Krantz

Transition from Beowulf to Chaucer

1. The Middle of Beowulf:
A. With Beowulf's victory over Grendel, the scop in the hall connects Beowulf with Sigemund, a great Germanic hero, and foreshadows the telling of Beowulf's story in a later hall (the present time of the telling of the story.) The story is framed by the joy of Hrothgar's retainers who race their horses back from tracking Grendel to the mere and who, like the scop, praise Beowulf.
B. One gnomic utterance is that "God may work wonder upon wonder." This connects Beowulf's victory to the protection of the Christian God even in seemingly impossible times. It teaches a lesson and thus justifies the use of poetry among the Christians and the writing down of it by the monks.
C. Hrothgar could adopt Beowulf who would then be in line for the kingship.  Wealtheow protects her son's right to the throne.
D. Recounting the monsters' stories lets us see the extent of their evil and explains where mama comes from.

E. The poet takes a jab at Unferth who was so quick to disparage Beowulf and yet is reluctant to emulate his courage.
F. Heremod is the antithesis of and a foil for B, Hroth, and Hygelac--he betrays his thanes, lives a solitary life, and is not generous.

2. The Ending of Beowulf is disturbing even though Wiglaf holds promise for his tribe.
A. Beowulf's death suggests that the age-old bonds of thane-lord are weakening--that whatever society invented the story, its values no longer have primacy.
B. Wergild is invented as a more Christian answer to the blood feud than slaughtering your enemy. Christianity sees peace as a gift from God, and that alone puts a warrior society into conflict with it. Moreover, the monks eventually become as important in the society as the leader warmakers. The third "estate" or the peasant-commoners were under the power of both groups.

3. Transition: In 1066 partly as a result of another Viking conquest in which King Knut of Denmark became king of England and the then-king was exiled to Normandy, William of Normandy invaded and conquered England. He brought the French language and French nobles and clerics to lead England. English Kings lived in France and spoke French for the next 300 years.

4. Edward's Line By Chaucer's time recurring occurrences of the plague, which took one-third of the people of Europe, the hundred years war fought by Chaucer's king, Edward III, to recover land and political power in France, and schism in the Church, because two popes had been elected, put the three estates (rulers, clerics, commoners) into flux. Deaths of large numbers of individuals in the ruling and priestly classes and the rise of the city with the growing economic power of the merchant classes and the trade guilds, put the social ranks into disarray. Chaucer became the first person in England to celebrate the common people.