1/15/20 Chelsea Lum Period 8

January 15,2020

Chelsea Lum Period 8

Blogger #17

Aim: How does the construction of Grendel as a monster indicate and embody the fears of the Nordic people during the Early Medieval Period?

In class today, we viewed the presentation by ourselves because Ms. Fusaro was out. The presentation began with a “Do Now,” which was:

Explain how the narrator describes the tactics the Danes used to try and drive Grendel away from their lands. What can we ascertain about civilization, judgment, and righteousness?

The next slide gave us some insight on the history behind The Dark Ages. We learn that the Scandinavians were one of the parts of Europe that were eventually christianized by the Anglo-Saxons. This caused great influence in “Beowulf” because the first person to write this story down was a Christian monk. He probably changed some parts of the story to fit Christianity better.

On the third slide, we watched a video of an English professor reading the opening lines of “Beowulf” in Old English, which was very interesting to listen to. From this video, we can see that certain parts of English have been kept the same. However, many words have evolved into different pronunciations and definitions overtime. Hs reading sounded familiar, although it was very hard to understand and sounded like gibberish. 

On the fourth slide, we learned about metonymy. It is a blanketing term for kennings and synetockys.The definition of metonymy is “a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated.” 

Kennings are a rehtorical device of Old English and is used to attribute through forms of metaphors and metonymy. An example would be that in Beowulf, Grendel is described as a “shepherd of evil.”

Next, the slide following it described a caesura, which is a rhythmic pause in a poetic line or sentence. In modern language, it is shown through punctuation. I believe that the purpose of these pauses is to make the story seem more natural and more real. If we read Beowulf without any natural pauses, it would feel too robot-like and unnatural. By having natural pauses, it makes the story come more alive in a way.

The last few slides asked questions about the metaphorical interpretation of Grendel. Through our group discussions, we came to the conclusion that Grendel is an interpretation of the Devil. However, we do not know it is the definite answer. Evidence that supports this is that like the devil, both of them distrubed the people in society. The devil bothers humans, just like Grendel disturbes the Danes. Grendel could also be considered an outsider, which is also what the devil was.