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Free Download Leonard Neidorf, "The Art and Thought of the "Beowulf" Poet"
English | ISBN: 1501766902 | 2023 | 216 pages | PDF | 929 KB
In The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet, Leonard Neidorf explores the relationship between Beowulf and the legendary tradition that existed prior to its composition. The Beowulf poet inherited an amoral heroic tradition, which focused principally on heroes compelled by circumstances to commit horrendous deeds: fathers kill sons, brothers kill brothers, and wives kill husbands. Medieval Germanic poets relished the depiction of a hero's unyielding response to a cruel fate, but the Beowulf poet refused to construct an epic around this traditional Description. Focusing instead on a courteous and pious protagonist's fight against monsters, the poet creates a work that is deeply untraditional in both its Description and its values. In Beowulf, the kin-slayers and oath-breakers of antecedent tradition are confined to the background, while the poet fills the foreground with unconventional characters, who abstain from transgression, display courtly etiquette, and express monotheistic convictions.