the monster’s arm and his descent into the mere,. The ethical values are quite manifestly the Germanic code of loyalty to chief and tribe and vengeance to enemies: hence the dishonourable desertion of the retainers during Beowulf’s final battle.

 But by the time that the tale was written down in 1000 A.d., Christianity had moved into former pagan kingdoms and the Beowulf poem is so infused with a Christian spirit that it really does lack the grim fatality of many of the Eddaic lays or the sagas of Icelandic literature. For instance, Beowulf seems far more altruistic than other Germanic heroes or the ancient Greek heroes of the Iliad. It is also quite significant that his three battles are not against men as such would entail the retaliation of the blood feud. The battles are against evil monsters, enemies of the whole community and of civilization itself.  Critics have called the poem a Christian allegory, with Beowulf the champion of goodness and light against the forces of evil and darkness. They also point out Beowulf’s sacrificial death is not so much tragic as the fitting end of a good (“too good”) hero’s life.

J.R.R. Tolkien  (who wrote some books you may have heard of) suggested that the total effect of the poem is more like a long, lyrical elegy than an epic. Yes, even the earlier and happier section in Denmark is filled with ominous allusions that were well understood by contemporary audiences. Thus, King Hrothgar speaking sanguinely after Grendel’s death, of the future, which the audience knows will end with the destruction of his line and the burning of Heorot. And when it comes to the second part of the tale the movement is slow and funereal: scenes from Beowulf’s youth are replayed in a minor key as a counterpoint to his last battle, and the mood becomes increasingly sombre as the wyrd (fate) that comes to all men closes in on him.

So, despite the locations, Beowulf is seen as the first hero of British legend in print because British tales and legends were normally passed along -as was most all knowledge- by word-of-mouth (at least no one has yet found any written record and any Druidic tomes were probably destroyed by the Romans when they attacked Anglesey and slaughtered the druids in A.d. 60 or 61). The stories of Irish hero Cu Chulainn, for instance, date back to the 9th century.

Beowulf has often been translated into modern English; renderings by Seamus Heaney (1999) and Tolkien (completed 1926; only published in 2014, believe-it-or-not) became best sellers. It has also been the source for retellings in text—John Gardner’s Grendel (1971) takes the point of view of the monster. 

The following is from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Beowulf:




“If the definition of a superhero is ‘someone who uses his special powers to fight evil’, then Beowulf is our first English superhero story, and arguably our best. It is also a deeply pious poem, bold in its reverence for a virtuous pagan past”.


In comics Beowulf has appeared in “The Ghost Beast” story in Tower of Shadows Vol 1 #6, July, 1970. I have not seen this story so cannot comment. However, according to the Marvel Wiki:

Ghost-Beast
Beowulf and an army of Vandals arrived in Vanaria and soon found himself rescuing a woman who was tied to a tree, a sacrifice for the "Beast-God". They killed the creature and Beowulf and his men were led to the king as heroes, but they soon turned to looting. Beowulf slew the king and took over the kingdom but Princess Ulana escaped with her father's ring. His rule was soon challenged with the return of the creature he thought he had killed, but who became corporeal and then disappeared into the "Land of Shadows" at will. Once the creature has killed enough of the Vandals, Beowulf was overpowered and captured by Vanarians, who tied him to the sacrificial tree. Ulana came to free him and give him the ring, in fact poisoned. Unaware he was dead, Beowulf battled the Ghost-Beast and triumphed yet again, only to find that he himself was actually a ghost, killed by the poisoned ring.

He later somehow became an immortal warrior living on the British Isles.



At some point, he developed an antagonistic relationship with Theseus, a fellow warrior who took the habit to refer to him as "Wulfie".

Does anyone have a vomit-bag hand? The Vandals were a large East Germanic tribe or group of tribes that first appeared in history inhabiting present-day southern Poland.  They later moved in large numbers, including most notably the group which successively established kingdoms in Spain and then North Africa in the 5th century. Their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4: when Emperor Justinian I's forces managed to reconquer the province for the Eastern Roman Empire.  So WTF has any of this Marvel tripe got to do with Geatland or the British Isles?

