Semantic Analysis on Beowulf

Approaches to Beowulf

Author(s): T. M. Gang

Source: The Review of English Studies , Jan., 1952, Vol. 3, No. 9 (Jan., 1952), pp. 1-12

Published by: Oxford University Press

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The Review of

English Studies VOL. III, NEW SERIES, No. 9 JANUARY 1952

APPROACHES TO BEOWULF

By T. M. GANG

I

ITERARY Criticism begets Literary Criticism: and an article that starts as a critique of a paper called Beowulf: The Monsters and the

Critics' looks suspiciously like the beginning of an infinite regress. But the object of my essay is not, primarily, to review Professor Tolkien's Biritish Academy Lecture-it is somewhat late in the day for this-and if I devote much of my space to a discussion of his interpretation of the poem, it is in the hope that some light may be shed on what is legitimate and what is not in literary criticism of Beowulf.

An additional reason for approaching Beowulf by way of Professor Tol- kien is the fact that there has been little discussion, in print, of his views; the reviews that his lecture received were favourable and distinguished, but few and uncritical except of detail.z Klaeber's (apparently the only one in a foreign language) is rather more non-committal than that by R. W. Chambers, whose enthusiasm for Professor Tolkien's interpretation is that of an eager convert.

In challenging this interpretation, I do not wish to reassert the views held by W. P. Ker, although these do not by any means deserve Professor Tolkien's strictures; but since Ker is the most distinguished and persuasive exponent of a very common approach to Beowulf, and since an under- standing of his premisses may help us to know what the literary critic of Beowulf is about, I shall contrast his view with Professor Tolkien's.

J. R. R. Tolkien, 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics', Proceedings of Brit. Acad., xxii (936), 245.

2 Klaeber in Beiblatt z. Anglia, xlviii (1937), 321, and R. W. Chambers in M.L.R., xxxiii (1938), 272; a third review, by H. R. Patch, in M.L.N., liv (1939), 217 f., is critical of a number of points, but not of the main thesis.

R.E.S. New Series, Vol. III, No. 9 (1952) 4690.9 1

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2 T. M. GANG

II

Ker's view, as expressed in The Dark Ages, English Literature, Medieval and Epic and Romance, is that Beowulf lacks the unity essential to epic, and that its subject-the killing of monsters-is unsatisfactory. The first charge he apparently considers the less serious; for while he writes

It is impossible, by any process of reduction and amplification, to get rid of the duality of Beowulf. . . . The adventure with the dragon is separate from the earlier adventures. It is only connected with them because the same person is involved in both.'

he adds that the plan of Beowulf might easily have been more lax and diffuse than it is.

But the second charge is urged without reservation:

The principal actions in Beowulf are curiously trivial, taken by themselves. All round them are rumours of great heroic and tragic events, and the scene and the personages are heroic and magnificent. But the plot in itself has no very great poetical value ... things essentially and in the abstract more important, like the tragedy of Froda and Ingeld, are thrust away into the corners of the poem.

In the killing of a monster like Grendel, or in the killing of a dragon, there is nothing particularly interesting; no complication to make a fit subject for epic.... The killing of dragons and other monsters is the regular occupation of the heroes of old wives' tales; and it is difficult to give individuality or epic dignity to common-places of this sort. .... The plot of Beowulf is not more serious than that of a thousand easy-going romances of chivalry, and of fairy-tales beyond all number ... the plot happens to be such that the characters are never made to undergo a tragic ordeal like that of so many of the other Teutonic stories.2

Ker certainly weakens his case in these pages by seeming to object to monster stories because they are common-which, after all, is not a fault in epic-but the context of his writing suggests that his objection is to commonplaceness rather than commonness. And the commonplaceness lies in the absence of what he calls 'tragic contradictions', 'tragic compli- cation'.

What this means is obvious; that which Ker finds most significant in the common run of Germanic hero-stories is the element of personal tragedy: the particular predicaments of the heroes, not the general tragedy of the human race. The Lombard stories of Paul the Deacon, the heroic lays of the Elder Edda, and those happenings that are 'thrust away into the corners' of Beowulf are tragic, not because they represent a tragic view of life, but simply by virtue of the predicaments in which their heroes find themselves. There may be a conflict of loyalties: loyalty to kin or lover,

W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance (London and New York, 1897), p. 184. 2 Ibid., pp. 189, 190, 192, 193.

