1 00:00:00,900 --> 00:00:08,160 My name is Frances Leneghan, I am university lecturer in Old English, and I'm a fellow of St Cross College here at Oxford, 2 00:00:08,160 --> 00:00:15,810 and I work on old English literature by which we mean literature that was written in England between about 650 and the 11th century. 3 00:00:15,810 --> 00:00:17,790 It's what we call the Anglo-Saxon period. 4 00:00:17,790 --> 00:00:24,000 And I'm interested in all aspects of old English literature, poetry and prose, particularly the poem Beowulf. 5 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:27,090 SP2 -What first attracted you to the study of old English? 6 00:00:27,090 --> 00:00:34,500 Well, I studied English studies at university in Trinity College, Dublin, and like here at Oxford's, old English was part of the syllabus. 7 00:00:34,500 --> 00:00:41,610 We did it in the first year. And I have to admit, I struggled with it. I struggled with the language and I found it very alien and strange. 8 00:00:41,610 --> 00:00:46,920 And in fact, it was this that actually appealed to me. I ended up studying a lot of middle English literature and my third and fourth year, 9 00:00:46,920 --> 00:00:52,350 and this sort of led me naturally back to the roots or the origins of English writing and English literature. 10 00:00:52,350 --> 00:01:00,090 And I think in particular, the fact that at school level in England, in the UK, we often start with 1066 11 00:01:00,090 --> 00:01:04,770 We start with the end of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and the beginning of the Norman Kingdoms. 12 00:01:04,770 --> 00:01:09,130 We trace the history of our kings and queens back to William the Conqueror. And this always puzzled me. 13 00:01:09,130 --> 00:01:14,640 And I was rather ignorant of what happened before the Norman conquest. And I suppose that's what got my attention. 14 00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:22,320 This sort of strange, seemingly very foreign literature that the more you look at it begins to emerge as English. 15 00:01:22,320 --> 00:01:27,930 So I believe that at Cambridge they're not studying old English within the English undergraduate. 16 00:01:27,930 --> 00:01:31,950 Why do you think Oxford has decided to keep this on? Well, it's a contentious issue. 17 00:01:31,950 --> 00:01:36,210 Even today, the Anglo Saxon referred to their language as English, English, 18 00:01:36,210 --> 00:01:43,320 and there's no reason to cut old English off from middle English or early modern English except out of a sense of convenience. 19 00:01:43,320 --> 00:01:45,180 Really, it is difficult. It's challenging. 20 00:01:45,180 --> 00:01:50,910 And undergraduates do find it difficult, but I don't think that's a reason to cut it off from the rest of English literature. 21 00:01:50,910 --> 00:01:57,270 I think it's very difficult to read middle English literature if you don't know old English literature, particularly the alliterative poetry. 22 00:01:57,270 --> 00:02:01,380 Some of the great poems of the 14th century are written in a style that harks 23 00:02:01,380 --> 00:02:04,740 back to the Anglo-Saxon alliterative styles so Sir Gawain and the Green knight 24 00:02:04,740 --> 00:02:09,720 For example, we're all familiar with this poem. If you don't know any old English, it's very, very difficult to understand this stuff. 25 00:02:09,720 --> 00:02:13,920 So by cutting off old English, you're also cutting off much of middle English. 26 00:02:13,920 --> 00:02:20,160 So it makes sense to start at the beginning. So do you think the old English should be introduced before undergraduate level? 27 00:02:20,160 --> 00:02:27,910 Do you think that would be useful? I think there are many modern translations of old English poetry that are appealing to younger readers. 28 00:02:27,910 --> 00:02:32,040 When people come for interview here at Oxford, they've often read Seamus Heaney is Beowulf, for example. 29 00:02:32,040 --> 00:02:37,930 And I think that's a good way of familiarising yourself with at least the themes and some aspects of the style of old English poetry. 30 00:02:37,930 --> 00:02:44,100 Heaney, to some extent, imitates the alliterative style of old English and other modern poets have tried that. 31 00:02:44,100 --> 00:02:51,720 I think there's a lot to be said for introducing sixth formers to some aspects of the early history of the English language as well. 32 00:02:51,720 --> 00:02:55,590 If they're interested in linguistics, just to get a sense of where the English language comes from, 33 00:02:55,590 --> 00:03:01,110 most of the words we're using now come from old English. You only have to look at the OED to see that. 34 00:03:01,110 --> 00:03:05,250 And I think there's a lot to be said for at least introducing it in small doses. 