Presumably the later writer had tripe for brains and had never read a book (no pretty pictures).

Beowulf from Canada’s Speakeasy Comics I just do not want to think about. Not original and awful art.




First Comics did produce a comic album sized Beowulf one off in 1984 with lovely art but, again, WTF reference were they using for a Dark Ages warrior-king because this was pure fantasy world stuff.
 


DC Comics, under its “intellectual” editor Denny O’Neill, produced a six issue Beowulf the Dragon Slayer series. I do not wish to over-use the W, T and F keys too much so I will move on.



The DC Wiki writes: Place of Birth Daneland (an archaic name for Denmark which is not correct as Beowulf was a Geat –Swedish if you will.






Creators Michael Uslan · Ricardo Villamonte
First Appearance Inferior Five #4 October, 1967
 
Facts:  c. 700–1000 AD (date of poem), c. 975–1010 AD (date of manuscript) and I do not think Uslan or Villamonte were involved. The Inferior 5 was created by writer E. Nelson Bridwell and artist Joe Orlando and drawn by Mike Sekowsky (1966-1967).  So, Uslan merely created a later comic book character from either seeing a humour comic or having heard of the poem.
 
Anyway, the DC fan wiki has all the information: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Beowulf_(New_Earth)

Beowulf was not some Conan the Barbarian knock-off. Yes, I think if you are going to use a character and story that has been fairly popular for a very long time you need to either stick to that character, his/her background and region they moved in or just leave the feck alone.

There are other comics out there but by Hrothgar’s dropped left testicle I’ll not mention them.

There have, of course, been a number of movies and none have impressed me with one exception.  The list includes:

The 13th Warrior : 1999 excellent and the best based on the story

Beowulf : 1999 science/fantasy film…Christopher Lambert…you let us down!

Beowulf : 2007 3D/animated film with Ray Winstone.  Thirty minutes in I had to be cstopped from gouging out mine eyes!

Beowulf & Grendel : 2005 and starring Gerard Butler. Expletives and though some locations and scenery were atmospheric…it failed.

Beowulf: Prince of the Geats: Not seen all of it just clips and the trailers. “Shoe-string budget” is no excuse.  Really does look awful.

Grendel : a 2007 TV movie that I believe someone described as “regrettable”.  They were far more polite than I would ever be about this fluff covered turd.

Grendel Grendel Grendel: This 1981 Australian animated movie had the great Peter Ustinov as the voice of Grendel. Saw part of it once and that is all I remember of it…nothing.

Jack and the Witch: This is a 1967 Japanese animated movie and I have never seen it.

No Such Thing a 2001 film I lost interest in quickly and it was not, apparently, well received by the critics.  Critics are people “who can’t” and rather like bloggers you need to ignore them and make your own minds up!

Outlander is a 2008 independent science fiction-action film starring Jim Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, John Hurt, and Ron Perlman, and written and directed by Howard McCain.  Now I have seen chunks of this and to be honest I lost interest every time and just wondered what the feck was going on.  According to Wikipedia:

“The plot is loosely based on the 9th-century epic poem Beowulf, adapted to a science-fiction back story involving a spaceship crashing in Iron Age Norway. The film was a box-office failure, grossing USD $7 million compared to a budget estimated at $47 million, though it has since become a minor cult classic”.

Oh, the whole “It’s crap. Let’s call it a cult classic” shtick. If it’s brown and smelly and comes from a bottom it’s crap.

Me? I always wanted to adapt two old works to comic/graphic novel format: the Mabinogion and Beowulf.  Doubt it will happen now but it was a dream!

Rather like Gilgamesh, to appreciate Beowulf, I would always advise someone to read the book which is far, far too much effort for people these days but I read it as a 12 year old at school voluntarily along with The Gun-Fight At The O.K. Corral, The The Twelve Labours of Heracles (Hercules) so shame on you!


Ahh….I can see the complaints about another mega post appearing soon!


In case you wondered....what Beowulf and retainers ought to look like



Beowulf


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