The Treatment of Evil in Early English Literature

Abstract

If ... it can be shown that Beowulf is truly meaningful in purely pagan terms; if the poem is founded upon pagan ideas of the nature of the cosmos and the struggle of good and evil; and if these ideas are inimical to Christian thought, then serious doubt is cast upon much recent criticism. For if these things are shown, then what can be made of the Beowulf poet? Can we legitimately argue that a mind steeped in paganism is capable of elaborate Christian allegory? Is the Beowulf poet another Augustine of Hippo? Or should we argue, instead, that the entire fabric of allegorical interpretation of the poem is seriously flawed? Again, can we accept any theory which proposes that the poem had its genesis in a monastic library? Would we not incline, rather, to the oral composition theory of the poem and perhaps even re-examine the interpolation theory apparently so thoroughly discredited? Finally, if it can be demonstrated that the poem rests upon pagan ideas of good and evil, then the 'meaning' of the poem must ultimately rest upon those ideas as well. Only by a similarity of type could critics argue for a Christian 'meaning' of the poem, and even then, such an argument would hold good only for the critic, and not for a pagan audience. I believe that the following study will show that all the conditions set down above can be met, and that a thorough-going pagan reading of Beowulf is not only practicable, but indeed the only possible reading of the poem.