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APPROACHES TO BEOWULF 3

loyalty to one's lord or one's oath. We find different versions of this in the Helgi and Gudrun poems, Waltharius, the Ingeld story, the Lombard tales of Alboin. Or the predicament may be a purely external one, where the hero is caught in a chain of events of which he may have been a secondary cause, but for which he is not ultimately to blame. Thus Sigurd acquires the curse that lies on Fafnir's gold; and, more directly, by his wooing of Brynhild for Gunnar, he creates the situation that with the help of malig- nant fate produces his downfall. What is important is that it is not mere bad luck, in the form of an accident or a superior opponent in battle, that does for him: it is a series of human actions motivated by human emotions that lead to his catastrophe. The fact that Brynhild is responsible for his death makes all the difference in the world. If all we knew of Sigurd was that, being stabbed in bed, he resisted to the last and cut his assailant in two, we should give him credit for Teutonic toughness, but should other- wise remain unmoved.

All this Professor Tolkien acknowledges in passing; but he passes, for it seems to him irrelevant. Whether it is irrelevant, and whether Ker's approach to the poem can be justified, are important questions, since they lead to general considerations of what premisses we may use in criticizing Beowulf; they must, however, remain until Professor Tolkien's interpreta- tion has been discussed.

If we find Beowulf unsatisfactory, he argues, it is simply because we come to it with the wrong expectations, looking for the wrong things. It is not like the heroic lays, nor indeed is it like classical epic. The poet had certain aims, and in these he succeeded admirably. What these aims are is inferred from the poem.

It might be remarked in passing that since the poem is our only evidence as to the poet's intention, it is surely to argue in a circle if we then say that the poem fulfils the poet's intentions and is therefore a success. When we are dealing with works like Andreas we can refer to a tradition of writing of which we have sufficient knowledge to infer the effect the poet was hoping to produce; and it is largely in order to acquire similar knowledge that we attempt to compare Beowulf with other epics and lays. But if we claim absolute uniqueness for Beowulf we cannot very well criticize it by comparing effect produced with effect intended. (I doubt whether, even in cases where we can make this comparison, it is a useful method of criticism.)

A portion of Professor Tolkien's lecture is taken up with an inquiry into the reasons for other critics' inability to see what the poet is getting at, and that the main story is worthy of serious attention:

... one reason is that the shadow of research has lain upon criticism. The habit, for instance, of pondering a summarized plot of Beowulf denuded of all that gives it its particular force or individual life, has encouraged the notion that its story

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4 T. M. GANG

is wild, or trivial, or typical even after treatment. ... The comparison of skeleton 'plots' is simply not a critical process at all....'

Another reason is that 'the allusions have attracted curiosity (antiquarian rather than critical) .. ."' and that this has diverted attention from the poem as a whole. A third and more serious reason is that critics believe 'the

heroic or tragic story on a strictly human plane is by nature superior' (sc. to that on the supernatural). 'Doom is held less literary than ctLap-rta ." Modern critics do not appreciate dragons.

What then is it that earlier critics have failed to realize ? In their blind

scrabbling among the detail they do not see that Beowulf transcends the heroic lays; it is 'something akin yet different: a measure and interpretation of them all'.2 For although it must not be read as allegory, it is broadly symbolic; the dragon is 'draconitas' rather than draco: 'a personification of malice, greed, destruction (the evil side of heroic life), and of the undis- criminating cruelty of fortune that distinguishes not good or bad (the evil aspect of all life)'.2 The heroic spirit that informs the lays-'the exaltation of undefeated will', 'the paradox of defeat inevitable yet unacknowledged' that distinguishes the 'heroes caught in circumstances that conformed more or less to the varied but fundamentally simple recipe for an heroic situation' is seen operating in Beowulf untrammelled by particularity:

Something more significant than a standard hero, a man faced with a foe more evil than any human enemy of house or realm, is before us, and yet incarnate in time, walking in heroic history, and treading the named lands of the North.2

And since the struggle with the monsters represents the struggle of man against the chaotic and evil, and his inevitable overthrow in Time, there is no need for tragic complications:

Beowulf... has no enmeshed loyalties, no hapless love. He is a man, and that for him and for many is sufficient tragedy. It is not an irritating accident that the tone of the poem is so high and its theme so low. It is the theme in its deadly seriousness that begets the dignity of the tone.3

The monsters, then, are essential because fundamentally allied to the underlying theme of the poem. The key to this interpretation, Professor Tolkien suggests, is provided by the poet's references to Cain. Grendel is the adversary of God, and as such he and his kin are linked to the first killer. In heathen mythology the monsters had been the foes of the gods, winning at the final battle in which the earth is destroyed. In the Christian poem of Beowulf the same monsters become the foes of the One God and later still they merge into the medieval Devil. And the hopeless struggle

I Tolkien, op. cit., pp. 255-6. 3 Ibid., p. 260.

