Political and Social Assumptions

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Political and Social Assumptions Through the texts and readings we covered this year, we saw many connections, through Beowulf, Poetry from the Exeter Book to Macbeth. Just with these few readings we can infer a lot. We do not read Macbeth or Beowulf and see acts or paragraphs describing the ways of politics and social beliefs of these people at the time, but through the stories and the fact that they are being recorded, can tell us a lot of what was important to them. For instance, the topic of war and battle is well associated with the political side of the readings. In Beowulf, Beowulf uses his last thoughts on reviewing how well a king he was for the Geats. In his thought he says, “No neighboring people have tried to threaten the Geats, sent soldiers against us or talked terror.” “Swearing no unholy oaths, seeking no lying wars. I can leave this life happy.” As I read that on lines 745 to 752, I inferred that as, Beowulf believed that he had a respectable reign because he avoided war the best he could for 50 years. So war is a common thought even for a king minutes before his ...

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