Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T03:48:40.297Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Storytelling in Beowulf and Meta-storytelling in Andreas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2022

Steven J. A. Breeze
Affiliation:
Birkbeck, University of London
Get access

Summary

Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl maintain that ‘all successful communications in Beowulf are oral, and the many formal speeches, boasts, flytings, and so on might, in real life, have been “performances” by modern standards.’ Taking this view, then among such communications the principal mode of performance in Beowulf is storytelling. It is the kind of performance represented most comprehensively in the poem, and the only one indisputably performed by named, principal characters. Whereas other performance acts represented in Beowulf may not have taken the form of poetry in the Germanic alliterative long line, one aspect of storytelling’s mode is clear: because it occurs within speeches, it is thus demonstrably, if fictively, executed in that poetic form.

Storytelling’s primacy results partly from the fact that it is suited to Beowulf’s psychological focus. Michael Lapidge argues that ‘Beowulf is very much taken up with reflection – on human activity and conduct, on the transience of human life’, and that ‘a central concern of the Beowulf poet … is with human perception of the external world and with the workings of the human mind’. In Beowulf, storytelling is the most prevalent and detailed method of expressing this reflection and perception. This chapter explores the representation of storytelling in the poem, arguing that speech acts by certain characters – often but not always named protagonists – regularly perform a function like that of the unnamed, generic artistic figures discussed in Chapter 2. That is, they are tools enabling the poet to weave digressive historical or legendary material, as well as matter related to the poem’s events, into the narrative, and they also serve to comment on cultural matters. Storytellers do this in a much more detailed way than the generic figures, however, and can usefully be seen as exemplars of the poet’s rhetorical dexterity. The latter part of the chapter considers storytelling in Andreas, a narrative poem containing intriguing parallels with Beowulf, and possibly influenced by that poem. The Andreas poet, using more overtly literate sources, shifts the function of storytelling within a more overtly Christian context, creating a work in which storytelling is conceived of as a vital element of Christian faith, transmission, and communication.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×