Beowulf:
Twenty Questions for Discussion
Short Answers
- Who is Scyld? Where does he come from? Where does he go?
What does he do? Why does the poem begin here, rather than with
Hrothgar and Grendel?
- What is Grendel's lineage? What do the characters in the
poem know about Grendel? How is this different from what we know?
- Trace the history of the hall Heorot--why was it built, what
happened within its walls, how and by whom was it destroyed?
- Who is Unferth, and why is he so hostile to Beowulf? Why
is he allowed to speak that way?
- What do the poets within Beowulf sing about? To whom do they
sing their songs? What is the purpose of their performances?
- Why would Beowulf rather be a hero than a king? What is the
difference?
- Where does the dragon come from? Why does he attack the Geats?
Is the dragon a greater or lesser threat than Grendel? Why does
Beowulf go to fight him?
- Who are the Swedes and Frisians? Why are we given such detailed
information about the history of the Geats and their quarrels?
- Trace the history of the Dragon's hoard from its first to
its last burial. How is this treasure different from other treasures
in the poem?
- When Beowulf dies, does he go to Heaven?
Longer Responses
- What are some of the differences between the poet's world
and that of the characters in the poem? What are the continuities
between these worlds? Is there irony in our vision of this past
age? How does the poet create a distance between the characters
and himself'and how does he express their own sense of a distant
past?
- Is Beowulf an epic? What sort of social order produces
"epic" poetry? What values does the poem promote, and
how does it promote them? What sorts of conflicts with or resistances
to the ideology of epic can be expressed? What sorts are found
within the poem itself?
- Look at the religious references in Beowulf--what
are the names for God? What biblical events are mentioned, and
who mentions them? What specifically pagan practices (sacrifice,
burial, augury, etc.) are described? How do the characters see
their relationship to God (or the gods)? Why would a Christian
author write a poem about a pagan hero? Does the heroic code
expressed in Beowulf conflict with a Christian sensibility?
- Try to construct a relative timeline (without specific dates)
for the events narrated and alluded to in the poem. Include the
reigns of the Danish kings (Heremod, Scyld, etc.), the Swedish-Geatish
wars, the life and death of the hero Beowulf, the destruction
of Heorot, and any other events which seem relevant to your understanding
of the story. Which plots are told in a straightforward narrative,
and which are not? Why are there so many digressions and allusions?
Discuss the relation between the plot (what happens) and the
story (what order things are told in) in Beowulf.
- What is the status of gold and gift-giving in the poem? Who
gives gifts, who receives them, and why? Are the modern concepts
of wealth, payment, monetary worth and greed appropriate for
the world of Beowulf?
- The manuscript text of Beowulf is divided into forty-three
numbered sections (plus an unnumbered prologue); most critics,
however, view the structure of the poem as either two-part (Young
Beowulf/Old Beowulf) or three-part (the three battles). What
grounds do critics have for these arguments? what are some of
the ways the poem suggests its structure? what signals does the
reader find to indicate endings and beginnings of sections and
larger units?
- Wealhtheow, Hygd, Hildeburh, Grendel's mother--what do the
women in Beowulf do? How do they do it? do they offer
alternatives perspectives on the heroic world (so seemingly centered
around male action) of the poem?
- Why are there so many stories-within-the-story in the poem?
What is the relation between the "digressions" and
the main narrative in Beowulf?
- This is a question about how abstract structures are made
into narratives. Every culture makes distinctions between what
is inside the social order and what is outside--between the human
and the non-human (a category which can include animals, plants,
natural processes, monsters and the miraculous). Cultures organize
themselves to exclude these `outside' things; social organization
also works to control certain violent human tendencies inside
the culture (anger, lust, fear, greed, etc.). How does the social
world depicted in the poem do this? That is, what does it exclude,
and why? What is its attitude towards the "outside"
of culture? How does it control the forces that threaten social
stability within the hall?
- In between every story and its audience stands a narrator
who tells the story; the narrator has certain attitudes, opinions,
interests and objectives which direct the audience's understanding
of the story. This is one of the most basic, and yet most complex,
facts of literature. Describe the relationship between the narrator
and the story, and between the narrator and the audience, in
Beowulf.
Questions from Roy M. Liuzza at Tulane University.
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