SOURCE: “Oral-Formulaic Context in Beowulf: The Hero on the Beach and the Grendel Episode,” in A Key to Old Poems: The Oral-Formulaic Approach to the Interpretation of West-Germanic Verse, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988, pp. 107-32.

In the essay below, Renoir examines the ways in which the author ofBeowulf employed the motifs and formulas of oral composition, maintaining that the use of such devices does not necessarily indicate that the poem was composed orally, but only that the poet was well-versed in the traditional methods of oral-formulaic composition.

Just as the prominence rightfully granted Beowulf by the literary world has naturally turned that poem into a standard against which much Germanic traditional poetry has been at times mistakenly measured, so it has encouraged the most distinguished Anglo-Saxonists and students of oral-formulaic matters to dissect practically every conceivable aspect of its artistry, language, and background; and the vigor with...