Beowulf as an epic?

   Beowulf as an epic

                                         

Though, all Anglo-Saxon scholars and critics agree to call Beowulf ‘a heroic poem’ only a few among them would great to it the additional title of ‘epic’. Beowulf is a heroic poem because it celebrates the actions of a heroic protagonist.  But Beowulf also has some epic characteristics too.

                   First, Beowulf has the inclusiveness of an epic. It comprehends war and peace, man and God, life and death. It begins with the founding of the Scylding dynasty, and ends with the death of the hero, Beowulf, and the imminent destruction of the Geatish people .Thus it shows not only the life-cycle of a hero but of a people. 

                   Secondly, Beowulf does not keep its cosmos to the narrowly human lived it speakers of both man and gods. There is also reference of the Davit. God is present at the poem particularly at the crucial stages of the Monster fights, a criterion that truly befits the epic convention.

Thirdly, an important criterion for epic is objectivity.  Beowulf is fair, even sympatric to the monsters. But as they are not men their fall cannot be tragic. But every single individual human death is given weight and significance, and the death of the hero has a full tragic cadence. The objectivity of the poem also lies in the traditional presentation of the life through voyage, welcome, feast, boast, arming, fight and reword. In all these there is an element of idealization as there should be an epic.

The Forth criterion, the unity of consciousness, is consistent with this objectivity. The plot of Beowulf is a unified to whole, and its ethos is the sense of solidarity with the universe and with the audience. The story not only synthesizes different folk tells into unity, it also synthesizes the primitive world-view with the poet’s refined Christian sensibility.

The fifth characteristic epic is that its story should have a kind of self-evident and axiomatic significance. The main subject of Beowulf is the human challenge to death and the glorious and tragic potentialities of that challenge. It acquires significance as the story of a hero defending mankind against its enemies.

From the above discussion it is evident that Beowulf has a breadth and depth, a resonance and dignity which we never find in a glorious folk tell. Above everything else, the poem expressed an apprehension of a deeper relief. Hence, It is no harm to label Beowulf as an epic.    

 

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