35 00:03:05,250 --> 00:03:11,820 I know that some people do Chaucer at a level now, but in some ways Chaucer is the beginning of what I would call modern English literature. 36 00:03:11,820 --> 00:03:18,360 It's a sort of halfway point in English literary history, and it's good to get people at least interested in what was happening before Chaucer. 37 00:03:18,360 --> 00:03:22,980 I mean, the style of old English poetry to some extent dies out in the late 14th century. 38 00:03:22,980 --> 00:03:27,480 Deliberative style goes into decline, but there are still traces of it to this day. 39 00:03:27,480 --> 00:03:31,320 You'll find it in the works of Hopkins, for example, or Auden and Heaney, 40 00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:36,590 not only in his translation of Beowulf, but in his own poetry often uses old English poetic style. 41 00:03:36,590 --> 00:03:40,290 So it's still around us, even though we might not be directly aware of it. 42 00:03:40,290 --> 00:03:47,880 So I know that you spent a lot of time studying Beowulf. Why do you think it's still really important to study this epic poem? 43 00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:54,720 Why should we read Beowulf? Woody Allen says to Annie Hall that you should never take any course that requires you to read Beowulf. 44 00:03:54,720 --> 00:04:00,300 There is a sort of perception that Beowulf is this difficult obstacle to be overcome maybe in the first year of an English degree. 45 00:04:00,300 --> 00:04:05,880 And the Norton Anthology, it's at the very beginning. You read that first and you move on to romance or stuff that's more familiar. 46 00:04:05,880 --> 00:04:12,030 It's a sort of Quarrie to be overcome. Balfe is a difficult work, I think self consciously difficult and complex. 47 00:04:12,030 --> 00:04:18,990 It's far and away the most sophisticated poem in any European vernacular, modern European vernacular before Danti. 48 00:04:18,990 --> 00:04:21,930 And if you're interested in literature, that's a good enough reason to study it. 49 00:04:21,930 --> 00:04:27,660 But if you're interested in English literature in particular, Beowulf perhaps doesn't cast a shadow so much of a middle English literature. 50 00:04:27,660 --> 00:04:31,950 But in old English literature it seems to have influenced other works. 51 00:04:31,950 --> 00:04:32,700 There's a life of St. 52 00:04:32,700 --> 00:04:39,780 Andrew, for example, in verse which seems to borrow heavily from Beowulf, and it may also have influenced other forms of writing, 53 00:04:39,780 --> 00:04:44,820 like royal genealogies and so on, which might borrow from Beowulf as a poem in its own right. 54 00:04:44,820 --> 00:04:48,360 It's a very rewarding text to study. It's very rich, it's very dense. 55 00:04:48,360 --> 00:04:52,710 It contains many genres within it. It's not simply heroic poetry or epic poetry. 56 00:04:52,710 --> 00:04:56,970 It contains elements and sermons and all kinds of other genres within it. 57 00:04:56,970 --> 00:05:03,150 And by reading Beowulf, you really get a sense of the range. Of styles available in old English poetry. 58 00:05:03,150 --> 00:05:11,620 We think of prospective undergraduates, what skills can they gain in the process of examining this classic book by reading Beowulf? 59 00:05:11,620 --> 00:05:16,960 You not only learn about early English history and culture and the way the Anglo-Saxon is understood, 60 00:05:16,960 --> 00:05:21,250 their own history, their pre migration history on the continent. 61 00:05:21,250 --> 00:05:25,660 But you also learn the skills of close reading that you need as part of an English degree. 62 00:05:25,660 --> 00:05:30,940 When doing old English, you're looking at morphemes and phonemes. You're looking at language very, very carefully. 63 00:05:30,940 --> 00:05:35,260 It's probably the closest close reading you'll ever do in your English course, 64 00:05:35,260 --> 00:05:44,350 and it teaches you to look at style and to look as poetic devices in sort of microcosm the commentary aspect of the old English paper. 