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/lit/ - Literature

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19337783 No.19337783 [Reply] [Original]

>no longer would his snakefolds
>ply themselves to guard gold in the hoard:
>hard-edged blades, hammered out
>and keenly filed, had finished him
>so that the sky-roamer lay there rigid,
>brought low beside the treasure lodge

any recs for similar books with such visceral writing?
also Beowulf thread

>> No.19338071
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19338071

>>19337783
Nibelungenlied
>In stories of our fathers high marvels we are told
>Of champions well approved in perils manifold.
>Of feasts and merry meetings, of weeping and of wail
>And deeds of gallant daring I'll tell you in my tale.

>> No.19338186
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19338186

>>19337783
rich, but miserly
great, yet petty
cunning but oblivious
imperious yet defensive
mighty, yet vulnerable
kingly, but alone
filthy, but hidden
sour, yet complacent
intelligent, yet evil
playful, yet predatory
human, but also animal
the grotesque dragon

>> No.19338231

>>19338071
good point anon I forgot about Nibelungenlied, I've got The Ring of the Nibelung which I've yet to read but my understanding is that the story is mostly different to Nibelungenlied

>> No.19338254

>>19338231
The Ring of the Nibelung is a conglomeration of Scandinavian myths with the Nibelungenlied laid over the top.

>> No.19338453
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19338453

>>19337783
I'm reading beowulf right now. I'm at the part where he goes back home after killing grendel's mom and I think I got filtered because I dont see what's so great about this book. I'm not trying to bait here but to me this whole story it's just:
>hey filthy pagans! look how cool christianity is! why don't you join us?
I dont see what's so great about this poem... maybe it's the translation I'm reading but I'm not feeling anything.

>> No.19338550

>>19338453
I don't really see it as being about Christianity much at all. Rather, the Anglo-Saxons thought Beowulf was really fucking cool, and they wanted to keep him around at all costs, so of course he gets Christianized. A Christian King in Denmark around 200AD makes no fucking sense, but it's not supposed to. As the poem tells us, Beowulf was a good king.

>> No.19338591
File: 93 KB, 480x360, Kells dragon cat.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19338591

>>19338453
>>19338550
The Christian stuff was put in because monks wrote the version we have down. It's glaringly obvious because the Christian stuff breaks the narrative and goes "oh by the way praise the almighty". You can cut all the Christian stuff out and nothing changes in the core story. Also, the dragon isn't supposed to be a Biblical metaphor, it's more like Fafnir or the world-serpent. There's even a theory that the dragon was a slave/thief who turned into the dragon, which is just like Fafnir.

>> No.19338607

>>19338591
Of course; the most glaring example is the Skald singing about Genesis to 200AD Danish peasants. The point is though that the story is really independent of Beowulf's religious views. Beowulf is a good king, so a Christianized people require him to be a Christian, nothing more.

>> No.19338662

>>19338607
That Genesis part is funny because the sword made by giants shows a scene of the giants being destroyed by the blood of Ymir (I think), which would be the native creation myth, but integrated very well into the story unlike the Genesis part. There's also the treasure-trove built by what sounds like the same group of ancient giants.

You put it well, they basically dashed a hasty paint of Christianity on the story to make Beowulf as good a king as possible (in their minds) without deforming the story into theology.

>> No.19338682

>>19338591
There's a lot of debate over whether Christianity was in the original poem, from what I've read there's no answer so simple. We just don't know.

>> No.19338712

>>19337783
ebin of bilgames :DD (seriously though its great)

>> No.19338746

>>19338682
Honestly I think that comes from the earliest scholars being Christians and wanting to preserve what they saw as a Christian essence to the story. And those scholars became the basis for Beowulf studies. But it doesn't hold.

>> No.19338751

>>19338712
Crazy that the monster is killed halfway through and the second half the story is Gilgamesh so grieved by his friend's death that he goes on an obsessive quest for immortality. It's not what I expected at all.

>> No.19339208

>>19337783
Aeneid

>> No.19339236

>>19338746
There's definitely a lot more than just a purely superficial Christian plaster over the story, but at the same time the story doesn't depend on Christianity.

When I read it I couldn't figure either.

>> No.19339795

>>19339236
What are some Christian parts of the story that are more than superficial?

>> No.19340745

>>19339795
i went through and removed all the christian interpolations and the poem wasn't hampered at all. if anything, there was a greater clarity to it.

>> No.19341381

>>19338453
make sure you aren't speed reading because the actual plot is really short; it's poetry so the appeal is the writing as well as the historical insight

>>19340745
you could say that about the random interruptions that disrupt the flow of the story, but you could also argue that it's just part of what makes Beowulf what it is