Adapting Beowulf: Text, History and Dramatic Form. Dr Craig Jordan-Baker Open University

Transcription

1 Adapting Beowulf: Text, History and Dramatic Form Dr Craig Jordan-Baker Open University

2 Introduction: Aims and Structure Critique Beowulf as a poetic text to establish a partial critical reading. Consider the connection between critical reading and the adaptive process. Look at how the production reflects on the separation and contest of faculties in HE.

3 Beowulf, Art and the Other

4 Zemeckis Beowulf (2007) I m here to kill your monster!

5 Considering the Beowulf poem The nature and status of monsters The status of art making (music, poetry) Beowulf as a Nordic hero-archetype

6 Monsters: Grendel Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, Nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall, the harp being struck and the clear song of the skilled poet telling with mastery of man s beginnings, (Heaney, 2000, l.86-91, p.5) nothing but war; how he would never parley or make peace with any Dane Nor stop his death-dealing nor pay the death-price. (Heaney, 2000, l , p.7)

7 Monsters: Grendel s Mother He died in battle, Paid for his life; and now this powerful Other one arrives, this force of evil Driven to avenge her kinsman s death. (Heaney, 2000, l , p.44) But now his mother Has sallied forth on a savage journey, Grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge. (Heaney, 2000, l , pp.42-43)

8 Donna Harraway Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imagination. The Centaurs and Amazons of ancient Greece established the limits of the centred polis of the Greek male human by their disruption of marriage and boundary pollutions of the warrior with animality and woman (Haraway, 1991, p.180).

9 Art as a Human Institution Meanwhile, a thane of the king s household, a carrier of tales, A traditional singer deeply schooled In the lore of the past, linked a new theme With a strict metre. The man started (Heaney, 2000, p ) Hygelac s kinsman kept thinking about his name and fame: he never lost heart (Heaney, 2000, l , p.50) They sang then and played to please the hero Words and music for their warrior prince, Harp tunes and tales of adventure: There were high times on the hall benches And the king s poet performed his part (Heaney, 2000, l , p.34)

10 Beowulf and Adaptation: Theme and Dramatic Form

11 On adaptation [t]here is nothing in the text, complete though it is, to give definite instructions. The agency of adaptation, in other words resides with the adaptor, even though the adaptation occurs within a set of constraints (Pucher, 2011, p.296). The plot was not the poet s; and though he has infused feeling and significance into its crude material, that plot was not a perfect vehicle of the theme or themes that came to hidden life in the poet s mind as he worked upon it (Tolkien, 1936, p.272). We can conceive of it re-presented and transformed in performance in a Bunraku theatre in Japan, where the puppetry and poetry are mutually supportive, a mixture of Technicolor spectacle and ritual chant (Heaney, 2000, p.xiii).

12 Beowulf by Barely Human Puppets Combined table-top puppetry, music, poetry and shadow puppetry First performed at the Theatre Royal, Brighton Will be performed at the Iron Duke as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival 2014

13 Aspects of Adaptation Linguistic/poetic approach The themes of art and humanity Beowulf as a character

14 Frenchifying Beowulf The Poet: ABCC+BADD/Iambic pentameter Hrothgar: AAB/Iambic pentameter Beowulf: ABCB/Iambic tetrameter Grendel: ABA/Trochaic heptameter Grendel s Mother: ABCBD/Iambic trimeter

15 Verse forms of characters Hrothgar My people my kin, my men and women Help me build a hall in my Kingdom s ken. To shut out the unwieldy-wending of night. My earthly hall: now clean and human. Though the earth is full, pregnant and swollen, With much we must keep outside, at arm s length. Grendel Over bridge and road and path I walk my body. Taken from my cave and moss and gloom, solitary. I come to strip the flesh from your melody. You are new and tall and strong and lithe but still scared. Brought from far away in boats through eddies with your oars. Yes I m real; to your stories I ll not be compared. Poet Beowulf goes and kneels and Beowulf explains His sea-born brethren have come cross the brine. To test humanness against the un-human, To turn action to song, worries to ruin. At these sentiments, Hrothgar nods in slow time, He has heard this tune before, knows its refrain. And though these Geats may be welcome and more, He stares down, imagines dirt mixed with their gore.

16 The Word-Hoard: Links to Anglo-Saxon Ring-giver (King) Thole (to tolerate) Kith (Associates/Friends) Wight (Creature/Monster) Fyrd (Small war party) Thane (Noble) Aethling (Prince/one of High rank)

17 Art and Autonomy Needing hut no, hearth no, kin no, bread no, sword. I m myself with little, cripples stop your mirth! Treasure death s I do, like you treasure your metal hoards. (Jordan-Baker, 2013, p.5) Mark, you music-meddler! My child needed no care, He was himself from birth. Unlike men, needing their Fables, foes and friends. (Jordan-Baker, 2013, p.25)

18 Beowulf: Quixotic Hero Mother s-milk was laced with story, My bread was baked with poetry, On this ship you should join me now. You my fyrd, worthy company! (Jordan-Baker, 2013, p.7) The sky. The ground. High Heorot hall. These I note, as though in fever. I recall acts, recount those boasts, Soon told by some story-weaver. Hrothgar, even though I am weak, I beg to know of other wiles. Are there more phantoms in your realm? Or abroad, are there other trials? (Jordan-Baker, 2013, pp.27-28)

19 Interdisciplinarity in Higher Education

20 Creative Writing and the Contest of Faculties memory and emotion which are the exclusive spurs [for studying CW], not intellectual interest, curiosity and the many resources (books among them) for acquiring new knowledges (Wandor, 2008, p.113) [The integrational model] is based on the assumption that there is a fundamental conflict between writers and critics over the nature of literature (Dawson, 2005, p.161)

21 (Not) Slaying the Dragon Problems of Representation Problems of Narrative Problems of Performance

22 Alexander (trans.) (2003) Beowulf. London: Penguin. Bibliography Ambrisco, A.S. Trolling for Outcasts in Sturla Gunnarsson s Beowulf and Grendel, in The Journal of Popular Culture, 46, 2, (2013), Dawson, P. (2005) Creative Writing and the New Humanities. London: Routledge. Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge. Heaney, S. (trans.) (2000) Beowulf. London: Faber and Faber. Jordan-Baker, C. (2013) Beowulf. Unpublished play manuscript. Pulcher, M. Drama and Performance: Towards a Theory of Adaptation, in Common Knowledge 17, 2 (2011), Tolkein, J.R.R. Beowulf: The monsters and the Critics. Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936), Wandor, M. (2008) The Author is not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else: Creative Writing Reconceived. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dr Craig Jordan-Baker: c.jordan-baker@open.ac.uk

23 WASSAIL! Thanks to Mary Martin for photography