Beowulf

The Critical Heritage

Andreas Haarder, T A Shippey, T. A. Shippey, Andreas Haarder, T A Shippey, T. A. Shippey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134970933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Beowulf is the oldest and most complete epic poem in any non-Classical European language. Our only manuscript, written in Old English, dates from close to the year 1000. However, the poem remained effectively unknown even to scholars until the year 1815, when it was first published in Copenhagen.
This impressive volume selects over one hundred works of critical commentary from the vast body of scholarship on Beowulf - including English translations from German, Danish, Latin and Spanish - from the poem's first mention in 1705 to the Anglophone scholarship of the early twentieth century. Tom Shippey provides both a contextual introduction and a guide to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholarship which generated these Beowulf commentaries.
The book is a vital document for the study of one of the major texts of 'the Northern renaissance', in which completely unknown poems and even languages were brought to the attention first of the learned world and then of popular culture. It also acts as a valuable guide to the development of nationalist and racist sentiment, beginning romantically and ending with World War and attempted genocide.

1
Humfrey Wanley 1705

As one can see from several of the items below (2, 6, 10, 11, etc.), many scholars were misled as to the parts played by George Hickes and Humfrey Wanley in their joint publication of 1705. The first title-page of this gives Hickes alone as the author of the Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archæologicus. The second more scrupulously announces Antiquæ Literaturæ Septentrionalis Libri Duo, of which the first is the Thesaurus by Hickes (and Sir Andrew Fountaine), the second being Wanley’s Librorum Vett. Septen trionalium, qui in Angliæ Bibliothecis extant… Catalogus Historico-Criticus (both Oxford 1705). For a fuller account of the Thesaurus/Catalogus (reprinted in facsimile by Scolar Press, Menston 1971), see Bennett 1948; for Wanley’s life (1672–1725) and career, see Bennett 1938: ch. 4; Sisam 1953; Wright 1960. Wanley’s Latin description remained the sole source of knowledge of Beowulf for almost a century (see Introduction, pp. 3–6). Pp. 218–19.

Vitellius A. XV

[Wanley lists the contents of this codex under ten headings, of which nos VI, VII and VIII are respectively ‘The Legend of St. Christopher’, ‘Fabulous description of the East, and the monsters who are born there’ and ‘The fabulous letter of Alexander to Aristotle’. He adds brief descriptions, comments and opening citations. He then continues:]

IX.fol.130. A most noble treatise written in poetry. This is the beginning of the preface,

[transcribes lines 1–19, with some five minor errors (gefrumon for gefrunon (line 2), ðreatum for þreatum (4), mægðum for mægþum (6), wæs for þæs (7), hwilc for hwile (16), and some added capitalisation.]

However the beginning of the first Chapter goes like this,

[transcribes lines 53–73, with two further slight errors (ðrage for þrage, line 54, gefrumon for gefrunon, line 70) and added capitalisation and minor expansion again. Wanley reads line 62 as hyrde ic þ[æt] helan cwen.]

In this book, which is an outstanding example of Anglo-Saxon poetry, seem to be described the wars which Beowulf, a certain Dane, sprung from the royal stock of the Scyldings, waged against the petty kings of Sweden.

Wanley concludes by listing X, ‘Poetic fragment of the History of Judith and Holofernes’. The Index to the Catalogus also includes under ‘B’ the entry, still in Latin: ‘The history of Beowlf [sic] king of the Danes, in Dano-Saxon verse.’

2
Jacob Langebek 1772

Jacob Langebek (1710–75) held the post of Danish National Archivist, and began the project of editing the Scriptores Rerum Danicarum Medii Ævi, eventually to appear in nine volumes 1772–1834. Although he had not seen Beowulf, he read Wanley’s catalogue entry, item 1 above, carefully enough to draw some original conclusions even from its short citations. In Scriptores: I, 9 (Copenhagen 1772), he comments on the various forms of the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies so far printed, and remarks that while Sceaf is not mentioned by Asser or the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a strange story is told of him by Ethelweard, William of Malmesbury and Simeon of Durham. He then cites the account of the sleeping boy in an oarless boat from William of Malmesbury, adding Ethelweard’s version, the boy in a boat ‘surrounded by weapons’, in footnote p; his versions are virtually identical with those in the footnotes to Chambers 1959:70–1, except that Langebek takes William’s story to refer to Sceaf, not. Sceldius. He then gives what appear to be two conflated versions of the West Saxon royal genealogy from Sceldvea Heremoding to ‘Sceaf who was born in Noah’s ark’ (see Chambers 1959:200–3), and adds the following as a note to Sceldvea in footnote r:

