Song of roland translated by frederick goldin

English Literature Research Paper

This essay must be at least 1200 words in length. It must be written in MLA format, typed, and double-spaced. You must incorporate at least two sources of research into your essay; this research must be literary criticism. Research must come from the library and must be reliable—I suggest the Literature Research Center. Internet sources do not count toward the two required sources. The library’s online databases, however, are not considered Internet sources and can be used as research. Wikipedia and similar sites are not allowed; using such sites will lower your essay’s grade. Dictionaries and encyclopedias do not count toward the required number of sources.

A Works Cited page is required. The Works Cited page, quotations, and citations account for at least 25% of the essay’s score, so be sure to include proper documentation.

Beowulf: The Hero-Life Isaac Disraeli Amenities of Literature, Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature. Ed. Earl of Beaconsfield . Frederick Warne and Co., 1881. p51-58. Rpt. in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Ed. Dennis Poupard and Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 1. Gale, 1988. From Literature Resource Center. Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1988 Gale Research, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning Full Text:
[Although probably most famous as the father of novelist and British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, Isaac Disraeli was a noted essayist and critic who wrote several popular and important studies of English literature. In the following excerpt from a book originally published in 1841, he compares the social customs portrayed in Beowulf with those depicted in the Homeric epics.]

The Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of [Beowulf] forms a striking contrast with the chronological paraphrase of Cadmon. Its genuine antiquity unquestionably renders it a singular curiosity; but it derives an additional interest from its representation of the primitive simplicity of a Homeric period—the infancy of customs and manners and emotions of that Hero-life, which the Homeric poems first painted for mankind:—that Hero-life of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but imperfect conceptions from the fragments he may have collected, while he metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those of the sentimental romance of another age and another race. (p. 51)

The war-ship and the mead-hall bring us back to that early era of society, when great men knew only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose songs are ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.

We discover these heroes, Danes or Angles, as we find them in the Homeric period, audacious with the self-confidence of their bodily prowess; vaunting, and talkative of their sires and of themselves; the son ever known by denoting the father, and the father by his marriage alliance—that primitive mode of recognition, at a period when, amid the perpetual conflicts of rival chieftains, scarcely any but relations could be friends; the family bond was a sure claim to protection. Like the Homeric heroes, they were as unrelenting in their hatreds as indissoluble in their partisanship; suspicious of the stranger, but welcoming the guest; we find them rapacious, for plunder was their treasure, and prodigal in their distributions of their golden armlets and weighed silver, for their egotism was as boundless as their violence. Yet pride and glory fermented the coarse leaven of these mighty marauders, who were even chivalric ere chivalry rose into an order. The religion of these ages was wild as their morality; few heroes but bore some relationship to Woden; and even in their rude paganised Christianity, some mythological name cast its lustre in their genealogies. In the uncritical chronicles of the middle ages it is not always evident whether the mortal was not a divinity. Their mythic legends have thrown confusion into their national annals, often accepted by historians as authentic records. But if antiquaries still wander among shadows, the poet cannot err. Beowulf may be a god or a nonentity, but the poem which records his exploits must at least be true, true in the manners it paints and the emotions which the poet reveals—the emotions of his contemporaries. (pp. 51-2)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) Disraeli, Isaac. "Beowulf: The Hero-Life." Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, edited by Dennis Poupard and Jelena O. Krstovic, vol. 1, Gale, 1988. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420011074/LitRC?u=tel_a_nsti&sid=LitRC&xid=e87be955. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018. Originally published in Amenities of Literature, Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature, edited by Earl of Beaconsfield, Frederick Warne and Co., 1881, pp. 51-58.
Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420011074