SOURCE: "Ring Composition," in "Beowulf": The Poem and Its Tradition, Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 152-62.

In the following excerpt, Niles explains how the author of Beowulf used a repeating structural design known as "ring composition" to organize his poem and to draw connections between characters such as Beowulf and Grendel.

The overall structure of Beowulf was once believed to be a product of a series of mistakes or fortuituous accidents. The author (or authors, for he was multiplied) was given credit for his fine sentiments and noble style, but not for his sense of form. Like most readers today, I believe that this view is based on a misapprehension of the poet's concept of what constitutes narrative form, and I want to help lay the view to rest by examining certain ways in which the poem shows patterning in its larger structure as well as on the level...