65 00:05:44,350 --> 00:05:50,110 It's very important in that respect, I think. But it also teaches you to to seek to place the text within a context. 66 00:05:50,110 --> 00:05:54,310 Beowulf is famously a text without a context. We don't know when it was composed. 67 00:05:54,310 --> 00:05:59,500 It could be any time between about seven hundred and eleven hundred. Ten hundred is the date of the manuscript. 68 00:05:59,500 --> 00:06:03,790 But some people have insisted on an early 11th century date for the poem, which is controversial. 69 00:06:03,790 --> 00:06:12,100 But even by trying to date the poem or locate it within a historical context, it introduces students to the problems of contextualising literature, 70 00:06:12,100 --> 00:06:17,380 the importance of it, and also the difficulties that we have with the text that doesn't really have a context. 71 00:06:17,380 --> 00:06:21,350 So in light of that, are there any echoes of Beowulf in modern literary works? 72 00:06:21,350 --> 00:06:27,340 Can you see, in other words, they adopt similar narrative devices or stylistic techniques? 73 00:06:27,340 --> 00:06:31,930 The narrative style of Beowulf is something that's always posed problems. 74 00:06:31,930 --> 00:06:34,870 Klaiber, who is the great editor of the poem in the early 20th century, 75 00:06:34,870 --> 00:06:39,280 said that the poem lacks steady advance as if the poem was meant to advance steadily. 76 00:06:39,280 --> 00:06:43,060 It doesn't move from one thing to the next in any linear fashion. 77 00:06:43,060 --> 00:06:45,070 It's constantly moving backwards and forwards. 78 00:06:45,070 --> 00:06:51,080 But this is something that modern readers are familiar with, in fact, and we're familiar with it from television, from radio. 79 00:06:51,080 --> 00:06:55,420 It's what we might call a polyphonic narrative or an interlaced narrative. 80 00:06:55,420 --> 00:06:57,790 It's constantly zooming backwards and forwards in time. 81 00:06:57,790 --> 00:07:04,600 And this confuses some readers who are looking for something different, looking for a straightforward tale about monster slaying and so on. 82 00:07:04,600 --> 00:07:08,260 They're often disappointed when they come to Beowulf and find that it's as much about the 83 00:07:08,260 --> 00:07:12,940 history of fifth and sixth century Scandinavian kings as it is about Grendel or the Dragon, 84 00:07:12,940 --> 00:07:16,870 and that style of telling a story of not really beginning at the beginning and proceeding to 85 00:07:16,870 --> 00:07:20,290 the middle and proceeding to the end of things that we find throughout modern literature. 86 00:07:20,290 --> 00:07:25,250 In fact, modernist literature, postmodern literature is often described in those sort of terms. 87 00:07:25,250 --> 00:07:32,710 So these are things that we might be familiar with in modern writing or storytelling in terms of the style choices passing in the late 14th century, 88 00:07:32,710 --> 00:07:37,960 dismisses alliterative verse and says, I'm a Southern man, I can't run around rough, I don't do that sort of thing. 89 00:07:37,960 --> 00:07:44,410 But many poets in the 14th century were still using that technique. I've mentioned the go in poet already, Langoulant, etc. 90 00:07:44,410 --> 00:07:50,650 In more recent years, modern poets have engaged with the stylistic aspects of all English poetry. 91 00:07:50,650 --> 00:07:56,500 I've mentioned Hopkins already who uses what he calls spring rhythm, which is influenced by his reading of old English poetry, 92 00:07:56,500 --> 00:08:01,060 the sort of densely alliterative style and also the use of compound diction. 93 00:08:01,060 --> 00:08:03,370 Old English poetry is characterised by compounding. 94 00:08:03,370 --> 00:08:08,350 Will you stick two words together to create a new word like railroad, which is a compound for the sea? 95 00:08:08,350 --> 00:08:16,720 And you'll find this in Hopkins's works. Others have attempted sort of retellings of old English poetry that avoid the style of old English poetry, 96 00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:19,570 but try and update the ideas to some extent. 97 00:08:19,570 --> 00:08:28,900 So, for example, Bernard O'Donohue has a translation or a reworking of The Wanderer set in a modern context that avoids old initial iterative style, 98 00:08:28,900 --> 00:08:34,990 but uses those ideas of exile and wandering and isolation and puts them in a sort of modern context. 