Friday's In-Class Work

Hey folks. I’m out today. Please work hard!

No chicken dancing Tess and Eleanor.

No whining John, Jacob, and Ryan.

Go team!

1. Discuss the following in groups of 2-4, and take one set of group notes with all names:

1. Reread from page 119, line 1724 to page 123, line 1784. What do you make of Hrothgar’s lecture to Beowulf? Does this seem in line with the Anglo-Saxon values we’ve so far noticed or does this feel like the Beowulf Poet’s Christian values superimposed on the tale?
2. Our world is practically obsessed with interior selves: from psychoanalysis and talk-therapy to iPods and blogs; from loneliness and “feelings” to guilt complexes and anxieties. Some consider our times as operating under the “cult of the individual.” How does Beowulf conceptualize the individual? Does there even seem to be such a thing as an interior self in the poem? If so, how does it look compared to today’s notion of the self

1. “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” are beautiful examples of Anglo-Saxon verse. They were both discovered in a 10th century manuscript called The Exeter Book. Here’s an example of a riddle from The Exeter Book:

• I am a wondrous creature for women in expectation, a service for neighbors. I harm none of the citizens except my slayer alone. My stem is erect, I stand up in bed, hairy somewhere down below. A very comely peasant's daughter, dares sometimes, proud maiden, that she grips at me, attacks me in my redness, plunders my head, confines me in a stronghold, feels my encounter directly, woman with braided hair. Wet be that eye.

• Answer: Onion

Read “The Wanderer” or “The Seafarer” as a group. TAKE THE READING SERIOUSLY! You may annotate as you read if you wish. Respond to the discussion questions in the back on a separate sheet of paper.

Everyone is responsible for completing these! One sheet per student.

Homework: Finish Beowulf and any remaining questions on “The Wanderer” or “The Seafarer”