Ibid., p. 259.

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APPROACHES TO BEOWULF 5

of the old gods against the monsters becomes, in Beowulf, the theme of man on earth, who must die with all his works. As for the structure, this is totally justified by what has been shown as

the true nature of the poem. It is not a tale told sequentially: it is essentially 'a balance, an opposition of ends and beginnings. In simplest terms, it is a contrasted description of two moments in a great life, rising and setting; an elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and final death. It is divided in consequence into two opposed portions, different in matter, manner and length." 'There is no need to cavil at this proportion-in any case, for the purpose

and production of the required effect it proves in practice to be right.'2 As for the long recapitulation of the Grendel story on Beowulf's return, it is also completely justified by the requirements of the theme. For, as the two adventures happen in different countries, the contrast between them is not as obvious as if they happened in the same; to preserve which con- trast the Danish incidents are retold in Geatland.

Professor Tolkien suggests a secondary division in the poem at 1. 1887 (Beowulf's departure from Hropgar). All the tragedy in the poem happens after this point. But, of course, without the first half we should miss much incidental illustration; we should miss the dark background of the court of Heorot, that loomed as large in glory and doom in ancient northern imagination as the court of Arthur: no vision of the past was complete without it.3

The structure of the poem is then compared to that of the OE. alliterative line-a balance of contrasted and unequal halves. And we are told that if we have to classify the poem we come nearest the truth in describing it as an elegy of 3,182 lines-'in a sense, all its first 3,136 lines are the prelude to the dirge'.4

This elaborate apology is open to criticism in a variety of directions, and on various grounds. In the first place, the unfortunate critics who have been so vigorously put in their place deserve a few words of defence. To suggest that W. P. Ker, for instance, was prevented by mere antiquarianism from arriving at a true estimate is obviously untrue. That he was guilty of pondering a summarized plot of Beowulf cannot, on the other hand, be denied. But the comparison of skeleton plots is quite respectable critical practice, in spite of Professor Tolkien: Ker does it by leave of Aristotle. For it is simply not true to say that all stories, great or small, are, in such nakedness, wild or trivial or typical. Those very stories that Ker wishes had been at the centre of the poem have come down to us as skeletons at best-a few scattered bones at worst, but as far as we can make them out they are impressive. However, the real usefulness of skeleton plots is that

' Ibid., p. 271. 2 Ibid., p. 272. 3 Ibid., p. 273. 4 Ibid., p. 275.

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6 T. M. GANG

they show us clearly whether a story has unity-that is, whether the beginning and end have some sort of causal connexion. And in Beowulf they have none. Even in a story involved in so many digressions and episodes as Malory's Morte d'Arthur there is a clear connexion between beginning and end: Mordred is the link.' In a poem as long as Beowulf we cannot altogether dispense with unity of plot and rely on a general unity of theme and the contrast between parts to satisfy us that it is one poem and not two that have somehow got stuck together. The analogy between the two-part structure of the poem and that of the OE. alliterative line is misleading, since there is nothing in rhythm (a pattern of stresses and lengths) that in any way corresponds to the connexion of thoughts or sequence of events that constitutes the matter of a poem.

But this is a minor issue, and perhaps Professor Tolkien did not mean the analogy to be taken too literally. My main contention is that the arguments by which Professor Tolkien shows that the poem may be symbolic are not cogent, and that the internal evidence is against this view, or at least against the particular symbolism that he discerns.

The internal evidence is something of which Professor Tolkien shows himself aware, for he himself points it out in a footnote,2 but he does not explore its significance. The fact is that the dragon is altogether a different sort of creature from the Grendel-tribe. For he is nowhere called God's

enemy, or a fiend, or joyless; in fact, no words of moral disapprobation are applied to him; his wrath is not aroused by any unreasonable jealousy of human happiness but by a very definite outrage. The difference in the epithets applied to him and Grendel is striking: for while the dragon is undoubtedly lap, a peodscapa and uhtsceapa, the earlier monster is feond on helle. Lap is often glossed as 'loathsome', but 'hostile' is surely a more correct rendering (cf. 1. 440). Now it makes good sense to talk of Grendel as symbolizing evil; and, were there no Grendel, we might well suppose that that was what the dragon signified. But it is hard to believe that the poet, having so clear an idea of supernatural evil and its opposition to God as we can infer from the Grendel story, should suddenly present us with a symbol for the same kind of evil that is nevertheless devoid of so many of the specific characteristics of an evil creature. Certainly we can call the dragon 'evil'-but in a very different sense of the word; an imper- sonal, amoral sense: rather as we might think of a disease as an evil.

