Weber Reads Beowulf
 

 

Bibliography

Resources for teachers:

Programs:

Beowulf Out Loud
Date: January 10
Time: 1:00 - 3:00 PM
Location: Student Union
Presenters: faculty, staff, students

     Join with members of the WSU Community for a marathon reading of the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf. This Irish poet won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Hwaet! In the Dark
Date: January 10
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: Ogden Amphitheater
Presenters: Margaret Rosktkowski and Joe Crnich (Ogden High School, Theater)

     Gather around an open-pit fire to hear professional readers give voice to the tale of monsters and dragons, royalty and heroes. Hear creatures ooze out of the darkness and capture our imaginations as we meet together to kick off WEBER READS Beowulf. We will be joined by local members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe.Hot drinks will be offered for sale by Grounds for Coffee.

Beowulf: The Translator’s Challenge
Date: January 17
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenter: Karen Moloney (WSU, English)

     Beowulf is the longest poem that has come down to us from Old English, one of the languages ancestral to Modern English. It is seen as an encomium, a song of praise for a great king:


Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
In modern English:
Lo! Of the Spear-Danes, in days of yore,
we have heard; of the glory of the people's kings,
how the noble ones did deeds of valor.

     The first translation from Old English by Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin and published in 1815, was to Latin. Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, greatly unsatisfied with this translation, made the first translation into a modern language — Danish — which was published in 1820. After Grundtvig's travels to England came the first English translation, by J. M. Kemble in 1837. William Morris & A. J. Wyatt's translation was published in 1895.

Beowulf’s Children: Bilbo, Harry, and Buffy
Date: January 24
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenters: Shelley Thomas (WSU, English) and Scott Rogers (WSU, English)

     Beowulf was a major inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien, whose academic career was built around its analysis and explication. But the story also echoes through much of English and American popular culture.

Beowulf: A Readers’ Theater
Date: February 7
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenters: WSU students

     WSU student Clayton David Gerrard (English, Theater, Honors) has adapted Beowulf into a readers’ theater format. “I am trying to maintain the story as an oral tradition. I ended up researching several different translations of Beowulf, including Ian Serraillier’s translation for children, John Gardner’s Grendel, and Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead. In the end, it came down to finding a way to translate the story as my own, rather than reiterate what others have done. This has also allowed me to put my own twist on the story of an epic hero that I hope will provoke some thought and wonder in the audience.”

Beowulf: Chaos, Order, and Community
Date: February 12
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Commission Chambers, Weber Center, 2380 Washington Blvd., Ogden
Facilitators: Charles Trentelman (writer, Standard Examiner ) and Lt. Randy Watt (Asst. Chief Ogden Police Department)

     The men and women who first heard the Beowulf story were emerging from a pagan past, adapting themselves to a new religion and a new kind of society. The difficult transition between these two worlds accounts for much of the tension in the story in which the old virtues of courage, loyalty, faithful service, and gift giving clash with Christian piety, humility, charity, and a faith in the hereafter.
Readers will find many modern parallels of the chaos which results when cultures collide and social order is imposed, including in the wars between nations and among tribes throughout the world, and the rise of gang activities in our own community.

Beowulf: The Stuff of Heroes
Date: February 21
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenter: Stephen Francis (WSU, History)

     Anglo Saxon conversion to Christianity meant not only acceptance of a new monotheism, but also embracing drastic changes in culture and society. Solitary heroes, such as those exemplified by Beowulf, were passing out of style, as Beowulf himself illustrates the dawning of a new age as his motivations change from raw courage and a simple quest for glory to a spirit of magnanimity and charity toward others. Prince Beowulf in his youth seeks only the glory of triumph over a terrible enemy; as an aged king, he sacrifices himself single-handedly for the sake of a thief and for his unworthy followers.

