This work asserts that is is "not improbable" that a Trojan army led by a "Northern king" "would have driven Agamemnon and Achilles into the sea more decisively than the Greek hexameter routs the alliterative line."
This work asserts that is is "not improbable" that a Trojan army led by a "Northern king" "would have driven Agamemnon and Achilles into the sea more decisively than the Greek hexameter routs the alliterative line." Originally delivered as the seventh Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, this essay claims that the work it addresses is "wild" only in the sense that King Lear is "silly" and repeatedly critiques the notion that its subject places "the unimportant things at the centre and the important on the outer edges." This work quotes and attacks W.P. Ker's assertion that "there are other things in the lives of Hercules and Thesues besides the killing of the Hydra or of Procrustes," whereas another figure has "nothing else to do." Claiming that "a man might well exchange for one good dragon what he would not sell for a wilderness," this essay notes that there are only two important dragons in all of northern literature, the other being Fafnir. This lecture claims that a certain work ought to be studied to promote "understanding the poem as a poem" rather than as a mere historical or linguistic source and disputes the notion that battles with fantastic creatures render literature unserious. For 10 points, identify this lecture by J.R.R. Tolkien which defends the quality of an anonymous Old English poem.
This work asserts that is is "not improbable" that a Trojan army led by a "Northern king" "would have driven Agamemnon and Achilles into the sea more decisively than the Greek hexameter routs the alliterative line."
“Beowulf: The {Monsters and the Critics}”