It is by juggling with this ambiguous word that Professor Tolkien first

I Whether Malory conceived his work as one or more books is irrelevant; the unity is in the story, not in the treatment.

2 Tolkien's footnote 14. But on p. 276 he says: 'They are creatures, feond mancynnes, of a similar order and kindred significance.'

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APPROACHES TO BEOWULF 7

arrives at his solution of the symbolism. The dragon is a personification of malice, greed, and destruction (the evil side of heroic life) and of the undiscriminating cruelty of fortune (the evil side of all life). Again we have two distinct meanings of the word. Malice and greed are moral and personal Evil; the cruelty of fate is an evil-an impersonal unpleasantness. These two uses of the word are so distinct that to run them into one and

apply them to the dragon gives that monster a most ambiguous significance. Nor is the distinction a hair-splitting one; if we had not seen 'evil' as the adjective describing the undiscriminating cruelty of fate we might hesitate to describe the dragon as a 'foe more evil than any human enemy of house or realm'. It is only in this very odd sense that the dragon is more evil than Grendel, and it is only by blurring the distinction that we can uphold the symbolism. If the poet had regarded the dragon as evil he would have probably have told us so quite clearly and repeatedly; and if he had seen in Beowulf's fight against him any reflection of the Twilight of the Gods, or a symbol of the fight between the powers of Good and Evil, he would probably not have been above dropping a hint. But we have nothing of the sort. Instead, we have a reference to an ancient curse' of which the dragon is as much a victim as is the hero; a curse of which, so it seems, Beowulf knows nothing. So that although the inevitability of death for all men is much commented on in this part of the poem, no stress is laid on the heroic paradox of defeat inevitable but unacknowledged, and there is no suggestion that the dragon is anything but a mere participant in a tragedy that started many ages before-before even the gold was buried.

The dragon-episode is in fact founded on a perfectly good tragic situation -a much better situation than either Professor Tolkien or W. P. Ker seem

to allow. There is a curse on the gold. A dragon appropriates it, and all seems,well; one day, a trespass is committed and the dragon is incensed: the curse comes into operation. Someone must stop him, and stopping him means becoming involved with the gold and the curse. Beowulf, as ruler of the Geats, has to stop the dragon, and so cannot avoid incurring the curse: the fact that he is ignorant of it lends tragic irony to the situation, or would do so if the poet regarded the matter in this light. But the poet is evidently not much interested in tragedy, for he does not stress those aspects of the story I have picked out. We cannot, at any rate, criticize him for choosing a story devoid of tragic possibilities; but though he stresses the inevitability of death after life, sorrow after joy, he seems uninterested in the mechanism of inexorable fate: which is one of the most

obvious differences between his outlook and that of the poets of the Elder Edda, or even (as far as we can see) of the original heroic lays.

We have, so far, little evidence that the dragon-fight symbolizes the I Beowulf, ed. Klaeber (London and New York, 1941), 11. 3o51 seq.

