In such a wide-ranging, long-standing, and international field of scholarship as Beowulf, one might imagine that everything would long since have been thoroughly investigated. And yet as far as the absolutely crucial question of the poem’s origins is concerned, that is not the case.
This cross-disciplinary study by Bo Gräslund argues that the material, geographical, historical, social, and ideological framework of Beowulf cannot be the independent literary product of an Old English Christian poet, but was in all essentials created orally in Scandinavia, which was a fertile seedbed for epic poetry.
Through meticulous argument interwoven with an impressive assemblage of data, archaeological and otherwise, Gräslund offers possible answers to the questions of the provenance of the Geats, the location of Heorot, and many more, such as the significance of Sutton Hoo and the signification of the Grendel kin and dragon in the sixth century when the events of the poem, coinciding with cataclysmic events in northern Europe, took place.
- COVER
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Prefaces
- Chapter 1. Introduction
- Chapter 2. The Origins of the Poem
- Chapter 3. Some Unproven Premises
- Chapter 4. Dating of the Poem
- Chapter 5. Archaeological Delimination
- Chapter 6. Results of Primary Analysis, Step 1
- Chapter 7. The Name Geatas
- Chapter 8. Other Links to Eastern Sweden
- Chapter 9. Elements of Non-Christian Thinking
- Chapter 10. Poetry in Scandinavia
- Chapter 11. The Oral Structure of the Poem
- Chapter 12. Results of Primary Analysis, Step 2
- Chapter 13. Gotland
- Chapter 14. Heorot
- Chapter 15. Swedes and Gutes
- Chapter 16. The Horsemen around Beowulf’s Grave
- Chapter 17. Some Linguistic Details
- Chapter 18. From Scandinavia to England
- Chapter 19. Transmission and Writing Down in England
- Chapter 20. Allegorical Representation
- Chapter 21. Beowulf and Guta saga
- Chapter 22. Chronology
- Chapter 23. Retrospective Summary
- Bibliography
Text
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