Beowulf and Middle-earth

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other influences. He used elements such as names, monsters, and the structure of society in a heroic age. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. Tolkien admired the way that Beowulf, written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, just as he was, embodied a "large symbolism"[1] without ever becoming allegorical. He worked to echo the symbolism of life's road and individual heroism in The Lord of the Rings
.

The names of races, including

Meduseld, derive from Beowulf. The werebear Beorn in The Hobbit has been likened to the hero Beowulf
himself; both names mean "bear" and both characters have enormous strength. Scholars have compared some of
the Beowulf dragon
. Tolkien's
Riders of Rohan
are distinctively Old English, and he has made use of multiple elements of Beowulf in creating them, including their language, culture, and poetry.

Context

Further information:
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences

a dragon. The tale is told in a roundabout way with many digressions into history and legend, and with a constant elegiac tone, ending in a dirge. It was written by a Christian poet, looking back reflectively on a time already in his people's distant past.[3]

Roman Catholic, he described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work", rich in Christian symbolism.[5]

The Tolkien scholar

Rohan; in the aesthetic style of The Lord of the Rings, with its impression of depth and its elegiac tone; and in its "large symbolism".[7]

People

A philologist's races

Elves, and other races.[8] Cotton MS Vitellius A xv – f134r in British Library

Tolkien made use of his philological expertise on Beowulf to create some of the races of Middle-earth. The list of supernatural creatures in Beowulf, eotenas ond ylfe ond orcnéas, "

Elves, and to an allusion to Ettens in his "Ettenmoors" placename.[8]
His tree-giants or
Orthanc (orþanc) from the same phrase, reinterpreted as "Orthanc, the Ents' fortress".[10]

Characters

Bödvar Bjarki, a shape-shifting character in Norse mythology
Beowulfian: Bödvar Bjarki shifts shape to fight in the form of a bear, as Tolkien's Beorn does.[11] Painting by Louis Moe, 1898

The word orþanc occurs again in Beowulf, alongside the term searo in the phrase searonet seowed, smiþes orþancum, "a cunning-net sewn, by a smith's skill", meaning a mail-shirt or byrnie. Tolkien used searo in its Mercian form *saru for the name of Orthanc's ruler, the wizard Saruman, whose name could thus be translated "cunning man", incorporating the ideas of subtle knowledge and technology into Saruman's character.[10][12]

An especially Beowulfian character appears in The Hobbit as

Norse myth, while it is Beowulf himself whom Beorn echoes in the Old English poem. The name "Beowulf" can indeed be read as "the Bees' Wolf", that is, "the Honey-Eater".[11] In other words, he is "the Bear", the man who is so strong that he snaps swords and tears off the arms of monsters with his enormous bear-like strength. Shippey notes that Beorn is ferocious, rude, and cheerful, characteristics that reflect his huge inner self-confidence—itself an aspect of northern heroic courage.[11]

Monsters

Further information: Tolkien's monsters

Scholars have compared several of Tolkien's monsters, including his Trolls, Gollum, and Smaug, to those in Beowulf.[13][14][15]

Trolls

Further information:
Troll (Middle-earth) and Grendel
Grendel, a monster in Beowulf
Tolkien's wordless[13] trolls have been compared to Grendel, a monster in Beowulf.[13] Illustration of Grendel by J. R. Skelton, 1908

Beowulf's first fight is with the monster Grendel, who is often taken by scholars as a kind of

Tolkien's trolls share some of Grendel's attributes, such as great size and strength, being impervious to ordinary swords, and favouring the night. The scholar Christina Fawcett suggests that Tolkien's "roaring Troll" in The Return of the King reflects Grendel's "firey [sic] eye and terrible screaming".[13] Noting that Tolkien compares them to beasts as they "came striding up, roaring like beasts ... bellowing", she observes that they "remain wordless warriors, like Grendel".[13]

Gollum

Further information: Gollum

Gollum, a far smaller monster in Middle-earth, has also been likened to Grendel, with his preference for hunting with his bare hands and his liking for desolate, marshy places. The many parallels between these monsters include their affinity for water, their isolation from society, and their bestial description.[16] The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger suggests that he is Tolkien's central monster-figure, likening him to both Grendel and the dragon; she describes him as "the twisted, broken, outcast hobbit whose manlike shape and dragonlike greed combine both the Beowulf kinds of monster in one figure".[14]