99 00:08:34,990 --> 00:08:42,010 These are ways of getting people interested in old English, perhaps, but also of re-engaging with old English literature as literature. 100 00:08:42,010 --> 00:08:45,850 So we're talking about the way in which we could no echoes of Beowulf. 101 00:08:45,850 --> 00:08:52,510 In modern times, there's been multiple adaptations, including the two thousand seven computer animated film. 102 00:08:52,510 --> 00:08:58,120 What's your take on these modern interpretations? Yeah, well, Beowulf is more popular now than it ever has been. 103 00:08:58,120 --> 00:09:04,960 I mean, between the copying of the poem in the manuscript that we have in around the year 1000 and the 19th century, 104 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:07,150 it hardly seems to have been read at all. 105 00:09:07,150 --> 00:09:15,550 And yet now you walk into any bookshop and you can see ten different translations of it and you've got films and video games and all sorts of things. 106 00:09:15,550 --> 00:09:20,620 In some ways, the twenty seven film is a very sophisticated response, I think, 107 00:09:20,620 --> 00:09:24,610 to the problems that critics have encountered in trying to make sense of the film. 108 00:09:24,610 --> 00:09:28,990 In some ways, it smooths out many of those problems that we have with Beowulf. 109 00:09:28,990 --> 00:09:31,780 Why doesn't the poem begin with the hero Beowulf? 110 00:09:31,780 --> 00:09:37,030 Why does it begin with someone else who seems to be called Beowulf, who doesn't have any obvious connexion with our hero? 111 00:09:37,030 --> 00:09:41,740 And Beowulf travels to the court of King Growth and kills a monster Grendel. 112 00:09:41,740 --> 00:09:46,510 There is a debate over the succession in Rothko's court. Beowulf is a perfect candidate for the throne. 113 00:09:46,510 --> 00:09:52,930 In many ways, the people seem to want him to become king. It would make sense for him to become king, and yet he doesn't. 114 00:09:52,930 --> 00:09:56,830 He returns home to his own kingdom, where later he becomes king of his own tribe. 115 00:09:56,830 --> 00:10:05,580 And this sort of bipartite structures has troubled. Critics, but in the film, he does become king of the Danes and he does marry Rothko's daughter. 116 00:10:05,580 --> 00:10:13,260 And so the hero gets the girl. The film turns it into a sort of modern family drama, in a sense, a sort of psychodrama. 117 00:10:13,260 --> 00:10:19,200 It's about the king as a fatally flawed individual who lies about his own achievements, in fact. 118 00:10:19,200 --> 00:10:25,230 And this is also something that I think is there in the poem, the sense of telling tall tales about yourself. 119 00:10:25,230 --> 00:10:30,900 There are different versions of burbles fight with Breker, for example. Beowulf tells one version of invertors another. 120 00:10:30,900 --> 00:10:37,560 And in the film in the 2007 film, the Robert Zemeckis film Babel doesn't in fact, Paul Grendel's arm off. 121 00:10:37,560 --> 00:10:42,300 It's ripped off by chain that's tied around a door. And I think Beowulf is almost surprised by that. 122 00:10:42,300 --> 00:10:50,100 But later in the film, when he's become king, a poet recites the account of Beowulf pulling Grendel's arm off from the old English poem, in fact. 123 00:10:50,100 --> 00:10:53,610 And the king looks rather sheepish. So I think there's something interesting going on there. 124 00:10:53,610 --> 00:11:01,500 I think all the tensions within the palm of the structure, the many of the themes are resolved in this film. 125 00:11:01,500 --> 00:11:08,040 But if we focus on those things that they've actually smoothed over, those are some of the most interesting things in Babel, I think. 126 00:11:08,040 --> 00:11:14,250 Do you think it can be useful to use some of these modern interpretations when trying to understand? 127 00:11:14,250 --> 00:11:17,100 What do you think it's important just to start with the text itself? 128 00:11:17,100 --> 00:11:22,290 Yeah, I think a lot of people that teach Beowulf now say you shouldn't look at the film because it's all wrong, but I think they will. 129 00:11:22,290 --> 00:11:29,010 The poem that we call Beowulf is simply one version of a series of stories that must have circulated from the time. 130 00:11:29,010 --> 00:11:33,210 If you go back and forth, go from the sixth century all the way up until the date of the manuscript. 131 00:11:33,210 --> 00:11:37,350 And within the poem itself, there's a sort of commentary on this tradition of storytelling. 