The "Battle with the Monster" : transformation of a traditional pattern in "The Dream of the Rood"

In what follows I intend to show how the Rood poet drew upon the "Battle with the Monster" sequence as a strategy for the poem's composition. Albert Lord focused upon this narrative pattern within Indo-European epic, with particular emphasis on the theme of the "Death of the Substitute."3 More recently, in Immanent Art, Foley has expounded upon the sequence, defining the Battle with the Monster sequence as a combination of five specific concomitants: Arming, Boast, Monster's Approach, Death of the Substitute, and Engagement (though these events may occur in differing order). It should be said at this point that even Foley asserts that within the corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry the "Battle with the Monster" sequence is manifest in only one poem, Beowulf (1991:232). His analysis consists of a codification of this sequence in terms of the "succession of actions and motifs" (231) that comprise it as shown in that poem. Foley's aim is a consideration of how the "Battle with the Monster" sequence as evident in Beowulf helps us in understanding that poem's traditional structure, how "oral-formulaic structure stands as a viable hypothesis" for this patterning (232). But I would suggest that the pattern that emerges in Foley's discussion of the sequence in Beowulf is one startlingly close to the pattern of conflict that emerges in "The Dream of the Rood."/

Forged Ties: the \u27Comitatus\u27 and Anglo -Saxon Poetry.

The focus of this study is the illumination of the most unchanging and consistent aspect of Anglo-Saxon poetry: the poetic representation of the ethos of the warrior band. The ideals of the comitatus offer a contributing, if not controlling, structure to nearly the entire corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry. That warband could attain no finer poetic representation than Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, which, in presenting not only positive but negative models of behavior, best exemplify the ideals of the comitatus as embodied in Anglo-Saxon verse. Chapter 1 examines the institutions and practices of that masculine circle as illustrated in these poems. The second chapter is as a vital companion to the first. Though the comitatus is exclusively male, it is a mistaken presumption that women had no influence with regard to that group. Contrary to common perceptions, women had a critical position within the male organization of the warband. Chapter 2 examines that role. This, however, is not the entire scope of the dissertation. Of course, it is virtually impossible for a dissertation to detail every reference within Anglo-Saxon verse where the ideals of the comitatus are pertinent; thus, chapters 3 and 4 focus on the manifestations of the comitatus in the poetic situations where we would least expect it. One would hardly anticipate discovering the ethos of the comitatus permeating Eden or Calvary. Yet undeniably it does. Chapter 3 discusses the Anglo-Saxon reinterpretations of the fall of man and his redemption (seen in Genesis B and The Dream of the Rood ). The speakers of the elegies are all deprived of a comitatus. Chapter 4 focuses on these poems, where ironically, we can ascertain the vitality and importance of the warband through an analysis of the consequences of its lack, and even its apparent repudiation. By examining cases in which the ideals of the comitatus seem irrelevant to the poetic situation, those ideals are in truth revealed to be the dominant paradigm. Thus, the controlling structure of the comitatus is explicated in various genres extant in the corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry

\u3ci\u3eÐe us ðas beagas geaf\u3c/i\u3e (He Who Gave Us These Rings): Sauron and the Perversion of Anglo-Saxon Ethos

Notes that a central concept of Anglo-Saxon culture is the lord as ring-giver. Sauron, as Lord of the Rings, is a perversion of this concept. Other elements of Lord of the Rings reflect the Anglo-Saxon ethos as wel