Flieger's comparison of Gollum with Grendel and the Beowulf dragon[14]
Grendel Gollum the Beowulf dragon
Man-eating
goblins, hobbits
if no fish to eat		 —
"Outcast, a wanderer in the waste, of the race of Cain" Murderer, outcast —
Unable to bear the sound of human pleasure with harp music A small corner of his mind could still enjoy "a kindly voice ... but that ... would only make the evil part of him angrier in the end"[17] —
— Greed for the Ring Greed for treasure
— Transformed by greed for ring into a creeping thing, his OE name Smeagol meaning "creeping" (
Fafnir
changed himself into a dragon to guard his gold and his ring)
— His name for the ring, "Precious", is OE māþum māþum is dragon's hoard

Smaug

Further information: Smaug

Tolkien made use of

Lake-town; the allure of gold is too much of a temptation for the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, who is killed soon afterwards.[18][19] On the other hand, the Beowulf dragon does not speak; Tolkien has made Smaug conversational, and wily with it.[20] Scholars have analysed the parallels between Smaug and the unnamed Beowulf dragon:[15]

Lee and Solopova's comparison of Smaug and the Beowulf dragon[15]
Plot element Beowulf The Hobbit
Aggressive
dragon 		eald uhtsceaða ... hat ond hreohmod ... Wæs þæs wyrmes wig / wide gesyne

"old twilight-ravager ... hot and fierce-minded ... that worm's war was / widely seen"

Smaug fiercely attacks Dwarves, Laketown
Gold-greedy
dragon 		hordweard

"treasure-guardian"

Smaug watchfully sleeps on a pile of treasure
Provoking
the dragon

wæs ða gebolgen / beorges hyrde,
wolde se laða / lige forgyldan
drincfæt dyre.

"was then furious / the barrow's keeper
wanted the enemy / with fire to revenge
precious drinking-cup."

Smaug is enraged when Bilbo steals a golden cup
Night-flying
dragon

nacod niðdraca, nihtes fleogeð
fyre befangen

"naked hate-dragon, flying by night,
wreathed in fire"

Smaug attacks Laketown with fire, by night
Well-protected
dragon's lair

se ðe on heaum hofe / hord beweotode,
stanbeorh steapne; stig under læg,
eldum uncuð.

"the one who on high heath / hoard watched
steep stone-barrow / the path up to it
unknown to any."

Secret passage to Smaug's lair and a mound of treasure in the stone palace under Mount Erebor
Accursed
dragon-gold 		hæðnum horde

"a heathen hoard"

The treasure provokes the
Battle of Five Armies

Culture of Rohan

Further information:
Rohan (Middle-earth)

Names, language, and heroism

Tolkien made use of Beowulf, along with other Old English sources, for many aspects of the

Riders of Rohan. Their land was the Mark, its name a version of the Mercia where he lived, in Mercian dialect *Marc. Their names are straightforwardly Old English: Éomer and Háma (characters in Beowulf), Éowyn ("Horse-joy"), Théoden ("King"). So too is their language, with words like Éothéod ("Horse-people"), Éored ("Troop of cavalry"), and Eorlingas ("people of Eorl", whose name means "[Horse-]lord", cf. Earl), where many words and names begin with the word for "horse", eo[h].[21][22]

There are even spoken phrases that follow this form. As Alaric Hall notes, "'Westu Théoden hál!' cried Éomer" is a scholarly joke: a dialectal form of Beowulf's Wæs þú, Hróðgár, hál ("Be thou well, Hrothgar!") i.e. Éomer shouts "Long Live King Théoden!" in a Mercian accent. Tolkien used this West Midlands dialect of Old English because he had been brought up in that region.[12]

Viking-style mead hall, like Hrothgar's hall, Heorot, described in Beowulf. Depicted is a reconstructed Viking longhouse
in Denmark.

