Beowulf is Oral-Formulaic
Three Works Cited Early versions of Beowulf were necessarily oral because the scops were unlettered. All versions of this classic poem were built of phrases or “formulas” repeated from generation to generation among scops. These formulas were a common source for all early poetry, from which all poets drew the language used in their extemporaneous poetic creations.
Francis Magoun, in his “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” states: “An oral poem until written down has not and cannot have a fixed text, a concept difficult for lettered persons” (Magoun 84). With each telling of the oral poem there is some variation from the previous telling. Consider from the poem when Hrothgar was honoring Beowulf for his victory over Grendel; the king had his scop, to the background of a harp, chant poetic verses relating the famous Finnsburh Episode:
There was tumult and song, melodious noise,
in front of Healfdene’s battle commander;
the harp was plucked, good verses chanted
when Hrothgar’s scop in his place on the mead-bench
came to tell over the famous hall-sport
[about] Finn’s sons when the attack came on them:
Hnaef of the Scyldings, hero of the Half-Danes,
had had to fall in Frisian slaughter. . . . (1063-70)
There was no verbatim memorization involved here, only memorization of the thematic material, plot, proper names and formulas which the extemporaneous composition of the poem required. Such “traditions” were passed down from one generation of scops to the next orally because they were unlettered scops until Catholic missionaries from Rome set up Schools: “In the nature of the case we do not have and cannot have any record of Anglo-Saxon poetry before the introduction of the art of reading and writing by Christian missionaries from Rome and from Iona in the Hebrides” (Magoun 87). There is also the non-existence of metrical formulas in the poetry of early lettered authors; Beowulf, having a metrical formula, has to be oral poetry for this reason also.
In Book 4, Chapter 24 of his The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Catholic priest Venerable Bede (b 673), writes a story of Caedmon (658-680), which included a statement about oral poetry as a social entertainment:
Hence sometimes at a feast, when for the sake of providing entertainment, it had been decided that they should all sing in turn, when he saw the harp approaching him, he [Caedmon] would rise up in the middle of the feasting, go out and return home (Collins 215).
Who knows for how many centuries this tradition of extemporaneous oral composing had been popular?
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature states regarding the composition of the poem Beowulf:
The relationships of the various Danish and Swedish kings can hardly have been remembered otherwise than in a more or less stereotyped form of words for more than a generation after their lifetime. Hence we are bound to conclude that the formation of the poem, or, at all events, that of the materials from which it was made up, must have occupied at least the greater part of a century (Ward v1, s3, l15).
It’s obvious that without the formulas enabling easy retention, the scop’s wide scope or field of vision would have been considerably lessened, and consequently the interest of the audience would have suffered. So the use of formulas was a necessity for the unlettered scops of early centuries.
Magoun comments on the discovery of two researchers:
Parry, aided by Lord, demonstrated that the characteristic feature of all orally composed poetry is its totally formulaic character. From this a second point emerged, namely, that the recurrence in a given poem of an appreciable number of formulas or formulaic phrases brands the latter as oral, just as a lack of repetition marks a poem as composed in a lettered tradition (84).
All the scops drew from the same common fund of formulaic phrases, and applied them according to the varying abilities of the individual scop. Examining Beowulf, Magoun finds that in the first 50 verses about 70 percent of the phrases appear in other Anglo-Saxon poetry, even though there are only 30,000 lines of such poetry in existence. He considers it probable that nearly 100% of the language in Beowulf is formulas (88-89).
Thus it is seen that early versions of Beowulf were necessarily oral, because of the unletteredness of the scops, and necessarily formulaic because of the scope or immensity of the non-memorized poetic creations.
Works Cited
Collins, Roger and McClure, Judith, editors. Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People; The Greater Chronicle; Bede’s Letter to Egbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Magoun, Frances P. “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry.” In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000
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