Читать книгу Halleck's New English Literature - Reuben Post Halleck - Страница 10

The Oldest Epic of the Teutonic Race.—The greatest monument of Anglo-Saxon poetry is called Beowulf, from the name of its hero. His character and exploits give unity and dignity to the poem and raise it to the rank of an epic.

The subject matter is partly historical and partly mythical. The deeds and character of an actual hero may have furnished the first suggestions for the songs, which were finally elaborated into Beowulf, as we now have it. The poem was probably a long time in process of evolution, and many different scops doubtless added new episodes to the song, altering it by expansion and contraction under the inspiration of different times and places. Finally, it seems probable that some one English poet gave the work its present form, making it a more unified whole, and incorporating in it Christian opinions.

We do not know when the first scop sang of Beowulf's exploits; but he probably began before the ancestors of the English came to England. We are unable to ascertain how long Beowulf was in process of evolution; but there is internal evidence for thinking that part of the poem could not have been composed before 500 A.D. Ten Brink, a great German authority, thinks that Beowulf was given its present form not far from 700 A.D. The unique manuscript in the British Museum is written in the West Saxon dialect of Alfred the Great's time (849–901).

The characters, scenery, and action of Beowulf belong to the older Angle-land on the continent of Europe; but the poem is essentially English, even though the chief action is laid in what is now known as Denmark and the southern part of Sweden. Hrothgar's hall, near which the hero performed two of his great exploits, was probably on the island of Seeland.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF BEGINNING OF COTTON MS. OF BEOWULF.]