Krantz
Sample Essay and Production
The essay is not the length of the required essay but it demonstrates the type of argument and the writing level expected. It doesn't attempt to use specific critical theory and purposefully avoids critical jargon. If you are comfortable and skilled at using such, hopefully from your 3080 class, feel free to do so. In a 10-15 page paper, a couple of longer quotes from the material would be admissable, but they should never overshadown the commentary done on them. For example, a 10-line quote should be followed by significant commentary (more than 2-3 sentences).
Below you will find the following:
Note that the entire argument relies on the texts (including the Bible but especially the primary sources) and does not rely on or develop my own feelings and opinions about the issues. It also does not contain specifically researched material although my knowledge of the period makes me an expert in ways you are not. Much of what is here would probably require research on your part.
1. Topic: Many of the works we've studied deal with or show recognition of the doctrine of predestination. Select any two works we've studied and argue that the idea of predestination shown is the same or is different. If possible, connect the idea of predestination with one of these sources: Boethius or Augustine or Acquinas. (You will not be penalized if you don't make that connection.)
2. Freewrite: Consider Beowulf and Chauntecleer from the NPT. Beowulf seems much more Pauline and therefore after the manner of Augustine in his ideas. Fate plays an important role in Beowulf and perhaps suggest a pagan background where individual decisions are necessitated in a number of ways. Beowulf owes Hrothgar help because of the help Hrothgar gave to Beowulf's father at one point. Moreover, once Beowulf gets to Denmark and makes his boast, he is required to kill both Grendel and Grendel's mother. Beowulf's duty as a king requires that he fight the dragon. Beowulf himself foresees or at least intuits his destruction at the dragon's cave.
The idea of predestination in Beowulf stems from both the Norse mythology that decreed that both gods and heroes are ultimately destroyed and from the Christian reading of St. Paul's letter to the Romans that claims that God predestines those he foreknows.
Chauntecleer lives out a more Boethian notion of predestination. God's foreknowledge does not deprive people (or chickens) of free will. Just as fate is mentioned often in Beowulf, the free will debate occurs in a long passage in the Nuns' Priest's Tale. While the priest narrator doesn't take sides, he suggests that Chauntecleer's near-death is largely his own fault and that his escape follows from his cleverness. Although his prohetic dream demonstrates that God has foreknowledge of the rooster's impending danger, no sense exists that he can't escape such a doom and in fact he does escape.
One might be tempted to suggest that Beowulf's emphasis on predestination results from its pagan origins while the NPT reflects a more Christian emphasis on free will, but such is an oversimplification of Christian theology. Both tales are told in light of Christian consciousness and they reflect the tension that occurs in light of biblical passages that suggest that God is in control of everything while other passages suggest that humans are responsible for their actions. The inability to resolve this self-contradiction or even to live with it will emerge explosively in the reformation when Calvin makes double predestination the cornerstone of his religious teaching.
3. Outline
I. Introduction
II. Beowulf and Predestination
III. Chauntecleer and Free Will
IV. Conclusion
4. Polished Response (the introduction will make reference to the topic addressed but will narrow it to create an arguable thesis).
Diane Krantz
English 4610
December 6, 2004
The Power of Fate in Anglo-Saxon and Chaucerian Story
Ancient Pagan and Christian religions that have inspired heroic epics and pseudo-epics like Beowulf and the Nuns' Priest's Tale often struggle with the role of god in the life of the hero. Where god's power determines the outcome of events, the decisions of the hero appear useless, and where the hero's will directs the battle, the power of god seems superfluous. That Christians of all major denominations have, since the second century, grappled with the complex issue of predestination versus free will testifies to the difficulty of resolving it satisfactorily. I will compare the role of fate or predestination in Beowulf with its operation in NPT, showing that the latter serves as an example of how Boethius' ideas became enfleshed in Chaucer's tales and reflect the beliefs of modern Christians more than those of Augustine.
