The Diction of Beowulf

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.