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8 T. M. GANG

tragedy of the human struggle against the forces of evil; and we may doubt whether 'For the universal significance which is given to the fortunes of the hero it is ... necessary that his final foe should be, not some Swedish prince or treacherous friend, but a dragon, a thing made by the imagination for just such a purpose'.' This is by no means self-evident. There is no reason why a dragon should be regarded as much more universal in signifi- cance than a human foe. That Grendel, who is maddened by the sound of harps, should represent the outer darkness in all its active malevolence is plausible; but dragons were, after all, the natural guardians of treasures (as the Cotton Gnomic Poem, that repository of obvious truths, informs us); unpleasant though they were, they were not accomplices of hell. Nor, for that matter, were they 'things made by the imagination' for any purpose whatsoever; they were solid enough fact for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. If there were any hint of a connexion between the dragon and Grendel, or the least suggestion that the former was connected with other unpleasant incursions from the fearsome world outside our little circle of light, we might concede it had universal significance. But there is no such hint: and Beowulf's death becomes an isolated, particular disaster, the ultimate consequence of a particular curse and a particular piece of bad luck. In any case, is there any story or poem whatever in which the monstrous nature of his foes lends a hero universal significance? The Northern story that has had the greater power of survival and that proved capable of accumulating fresh significance even in the nineteenth century-the story of the Nibelungs-has a dragon-slaying hero. But the dragon is disposed of early in the proceedings, and we scarcely feel that the hero ought to be killed by a monster; nor, I think, has anyone found Fafnir to be more significant and universal than the human beings who (admittedly instru- ments of Fate) murder Sigurd. And yet Professor Tolkien insists that if we have Grendel we must have the dragon, and vice versa.2 If these criticisms are just, then Professor Tolkien's account of the structure of the poem loses some force, since it is based on the view that the two parts of the poem are basically akin, representing two aspects of' the same struggle. It could, on the other hand, be argued that the poet must have realized that there was no real connexion between them, only a certain similarity, and that the long recapitulation of the poem is his not altogether successful means of linking the two. He was, after all, very expert at the use of the 'flashback'; it is one of his chief narrative devices. By introducing the Grendel story into the Geatish court he is doing for it much the same as he does for the tales of Finnesburh and of Ingeld, that is, to turn it into a significant 'episode', and by associating it with his prophecy of disaster for Heorot he manages, to some extent, to subordinate

' Tolkien, op. cit., p. 275. 2 Ibid., p. 276.

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APPROACHES TO BEOWULF 9

it to the pessimistic atmosphere that (in this poem) is associated with Geatland. Yet in spite of this clever piece of suturing, the events of the first part of the poem do not influence those in the second; there is no cumulative effect. The poem may be a balance; it is certainly not a unity. However, it is fairly well established that the Anglo-Saxon poets in

general had little idea of form and structure as we understand it-it is still a matter for dispute whether Christ is one poem, or two, or even three; whether Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles are one or two; whether the Seafarer is all due to one poet; examples could be multiplied.2 Beowulf certainly comes nearer to a tidy and satisfactory structure than many Anglo-Saxon poems. It might further be said in favour of the poet that he anticipated the

break between the stories quite a long way in advance: not only are we gradually prepared for the Heapobeard episode, from the very first mention of Heorot; but the death of Hygelac, which is described in detail in Part 2 (the fullest account is that beginning at 1. 2354) is first anticipated at the height of rejoicings at the Danish Court, when Wealhpeow gives Beowulf a precious neck-ring (1. 1202). As if to compensate for the essentially untragic story of the Grendels, tragedy is constantly being dragged in by allusion: the kind remarks of Wealhpeow to Hropulf are no doubt highly charged with dramatic irony; and similarly the harping on Hropgar's graciousness and goodness (with total silence about his warlike qualities) is perhaps meant to produce similar forebodings. The Grendel story is given importance by being set against a great and tragic background-a background that includes the fortunes of dynasties and nations. In a some- what more direct way the dragon story is associated with the national destiny of the Geats. Indeed, the Geatish wars are given such prominence that they can scarcely be called 'background'. National catastrophe will follow personal disaster. All this is obvious, and is only mentioned here to show that, even if one does not accept Professor Tolkien's theories, there is more to Beowulf than W. P. Ker allows.

III

The fundamental difficulties that a literary critic encounters in dealing with Beowulf become apparent if we examine Ker's, and Professor Tol- kien's, premisses. Ker's seem pretty simple: in effect he accepts the stan- dards of the main European tradition, the standards that apply both to Classical and Renaissance and modern literature; and he accepts them as having permanent value. Another way of putting it (implying a different critical theory, but having similar results in practice) would be to say that he judges all literature from the impact it makes on him, a representative

Cf. K. Sisam,'Cynewulf and his Poetry', Proceedings ofBrit. Acad., xviii (1932), 31 o, 312.

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10 T. M. GANG

cultured man of the nineteenth or twentieth century; whether or not the human heart is unchanging, he behaves as though it were, and judges the literature of all ages as though it were contemporary. That is not to say that he ignores the historical background that might elucidate ancient literature; but he regards it as something secondary. Like Dr. Johnson, he is a non-historical critic; and, like Dr. Johnson, he produces criticism that is solid and valuable because it is founded on his own experience, not on second-hand knowledge of how other ages reacted to literature. So long as we are quite clear that we are speaking for the present, we are safe enough with this method; but Ker does not seem entirely clear on this point. His vagueness is well illustrated by a passage in the Introduction to English Literature Medieval:'

As no one now thinks of despising Gothic architecture simply because it is not Greek, so the books of the Middle Ages may be read in a spirit of fairness by those who will take the trouble to understand their language; they may be appreciated for what they really are; their goodness or badness are not now determined merely by comparison with the work of other times in which the standards and ideals of excellence were not the same.