Fate or wyrd plays an important role in Beowulf . At the start of the main story Beowulf gives directions before the fight with Grendel about what to do with his body should he lose. He does so because "Fate goes ever as fate must," (Norton 42). The outcome of the battle depends on what God has decreed, not on Beowulf's skill. Hrothgar's own men have not been successful because, as he says, "fate sweepsthem away into Grendel's clutches–but God can easily halt these raids" (42). Not only are Hrothgar's Danes destroyed with God's permission, but God could stop the slaughter at any time!
In some places, the irony of the narrator's position about God's power over what is happening becomes clear. Beowulf points out to Unferth that "for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked" (44); that is, if someone has not been predestined to die at a certain moment, then his courage will save him. But this implies that if he is fated to die, nothing will save him. It also leaves the listener/reader to wonder what will happen to the coward if he isn't fated to die.
Grendel's actions are also under God's control. Once Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm, the narrator claims "all of us with souls …must make our way to a destination already ordained where the body…sleeps on its deathbed" (53). The words 'must,' implying necessity, and 'ordained,' implying already decided on, signal the control of God over Grendel's future.
Grendel's mother, too, is "doomed" (66), as is Handscio, the first warrior to die in our story (75). Finally Beowulf foresees or at least intuits his own destruction at the dragon's cave. There, according to the narrator, "he was destined to face the end of his days…as was the dragon" (82). Beowulf is not fated to meet his death because of old age but specifically in fighting the dragon.
His heroic death parallels that of the Norse gods who will be destroyed at the end of time along with all the heroes who have already died and been taken to Aasgard. Unable to escape annihilation through heroism or good works of any kind, they achieve victory only through facing such an end with courage. For the Christian scribe, this sad fate awaited all his pagan ancestors. His Christian foreparents were under a different necessity. He subscribed to what St. Paul asserts in his letter to the Romans, 8:29-30. "For those whom [God] has foreknown he has also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son…. And those whom he has predestined, them he has also called; and those whom he has called, them he has also justified, and those whom he has justified, them he has also glorified." According to Calvin, only God has free will. Those will be saved (glorified) that he elects.
Chaunteclee, and the Nuns' Priest, like most Christians, do not accept wholly either Paul's or Augustine's doctrine. The priest excuses himself from the argument by saying that if great teachers like Augustine, Bishop Bradwardine, and Boethius don't agree about predestination, he isn't about to try to solve the problem (306). Further he reminds us that his story is only about a chicken anyway (306). But the rooster seems to use Boethius's ideas of how God's foreknowledge works to save his own life.
Chauntecleer has been warned in a dream that he is to be captured by a fox (298). Only God's foreknowledge would account for such an accurate view of the future. Moreover the rooster relates to Pertelote, his wife, a whole series of biblical, classic, and popular stories about what happens to those who ignore prophetic dreams (300-304). He thus establishes the power of fate as revealed in dreams. Nonetheless, when Chauntecleer is caught by "daun Russel" the fox, he manages through his own wit to escape (309-10). God's foreknowledge of his capture does not guarantee the success of the fox.
NPT seems, then, to reflect a view of free will taught by Boethius. if God knows something, it must necessarily be true. Nonetheless, this necessity does not abridge human freedom. When a human knows someone is sitting that person is necessarily sitting;, so God's knowledge of the future means that future must happen necessarily. But also just as our knowing the person is sitting doesn't constrain him to sit, so God's knowing the future doesn't constrain how we act.
One might be tempted to suggest that Beowulf's emphasis on predestination results from its pagan origins while the NPT reflects a more Christian emphasis on free will, but such is an oversimplification of Christian theology. Both tales are told in light of Christian consciousness, and they reflect the tension that occurs in light of biblical passages some of which suggest that God is in control of everything while others suggest that humans are solely responsible for their own actions. The inability to resolve this self-contradiction or even to live with it will emerge explosively in the reformation when Calvin makes double predestination the cornerstone of his religious teaching. Eventually, however, even protestants, like Christians from the second century on, will ignore the dilemma and live as if free will alone determines the future.