Death After the Banquet: The Elegiac Unity of Beowulf

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make a generic investigation of the poem and, if possible, reveal what it means by defining what it is. Since the poem comes from a definite and somewhat known tradition, generic criticism offers a far better approach than that of The Audience of Beowulf. The unity of the poem's structure and its place in the Anglo-Saxon tradition should discover its determined meaning. Most commonly the poem is referred to as an epic, but what is meant by "epic"? Genre study shouldn't seek merely to place the poem in some static class, but rather view its generic elements in order to determine their usage towards the general effect of the poem. Quite simply all this paper can offer is to restate how exactly the Christian significance is placed over the pagan subject matter in the terms of the genres of the literary tradition contemporary to the Beowulf poet. [From introductory section]