132 00:11:37,350 --> 00:11:41,100 People tell stories about each other within the poem and then they're often contradicted. 133 00:11:41,100 --> 00:11:46,620 So I think Balfe itself opens up this idea of their not being one version of a tale. 134 00:11:46,620 --> 00:11:51,690 Every poet tells his own story and uses traditional stories to create a new story. 135 00:11:51,690 --> 00:11:55,020 And the story of Beowulf then doesn't end with the Beowulf manuscript. 136 00:11:55,020 --> 00:12:00,210 I think these modern interpretations tell us much more about our society than they do about the Bible. 137 00:12:00,210 --> 00:12:02,790 But that in itself is very interesting and that's something I always get my 138 00:12:02,790 --> 00:12:07,350 students to look at as modern translations or interpretations of the Bible. 139 00:12:07,350 --> 00:12:12,570 But we have to put the poem itself at the centre of our study because our principal interest in old English literature. 140 00:12:12,570 --> 00:12:18,130 So do you ever forget that you're reading something that's between the 8th and 11th century? 141 00:12:18,130 --> 00:12:23,340 No, because to read Beowulf is very challenging and you're constantly having to look words 142 00:12:23,340 --> 00:12:28,350 up and think about grammar and think about complex problems of interpretations. 143 00:12:28,350 --> 00:12:32,370 So there's a real sense of otherness about it, which is in a way very appealing. 144 00:12:32,370 --> 00:12:35,760 So there's no danger that you're ever going to just flick through very naturally. 145 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:41,980 Having said that, the more familiar you are with the poem, the more you can appreciate its complexity and subtlety. 146 00:12:41,980 --> 00:12:43,920 But it's a challenge worth taking. 147 00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:48,270 Yeah, it's a challenge that I think if you want to come to university and read English literature, you want to be challenged. 148 00:12:48,270 --> 00:12:51,300 You don't just want to read stuff that you can read for fun at home. 149 00:12:51,300 --> 00:12:56,170 So it's probably the most challenging material that you might read as part of an English degree. 150 00:12:56,170 --> 00:13:01,800 But many students find it the most rewarding, I think, in that respect. So to sum up, why should we keep studying? 151 00:13:01,800 --> 00:13:06,900 For the first time I ever went to an academic conference and people asked me what I was working on and I said Beowulf. 152 00:13:06,900 --> 00:13:10,380 And many people said, hasn't that already been done? 153 00:13:10,380 --> 00:13:15,480 And this puzzled me really, because every time someone comes to read Beowulf, they find something new in it. 154 00:13:15,480 --> 00:13:19,080 And there's a whole industry of academic writing on the poem. 155 00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:23,700 But every student who reads it, everybody who reads the translation of it, find something new in it. 156 00:13:23,700 --> 00:13:30,750 I think this is because Beowulf is a poem that throws up questions and it doesn't provide easy answers. 157 00:13:30,750 --> 00:13:38,160 One of the main themes of the poem is Warfare is fighting. It begins with a king attacking his neighbours and winning the respect of the poet. 158 00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:41,280 He says that was a good king because he terrifies his neighbours. 159 00:13:41,280 --> 00:13:47,550 But soon we find that his descendants are then terrified by a monster who seems to be doing very similar things to the king himself, 160 00:13:47,550 --> 00:13:50,970 destroying whole terrifying things in the hall. 161 00:13:50,970 --> 00:13:57,180 And at the end of the poem, we have a tribe faced with invasion who've lost their own king because of his decision to go to war. 162 00:13:57,180 --> 00:14:02,310 And so the poem is constantly throwing up these questions about when we should fight, what are the consequences of fighting, 163 00:14:02,310 --> 00:14:09,750 what it means to fight in a society where war is is endemic, is necessary for the survival of the people, but also has consequences. 164 00:14:09,750 --> 00:14:12,810 And Will keeps throwing up these sort of questions and critics keep debating them. 165 00:14:12,810 --> 00:14:16,662 But these are exactly the questions that I think the poem is designed to foreground.