On Beowulf's Elegiac Mood: from the Perspective of Cognitive Poetics

Abstract

Beowulf is the longest narrative poem in ancient England and the most complete and outstanding epic in the early Middle Ages of Europe. It holds an important position in the history of British literature and even European literature. Beowulf mainly tells the great deeds of the hero Beowulf, who is half human and half divine, in subduing monsters and killing poisonous dragons. It has a mythological colour and can be regarded as a heroic mythological epic. It mainly praises Beowulf's heroic spirit, promotes Christian consciousness, and showcases England's unique cultural style during the Anglo-Saxon period. Most studies of Beowulf focus on Germanic culture, literary form, historical background, themes, and symbolic significance portrayed in the poem. By adopting theories in Cognitive Linguistics like prototype, iconicity, perspectives, metaphor, naming in cognitive poetics, this article peruses the elegiac language of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, illustrating that Beowulf is an elegy of the deaths of heroes, the inconstant fate, the vicissitudes of the world and age, the collapse of tribal society, and ultimately—the elegiac world, and results in that Beowulf is more like an elegy than an epic.