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The medievalist Marjorie Burns writes that "J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is conspicuously and intricately northern in both ancient and modern ways." [4] She cites a letter to the classics scholar Rhona Beare, where Tolkien wrote that he had not invented the name "Middle-earth", as it had come from "inhabitants of Northwestern Europe, Scandinavia, and England".
When Beowulf damages his sword wounding the dragon and is burned by the dragon's fire, [B 5] Wiglaf is the only man of Beowulf's band to overcome his fear of the dragon. [B 6] He rebukes the other thanes [B 7] and goes to Beowulf's aid [B 8] crying words of encouragement. [B 9] Wiglaf does not retreat, though his shield is consumed by fire.
Beowulf is an epic poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero.He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel, [a] who was ravaging the land; he dies saving his people from a dragon.
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature.
Title page of Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, 1936 "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and has since been reprinted in many collections.
The poet states that Unferth is envious of Beowulf's fame (since Beowulf has offered to defeat the monster Grendel, which Unferth has failed to do). At line 506, Unferth impugns Beowulf, bringing up the story of Beowulf's swimming-contest with Breca the son of Beanstan.
The parallel in the story lies with the similarity to Beowulf's hero Sigemund and his companion: Wiglaf is a younger companion to Beowulf and, in his courage, shows himself to be Beowulf's successor. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] The presence of a companion is seen as a motif in other dragon stories, but the Beowulf poet breaks hagiographic tradition with the ...
It represents Tolkien's attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative of the first half of Beowulf. The book ends with two versions of Tolkien's "The Lay of Beowulf". The former, subtitled "Beowulf and Grendel", is a poem or song [5] of seven eight-line stanzas about Beowulf's victory over Grendel. The latter is a poem of fifteen ...