Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings

what we would now identify as romantic elements, and that based the appeal of the stories on a worship of heroism and heroic action. J.R.R. Tolkien was a student of ancient literature who transferred ideas about virtue and heroism into a romantic structure that appealed to modern sensibilities.

There is some question about the origin of the heroic poem of Beowulf, but it is believed to have been an Anglian poem composed in Northumbria (or possibly Mercia) during the first half of the eighth century:

[The version that exists today] presupposes an aristocratic Christian audience whose Germanic background and ancestry included the knowledge of Scandinavian and all of Germanic tradition and folk-lore of which the stories of Beowulf's three battles were a part, stories which were transmitted to England during the Anglo-Saxon invasions (Hopper viii).

The poem fuses historical material such as the story of Hygelac with folk tales of monster fights, and the language has been given a Christian coloring that places the poem in the first half o

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loyalty--there is also a great love that has been built over time. The king is surrounded by a group of warriors, hand-picked men specially charged with protecting the king. Many of the members of this inner circle are related to the king by blood. These warriors lived by a code of honor and loyalty that defined their place in their society and also created an ideal for others to emulate. The poet is appealing directly to listeners in this type of social structure, listeners who would understand the importance of the relationship between king and warrior. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings has drawn on Beowulf as a source just as he draws on subsequent heroic and romantic literature. Tolkien read the ancient poem when he was in school and then re-read it when he was at Oxford. Two decades later he gave a lecture on the subject to the British Academy, a lecture entitled "Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics." This was an important bit of criticism of Beowulf and took exception with the prevailing view of critics and readers that something was wrong with the centrality of the monsters in the poem. Critics called these monsters wild folk elements and childish fantasy, but Tolkien took a different view and held that the monste
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Lord Rings, Britain Christian, Heroic Age, Monsters Critics, England Anglo-Saxon, JRR Tolkien, DH Lawrence, Heroism Tolkien, Rogers Rogers, Fairy Stories, lord rings, rogers rogers, eighth century, half eighth century, historical material, hero remembered, notre dame, irving 11, jrr tolkien, germanic world, heroic romantic,
Approximate Word count = 1881
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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