Théoden's hall, Meduseld,[b] is modelled on Beowulf's Heorot, as is the way it is guarded, with visitors challenged repeatedly but courteously. Heorot's golden thatched roof is described in line 311 of Beowulf which Tolkien directly translates as a description of Meduseld: "The light of it shines far over the land", representing líxte se léoma ofer landa fela.[23]

The war horns of the Riders of Rohan exemplify, in Shippey's view, the "heroic Northern world", as in what he calls the nearest Beowulf has to a moment of Tolkien-like eucatastrophe, when Ongentheow's Geats, trapped all night, hear the horns of Hygelac's men coming to rescue them; the Riders blow their horns wildly as they finally arrive, turning the tide of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields at a climactic moment in The Lord of the Rings.[24][25]

Alliterative verse

Further information: Poetry in The Lord of the Rings

Among the many

ship-burial in Beowulf:[28]

Mark Hall's comparison of the "Lament for Boromir" with the ship-burial in Beowulf[28]
Beowulf 2:36b–42
Scyld Scefing
's funeral		 Hall's translation "Lament for Boromir"
Anduin

to the Falls of Rauros)
                        þær wæs madma fela
of feorwegum     frætwa gelæded;
ne hyrde ic cymlicor    ceol gegyrwan
hildewæpnum     ond heaðowædum,
billum ond byrnum;     him on bearme læg
madma mænigo,    þa him mid scoldon
on flodes æht    feor gewitan. 		                        There was much treasure
from faraway     ornaments brought
not heard I of more nobly     a ship prepared
war-weapons     and war-armour
sword and mail;     on his lap lay
treasures many     those with him should
on floods' possession     far departed. 		'Beneath
Rauros
, golden Rauros-falls,
     bore him upon its breast.'

Style

Impression of depth

Main article: Impression of depth in The Lord of the Rings
Illustration of an Anglo-Saxon minstrel performing
The many digressions in Beowulf must have given its listeners a powerful impression of looking into a noble pagan past.[30] Illustration by J. R. Skelton, c. 1910

A quality of literature that Tolkien particularly prized, and sought to achieve in The Lord of the Rings, was the impression of depth, of hidden vistas into ancient history. He found this especially in Beowulf, but also in other works that he admired, such as

The Monsters and the Critics that Beowulf:[30]

must have succeeded admirably in creating in the minds of the poet's contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but noble and fraught with a deep significance – a past that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiquity of sorrow. This impression of depth is an effect and a justification of the use of episodes and allusions to old tales, mostly darker, more pagan, and desperate than the foreground.[30]

In addition, Tolkien valued particularly the "shimmer of suggestion" that never exactly becomes explicit, but that constantly hints at greater depth. That is just as in Beowulf, where Tolkien described the quality as the "glamour of Poesis",[33] though whether this was, Shippey notes, an effect of distance in time, the "elvish hone of antiquity", or a kind of memory or vision of paradise is never distinguished.[34]

Elegiac tone

Further information: Decline and fall in Middle-earth § Fading

The Lord of the Rings, especially its last part, The Return of the King, has a consistent elegiac tone, in this resembling Beowulf.[35] The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns describes it as a "sense of inevitable disintegration".[36] The author and scholar Patrice Hannon calls it "a story of loss and longing, punctuated by moments of humor and terror and heroic action but on the whole a lament for a world—albeit a fictional world—that has passed even as we seem to catch a last glimpse of it flickering and fading".[37]

"Large symbolism"

Shippey notes that Tolkien wrote of Beowulf that the "large symbolism is near the surface, but ... does not break through, nor become allegory",[1] for if it did, that would constrain the story, like that of The Lord of the Rings, to have just one meaning. That sort of constraint was something that Tolkien "contemptuously" dismissed in his foreword to the second edition, stating that he preferred applicability, giving readers the freedom to read into the novel what they could see in it. The message could be hinted at, repeatedly, and they would work, Shippey writes, "only if they were true both in fact and in fiction";[1] Tolkien set out to make The Lord of the Rings work the same way.[1]

A learned Christian's heroic world

Further information: Christianity in Middle-earth and Paganism in Middle-earth

Another theme, in both Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings, is that of the

Jesuit priest Robert Murray that he had cut religion out of the work because it "is absorbed into the story and the symbolism".[39] George Clark writes that Tolkien saw the Beowulf poet as[40]

a learned Christian who re-created a heroic world and story in an implicitly Christian universe governed by a God whose existence and nature the poem's wiser characters intuit without the benefit of revelation. Tolkien's Beowulf poet was a version of himself, and his authorial persona in creating [The Lord of the Rings] was a version of that Beowulf poet.[40]

Contrasted heroes

Further information: Heroism in The Lord of the Rings

Flieger contrasts the warrior-hero Aragorn with the suffering hero

Morte D'Arthur".[41] In other words, the two types of hero are not only contrasted, but combined, halves of their legends swapped over.[41]

