"Great Adaptations" and Anglo-Saxon Epic Poetry

Sophie Gee's claim, in yesterday's New York Times Book Review, that both Beowulf and Paradise Lost are "now virtually unreadable" is the kind of thing I would expect from a high school student, not from a professor of English at Princeton (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/books/review/Gee-t.html?_r=1&ref=review&oref=slogin). Of course, as Gee knows, they are indeed readable, even if it does require assistance to read them. What Gee means, in effect, is that they do not reflect modern values--either culturally or in terms of our literary sensibilities. They are not written in our language, and they don't reflect the way we live our lives today. This does not make them unreadable. Rather, it makes them classics, reflective of attitudes that preceded and helped to shape our own.

According to Gee, not only has the screen adaptation of Beowulf "succeeded aesthetically," it has also given the story "the kiss of life." To indicate, as Gee has, that the new film version of Beowulf triumphs by "picking up on [the original's] weirdest and hardest-to-parse particulars" is a stretch. Seduction of the sexual variety is not an element in Beowulf--at all--nor is the hero's succumbing to temptation of any sort.

Women in this epic poem lament for the dead, but they do little else. To say that this Anglo-Saxon epic is dominated by the masculine perspective is an understatement, but at least the women involved aren't playthings or caricatures. In fact, we sympathize greatly with Hildeburh as she weeps over her dead husband and dead brother, slain in combat with each other, victims of the heroic code of vengeance (the wergild, or man-price) that pervades the warrior culture. Nobody seduces anybody, and Beowulf, manly man that he is, dies a virgin for all we know. He's too busy making war to make love, and it seems that the Anglo-Saxons admired him for all that. That's exactly the way they wanted him to be.

The lure of gold and its potential for corrupting even great men is a prominent element--but the great men in Beowulf never fall prey to this. Rather, they espouse the Anglo-Saxon ideal of great leadership: the great ring-givers share their treasure with their people. That Beowulf himself is morally infallible--but absolutely mortal--is part of the point, and to take this quality away is to misread the poem. Beowulf occupies a special place in the canon of epic literature: not only is it the only surviving epic of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, it is also perhaps the only epic that gives us a fully human protagonist in a natural landscape. Beowulf's skills, though remarkable, are simply the skills we have but amplified: immense strength, fantastic fortitude, an iron-hard will, but no supernatural protection. There are no gods in Beowulf as there are in epics of the classical tradition--only a distant and vaguely understood Judeo-Christian Lord. Even the monsters--Grendel, his mother, the dragon--are more like forces of nature, our archetypal fears (to borrow language from Seamus Heaney's introduction to his stunning translation of the poem) personified.

The twists of the new film, which according to Gee point to Beowulf himself not only as the founder of his own myth but also as a falsifier of the truth, may satisfy a postmodern audience's skepticism toward hero-worship, but they don't present character the way Anglo-Saxons saw it.

What you have when you change these elements may be entertainment. It may be good or--for all I care, call it what you want--even great film-making. But it's not Beowulf, and what bothers me about the film is not the modernization of an ancient story but the claims of authenticity that promotional materials for the film make. Gee, in her essay, seems amazingly unwilling (given her profession) to entertain the possibility that 10th century participants in the oral tradition might have appreciated the story as it is: "Purists will object that none of this is in the original, composed sometime between the seventh and 10th centuries. Well, maybe not, but it should have been."

What do we expect from the literature of past eras? Gee ought to know that rarely will it pander to our world views, our values, or for that matter our need to be entertained. As it is, Seamus Heaney's popular translation of the poem is imminently readable, even to high school students, and even without the added benefit of Angelina Jolie's presence.

I'm glad Gee at least enjoyed the film.