Ethelweard…names this Scyld as the son of Scef. Unless I am mistaken, this is the same Scyld Scefing, of whose posterity was Beowulf a Dane, who made wars against the kings of Sweden, of whom we have an old Anglo-Saxon poem in the Cotton library [cites Hickes, i.e. Wanley, p. 219.]

[On p. 44, footnote e, commenting on ch. 1 of Sven Aggesen’s Historia Regum Danorum, Langebek cites Wanley more fully, including the phrase ex Regia Scyldingorum stirpe ortus, and adds, still in Latin:]

I am surprised that none of the scholars of England has taken the trouble to edit a work of such antiquity, which would infinitely gratify both his own people on account of its poetry, and ours on account of its history.

3
Sharon Turner 1803

Sharon Turner’s four-volume History of the Anglo-Saxons began to appear in 1799. Turner was, however, accused of ‘gross credulity’ for accepting the evidence of Welsh poetry in reconstructing that history, and replied with A Vindication of the Genuineness of the Ancient British Poems of Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarchhen, and Merdhin, London 1803. His first incidental reference to Beowulf appears as part of this argument on pp. 110–12, as pointed out by Stanley 1975a.

It would not be very easy to prove the existence of any individual poet of these distant periods. There were both Frankish and Saxon poets, but their names have not appeared in history, and cannot now be recovered. How many of the poets and minstrels of Europe are known only by some lays having been transmitted to us under their names; but of their existence what external evidence can be brought?

There is a very long and curious Saxon poem in existence, which of course must have had an author, and have been written in the Saxon times; and yet the poem is mentioned in no writing that has survived to us, nor is the name of its parent known. It is a poem in forty sections, and occupying 140 MS. pages. It describes the wars which Beowulf, a Dane of the Scyldinga race, waged against the Reguli of Sweden. It is in the Cotton library, Vitellius, A. 15. Wanley calls it a tractatus nobilissimus—an egregium exemplum of the Anglo-Saxon poetry; and so it is. But if any one should take it into his head to pronounce it to be a forgery, and should call upon its advocates to prove its genuineness, how could this be done by any external evidence? How could it be defended by facts taken from other authors, when no other writing mentions it? It could only be supported by some arguments from the antiquity of the writing; from its internal evidence, and the improbability of any person having had sufficient inducements to commit the fraud.

I put these observations, merely to shew the difficulty of proving even those compositions to be genuine, which no one will dispute.—Greater proofs, in favour of the Welsh bards, must not be expected, than such as the nature of the case will admit us to obtain.

4
Sharon Turner 1805

By 1805 Turner was ready to give a longer account of Beowulf than he had ventured on in 1803, and accordingly devoted to it pp. 398–408 of vol. 4 of his The History of the Manners, Landed Property, Laws, Poetry, Literature, Religion, and Language of the Anglo-Saxons, 4 vols, London 1799–1805. The pioneering quality of this work may be seen by the fact that Turner uses only one footnote in his eleven pages, to ‘Wanley Catal.’, i.e. item 1 above. For the problems of the ‘misplaced leaf’ etc., see Introduction, pp. 7–9.

The most interesting remains of the Anglo-Saxon poetry which time has suffered to reach us, are contained in the Anglo-Saxon poem in the Cotton library, Vitellius, A. 15. Wanley mentions it as a poem in which ‘seem to be described the wars which one Beowulf, a Dane of the royal race of the Scyldingi waged against the reguli of Sweden’. But this account of the contents of the MS. is incorrect. It is a composition more curious and important. It is a narration of the attempt of Beowulf to wreck the fæhthe or deadly feud on Hrothgar, for a homicide which he had committed. It may be called an Anglo-Saxon epic poem. It abounds with speeches which Beowulf and Hrothgar and their partisans make to each other, with much occasional description and sentiment.

It begins with a proemium, which introduces its hero Beowulf to our notice:

Beowulf...