Talk:Beowulf

Consensus on Dating

Wikipedia should give the scholarly consensus on important issues, not recapitulate the discussion. What is today's consensus on the date of Beowulf? It doesn't have to be a single decade or century -- maybe the consensus is that the dating bracket is wide. Has anybody got the 2008 version of Klaeber's edition? What date do its editors favour? Martin Rundkvist (talk) 07:23, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

As the article correctly establishes, there is no consensus. Some say 8th to 9th century, others say 9th to 10th, still others late 10th to early 11th. We cannot report a "consensus" when there simply isn't one. --dab (𒁳) 10:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Handscioh

Copied from my talk page:

"Well, there's an old argument, whether "Handscioh" at line 2076 refers to a companion of the hero, or is an alternate term for a "glov" at 2085. Most translators take the former view. DavidOaks (talk) 19:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)"

So the translation (from Project Gutenberg) that I quoted in my edit summary may have be at fault? What's the remedy, please? --Old Moonraker (talk) 21:13, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

The E Talbot Donaldson translation's pretty standard (used by Joseph F. Tuso in the Norton Critical Edn, NY:1975) p. 36, says "there the fight was fatal to Hondscioh, deadly to one who was doomed. He was dead first of all, armed warrior. Grendel came to devour him, good young retainer, swallowed all the body of the beloved man." Then there's an obscure reference to "his glove" (and "Handscio" means glove, but names often meant something in this culture, and "Grendel" is the nearest antecedent for "his"). If you google "handscioh" (with or without "h") & "Beowulf," you'll get lots of WP:RS articles where the point is argued, but I'd say most modern translations agree with Donaldson. DavidOaks (talk) 21:57, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Beowulf is a very old story 
in about 1000AD, the first 
founded peice in a poem
but it is an anonymous story
in Sweden and Denmark.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.105.78.169 (talk) 20:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC) 

The Beowulf manuscript

Under "The Beowulf manuscript" we read:

"The earliest known owner is the 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is named ... It suffered damage in the Cotton Library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Since then, parts of the manuscript ... "

Then, eventually:

"The poem is known only from a single manuscript, which is estimated to date from close to AD 1000."

Is this "single manuscript" the same manuscript that the previous two paragraphs have been describing? It's really quite confusing the way the explanation is currently set out; it kind of reads as if a new topic is being introduced here, about a different manuscript. If it's the same manuscript then the text "The poem is known only from a single manuscript..." needs to go at the very start of the section. 86.165.21.213 (talk) 01:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC).

using named references

The "Kiernan" reference reads

"Kiernan, Kevin (1996). Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. footnote 69 pg 162, 90, 258, 257, 171, xix-xx, xix, 3, 4, 277–278 , 23–34, 29, 29, 60, 62, footnote 69 162. "

This is silly. Named references are for referring to the same page or page range several times over. It will not do to stash such a wide selection of pages into a single footnote and then keep referring to it. This footnote needs to be split into one footnote per page or page range referred to. --dab (𒁳) 10:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

There are in fact 16 uses (a–p) of this ref, so they might correspond to the page-numbers, or they may have done so once upon a time. To assume the article passages citing this book have remained in the same order would be equally silly. ―AoV² 10:27, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Merge of The Dragon (Beowulf) into Article

Currently this stub is rather not notable and ought to be merged and deleted or at least redirected to the correct section of Beowulf. Any other thoughts? Sadads (talk) 20:56, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - There are other articles linking back to Beowulf (e.g. Grendel, Grendel's Mother) which are equally notable and which, if also merged, would make the Beowulf article unwieldy. An article on Characters in Beowulf might work better, but The Dragon is a known character in the myth, and should also link back to a dragon disambiguation page.Metabaronic (talk) 21:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

So get rid of the unnecessary detail. This article has no information that makes it notable, is even unnamed. I don't think this qualifies it for a child article. Sadads (talk) 21:39, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd argue that a character from a particularly well-known legend is more notable than, say, a character in a film, many of which are deemed notable enough for articles of their own.Metabaronic (talk) 22:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Characters in films should be deleted unless someone goes out of their way to collect sources for them, anyway. Sadads (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per Metabaronic. Also the article can be expanded considerably. Scholarship exists to support an article for each separate section if necessary. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem with the article is that the fight rather than the dragon recieves the scholarship, see This google scholar search. The dragon itself, which has no significant characterization nor name, therefore does not have lasting repercussions. On the other hand, the character of the battle does, and is hardly covered in the main article. Therefore child article should not exist yet. Also, the article has little real need throughout the rest of the Encyclopedia, see [1]. Sadads (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see your point. But surely the first step is to either seek a greater level of references and citations in relation to the Dragon itself (particularly focusing on its description and characteristics), or else propose a change to the article title (and possibly also to the Grendel and Grendel’s Mother articles) to ‘Beowulf and the Dragon’. Some components of the article are repetitive of what appears in the main Beowulf article, and should be trimmed.

The problem in my view is that the Beowulf article is of a good length, and that linked, supporting articles are also at least start-class or better. I also think that this article should form part of a number of looking at British and English Dragons more generally.

The Dragon article should certainly be better written (I think most dragon articles suffer from this) and its purpose made more clear (the one liner about it under European dragon does a better job in a lot less space), but I don’t think a challenge to its notability stands up as there is a lot of Tolkein-focused literary research out there which could be brought into play, in that Beowulf was studied and translated by Tolkein, and its fire-breathing, cave-dwelling, treasure-guarding characteristics were clearly the basis for Smaug in The Hobbit, directly influencing the dragon archetype adopted in modern fantasy literature.Metabaronic (talk) 17:25, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The Dragon (Beowulf) could use expansion, and in fact Sadads' google scholar search does have material about the dragon. The article size is another important consideration (I'd intended to mention it, but Metabaronic beat me to it). Beowulf comes in at over 6000 words of readable prose;Grendel's mother at over 2000 words of readable prose. If the The Dragon (Beowulf) were to be included here, then a precedent is set to include Grendel's mother as well, which would result in an overly lengthy article. Also agree that Tolkien's work should be incorporated in The Dragon (Beowulf) as part of the expansion of that page. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:17, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion has been moved to Talk:The Dragon (Beowulf). Any further comment should be made there. Sadads (talk) 19:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Images

I've put up several images for Beowulf at commons:Category:Stories_of_BeowulfSmallman12q (talk) 19:21, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Hroðgar

I've just reverted a good faith edit that substituted a couple of "Hrothgars" for "Hroðgar" for internal consistency and consistency with Hroðgar. Is the eth spelling consistent with the "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet...must be romanized into characters generally intelligible to English-speakers" in WP:MOS#Foreign terms? "Change one change all" reads the edit summary; perhaps we should. Views?--Old Moonraker (talk) 20:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I am of a divided mind on this. I interpret the policy as favouring "Hrothgar", but if his page is at Hroðgar, that constitutes precedent and wikilinking and consistency reasons for using the eth. I would choose to use Hroðgar at all times. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 13:29, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Interpretations -- delete Cabaniss stuff

I would suggest deleting the Cabaniss stuff. The interpretation is, to put it mildly, eccentric, and completely off the beam so far as most interpretations go, especially so considering that the Yeager quotation, immediately below, basically destroys the basis for any such interpretation. In short, Cabaniss is indulging a form of special pleading, and is interested not in the poem itself but in the Bible. A noble gesture, but it has really nothing to do with the poem, and should be deleted.24.81.25.127 (talk) 23:41, 21 August 2010 (UTC)