The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf: Arrivals and Departures (review)

John M. Hill, known for his scholarship on Anglo-Saxon warrior culture and Beowulf in books such as The Anglo-Saxon Warrior Ethic: Reconstructing Lordship in Early English Literature (2000) and The Cultural World in Beowulf (1995), offers a new meditation on the poem in this short, suggestive study. While one might expect from the title that the book is an exercise in narrative analysis, perhaps attending to traditional conceptual categories such as the narrator or utilizing narrative theory, this is not really the case; instead, The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf is a close reading of scenes in the poem connected to arrivals and departures. Hill estimates that an arrival or departure occurs approximately every 150 lines or so in the poem; thus he maintains that "Beowulf is a poem of arrivals and departures, with lesser departures and arrivals inside major scenes, each one usually generating either social tension or expectation" (p. 4). Hill's main focus is on the "social tension" within these scenes rather than on an analysis of the narrative qua narrative. His aim, as it has been in his previous work, is to explicate the "deeply social and always edgy" dynamic (p. 4) at work in the poem's rendering of the heroic life. The idea of the "narrative pulse" is thus a general rubric organizing his close readings of the poem's social fabric; a title such as "The Social Drama of Beowulf" might have better described the actual focus of the book's explication.

In the first chapter ("The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf: Arrivals and Departures"), Hill asserts that arrivals and departures are "electric with possibilities" (p. 5) and lend the narrative its urgency. He notes that "the scenes in Beowulf of arrival and departure are highly dramatic, with arrivals initiating response and action, while departures mark significant changes in the hopes or expectations or even the status of interacting characters" (p. 13). The next four chapters move through the poem, from start to finish, explicating key scenes. Chapter Two ("Beowulf's Sudden Arrival and Danish Challenges: Nothing Said is Merely a Formality") analyzes the various tensions and challenges Beowulf and his men face upon their arrival in Denmark, up to the fight with Grendel. Hill often takes the dominant critical tradition to task for ironic readings of the poem's action. Some scholars, for example, have seen a hint of weakness in Hrothgar's exit from Heorot after entrusting the hall to Beowulf for the night, or at least a suggestive narrative contrast between the old king seeking the safety of his queen's bed and the heroic young warrior settling down in the dangerous hall for the night. But Hill argues that "[t]his seemingly simple sequence of actions [i.e., Hrothgar's exit] is socially quite complicated and formal" (p. 37) and asserts that "[t]here is no irony in his departure" (p. 38) as he goes to seek Wealhtheow's bed: "Indeed, there is something shining and grand, even splendid in his power and his Scylding procession out of the hall" (p. 38). For Hill, the context of the scene establishes a straightforward drama of heroic codes and obligations, as Hrothgar entrusts guardianship of the hall to Beowulf in a formal, ritualistic fashion.

In Chapter Three ("The Arrival of Joy after Grendel's Departure and a Momentous Question: Succession or Not?") Hill argues that when Hrothgar returns to Heorot in the morning after the defeat of Grendel, he tenders a serious offer of adoption and succession to Beowulf, a bold, active, shrewd move by the king. (Hill does not see Hrothgar as weak or tragic, as some scholars do.) He argues that when Hrothgar tells Beowulf that he will love him like a son, this actually is "a sweeping offer of adoption in relation to a non-verbal but no less overt offer of a leading place in the Danish line of succession—the latter conveyed clearly to...