We are left wondering whether appreciating the books 'for what they really are' means appreciating them as their authors meant us to, or whether it means reading them with no critical preconceptions of any sort. But, of course, we cannot criticize unless we have some preconceptions. And if the goodness or badness of these books 'are not now determined merely by comparison with the work of other times in which the standards and ideals of excellence were not the same', why does Ker, as in Epic and Romance, repeatedly compare Beowulf with Homeric epic ? Sometimes he seems to appeal to 'absolute' standards-as when he writes of the tragedy of Froda and Ingeld as 'essentially and in the abstract' more important than the monster-stories;z but how does he square a belief in absolute standards with the admission that standards and ideals of excellence vary from age to age ?

Whatever Ker's confusion on this point may have been, there is one general drawback to the non-historical approach: we may have to admit that what we admire in an ancient poem may be something the poet never intended us to notice, while we may miss or discount as dull and trivial that which mattered most to the age that produced the work. In fact, this sort of criticism rules out the understanding of any literature based on conventions and views very different from ours, and at its worst can lead to gross misreading and misinterpretation.

Thus far I am with Professor Tolkien. But it is extremely difficult to

W. P. Ker, English Literature Medieval (London and New York, I912), pp. 12-13. 2 Epic and Romance, p. 19o.

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APPROACHES TO BEOWULF 11

see what exactly his critical position is. For while he tries to elucidate the background of the poem, he never exactly claims that the poet's original audience would have interpreted it as he does. He seems more concerned with constructing a meaning not incompatible with what we know of the intellectual background of the poem, but a meaning that makes sense and appeals to the twentieth century. If in order to convince us that Beowulf has value for us he has to conjure up for us something like the Anglo-Saxon world picture, he is nevertheless not a genuine historical critic, for the effect of the poem on the Anglo-Saxon audience is only a secondary consideration with him. His reconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon view of the world, leaning heavily as it does on the extremely doubtful evidence of Norse poetry (of a later date than Beowulf and suggestive of a very different outlook on life) can hardly be accepted as objective, unbiased, or altogether convincing. But if his criticism is neither completely historical nor completely unhis- torical, it is difficult to see on what premisses it is based, or what sort of status we may accord his assertions and judgements. A piece of purely historical criticism, Miss Whitelock's The Audience of

Beowulf,' gives us a much clearer insight into the sort of status the monsters would have held. The references to the poems on Guthlac are particularly illuminating and suggestive. Perhaps it would not be excessively rash to suggest that Beowulf, so far from being a Christianized epic, is an attempt at a sort of secular Saints' Life: the sort of poem that would meet Alcuin's strictures on the heroic poetry without altogether sacrificing the heroic stories to instruction. One might go one stage farther in speculation and suggest that the poet fails to exploit the potentialities for tragic irony of the dragon story, while showing himself fully awake to similar possibilities in the subsidiary stories, because such irony is too closely associated with the old (and heathen, or at least un-Christian) lays, perhaps even with heathen religion and ways of thought, to be appropriate to the edifying main story. But, conversely, the heathen legends retain their literary appeal and the Beowulf poet, at any rate, could have given an answer to Quid Hinieldus cum Christo ?-namely, that Ingeld served to embellish a great deal of sound doctrine and Christian morality. However, these are mere conjectures; they could only be supported or

demolished by a much fuller study of the Christian and non-Christian elements in the Anglo-Saxon poetry that survives, and an exhaustive re- search into the attitude of the Church of that time to literature. We might, however, do well, before we are too ready to form an opinion on the Anglo- Saxon audience and its tastes, to reflect that such literature as survives has undergone a process not merely of natural but ecclesiastical selection. That

Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951); pp. 75, 80-2, are particularly relevant.

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12 T. M. GANG

is the great drawback to historical criticism as applied to Beowulf and indeed to Anglo-Saxon poetry in general. Unless we start with a pre- conceived idea, we may have an uneasy feeling that we cannot contact the minds behind the poetry. And herein lies the prime difficulty of any literary criticism of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and, incidentally, a good reason why such criticism should be as rare as it is.

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