Friday, May 31, 2019

Conflicts in the Epic of Beowulf Essay -- Epic of Beowulf Essay

Beowulf the Conflicts J.D.A. Ogilvy and Donald C. Baker in Beowulfs Heroic Death comment on the heros blameworthiness in his final mesh . . .the author describes Beowulf and the dragon lying dead side by side and observes rather sententiously that it was a bad line of business fighting with a dragon or disturbing his hoard. Beowulf, he adds, had paid for the treasure with his life. Some commentators seem to consider this passage, combined with Wiglafs remarks about Beowulfs insistence on fighting the dragon alone, as a connoisseurism of Beowulfs conduct (69). Beowulf contains considerable conflict, both external and internal. Conflict is how one describes the kind between the protagonist and antagonist in a literary work (Abrams 225). There is also another type of conflict which takes place within the psyche of a given character. These two types of conflict occur within this poem. H. L. Rogers in Beowulfs Three Great Fights expresses his opinion as a literary critic rega rding conflicts in the poem The superhuman forces are Fate, the heathen gods, or the Christian God conflicts between them and the heros character are frequently found. . . .The treatment in the three great fights of the motives of weapons, treasure and society implies a moral idea in which the poet believed that a man should not trust in the things of this world, for they leave fail him. Another aspect of this idea comes out clearly in the account of the first fight that a man should trust rather in God and in the natural powers God gives him, for these will not fail him(234-37). King Hrothgars construction of Heorot and the subsequent enhancement of the joy of the Danes precipitated t... ...with repeated conflict WORKS CITED Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. BEOWULF. From The Harvard Classics, Volume 49. P.F. Collier & Son, 1910. Translated by Francis B. Gummere. http//wiretap.area.com/ftp.items/Library/Cl assic/beowulf.txt Clover, Carol F. The Unferth Episode. In The Beowulf Reader, edit by Peter S. Baker. New York Garland Publishing, 2000. Ogilvy, J.D.A. and Donald C. Baker. Beowulfs Heroic Death. In Readings on Beowulf, edited by Stephen P. Thompson. San Diego Greenhaven Press,1998. Clark, George. Beowulf. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1990. Rogers, H. L. Beowulfs Three Great Fights. In An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, edited by Lewis E. Nicholson. Notre Dame, IN University of Notre Dame Press, 1963.