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The Monsters of Beowulf: Heroic and Christian Values
Howe, Patricia ; Znojemská, Helena (advisor) ; Markus, Radvan (referee)
This thesis deals with the Old English poem Beowulf, exploring the dichotomy between the Christian poet and the pre-Christian material he tackles. Beowulf was written at least a few hundred years after Christianity was already established in England, yet still had to reckon with the remnants of a culture that had radically different values. The attitude Christianity had to these was ambivalent, at times choosing to conform and integrate some aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture, and at others taking a confrontational approach and condemning them. This is reflected in Beowulf, which has both praise and censure for the society it depicts. The poem's overarching theme is community1 , and the fight against forces that would threaten to destroy it. These forces are personified by monsters, who are literal as well as metaphorical threats to social order. I argue that in Beowulf, by putting secular material in a Christian framework, the poet is able to explore which values are the most conducive to the fight against these threats. The monsters of Beowulf have long been recognized as "crucial to the very structure of the poem"2 . They are the point where the secular and the Christian world meet, as they are both material creatures and evil spirits. The Grendel-kin and the dragon are material monsters, analogous...
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