Here's a three-sentence answer:
The narrator of the epic poem Beowulf is Christian, but Beowulf sure isn't. If Beowulf goes anywhere when he dies, it's into the immortal realm of legends and heroes. The Germanic people that Beowulf represents didn't have a Christian afterlife; they saw as immortality as something secured by being so great (incl. killing humans better than anyone else) in this world that people would continue to talk about them even after they're long dead.
If that's not enough, here's some more:
Beowulf's a character out of the pagan Germanic past that was carried over to England when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (among other, smaller groups) swept into the island from mainland Europe to fill the power vacuum left by the retreating Romans. That pagan past didn't disappear when Christianity spread across England.
No comments:
Post a Comment