A strikingly original approach to Beowulf, linking its structure to
the dynastic life-cycle. The original audience of Beowulf was
steeped in ancient Scandinavian royal legend. But for modern
readers of the poem, these traditions are frustratingly obscure and
confusing. This book argues that Beowulf is a dynastic drama
centred on the fortunes of three great royal houses, the Scyldings,
Scylfings and Hrethlings. At the centre of the poem is the Geatish
hero, whose adventures provide the link between these three
dynasties. By unravelling the web of Scandinavian royal legends
known to the work's original audience, the volume allows the modern
reader to appreciate better the role of the monsters as portents of
dynastic and national crises. It begins by offering a new
interpretation of the work's structure based on the principle of
the dynastic life-cycle, providing explanations for features of the
poem that have never been satisfactorily explained, most famously
its many digressions and episodes. Highlighting the work's
often-overlooked originality, it then proposes that the poet
created a fictionalized monster-slaying hero and inserted him into
royal legend in order to dramatize specific moments of dynastic
crisis. Finally, it brings into focus the poet's debt to biblical
paradigms of kingship and considers how the Anglo-Saxons came to
read Beowulf as their own Book of Kings.
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