ABSTRACT

The following investigation sets out from a different conception of Beowulf than that customary till now. It looks at the great rift that runs through the poem’s composition only between the Grendel adventures and the dragon-fight. Here we have a far greater difference than that between the two parts of the Nibelungenlied, indeed a difference almost like that between Iliad and Odyssey. The two treatments are only held together by the figure of Beowulf-admittedly in a higher sense than that often accepted up till now, see below-but otherwise neither characters nor relationships have anything to do with each other. Compared with the dragon-fight it stands out especially clearly how closely the Grendel-fight and the fight with Grendel’s mother belong to each other. As artists have without doubt worked on the Beowulf-poem, criticism must for once attempt to draw out the artistic composition intended. It then immediately strikes one that the fight with Grendel’s mother presents with unmistakable force an intensification of the Grendel-fight. [Paraphrases the fights with Grendel and his mother, stressing the lack of suspense in

without effort, in the second he fights hard for his life and victory, in the end gaining both. In the third it is shown that he has only human powers at his disposal, he must now lose either life or victory-with the winning of the victory he loses his life.