Oral Songs In Beowulf

Songs and poetry serve an important social function, communicating prominent cultural paradigms and archiving historical events. Oral songs were particularly significant in Anglo-Saxon culture, and were used as channels for creativity, preservation, and religion. Christianity became dominant in later Anglo-Saxon works, as seen in Beowulf. As Tolkien was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon language and Beowulf, his work reflects much of their traditions. Tolkien uses symbolism to establish Christian themes in his songs, which he uses as a conduit for religion and Biblical parallels.

The insertion of songs into prose or stories, particularly in medieval literature, serves as both a visual and auditory emphasis for the reader. The disruption and stark transition forces a more careful analysis of the poem because it changed the flow of the narrative. A song can stylistically and symbolically cement the tone of the passage and provide a clearer insight to the scene being described, as a sad song can set the stage for a somber event. The level of integration of the song into the text can have different effects as well. In classical rhetoric, there were three levels of style: the humble, the middle, and the sublime. Style was determined in the early twelfth to fifteenth centuries not by the actual diction but by the speaker. For example, a peasant would use humble style while an emperor’s would be considered sublime. In using the appropriate class and style, an author can more fully integrate a song into a piece (Boulton). However, the contrast created by a lowly character, for instance a hobbit, singing a song of sublime quality would place more stylistic emphasis on the song, such as when Bilbo sang a song about Earandil in The Fellowship of the...

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...est of the work, which are accented by the break in narrative that the songs create. The accentuation of these themes increases reader awareness of the Biblical undertones and creates Christian equivalences in the songs themselves and the surrounding text. The use of songs as a religious communication tool was developed by the Anglo-Saxons, and is seen in their work as well as their Old- and Middle-English successors. Tolkien’s practice therefore of using songs is a derivative of his work in Old-English literature and scholarship of Anglo-Saxon language and culture. The historical tie of Tolkien’s work to that of his studies validates the connection and the significance of the songs in The Lord of the Rings, and despite Tolkien’s denial of intentional allegory in his epic, Christianity was an integral part of his life, and its presence in his work is undeniable.