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The Diction of Beowulf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Whallon
William Whallon*
Affiliation:
Reed College, Portland, Ore.
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Extract

Anglo-Saxon and Greek epic each provide k. on two occasions a seemingly authentic account of the narration of verse in the heroic age. Hrothgar's court bard sings of the encounters at Finnsburg (lines 1068–1159), and improvises the tale of Beowulf's exploits in a complimentary comparison of the Geatish visitor with Sigemund (lines 871–892); Alcinous' court bard sings of the discovered adultery of Ares and Aphrodite (Odyssey vin.266–366), and takes up a tale of Odysseus while the Ithacan wanderer listens on (Odyssey vin.499–520). Nothing in all this is autobiographical : unlike the poets of Deor and Widsith, the poet of Beowulf is not concerned with his own identity; the poet of the Odyssey, reputed blind, reveals himself not at all in singing of the blind minstrel Demodocus. Since none of these glimpses of poetizing without writing is intended to incorporate a signature into the epic matter, there is prima-facie evidence that Beowulf and the Homeric poems each derive from an oral tradition. That such a tradition lies behind the Iliad and the Odyssey, at least, is hard to deny. Milman Parry rigorously defended the observation that the extant Homeric poems are largely formulaic, and was led to postulate that they could be shown entirely formulaic if the complete corpus of Greek epic survived; he further reasoned that frequent formulas in epic verse indicate oral composition, and assumed the slightly less likely corollary that oral epic is inclined towards the use of formulas. Proceeding from Parry's conclusions and adopting one of his schemata, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., argues that Beowulf likewise was created from a legacy of oral formulas inherited and extended by bards of successive generations, and the thesis is striking and compelling. Yet a fresh inspection will indicate one crucial amendment: Beowulf and the Homeric poems are not at all formulaic to the same extent.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1961 , pp. 309 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 310 That the Homeric poems are formulaic was suggested by Antoine Meillet, Les origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs (Paris, 1928), p. 61. Parry, who studied under Meillet, discusses the suggestion as a point of departure for his treatise L'épilhète traditionnelle dans Homère (Paris, 1928). For the complete bibliography of Parry, see Albert B. Lord, “Homer, Parry, and Huso,” AJA, m (1948), 43–44.

Note 2 in page 310 The assumption that oral epic is formulaic caused Parry and Lord to commence their research in Jugoslav heroic song: see Lord, “Homer, Parry, and Huso,” pp. 34–44.

Note 3 in page 310 “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” Speculum, xxviii (1953), 446–467. That Beowulf is formulaic has been said by others, before or contemporary with Parry: H. Munro Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge, Eng., 1912), p. 320, and William Witherle Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1928), p. 4.

Note 4 in page 310 It was more probably a ballad than the epic we possess: see T. Atkinson Jenkins ed., The Song of Roland (Boston, 1924), p. ix.

Note 5 in page 310 “Milman Parry and Homeric Artistry,” CL, XI (1959), 193–208.

Note 6 in page 310 “Epithetic Compound Folk-Names in Beoumlf,” Studies in English Philology in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, ed. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Ruud (Minneapolis, 1929), pp. 120–134.

Note 7 in page 311 Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley, 1959), p. 249.

Note 8 in page 311 “Homer's Originality: Oral Dictated Texts,” TPAPA, Lxxxrv (1953), 124–134. Lord has notably expanded this thesis in his book The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960) : see esp. pp. 149 and 198.

Note 9 in page 311 “Oral-Formulaic Character,” p. 460.

Note 10 in page 311 See Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf, p. 4.

Note 11 in page 311 Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf, pp. 88–106.

Note 12 in page 311 Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 253–255. For a criticism of this thesis see the review in CL, xii (1960), 159–166.

Note 13 in page 311 Parallel-Homer (Gottingen, 1885), p. viii.

Note 14 in page 311 Walter Morris Hart, Ballad and Epic (Boston, 1907), pp. 195, 198. See also Kemp Malone, “Beowulf,” ES, xxix (1948), 166.

Note 15 in page 312 D. H. F. Gray, “Homeric Epithets for Things,” CQ, XLI (1947), 121 and 113.

Note 16 in page 312 For a list of compounds see Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf, pp. 254–271.

Note 17 in page 319 Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition, p. 4.

Note 18 in page 319 Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf, p. 70.

Note 19 in page 319 Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf, p. 16.