Looking Back in Beowulf

R. M. Liuzza states in our Intro to Beowulf that the average reader approaches the text with the expectation that s/he will come face to face with the "collective unconscious of English culture, [that the text] will allow him to experience at first hand what is primordial, elemental and primitively powerful in it." But, he goes on to say, the reader finds that Beowulf does not contain anything we might call primorodial but is, itself, looking back as well (17). It's as if we are reading an epic about the making of an epic. This raises the question as to whether there is anything "primordial" or "elemental" in any culture or literature or whether whatever is deemed to be "primoridial" is, itself, contingent on the age (among many other things).

This idea of looking back has always fascinated me as it has fascinated many who are interested in understanding, not only literary or nationalisitic origins, but also human ones. The Victorian period is wrought with novels and essays and poems about looking backwards to our past, our primal ancestors, at the same time that they are fervently pushing forward with industrialization and modernization. This idea that we cannot move forward without taking stock of our origins is not a new one and it seems to be operating in Beowulf in a fundamental way.

I should say at this point that I have only done the reading for our first Beowulf meeting - just wrapped up the battle and defeat of Grendel. It seems to me to be a battle between the hero, Beowulf, and the very material and extremely hostile world in which Beowulf must decide what man he will be and what he will fight/stand for. This battle becomes a microcosm for the world at large that is taking stock of the kind of nation and people they want to be. They must rid themselves of the past that no longer serves them (and maybe Grendel is a symbolic stand-in for paganism?) before they can move forward to what seems to be a more Christian future. They must, in a sense, come to terms about their past before they can move forward.