Arguably one of the finest stories in the Western Tradition, “Beowulf” concerns the advent of a hero and his timely end. Throughout, questions of fate, free will, good, and evil predominate. Most prominent, though, are the theological questions of will and grace, one pagan and the other Christian. In 1926, when merely a thirty-four [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien argued that while Christianity gave the heroes a new point upon which to focus, the enemies of the heathen gods remained, too, the enemies of the Christian God. Beowulf, by challenging all that is spawned in Hell, has, by default, become the ally of all that destined to Heaven. Inducted into the [...]
Culture is what the heart is oriented to. What the heart is oriented to is what it loves. And what one loves will become the cornerstone of culture. And the heart, love, is a major theme in “Beowulf.” “There was song, and the voices of men gathered together before the leader of the host [...]
Arguably the most important literary influence on The Lord of the Rings, the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, helps us understand the way in which Tolkien both conceals and reveals the deepest meaning in his own work. Probably dating from the early eighth century, making it contemporaneous with the lives of Saints Boniface and Bede, Beowulf [...]