Beowulf: Natural and Unnatural Worlds
Date: February 28
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Ogden Nature Center, 966 W 12th Street, Ogden
Presenters:

     In Beowulf, the natural world represents not beauty or poetic inspiration but rather a dangerous, chaotic, and menacing force. The forests hold wild beasts and supernatural monsters, and the awful storms of summer and the bitter frosts of winter posed mortal threats.
     In Beowulf, nature is represented most vividly by the Grendel and his mother, who live in haunted swamps and terrifying black pools. Nature, as the poet represents it, has always been the place for Cain’s race of monsters, a fearsome place that kills and which can only be conquered by the weapons, armor, and the tools of humans.
     The conquest of nature in the form of plowed fields, cleared forests, walled villages and towns, and castles raised on prominent hilltops was seen as the task of civilization. Within these artificial structures, humans took pleasure in each other’s company, in feasting, drinking, storytelling, and other amusements. The joyous feasting within the hall of Heorot symbolizes civilization, and for that reason the hall enrages Grendel, the symbol of the natural world.

Beowulf: What Are the Girls Doing?
Date: March 7
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenters: Leah Murray (WSU, Political Science) and Kathryn MacKay (WSU, History)

     Anglo-Saxon literature is mainly about wars, heroes and Christianity. There are not many works that focus on the lives of women who were usually looked upon as lower class. Women were considered as objects that could be manipulated in any way by men. In the medieval era, it was common for female to be unrecognized and undervalued. Women’s social position was at the bottom of the scale; they were forced into an arranged marriage and they had abusive husbands on whom they were completely dependent.
     On the other hand, in the kingdom the king respected his queen and she played an important role. In the poem Beowulf, Wealhtheow is a Danish queen and Hrothgar’s wife. She is mentioned as Hrothgar’s lover and sexual partner: “ In the hall, Wealhtheow serves alcoholic drinks to all the guests (only women were allowed to serve alcohol). She is a cup-bearer during the celebration.
And there is in Beowulf Grendel’s Mother.......

Beowulf: The Virtue of Vengeance
Date: March 11
Time: 7:00 PM
Sponsors: Weber County Sheriff (Inmates of the County Correctional Facility only)
Ogden Gang Task Force & Your Community Connection
Facilitator: Marci

     In the pagan world, humility and sacrifice were not celebrated. Instead, the people valued courage in battle, loyalty to their kin and their chieftains, and the righting of wrongs by personal vengeance. The taking of vengeance was a matter of honor and necessity in Beowulf’s world, where there was no written law code to live by or courts to judge disputes between tribes or individuals. Instead, the taking of life was to be redeemed by vengeance or by payment of blood money, also known as wergild, by the killer. Vengeance was a matter of sacred honor.
     The ideal of vengeance created tension between the pagan and Christian world. Personal vengeance, and feuding for the sake of honor, had no place in the new religion. When wronged, Christians were expected to turn the other cheek and fight the sin of pride. In the opinion of many, the poet and the audience of Beowulf were thoroughly Christian – but they were Christians who still accepted the virtue of vengeance.
     Vengeance still plays a major role in the settling of wrongs modern society, some much more than others, illustrating how far we have yet to travel in our systems of law and order to replace this world view and how ineffective Christian virtues have been in assigning this element of social order to the past.

Beowulf: Studying the manuscript
Date: March 18
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenter: Brian J. McFadden (Texas Tech, English)

     Though scholars don’t know exactly where the Beowulf manuscript – or, as it is also known, Cotton-Vitellius A.xv – originated, it is certain that one of its owners was Sir Robert Cotton, a seventeenth-century collector who kept track of his precious manuscripts by noting their shelf position in his bookcases which were each named for the busts of the Roman emperors that topped them (ergo, Vitellius A.xv was the fifteenth book on the first shelf of the Vitellius case). Cotton bound the manuscript in a volume with another completely unrelated manuscript:
     The first 90 folios are in twelfth-century handwriting, and we call this part of Cotton's book the Southwick Codex, based on the notice of ownership – actually a chilling curse on anyone who stole the book – on the second folio. The last 116 folios are copied by two early eleventh-century scribes, and we call this part of Cotton's book the Nowell Codex, because a previous owner, Laurence Nowell, left his name on it in 1563.
     The Beowulf manuscript managed to survive at least 700 years without incident until a fire in Cotton’s library in 1731 left the manuscript scorched along the edges.

