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Beowulf
heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. Preserved in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV) from c. 1000, it deals with events of the early 6th century and is believed to have been composed between 700 and 750. It did not appear in print until 1815. Although originally untitled, it was later named after the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, whose exploits and character provide its connecting theme. There is no evidence of a historical Beowulf, but some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be historically verified.
The poem falls into two parts. It opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar's splendid mead hall, Heorot, has been ravaged for 12 years by nightly visits from an evil monster, Grendel, who carries off Hrothgar's warriors and devours them. Unexpectedly, young Beowulf, a prince of the Geats of southern Sweden, arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to cleanse Heorot of its monster. The King is astonished at the little-known hero's daring but welcomes him, and after an evening of feasting, much courtesy, and some discourtesy, the King retires, leaving Beowulf in charge. During the night Grendel comes from the moors, tears open the heavy doors, and devours one of the sleeping Geats. He then grapples with Beowulf, whose powerful grip he cannot escape. He wrenches himself free, tearing off his arm, and leaves, mortally wounded.
The next day is one of rejoicing in Heorot. But at night as the warriors sleep, Grendel's mother comes to avenge her son, killing one of Hrothgar's men. In the morning Beowulf seeks her out in her cave at the bottom of a mere and kills her. He cuts the head from Grendel's corpse and returns to Heorot. The Danes rejoice once more. Hrothgar makes a farewell speech about the character of the true hero, as Beowulf, enriched with honours and princely gifts, returns home to King Hygelac of the Geats.
The second part passes rapidly over King Hygelac's subsequent death in a battle (of historical record), the death of his son, and Beowulf's succession to the kingship and his peaceful rule of 50 years. But now a fire-breathing dragon ravages his land and the doughty but aging Beowulf engages it. The fight is long and terrible and a painful contrast to the battles of his youth. Painful, too, is the desertion of his retainers except for his young kinsman Wiglaf. Beowulf kills the dragon but is mortally wounded. The poem ends with his funeral rites and a lament.
Beowulf belongs metrically, stylistically, and thematically to the inherited Germanic heroic tradition. Many incidents, such as Beowulf's tearing off the monster's arm and his descent into the mere, are familiar motifs from folklore. The ethical values are manifestly the Germanic code of loyalty to chief and tribe and vengeance to enemies. Yet the poem is so infused with a Christian spirit that it lacks the grim fatality of many of the Eddic lays or the Icelandic sagas. Beowulf himself seems more altruistic than other Germanic heroes or the heroes of the Iliad. It is significant that his three battles are not against men, which would entail the retaliation of the blood feud, but against evil monsters, enemies of the whole community and of civilization itself. Many critics have seen the poem as a Christian allegory, with Beowulf the champion of goodness and light against the forces of evil and darkness. His sacrificial death is not seen as tragic but as the fitting end of a good (some would say “too good”) hero's life.
That is not to say that Beowulf is an optimistic poem. The English critic J.R.R. Tolkien suggests that its total effect is more like a long, lyrical elegy than an epic. Even the earlier, happier section in Denmark is filled with ominous allusions that were well understood by contemporary audiences. Thus, after Grendel's death, King Hrothgar speaks sanguinely of the future, which the audience knows will end with the destruction of his line and the burning of Heorot. In the second part the movement is slow and funereal; scenes from Beowulf's youth are replayed in a minor key as a counterpoint to his last battle, and the mood becomes increasingly sombre as the wyrd (fate) that comes to all men closes in on him. John Gardner's Grendel (1971) is a retelling of the story from the point of view of the monster.
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Britannica style:
"Beowulf."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
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 Beowulf itself narrates the battles of Beowulf, a prince of the Geats (a tribe in what is now southern Sweden), against the monstrous Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a fire-breathing dragon. The account contains some of the best elegiac verse in the language; and by setting marvelous tales against a historical background in which victory is always temporary and strife is always renewed, the poet gives the whole an elegiac cast. Beowulf also is one of the best religious poems, not only because of its explicitly Christian passages but also because Beowulf's monstrous foes are depicted as God's enemies and Beowulf himself as God's champion. Other heroic narratives are fragmentary. Of “The Battle of Finnsburh” and “Waldere” only enough remains to indicate that when whole they must have been fast paced and stirring.
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English literature."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
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A typical Heroic Age occurred during the wanderings of the Germanic tribes from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. Out of this, too, came a rich oral tradition, from which developed in the Middle Ages many epic poems. One of the greatest of these is the Old English Beowulf, written down in the 8th century. Archetypal Indo-European themes also reappear in these epics. For example, the theme of the fatal fight between father and son is recounted in the German Hildebrandslied, of which a 67-line fragment is extant. Again, an heroic version of the Indo-European myth about the rescue of the Sun Maiden from her captivity by the Divine Twins, which also provided the basic plot of the Greek Trojan cycle and the Indian Rāmāyaṇa, is found in the German Gudrun (c. 1230).
"epic."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
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orc
a mythical creature (such as a sea monster, a giant, or an ogre) of horrid form or aspect.
The word orc in English has two distinct sources. Orc in reference to a vaguely cetacean sea monster is borrowed from one or more Romance words, such as the French orque or the Italian orca, all ultimately descended from the Latin orca, which probably denoted a small cetacean such as the killer whale. In Ludovico Ariosto's epic Orlando furioso, the heroine Angelica is set out as a victim for a man-eating orca, in a literary recasting of the Andromeda myth.
