ABSTRACT

Bouterwek (1859:66) is right to consider the inserted tribal legends as the most important and meaningful element in the Beowulf-poem, and it cannot possibly escape even a fairly attentive consideration of the Anglo-Saxons’ national epic that these episodes are the oldest of all the poem’s components. These are however not inserted in such a simple and inartistic way as to allow them to be dissected out without further ado, but are for the most part skilfully and tastefully reworked and fitted to the context of the place where they are inserted. The assertion may however confidently be proposed that the episodes existed earlier as single independent poems, and often the proof for their originally independent existence can be brought forward not only on grounds of inner but also of outer form. If I pick out for this investigation two particular episodes which do not stand out as heterogeneous components of the Beowulf-poem either by their extent or by any conspicuous difference of content, I am doing it for this reason, in order to prove from precisely such an example the necessity of applying the Liedertheorie to the Anglo-Saxon national epic as well.