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Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...
Beowulf and Gnomes 6519 Views
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Description:
Beowulf is full of Gnomes...and no, not adorable garden gnomes who’re just trying to save you money on vacations. Find out more about what a Gnome is by checking out this video.
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:04
Beowulf a la Shmoop
- 00:06
Gnomes
- 00:09
Words of wisdom, Deb, long question for you.
- 00:12
As if Grendel weren't bad enough,
Full Transcript
- 00:14
his mother makes her way to town
- 00:15
the night after his death, no less.
- 00:18
And, as you might imagine, she wants revenge.
- 00:20
Revenge a big theme in this era.
- 00:22
So, luckily, Beowulf comes to the rescue again
- 00:25
and tracks her down beneath her leg,
- 00:27
ending her life and taking Grendel's head as a trophy.
- 00:30
When he returns victorious,
- 00:31
Hrothgar has more than just material gifts to give him.
- 00:35
Although he does have plenty of those, as well.
- 00:37
So, tell us about the wise gifts of Hrothgar.
- 00:41
Gift-giving and revenge and the whole notion of
- 00:44
paying for your sins financially
- 00:48
seems to be a meaningful theme here.
- 00:50
So run us through that whole structure.
- 00:53
Economy, I guess.
- 00:54
Right. We'll talk a lot about - in an upcoming lesson -
- 00:57
about the material gifts, right?
- 00:59
So, right now we're gonna talk about
- 01:00
the gifts of wisdom that Hrothgar gives Beowulf.
- 01:03
And these have a name to them.
- 01:06
We call them "gnomes,"
- 01:08
- like little garden gnomes. - Yeah, those little...
- 01:10
Yeah, but not.
- 01:11
And they're basically like little pithy
- 01:15
phrases of wisdom.
- 01:17
So these are pieces of wisdom that are given
- 01:20
from one character to another.
- 01:21
But we're also supposed to take them to heart
- 01:23
as readers.
- 01:23
So it kind of has a double meaning.
- 01:27
An example of a gnome from today
- 01:29
would be something like, "don't bite the hand that feeds you."
- 01:31
These are just like little things that people say to each other.
- 01:34
And it means something when Hrothgar says it
- 01:37
to Beowulf and it also means something when
- 01:39
we, as readers, look at it.
- 01:40
So, Hrothgar tells Beowulf
- 01:43
not to boastfully give gifts.
- 01:46
If you're gonna give gifts, it shouldn't be boastfully.
- 01:47
He tells him not to be arrogant.
- 01:49
And he also warns him about the fleetingness of life.
- 01:53
He says, "But a little-while lasts thy life-vigor's fulness.
- 01:57
'Twill after hap early,
- 01:59
that illness or sword-edge shall part thee from strength."
- 02:02
So, it's basically saying, like,
- 02:04
"Yeah, you're great and all now, but life's short."
- 02:06
When we hear these words of wisdom,
- 02:08
again, we can't just take them at face value and move on.
- 02:11
We have to think about what they represent
- 02:12
about the culture's values at the time.
- 02:15
"Don't bite the hand that feeds you"
- 02:17
is something we say today.
- 02:19
That is something that represents
- 02:21
a cultural belief that we have,
- 02:22
that you should respect, kind of, the people who are
- 02:25
giving you what you have.
- 02:26
These gnomes are a pretty good way of figuring out
- 02:28
what was important to a society.
- 02:30
After Grendel's mom comes
- 02:33
and kills a bunch of people,
- 02:35
Hrothgar is like all "woe is me."
- 02:37
He's really sad, and one of his
- 02:39
you know, closest associates has been killed
- 02:42
and he's mourning.
- 02:43
And Beowulf comes up to him and is like,
- 02:45
"Dude, suck it up.
- 02:46
We need to get revenge.
- 02:48
Stop mourning, stop wallowing.
- 02:50
We're gonna get revenge."
- 02:51
And he does it through a little gnome.
- 02:53
And it shows us that that's what important in this society,
- 02:57
is revenge.
- 02:59
And that's not a bad thing.
- 03:01
That's just how they worked back then.
- 03:04
So when we hear these gnomes,
- 03:06
we can say, "Oh, okay.
- 03:08
Check. Revenge was important back then. Not mourning."
- 03:10
So what was -- Revenge is almost a moral compass, then.
- 03:14
It's a balancing act that, you know,
- 03:16
for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
- 03:19
So you kill my cousin, I'm gonna kill yours.
- 03:21
Or you, or whatever, right?
- 03:22
Exactly, and that's where that death price comes into play.
- 03:24
Because, either "you kill my cousin, I kill yours,"
- 03:28
or "you kill my cousin,
- 03:30
and now you pay me a ton of money." Exactly.
- 03:32
Exactly. So, but it is, it's a really -- It's a balancing act.
- 03:35
And it -- Life is worth some finite amount, right?
- 03:39
Again, if we can -- Someone gets killed and then
- 03:41
you pay some amount of money
- 03:43
or gifts to make up for it.
- 03:45
Life has a specific value
- 03:47
and the only way to get, you know,
- 03:49
precise equal value is by taking another life.
- 03:51
Got it. And, I mean, it applies in today's legal courtrooms.
- 03:54
You know, when people are guilty of a product liability
- 03:58
and the air bag didn't deploy, you know,
- 04:00
GM does a discounted cash flow analysis
- 04:03
of what the person's profits would have been
- 04:04
the remaining part of their life,
- 04:06
does some adjustments to it, and says,
- 04:07
"Well, this life was worth 842,000 dollars."
- 04:10
Exactly. And to us, that seems kind of, like,
- 04:13
vulgar, right? A lot of people are like,
- 04:14
"How can you say this person's life was worth,
- 04:16
you know, 800,000 dollars?"
- 04:17
But, back then, that's just what it was.
- 04:20
It was not vulgar; it was not looked down upon.
- 04:22
That just was how culture worked.
- 04:26
What is a gnome
- 04:27
and why would Hrothgar want to give gnomes to Beowulf?
- 04:31
What are some gnomes from our own culture?
- 04:34
What can we tell about the culture of the time from gnomes in Beowulf?
- 04:38
Are there similarities we can draw between our culture and Beowulf's?
- 04:43
How was revenge viewed
- 04:45
and dealt with in Beowulf's time?
- 04:48
What about now?
- 04:52
To us that seems, kind of, like, vulgar.
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