Discussion Topic

Role and Impact of Digressions in Beowulf

Summary:

In Beowulf, digressions serve multiple purposes, enhancing narrative depth and audience engagement. They connect the main plot to familiar stories, helping listeners comprehend themes like heroism, grief, and kingship. These digressions, such as those about Sigemond and Heremod, contrast Beowulf's virtues with other characters' flaws, reinforcing cultural values. Furthermore, they maintain audience interest in this oral tradition, highlighting the cultural significance of storytelling and the preservation of history through narrative.

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What role do the digressions play in Beowulf and how do they impact the main action?

In order to understand the digressions in Beowulf, it's important to understand the context in which the poem would originally have been performed. It's a long, long poem, and it would have been delivered orally. This means that not only did the poet have to remember the whole poem, he also had to maintain the interest of the audience.

The digressions in Beowulf represent a means of keeping the audience's attention, to begin with. Often the poet brings in well-known stories, so even if somebody hadn't been there for the beginning of the poem, they'd know who was being referred to in the digression , as they would have heard that story before. This means someone could come into the poem in the middle, hear the digression, and recognize that, ah! What's going on in the main narrative is similar to this story, which is familiar to all. The...

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digressions also give the audience a bit of a break from the main narrative, in much the same way that Shakespeare often breaks up his tragedies with seemingly random comic scenes -- or even in the same way that, on television, the director might cut between the A-plot and a B-plot, which will often represent a similar theme on a smaller scale.

In Beowulf, the digressions help us understand the main plot, not only because they rely upon cultural understanding from the original audience, but also because they draw out what is important about the main narrative and what key themes we're supposed to be thinking about. The digressions raise issues around what it is to be a queen; what it is to be a successful peaceweaver as a woman; what is it to be a father who has lost a son, and so forth. They invite us to compare Modthryth to Wealtheow, to think about grief in the Anglo-Saxon cultural context, and so on. For the Anglo-Saxon audience, the digressions helped them place a new-to-them story in an existing context; for us, the digressions give us a better understanding of the cultural context as a whole.

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Digression (getting off track) is used in a stylistic way to weave themes together into a leit motif, to enhance character development, and to heighten suspense through anticipation:

The action of Beowulf is not straightforward. The narrator foreshadows actions that will occur later, talking about events that are yet to come. Characters talk about things that have already happened in the poem. Both narrator and characters recall incidents and characters outside the poem's main narrative. These "digressions" (see Style section below) are connected thematically to the main action. Critics once saw the digressions as flaws. The poet, however, was consciously using them to characterize human experience, stressing recurring patterns, and to represent the characters' attempts to understand their situation (see Themes section below).

                                    - from enotes, Beowulf, 'Summary'

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What is the purpose of the Sigemond and Heremod digressions in Beowulf?

The poet uses Sigemond and his killing of the dragon as a positive comparison with Beowulf even though the results of their respective fights are vastly different—Sigemond kills his dragon and takes the dragon's hoard whereas Beowulf kills the dragon and saves his kingdon, but dies in the process. The main point of the Heremod digression, however, is to point up the difference between a bad king, who fell victim to "floods of sorrow" and betrayed his duties as king, and Beowulf, who has already shown his ability to protect his people and his stronghold (Heorot). A secondary but perhaps equally important reason for the digression is to discuss kingship. Even though Beowulf's fight with Grendel appears as the centerpiece of the poem—the action that readers remember—it is just one episode in the long life of a king who ultimately is known and loved for having created a powerful and peaceful kingdom for the Geats and who dies protecting his people from evil (the dragon).

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What is the significance of digressions in Beowulf?

It is unfortunate that Beowulf is our only true example of Anglo-Saxon poetry of this length, as it is likely that scops or bards of the ninth century would have known several heroic epics which, for various reasons, were not simply chronological narrations of a single story. The digressions we see in the context of Beowulf, a poem from an oral tradition, are in many ways precursors to the very careful arrangements found in slightly later collections of works like The Exeter Book, where the placement of each work tells the reader something about the works to either side of it. The Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wife's Lament,"for example, has been hugely debated because of its placement in The Exeter Book, which may suggest that it is not only a lament but a gnomic poem or riddle. In the same way, one purpose of the digressions in Beowulf is to make the listener reconsider the main narrative of the poem in the context of what is contained in the digression. 

The answer above illustrates how this could be the case in the Unferth digression. There are many other places in Beowulf where the narrative diverges from the main story thread in a way that is significant to the plot. For example, the women in Anglo-Saxon tradition are often cast in the role of "peaceweaver," seen most obviously in Beowulf in the person of Hrothgar's wife, Wealtheow. There are several digressions in the text which invite the listener to consider this womanly role and what can happen when queens do not fulfil it. One early digression narrates the story of Hildeburh, a princess sent to marry Finn of Frisia. Theoretically, she should have served to unite two families, protecting them from violence, but in effect, Hildeburh loses her son, brother, and husband in battle and is carried back to her home country in disgrace as a widow. Later, a digression tells the story of Thryth or Modthryth, a queen who, unlike Hildeburh, is actively malicious, and we are invited to consider her unwomanly behavior as a foil to Hygd's in the main narrative. 

One of the most famous digressions in the poem is the section often called "The Father's Lament" (from line 2444). This section describes the grief of a father who has lost a son and lived on beyond that loss. Much Anglo-Saxon poetry focuses upon the pain of the survivor, which would have resonated with the audience, but moreover, this section follows directly from the death of Hrethel in the main narrative. The hypothetical father alluded to in the digression is, the scop tells us, the "guardian of inheritance" or the one responsible for carrying on the memory of his dead son. In the same way, then, those who hear the tale of Hrethel are responsible for preventing his memory from being lost: the message of "The Father's Lament" is a defence of telling and retelling oral histories over the centuries. 

There is no doubt that the structure of this poem is very carefully arranged, with the digressions placed specifically to allow reflection upon and further understanding of the main narrative. However, it is also useful to consider oral-tradition poems in their original context and remember that listeners can sometimes become bored with a single story. The digressions in Beowulf may also have served simply to revive flagging interest, remind listeners of why the main story matters, and provide opportunity to incorporate other familiar stories into the story of Beowulf. 

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What is the purpose of the digressions in lines 7709-1382 of Beowulf?

Following Beowulf's defeat of the monster Grendel, the Danes and Geats celebrate with quite traditional mead-hall revelry. Warriors from all over the kingdom gathered both inside and outside of the hall, racing their horses in sport and flocking to see the great wonder of a new hero in the land. King Hrothgar's minstrel sang songs of Beowulf's victory and the king himself thanked Beowulf for rescuing the kingdom, promising to adopt him as a son and bless him with treasure. The oral tradition of poetry is evident here, in that Beowulf tells the story of his victory as well. After all, it was quite valued to be able to tell a good story. The warriors continue to drink and sing throughout the night, further establishing Hrothgar's great hall as a monumental establishment in this land.

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