Flieger's analysis of heroes in Beowulf, fairy tales, and The Lord of the Rings[41]
Beowulf Fairy tale hero Aragorn Frodo
Bold hero, victorious — Battle of Helm's Deep,
Battle of the Pelennor Fields		 —
— Small beginnings:
Little man sets out on quest		 — Hobbit sets out not knowing where he's going
Bitter ending — — Defeat and disillusionment after the quest
— Happy ending:
Returns home rich, marries princess		 King of
Elf-princess Arwen
 —

The road of life

Further information: The Road Goes Ever On (song)

The symbolism of the road of life can be glimpsed in many places, illuminating different aspects.

The Old Walking Song is repeated, with variations, three times in The Lord of the Rings. The last version contains the words "The Road goes ever on and on / Out from the door where it began. ... But I at last with weary feet / Will turn towards the lighted inn". Shippey writes that "if 'the lighted inn' on the road means death, then 'the Road' must mean life", and the poem and the novel could be speaking of the process of psychological individuation. Beowulf, too, concerns the life and death of its hero.[42][43][44] Flieger writes that Tolkien saw Beowulf as "a poem of balance, the opposition of ends and beginnings":[41] the young Beowulf rises, sails to Denmark, kills Grendel, becomes King; many years later, the old Beowulf falls, killing the dragon but going to his own death. In Flieger's view, Tolkien has built the same values, balance, and opposition into The Lord of the Rings, but at the same time rather than one after the other.[41]

Notes

  1. ^ Beowulf also rid Heorot of Grendel's mother.[2]
  2. ^ Meduseld means "mead hall" in Beowulf.[23]
  3. OCLC 1031688621
    .

References

  1. ^ a b c d Shippey 2005, pp. 104, 190–197, 217.
  2. ^ Liuzza 2013, pp. 17, 147–149.
  3. ^ Liuzza 2013, pp. 11–36.
  4. ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 111, 200, 266.
  5. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter 142 to Robert Murray, 2 December 1953
  6. ^ Shippey 2005, p. 389.
  7. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 104, 192–193, 217.
  8. ^ a b Shippey 2005, pp. 66, 74, 149.
  9. ^ Shippey 2005, p. 149.
  10. ^ a b Shippey 2001, pp. 88, 169–170.
  11. ^ a b c Shippey 2005, pp. 91–92.
  12. ^ a b c Hall 2005
  13. ^ a b c d e Fawcett 2014, pp. 29, 97, 125–131.
  14. ^ a b c Flieger 2004, pp. 141–144.
  15. ^ a b c Lee & Solopova 2005, pp. 109–111.
  16. ^ Nelson 2008, p. 466.
  17. ^ Tolkien 1954a, "book I, ch. 2"
  18. ^ Sommerlad, Joe (2 October 2017). "The Hobbit at 80: What were JRR Tolkien's inspirations behind his first fantasy tale of Middle Earth?". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 7 February 2021.
  19. ^ Evans 2000, pp. 30–32.
  20. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 99–102.
  21. ^ Shippey 2001, pp. 90–97, 111–119.
  22. ^ Kennedy 2001, pp. 15–16.
  23. ^ a b Shippey 2005, pp. 139–143
  24. ^ Tolkien 1955, book V, ch. 4.
  25. ^ Shippey 2001, pp. 212–216.
  26. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter 187 to H. Cotton Minchin, April 1956
  27. ^ Lee & Solopova 2005, pp. 46–53.
  28. ^ a b Hall 2006, pp. 46–47
  29. ^ Tolkien 1954 book III, ch. 1
  30. ^ a b c Tolkien 1983, p. 27.
  31. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 259–261.
  32. ^ a b Nagy 2003, pp. 239–258.
  33. ^ Tolkien 1983, p. 248.
  34. ^ Shippey 2005, p. 61.
  35. ^ Shippey 2005, p. 239.
  36. ^ Burns 1989, pp. 5–9.
  37. ^ Hannon 2004, pp. 36–42.
  38. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 224–230.
  39. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter 142 to Robert Murray, 2 December 1953
  40. ^ a b Clark 2000, pp. 39–40.
  41. ^ a b c d e Flieger 2004, pp. 122–145.
  42. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 210–211.
  43. ^ Liuzza 2013, p. 13.
  44. ^ Reynolds 2021, pp. 1–10.

Sources

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