Justin Enriquez
British Lit. P.6
30 August 2013
The Analysis of
Beowulf
My take on agreeing or
disagreeing with the criticism made by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien on Beowulf is
that I do in fact agree with the author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. From his
critique on Beowulf I agreed with his view on the missing elements of poetry
that the unknown author of Beowulf failed to provide. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
provides a very accurate perception on Beowulf in which he states, “Beowulf has
been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been
studied as a work of art". In addition, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien also
states, “So far from being a poem so poor that only its accidental historical
interest can still recommend it”. In these statements of Beowulf that John
Ronald Reuel Tolkien provides, he is basically saying that Beowulf is utilized
more as a historic story of fiction than
what it is meant to be used and appreciated as which is a poetic story in which
lies historic events. One reason why many readers may mistake Beowulf
as a fictional story rather than a piece of poetic literature is largely due to
the style in which the unknown author of Beowulf wrote it in. Normally, readers
would read poetry as short stanzas in which additional lines may be provided by
the specified author. However, Beowulf being in the epic style it exists in is 3,182 lines of alliteration long. Beowulf is written as an epic poem which
is a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds. This plays a major role in
how readers perceive Beowulf because if it were written in the lines of how
readers regularly perceive poetry than it would be more easily identifiable.
Therefore, since Beowulf is written in its epic style readers fail to perceive
it as poetic literature and instead a very long historic fictional story. As
one has just read, I do in fact agree with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and his
analysis of Beowulf and how he criticized the epic poem stating that the author
failed to represent poetry in his literary work.
