Tolkien’s Beowulf: Not a Narrative Pt3

Beowulf

Feb 21

But a Balance of Opposites

Beowulf: A Heroic-Elegiac Balance, Not a Narrative

The debate over Beowulf’s structure has long intrigued scholars. Some argue it lacks a “steady advance,” as Klaeber puts it. But perhaps it was never meant to have one. Instead, Beowulf thrives on a steady balance—a poetic interplay of opposites, beginnings and endings, youth and old age, triumph and death. The poem isn’t simply a continuous story; it captures two defining moments in a great life, divided into two distinct parts: lines 1-2199 and 2200-3182.

J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the poem’s most famous defenders, acknowledged a perceived weakness: the long recapitulation in Beowulf’s report to Hygelac. It feels like the medieval equivalent of “Last week on Beowulf,” a recap that might seem unnecessary. Was this a flaw, or was it a feature? Perhaps the poem was designed to be told over multiple days, requiring a reminder of past events. We may never know.

The Harmony of Beowulf’s Structure

Beowulf is the most successful Old English poem because its elements—language, metre, theme, and structure—work in harmony. The metre of Old English poetry is often misunderstood. Unlike later poetry with a fixed rhythm, Beowulf’s lines balance two halves of roughly equal phonetic weight. The structure isn’t weak; it’s inevitable. Though some details might seem flawed, the poem remains a powerful whole.

We might have lost other verses that detailed Beowulf’s battles with Frisia or the fall of Hygelac, but what remains is not an epic in the traditional sense. Nor is it a grand heroic lay. Instead, Beowulf is a heroic-elegiac poem, where the first 3136 lines lead inevitably to the final dirge—one of the most moving ever written.

The Role of the Dragon

Beowulf’s final opponent had to be a dragon. Not a Swedish prince, not a human rival, but an elemental force, a creature of myth and inevitability. “Nowhere does a dragon come in precisely where it should,” Tolkien noted, but in Beowulf, the placement is perfect.

Some critics argue that the poem’s structure—monsters in the first half, monsters in the second—is repetitive. But this is missing the point. Removing the monsters would be one thing, but reducing them would only weaken the poem. If Beowulf had started with a battle against Frisia and ended with a dragon, the narrative would have felt disjointed. Instead, by beginning and ending with monsters, the poem maintains its balance.

The contrast is key: Beowulf’s youthful triumphs over Grendel and his mother are later canceled by his defeat against the dragon. It is a poetic inevitability—a man can only die on his death-day.

Beowulf does not advance in a straight line. It is cyclical, balanced, and resonant—a poem that lingers in the space between victory and loss, legend and elegy.