The literary tradition of the Epic

Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:The Importance of Literary Genre and Time Difference“They said that of all the kings upon earth / he was the man most gracious and fair-minded, / kindest to his people and keenest to win fame,” (Beowulf 97 ln. 3180-82). This is a description of the great king Beowulf, from the epic poem of the same name. “…Sir Gawain you are, / Whom all the world worships, whereso you ride; / Your honor, your courtesy are higest acclaimed / By lords and by ladies, by all living men,” (Sir Gawain 139 ln. 1226-29).

This is a description of Sir Gawain, from the romantic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Both of these heroes are obviously very highly viewed by those around them, although almost 600 years separates the writing of the two manuscripts. Beowulf, an epic poem, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a romantic poem, are two great literary works, both with nameless and possibly countless authors, separated by literary genre and 6oo years of societal development.

Beowulf is an epic, and as such follows certain characteristics that are unique to this form of poetry. The key to any epic is its hero and his flaw; the hero is required to have a flaw because the epic is a form of serious and tragic poetry that allows for few lighthearted moments. This particular epic centers around a young and eager adventurer named, of course, Beowulf, who is fueled by a desire to be remembered forever as a great hero. His calling comes when “…a fiend out of hell, / began to work his evil in the world. / Grendel was the name of this grim demon / haunting the marshes, marauding round the heath / and the desolate fens;” (Beowulf 33 ln. 100-04).

Grendel also brings in the first otherworldly element of the poem, a characteristic specific to epics; this element is expanded upon when Beowulf tells of many sea monsters he destroyed in his youth, later when Grendel's mother seeks revenge, and finally when the great dragon threatens Beowulf's kingdom. The purpose for extremely long epics such as Beowulf (which is over 3000 lines, and likely longer due to destroyed sections of the original manuscript) lies in tradition and preservation. It is thought that the actual Beowulf lived around 450 A.D., but the epic was not recorded until approximately 700 A.D. - during this long gap, tales of Beowulf were passed down orally, a tradition of the Anglo-Saxons based upon the preservation of their unique culture. This culture was a serious one because the times of the Anglo-Saxons were extremely dangerous - outside of their own clan they had no one to trust as any outsider was just as likely to kill them as look at them, lest he end up slain first.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in contrast to the epic, is a romance: a circular and lighter version of the epic based around a ...