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On Beowulf and Ruodlieb: a folkloric context for Hrothgar’s Sermon

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Abstract

Though rarely compared, Beowulf and Ruodlieb are two medieval epics composed by speakers of West Germanic languages that exhibit a shared sequence of folktale motifs. In both works, a young man considered unpromising in his youth seeks adventure abroad, serves a magnanimous foreign king well, and returns to his homeland with wealth and wisdom in his possession. In Ruodlieb, the king’s wisdom is imparted to the hero in the form of a speech of counsels with unmistakable folkloric analogues. In Beowulf, it is argued, the king delivers a speech that derives from the same folkloric traditions but reflects the poet’s radical alteration of his source materials. In the Beowulf poet’s hands, the motif of the sapiential parting gift is shorn of its folkloric and demotic qualities and imbued with epic and aristocratic qualities instead.

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Notes

  1. On the date and authorship of Ruodlieb, see Gamer (1955, pp. 68–70); Zeydel (1959, pp. 7–9); Braun (1962, pp. 5–8); Leyser (1968, p. 42); and Grocock (1985, p. 6–8). Philologists generally regard Beowulf as a work that was first composed and set in writing about three centuries before Ruodlieb (e.g., Fulk, 1992; Neidorf, 2017).

  2. Davidson (1960) and Weber (2018) consider the treatment of swords and oaths in Beowulf, Ruodlieb, and various other works; Hirsh (1973, p. 77) notes in passing that the hunter’s interrogation of Ruodlieb (I. 72–126) resembles the coastguard’s interrogation of Beowulf (ll. 229–300).

  3. For a critique of these criteria and an argument for a broader definition of Beowulf analogues, see Neidorf (2023).

  4. Ford alludes here to the striking variety of descriptors that have been used by the poem’s editors and translators in their titles. In the title of Zeydel (1959), for instance, Ruodlieb is labeled “the earliest courtly novel.” In the title of Seiler (1882), Ruodlieb is labeled “der älteste Roman des Mittelalters.” Ford’s (1965) own title refers to Ruodlieb as “the first medieval epic of chivalry.” For discussion of these descriptors and their generic implications, see Kratz (1973), who proposes that Ruodlieb should be understood as a Christian epic, a work “in the Latin epic tradition” that serves “as a vehicle for the expression of Christian ideals” (1973, p. 266). Elsewhere Kratz refers to Ruodlieb as a “Christian alternative to Aeneas” (1977, p. 149). Commenting on the work’s generic heterogeneity, Zissos notes that it includes “accounts of spiritual asceticism, frequent learned digressions, novelistic elements, fairy-tale and folk-tale motifs, and explicit satire” (1997, p. 53). On the distinct traditions informing the various features of the poem, see Gamer (1955). For an argument that Ruodlieb is a fundamentally original and independent sui generis work, see Dronke (1970).

  5. The text and translation of Ruodlieb are cited throughout by line number from the edition of Kratz (1984).

  6. The text of Beowulf is cited throughout by line number from the edition of Fulk et al. (2008). Translations of Beowulf are cited throughout from Fulk (2010).

  7. The literature on the relationship between Beowulf and its folkloric analogues is extensive. For notable contributions to this literature, see Panzer (1910); Shippey (1969); Barnes (1970); Jorgensen (1975); Rosenberg (1975); Stitt (1992); Fjalldal (2013); and Grant (2022).

  8. For representative expositions of the notion that passages exhibiting Christian influence are likely to be inauthentic, see Müllenhoff (1869) and Blackburn (1897). For doubts about the authenticity of parts of Hrothgar’s sermon, see Cook (1925); Chadwick & Chadwick (1932, p. 559); Tolkien (1936, p. 295, n. 38); Wrenn & Bolton (1988, pp. 65–66); and Lapidge (2000, pp. 36–39). For a defense of the sermon’s authenticity on linguistic grounds, see Neidorf (2019).

  9. The Ruodlieb poet refrains from naming this king, referring to him only as the Rex Maior (“Greater King”) in contrast to his adversary the Rex Minor (“Lesser King”). On the nature of the Rex Maior, see Dronke (1970, pp. 38–40).

  10. On the folkloric analogues to the king’s counsels in Ruodlieb, see Seiler (1882, pp. 45–74); Liestøl (1924); Gamer (1955, pp. 77–79); and Braun (1962, pp. 11–17).

  11. For accounts of folktales structured around the motif of the sapiential parting gift, see Seiler (1882, pp. 45–74); Liestøl (1924); Wesselski (1925, pp. 219–220); Gamer (1955, pp. 77–79); and Tolkien (1960, pp. xiv-xvi).

  12. On the relationship between the folk-tale type, Beowulf, and other medieval manifestations of the tale, see especially Stitt (1992); see also Panzer (1910); Chambers (1959, pp. 365–381); and Barakat (1967).

  13. On the interpretation of the hero’s eulogy, see especially Cronan (1991) and Clark (1992).

  14. One sign of the sermon’s lack of overt relevance to the surrounding narrative is that critics have actually castigated the speech for this quality. Tolkien, for instance, considers some portions of the speech so irrelevant that their removal would improve the poem: “well done as the passage is, the poem would be better with the excision of approximately lines 1740-60” (1936, p. 295, n. 38). Wrenn & Bolton agree, judging the sermon to be “too long as it now stands for its context and not really appropriate” (1988, p. 65). They affirm, with good reason, that “Beowulf scarcely needed a discourse on pride and greed of this character” (1988, p. 65). Yet instead of regarding the speech’s lack of overt relevance as an accidental blunder, we might regard its ostensible irrelevance as the deliberate result of the poet’s effort to distance his poem from its folkloric predecessors, where a sapiential parting gift would possess implausibly precise relevance to the subsequent narrative.

  15. On the connections between Heiðreks saga and Widsith, see Malone (1925); and Tolkien (1955–1956). For the text of Widsith, along with ample discussion of its manifold connections to Beowulf, see Chambers (1912) and Malone (1962). On the antiquity of Widsith, see Neidorf (2013).

  16. The text and translation are cited from Tolkien (1960, p. 22).

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    Leonard Neidorf

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Neidorf, L. On Beowulf and Ruodlieb: a folkloric context for Hrothgar’s Sermon. Neohelicon (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-024-00726-z

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