Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and Table
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Loot and the Economy of Honour
- 3 Unferth's Gift
- 4 The Angel in the Mead Hall
- 5 Three Queens
- 6 The Perils of Peacemaking
- 7 Beowulf's Last Triumph
- Afterword
- Works Cited
- General Index
- Index of Passages
- Index of Words
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
7 - Beowulf's Last Triumph
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and Table
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Loot and the Economy of Honour
- 3 Unferth's Gift
- 4 The Angel in the Mead Hall
- 5 Three Queens
- 6 The Perils of Peacemaking
- 7 Beowulf's Last Triumph
- Afterword
- Works Cited
- General Index
- Index of Passages
- Index of Words
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Defeat, according to J. R. R. Tolkien, is the theme of the last third of Beowulf. In a passage of his ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' that probably many readers of this chapter have got by heart, the great critic elaborates his idea of the poem as ‘a contrasted description of two moments in a great life, rising and setting’ (p. 271):
In the struggle with Grendel one can as a reader dismiss the certainty of literary experience that the hero will not in fact perish, and allow oneself to share the hopes and fears of the Geats upon the shore. In the second part the author has no desire whatever that the issue should remain open, even according to literary convention. There is no need to hasten like the messenger, who rode to bear the lamentable news to the waiting people (2892 ff.). They may have hoped, but we are not supposed to. By now we are supposed to have grasped the plan. Disaster is foreboded. Defeat is the theme. Triumph over the foes of man's precarious fortress is over, and we approach slowly and reluctantly the inevitable victory of death. (p. 274)
The point is well enough known to need little emphasis: for Tolkien, defeat is both what happens to Beowulf and the great theme of human existence: ‘A light starts—lixte se leoma ofer landa fela—and there is a sound of music; but the outer darkness and its hostile offspring lie ever in wait for the torches to fail and the voices to cease’ (p. 277). Glory is transitory and tragedy inevitable.
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- Information
- Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf , pp. 200 - 239Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013