ENGL 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: English Poetry, Frame Story, Renews-Cappahayden
13 Jun 2016
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Beowulf world: darkness is always on the edge. The very things that makes life good or meaningful threaten to destroy it. There"s a god, but there"s also a relentless and uncaring fate, where everything always gets worse, no matter how hard you try. Perhaps it"s simply a way of recording it, remembering it, holding on to it. Or maybe making sense of that world. It"s a way of knowing, understanding this world, and see what our place is in it. Allows us to see points of view. Beowulf sees that the monster even has a perspective, and the monster"s mother has one as well. It helps us get out of ourselves and see things from a different angle. Poem that"s nostalgic for beautiful things in the past. Dragon is something beautiful, whose loss is a real one that poet feels. Easy to feel nostalgic for anglo-saxon world itself.
