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New Thinking: Beowulf

Arts & Ideas

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Beowulf's Death, Is It the Judgment of the Righteous?

Old English can be quite a tricky language sometimes to get a hand-long concept. There is one ambiguous example which kind of got me into this research topic in the first place, and I can share that with you. The question there is, does Beowulf's soul go to the judgment of the righteous, meaning the righteous people are going to judge Beowulf? So in that case, the ambiguity is kind of a hell or heaven question for Beowulf. Do you think the original audience and people listening to the poem writing it down would have had a clear idea of which one it was, or is it intentionally ambiguous?

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