The_Course_of_Time_in_Beowulf

The Course of Time in Beowulf What singles out Beowulf among all the other works of Anglo-Saxon poetry is the way its poet handles time. Unlike the narrative mode of the heroic lay or the folktale in which time moves in a progressive linear sequence in Beowulf temporal relationships happen to be quite complex. It is not only the dimension of the time span in it but also the arrangement of “past”, “present” and “future” which surprisingly seldom follow chronologically. The chronology of the poem as a whole is somewhat vague and the “past” and “future” in it so indefinitely marked that there is no clear beginning or end of the story in the historical time plane. And what makes the determination of the time boundaries of the poem even more complex are the poet’s references to events both from the biblical Creations and the final dissolution of the World. Probably no other feature of the poem distinguishes it as much as its constant movement backwards and forwards in time forming an incredible net of temporal interdependences. The three points of the time line – “past”, “present” and “future” often exchange their places breaking the natural sequence of events and sometimes even merge thus causing the reader time, present, poem, past, poet, future, beowulf, temporal, story, something, reader, narrative, days, thus, through, one, lines, line, events, clearly, between, beginning, years, way, very, two-thirds, two, side, sequence, points, poet’s, often, much, movement, moments