Alcuin and "Beowulf": An Eighth-Century View

This book sets out a reading of "Beowulf" as Alcuin, an intellectual near-contemporary, might have understood the poem. The approach differs in fundamental ways from the existing two main schools of "Beowulf" criticism, the close readers and the historical critics. The first school is basically subjective. It offers "one man’s view" of "Beowulf", but the critic is culturally remote from the poem: the interpretations depend on the sensibility of the critic rather than the historical rigor of his method, and the modem reader with a different sensibility may find little to agree with in the conclusions. At its worst, such a reading is little more than verbal fancy-dancing, and the practitioner is a performer rather than a critic... The second school, that of historical criticism, is ostensibly objective because it offers copious documentation from sources contemporary with the poem; but, like close reading, it falls into the intentionalist fallacy since it strives to reconstruct the poet’s purpose by a study of his poem, and then to judge the poem in the light of that purpose. The book sets out a method and arrives at a number of conclusions in terms of the method. The method is new so far as I know. Some of the conclusions are also new, and others confirm, in a different manner, ideas among those already published. The first chapter describes Alcuin’s literary theory, including his attitude toward pagan history. The second chapter sets out his literary practice; many features of his Latin literary diction, and even a number of his phrases, are shown to be shared with "Beowulf", as are also several of his dominant symbols. The third section reviews some of the main episodes and characters in Beowulf’s Danish expedition, and the final chapter discusses his death and fate, again according to Alcuin’s ideas. Among the conclusions of the book are a new theory of the theme and structure of "Beowulf"; the large-scale reconstruction of the "practical criticism" of literature as it existed in eighth-century English civilization; a refutation of the oral-formulaic theory of Old English poetic composition; an illustration of the relationship of the vernacular with the Latin literature of early England; the association of "Beowulf" with the intellectual milieu of the Mediterranean rather than that of the Baltic; the identification of much more scriptural material in the poem than was formerly recognized; and a number of solutions to specific problems of interpretation in obscure passages.