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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-07 > 0836295694


From: Stewart Baldwin <>
Subject: Re: Beowulf (was DFA: possible pre-Arsacid link)
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 08:21:34 GMT


Jared Olar <> wrote:

>On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

[snip]

>> ...
>> is based on the medieval French romances, which seems to me to be
>> somewhat analogous to using Mallory as a source for sixth century
>> British history.

>The skepticism on this point is quite wise, but the analogy isn't quite
>exact. With Sir Thomas Malory we have an interval of nearly a millennium

I didn't say it was exact (note the word "somewhat"). The interval of
time is not as important as the fact that we are dealing with romance,
in which the author has literary licence to alter the events in any
way he/she sees fit.

>between Malory's time and that of the reputed time of the perhaps
>entirely legendary Arthur. In the case of the French romances pertaining
>to William, the interval is nowhere near as great. Even so, they are
>romances, not histories. (Scholars believe _Beowulf_ to contain significant

If you want to use the present tense, then I would have to disagree
with the word "significant" here. It is true that scholars once
believed that a vague outline of sixth century Scandinavian history
could be gleaned from the pages of Beowulf, but modern scholarship has
pretty much shot that idea to pieces. To my knowledge, the only
verifiably historical characters in Beowulf were Eormenric (king of
the Goths, mentioned only briefly), Hygelac/Chocilaicus, and
Hnaef/Hnabi (the maternal grandfather of Charlemagne's wife, who was
plucked out of the eighth century and turned into a sixth century Dane
in the poem), and the only verifiably historical event in the poem was
the battle in which Hygelac/Chocilaicus fell.

>traces of history, but it is poetry, not history--this would be a more
>fitting comparison to the romances of William de Gellone than Malory's
>writings would be.)

Let's see, since you didn't like my first example, how about this one:
It would be analogous to using "Braveheart" as a source to prove that
king Edward III of England was the son of William Wallace. ;-)

Stewart Baldwin

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