• Dr. McFadden’s website for the class he teaches about Beowulf is: http://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/mcfadden/syll5303F07.html

• The Electronic Beowulf Project is at: http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeowulf/guide.htm

Beowulf: Pagan Heroics/Christian Virtues
Date: March 27
Time:7:00 PM
Place: Your Community Connection
Facilitator: Richard Minnich (Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Ogden)

     “Wyrd,” or fate, is a common theme in Old English poetry, illustrating the pagan world view that all things – glory, happiness, and success – come in cycles. A rise to glory is sure to precipitate a fall into disarray.
     Fate was a mysterious force that snared humans in an inescapable web. Despite one’s good intentions, fate had decided the results of one’s actions before hand, and efforts to escape adversity and death were useless. There was no heaven or hell in the pagan world, and there was no serene paradise awaiting those who lived a sinless life, there was only fate, which was determined before one’s birth and which, in the end, brought an inevitable death.
     At the time Beowulf was written, the workings of “wyrd” were falling away and the promises of heaven and hell were arriving in the words of the Bible and the sermons and promises of Christian missionaries. Throughout Beowulf, the Christian idea that right living could lead to a heavenly afterlife, while sinners could expect to earn the horrors of hell, is intermingled with the pagan view of fate. Beowulf, as a pagan hero, stands up to fate. He still does what he believes is right and honorable, even though it will bring his destruction.

Beowulf: Performance Art
Date: April
Time: 1:00 PM.
Place: Hetzel-Hoellein Room, Stewart Library, WSU
Presenter: Benjamin Bagby’s stage performance of Beowulf on DVD.

     For a thousand of years or more, one of Europe’s greatest epics has been silently
awaiting its return to the domain of the bards who first gave voice to the thrilling story
of King Hrothgar, the monster Grendel, and the hero Beowulf. The
vocalist and storyteller Benjamin Bagby takes the story of Beowulf from its written
form to a live performance, featuring the Anglo Saxon harp.

Beowulf: A Hero for Our Times
Date: April 24
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Weber County library
Facilitator: Carlos Camacho

     Beowulf in a close relative of the myth of the “Bear’s Son,” a folktale that has been recounted in many different forms and times throughout the world. In this myth, a young hero is raised in the wild by bears – or in some cases, wolves. When he reaches adulthood, the hero becomes a leader of men who clashes with dragons and demons and performs many feats of strength and daring. The setting of the story changes, as do many other details, but Beowulf epitomizes the valor of his ancestors, a hero who fights not only for personal glory and reward but also for the triumph of his nation.
     Join us for a discussion of the heroics of Beowulf, the noble actions of the worthy king Hrothgar, the terrors of the blood-thirsty monster, Grendel, and the vicissitudes of fate, all important themes of a poem which has parallels and relevance in modern political and religious life and which is still reflected in the organization of our own community, more than 1,000 years after the story was first committed to writing.
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The introduction and program notes were redacted from: Thomas Streissguth’s book, Understanding Beowulf, published by Thompson-Gale, 2004. Other Sources include: the British Express: http://www.britainexpress.com/History/anglo-saxon_life.htm; Greg Kessler http://ckessler.com/index.html; Sara Warneke, “Medieval Attitudes to Landscape” http://www.gardenhistoryinfo.com/medieval/medlandscape02.html; “Women in Anglo-Saxon England” http://csis.pace.edu/grendel/projf20004g/womenAnglo.html; Rachel Zirkelbach, “Beowulf: The Manuscript” http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/eliot/722/Manauth.htm..