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Teachers' Resource Web Study Questions on Beowulf Richard Kroll, UCI, 1990's 1. What is the problem of reading a poem like this in translation? What difficulties in interpreting events and characters does this problem emphasize? 2. What are your normal expectations when you read long prose narratives? What attitudes toward plot, causation, representation of time, character, and so forth does Beowulf fulfill or subvert? 3. What kinds of patterns do you see in Beowulf? 4. What kinds of attitudes is the "Prologue" trying to establish for the rest of the poem? What is the implied audience? What are the implied purposes of what that audience is about to hear/read? Is there any difference between hearing and reading such a poem? 5. What do you think is the function of the kennings (complex noun clusters like "swan's way" for "road," and so on)? What kind of world "outside" the poem's action do these kennings assume or create? 6. Regarding the "action": -What does Heorot look like to a Christian audience? -How is Grendel described? How does this description fit the Bible's language? -How does the poem's population know or recognize Grendel? -What is the pattern of Beowulf's arrival onto the scene? Any repetitions? To what effect? 7. What do you do with the theme of secrecy and openness? How does this fit into the poem's other concerns? Note: Read the background material I have given you. It is all useful. Remember that the Bible is itself a highly organized text, a formal document (a claim which authors do not necessarily use to impugn its truth value, as we shall see in Paradise Lost).
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