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280 - Richard Rohlin - Universal History: Beowulf

The Symbolic World

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Is There a Christian Author in the Beowulf Poem?

There's almost nothing about the poem that's not debated, but one of the things that isn't debated is that it that the Beowulf poet was a Christian. So you've got this Christian author, but then what people don't really necessarily agree on is to what degree was he just telling his own story or taking older stuff and kind of synthesizing it together. People didn't think about originality the way that we do today in the Middle Ages. And so my question is, well, is it a pagan leftover, which would be fine? I wouldn't really be bothered by that. But is it the Beowolf poet using his Christianity, Anglo-Saxon Christianity,

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