Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Details
In class when we were all asked to think of a question, concern or something that you were wondering about in the poem, I really would like to know more about the details in the poem. The details or descriptions that were present at the time weren't very enlightening to me, so that made the story just rub off and not sink in too much. This was a problem when I was doing the questions and write ups for the story but anyway...if anyone would like to add on any ideas about how the details in the poem were scarce and not making the poem pop, let me know...
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4 comments:
Just as discussed in class today, i think that the illiterate scop would have had a hard time memorizing the story (which is one of the reasons why alliteration is used), never mind adding in lots of detail. I mean, if details were added, the poem would be much longer. Also, the Anglo-Saxon culture is centered around winning glory and fame, which is why only certain scenes are in detail, such as the fight with Grendel, and the celabration feasts.
I think reason that there is not that much detail in the book Beowulf is because the book mostly revolved around the action between Beowulf and the monsterous characters in the book(like Grendel, G'Mom and Dragon). I think you can say that there was little detail during the feasts, etc, but overall we don't know anything about the people in the Anglo-Saxon period.
I also think that might be the reason for less detail is that the creator wanted his audience to have an imagination. I dont think he wanted to give grendal a actual specific look. Who knows if it was thought like this but if you lived that long ago you dont have TV and entrainment other then your family. So in having this poem maybe it gave enterainment to the people because they were allowed to think up of what they wanted these monsters to look like.
Perhaps there is little detail because the composer of the poem already knew what their lifestyle was like, and he expected his listeners to know the culture as well. He did not expect the poem to be written down and be stored away in some library and not read until centuries later when no one knew the customs of that time period.
Also, as the monks transcribed the poem, they could have been lazy and decided not to include some of the details about Anglo-Saxon customs because they already knew the customs and were writing the poem simply for their generation's sake.
But I'm simply speculating and therefore 90% of all speculating will be wrong (which incidentally is a speculated number, with a high probability of being wrong).
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