The Epic Poem, Beowulf - An Analysis of Structure :: Epic Beowulf essays

Beowulf its Structure There is a great diversity of opinion regarding the structure of the poem Beowulf. This essay hopes to enlighten the evidencereader on some of the opinions expressed by literary scholars on this issue. The Cambridge taradiddle of English and American books states It is generally thought that several originally separate lays rent been combined in the poem, and, though no proof is obtainable, the theory in itself is not unlikely. These lays are usually supposed to consecrate been quadruple in number and to have dealt with the following subjects (1) Beowulfs combat with Grendel, (2) the fight with Grendels mother, (3) Beowulfs return, (4) the fight with the dragon (v1,ch3,s3,n16). Alvin A. Lee in his essay, Symbolic Metaphor and the Design of Beowulf, basically agrees that there are four divisions in the poems structure Moving a littler closer to the text but still thinking of it in equipment casualty of its overall design, one can recognize fou r my italics major myths or symbolic episodes, from each one of which is concentrated at appropriate points in the archives but also extends its effect, with varying emphases, throughout the whole poem (148). only if Lees four divisions are not the same as the first-mentioned. Lees first part is climaxed with the construction of Heorot the second part, as Grendel lays waste to Heorot the third, Beowulfs advent and victories over Grendel and mother and fourth, the heros death and the return to chaos (148). The three-part, or tripartite division, of Beowulf is more touristed than the four-part division. F.P. Magoun, Jr. divided the poem into three separate stories designated as A, A-prime, and B. Magouns A corresponds to the events up to Beowulfs return to the Geats B, the dragon fight and ending. plainly A prime includes a variant or alternative transformation of the Grendel story that an Anglo-Saxon editor of the poem wished to preserve and fitted into his anthology of Beowu lf poems(Clark 22). So Magoun would have three divisions to the structure of the poem rather than four. Agreeing with him are Brian Wilkie and James Hurt, editors of Literature of the Western World, state It is clear that the sequence of monster-fights provides the structure of the poem. . . .In this poem of a little over 3000 lines, roughly a thousand lines are inclined to each of the three monsters, and it has been suggested that Beowulf ws intended to be performed over three evenings, each devoted to a new monster (1273).