A different word orc, alluding to a demon or ogre, appears in Old English glosses of about AD 800 and in the compound word orcnēas (“monsters”) in the poem Beowulf. As with the Italian orco (“ogre”) and the word ogre itself, it ultimately derives from the Latin Orcus, a god of the underworld. The Old English creatures were most likely the inspiration for the orcs that appear in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
"orc."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
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hero
in literature, broadly, the main character in a literary work; the term is also used in a specialized sense for any figure celebrated in the ancient legends of a people or in such early heroic epics as Gilgamesh, the Iliad, Beowulf, or La Chanson de Roland.
These legendary heroes belong to a princely class existing in an early stage of the history of a people, and they transcend ordinary men in skill, strength, and courage. They are usually born to their role. Some, like the Greek Achilles and the Irish Cú Chulainn (Cuchulain), are of semidivine origin, unusual beauty, and extraordinary precocity. A few, like the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and the Russian Ilya of Murom, are dark horses, slow to develop.
War or dangerous adventure is the hero's normal occupation. He is surrounded by noble peers, and is magnanimous to his followers and ruthless to his enemies. In addition to his prowess in battle, he is resourceful and skillful in many crafts; he can build a house, sail a boat, and, if shipwrecked, is an expert swimmer. He is sometimes, like Odysseus, cunning and wise in counsel, but a hero is not usually given to much subtlety. He is a man of action rather than thought and lives by a personal code of honour that admits of no qualification. His responses are usually instinctive, predictable, and inevitable. He accepts challenge and sometimes even courts disaster. Thus baldly stated, the hero's ethos seems oversimple by the standards of a later age. He is childlike in his boasting and rivalry, in his love of presents and rewards, and in his concern for his reputation. He is sometimes foolhardy and wrong-headed, risking his life—and the lives of others—for trifles. Roland, for instance, dies because he is too proud to sound his horn for help when he is overwhelmed in battle. Yet the hero still exerts an attraction for sophisticated readers and remains a seminal influence in literature.
The appearance of heroes in literature marks a revolution in thought that occurred when poets and their audiences turned their attention away from immortal gods to mortal men, who suffer pain and death, but in defiance of this live gallantly and fully, and create, through their own efforts, a moment's glory that survives in the memory of their descendants. They are the first human beings in literature, and the novelty of their experiences has a perennial freshness.
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 "hero."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
Vernacular sources in Old English are rich, but reveal little about the pre-Christian religion. The poem Beowulf is based upon heroic traditions, ultimately of Scandinavian origin, but in spite of its rather thorough Christianization, it retains a number of striking Germanic elements in its symbolism and contents. The fight of Beowulf against the monsters from the dark is paralleled by the struggle of Scandinavian heroes against trolls. The same heroism and defiance of death that characterize Germanic warrior ethics are found in minor historical poems, such as the Battle of Brunanburh and the Battle of Maldon. Old English literature also includes numerous charms intended as safeguards against illnesses and misfortunes, but these can hardly be called religious. In the 9th century Runic Poem, an old tradition about the god Ing has clearly been retained. Wôden (Odin) is also mentioned repeatedly in Old English sources; he is frequently named among ancestors of the royal houses.
"Germanic religion and mythology."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
The barbarians.
Whatever their differences, Byzantine armies were the direct heirs of the Roman legions in that they consisted of various kinds of troops in well-organized, centrally commanded units. Meanwhile, developments in the Latin West followed a different course. From the 1st-century historiography of Tacitus through the above-mentioned Tactica down to the Old English epic Beowulf, such scarce sources as survive describe the Germans who brought down the Western Roman Empire as seminomadic tribes rather than settled, urban societies. Commanded not by officers but by chieftains, they were formidable foot soldiers more notable for physical prowess and courage than for tactical organization. Weapons were mostly hand-held and included the sword, spear, and javelin. To these the Franks added the heavy battle-axe, or francisca, useful for both hacking and throwing. Defensive arms consisted of the usual helmets, corselets, greaves, and shields—although, since metal was expensive, most warriors seem to have worn only light armour. Sources mention the names of some tactical formations such as the hogshead, which apparently consisted of phalanxlike heavy blocks, but movement may have been carried out in smaller units, or Rotte, Germanic formations and tactics must have been effective, for in the end they overcame—or rather superseded—the Roman legions; how it was done, though, simply is not known.
"tactics."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
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Hengist and Horsa
Hengist also spelled Hengest (respectively d. c. 488; d. 455?), brothers and legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain who went there, according to the English historian and theologian Bede, to fight for the British king Vortigern against the Picts between AD 446 and 454. The brothers are said to have been Jutes and sons of one Wihtgils. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that they landed at Ebbsfleet, Kent, and that Horsa was killed at Aegelsthrep (possibly Aylesford, Kent) in 455. Bede mentions a monument to him in east Kent; Horstead, near Aylesford, may be named for him. The Chronicle says that Hengist began to reign in 455 and that he fought against the Britons; it implies that Hengist died in 488. The historic kings of Kent traced their direct descent from Hengist, although the Kentish royal house was known as Oiscingas, from Hengist's son Oeric, surnamed Oisc (or Aesc), who is said to have reigned alone from 488 to 512.
Hengist may perhaps be identified with the hero of this name mentioned in the epic poem Beowulf in connection with a tribe called Eotan (probably Jutes).
"Hengist and Horsa."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed October 29, 2006].
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