“Are you a student—or are you reading that for fun?”
I looked up from my copy of Beowulf with a knowing grin: “I’m a teacher.”
“I remember reading that in high school. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I hated it.”
I shook my head—“Totally get it. That’s where most people are at. And that’s the challenge for me: The win is getting my students to enjoy reading this.”
The nurse I chatted with last week isn’t the only one who grew up thinking Beowulf was dumb. In his essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” J. R. R. Tolkien cites a host of scholars who were less than impressed—
“Beowulf is a half-baked native epic”
“It is feeble and incompetent as a narrative”
“It is the confused product of a committee of muddle-headed and probably beer-bemused Anglo-Saxons”
Apparently, it’s easy to pan a thousand-year-old work—for scholars and students alike! Old books aren’t concerned with answering contemporary questions or solving contemporary problems or pleasing contemporary audiences. And rather than considering whether we are asking the wrong questions or are focused on the wrong problems or have bad taste—yikes!—we assume the prerogative of the living to snub the dead.
This is one way. We can assume that because we are the latest humans to walk the planet, our opinions are chief, our perspectives supreme.
Or we can follow in the footsteps of Tolkien. Seeing a major piece of Anglo-Saxon heritage falling among thorns, he fought the Grendels of his age with humility. Rather than crossing his haughty arms in hardened assumptions, he “took for granted the poem’s integrity and distinction as a work of art . . . He assumed, in other words, that the Beowulf poet was an imaginative writer.”
The second path begins with this question: If I don’t appreciate this work, could the problem be with me?
Tolkien approached Beowulf with the assumption that he was dealing with creative genius, and it changed everything. Appreciation for the artistry and beauty of the poem began to rise again. The saga hadn’t changed; its readers had.
It begins with expectations. For most of us, we think too little of the art we encounter, too little of artists—and too highly of ourselves.
Get Reading Classically on Amazon!
Last week, I published a 70-page resource to help us relearn how to read. You can now look inside Reading Classically on Amazon:
If you’ve read the book, you can spread the word to friends, students, teachers, and neighbors who might also enjoy it. You can also post a review on Amazon! Thanks to our devoted readers—and pie eaters!