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Beowulf Videos 9 videos

All About Beowulf as a Translated Piece of Literature
6740 Views

Old English is just English, right? Can’t be more difficult than reading Shakespeare, right? Hah. Yeah...no. Click on the video to find why tra...

All About Beowulf's Historical Context
17043 Views

Who is it about? Who told it? Who wrote it? Who are we? What’s the meaning of life? Do you know the Muffin Man? All these answers and more can be...

Beowulf and Material Goods
12450 Views

The characters in Beowulf knew the importance of bling. Watch the video to learn more about the place of material goods in the wonderful world of B...

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Beowulf and Gnomes 6515 Views


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Description:

Beowulf is full of Gnomes...and no, not adorable garden gnomes who’re just trying to save you money on vacations. Find out more about what a Gnome is by checking out this video.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:04

Beowulf a la Shmoop

00:06

Gnomes

00:09

Words of wisdom, Deb, long question for you.

00:12

As if Grendel weren't bad enough,

00:14

his mother makes her way to town

00:15

the night after his death, no less.

00:18

And, as you might imagine, she wants revenge.

00:20

Revenge a big theme in this era.

00:22

So, luckily, Beowulf comes to the rescue again

00:25

and tracks her down beneath her leg,

00:27

ending her life and taking Grendel's head as a trophy.

00:30

When he returns victorious,

00:31

Hrothgar has more than just material gifts to give him.

00:35

Although he does have plenty of those, as well.

00:37

So, tell us about the wise gifts of Hrothgar.

00:41

Gift-giving and revenge and the whole notion of

00:44

paying for your sins financially

00:48

seems to be a meaningful theme here.

00:50

So run us through that whole structure.

00:53

Economy, I guess.

00:54

Right. We'll talk a lot about - in an upcoming lesson -

00:57

about the material gifts, right?

00:59

So, right now we're gonna talk about

01:00

the gifts of wisdom that Hrothgar gives Beowulf.

01:03

And these have a name to them.

01:06

We call them "gnomes,"

01:08

- like little garden gnomes. - Yeah, those little...

01:10

Yeah, but not.

01:11

And they're basically like little pithy

01:15

phrases of wisdom.

01:17

So these are pieces of wisdom that are given

01:20

from one character to another.

01:21

But we're also supposed to take them to heart

01:23

as readers.

01:23

So it kind of has a double meaning.

01:27

An example of a gnome from today

01:29

would be something like, "don't bite the hand that feeds you."

01:31

These are just like little things that people say to each other.

01:34

And it means something when Hrothgar says it

01:37

to Beowulf and it also means something when

01:39

we, as readers, look at it.

01:40

So, Hrothgar tells Beowulf

01:43

not to boastfully give gifts.

01:46

If you're gonna give gifts, it shouldn't be boastfully.

01:47

He tells him not to be arrogant.

01:49

And he also warns him about the fleetingness of life.

01:53

He says, "But a little-while lasts thy life-vigor's fulness.

01:57

'Twill after hap early,

01:59

that illness or sword-edge shall part thee from strength."

02:02

So, it's basically saying, like,

02:04

"Yeah, you're great and all now, but life's short."

02:06

When we hear these words of wisdom,

02:08

again, we can't just take them at face value and move on.

02:11

We have to think about what they represent

02:12

about the culture's values at the time.

02:15

"Don't bite the hand that feeds you"

02:17

is something we say today.

02:19

That is something that represents

02:21

a cultural belief that we have,

02:22

that you should respect, kind of, the people who are

02:25

giving you what you have.

02:26

These gnomes are a pretty good way of figuring out

02:28

what was important to a society.

02:30

After Grendel's mom comes

02:33

and kills a bunch of people,

02:35

Hrothgar is like all "woe is me."

02:37

He's really sad, and one of his

02:39

you know, closest associates has been killed

02:42

and he's mourning.

02:43

And Beowulf comes up to him and is like,

02:45

"Dude, suck it up.

02:46

We need to get revenge.

02:48

Stop mourning, stop wallowing.

02:50

We're gonna get revenge."

02:51

And he does it through a little gnome.

02:53

And it shows us that that's what important in this society,

02:57

is revenge.

02:59

And that's not a bad thing.

03:01

That's just how they worked back then.

03:04

So when we hear these gnomes,

03:06

we can say, "Oh, okay.

03:08

Check. Revenge was important back then. Not mourning."

03:10

So what was -- Revenge is almost a moral compass, then.

03:14

It's a balancing act that, you know,

03:16

for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

03:19

So you kill my cousin, I'm gonna kill yours.

03:21

Or you, or whatever, right?

03:22

Exactly, and that's where that death price comes into play.

03:24

Because, either "you kill my cousin, I kill yours,"

03:28

or "you kill my cousin,

03:30

and now you pay me a ton of money." Exactly.

03:32

Exactly. So, but it is, it's a really -- It's a balancing act.

03:35

And it -- Life is worth some finite amount, right?

03:39

Again, if we can -- Someone gets killed and then

03:41

you pay some amount of money

03:43

or gifts to make up for it.

03:45

Life has a specific value

03:47

and the only way to get, you know,

03:49

precise equal value is by taking another life.

03:51

Got it. And, I mean, it applies in today's legal courtrooms.

03:54

You know, when people are guilty of a product liability

03:58

and the air bag didn't deploy, you know,

04:00

GM does a discounted cash flow analysis

04:03

of what the person's profits would have been

04:04

the remaining part of their life,

04:06

does some adjustments to it, and says,

04:07

"Well, this life was worth 842,000 dollars."

04:10

Exactly. And to us, that seems kind of, like,

04:13

vulgar, right? A lot of people are like,

04:14

"How can you say this person's life was worth,

04:16

you know, 800,000 dollars?"

04:17

But, back then, that's just what it was.

04:20

It was not vulgar; it was not looked down upon.

04:22

That just was how culture worked.

04:26

What is a gnome

04:27

and why would Hrothgar want to give gnomes to Beowulf?

04:31

What are some gnomes from our own culture?

04:34

What can we tell about the culture of the time from gnomes in Beowulf?

04:38

Are there similarities we can draw between our culture and Beowulf's?

04:43

How was revenge viewed

04:45

and dealt with in Beowulf's time?

04:48

What about now?

04:52

To us that seems, kind of, like, vulgar.

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