Old English þa “now that” and the Integrity of Beowulf

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Notes

¹All Old English verse except for Beowulf is cited from the edition of Krapp and Dobbie, eds. For Beowulf the edition in use is Klaeber's. However, Klaeber's diacritics, irrelevant to present purposes, have been omitted.

²Bradley, 46.

³I have noticed just one instance in Old English verse in which nu, rather than þa, is used this way, at Christ I 83b. The example at Andreas 485b is irrelevant, as the verb in the independent clause is subjunctive, and the preterite in the dependent clause must be rendered as a present perfect.

⁴Translators using “now” or “now that” include Gordon, trans., 47; Garmonsway, Simpson, and Davidson, eds. and trans., 63; Donaldson, trans., 41; Bradley, 473; Swanton, ed. and trans., 147; Liuzza, trans., 125; and Chickering, ed. and trans., 191. It would be beside the point to attempt a survey of all translations of the poem, and the selection appealed to here is somewhat random—it amounts to all the English translations I happen to have on my shelf. Two of those on my shelf do not use “now (that)” in any of the instances examined below, though there seem to be stylistic reasons for this: these are Child, trans., and Heaney, trans.

⁵“Now (that)” is the choice of Donaldson, 27; Bradley, 452; Swanton, 107; and Chickering, 139.

⁶“Now (that)” is the rendering of Garmonsway, Simpson, and Davidson, 44; and Chickering, 143.

⁹Similar is 723b, ða (he ge)bolgen wæs, in connection with Grendel's flinging open the doors of Heorot.

⁷Garmonsway, Simpson, and Davidson, 21; and Swanton, 69.

⁸See Garmonsway, Simpson, and Davidson, 35; Bradley, 446; and Swanton, 97.

¹⁰Andrew, §15.

¹¹See verses 140b, 1103b, 1681b (with change of punctuation), 2676b.

¹²See verses 223b (with change of punctuation), 323b, 402b, 1291b, 1506b, 1813a (with change of punctuation), 2567b, 2756b, 2944b.

¹³Definitely causal meanings are to be found in Daniel 147b (where the sense “now that” is impossible), Genesis B 782b, 843b, and The Battle of Maldon 276b. In each of these instances, Bradley renders the word “since”. Some possibly causal examples are to be found in Daniel 240b, The Meters of Boethius 1.77b, 9.20a, and Psalm 50 122a.

¹⁴Examples are ÆCHom II 84.102, Or 3 3.57.19, 4.58.3, ChronE (Irvine) 1052.56, and Mt (WSCp) 1.19. Short titles of Old English prose texts are those prescribed by Mitchell, Ball, and Cameron, and employed by the Dictionary of Old English.

¹⁵These are documented in Fulk, “Archaisms”. One piece of evidence against attributing Beowulf's archaic metrical features to antiquarianism on the poet's part is offered in Fulk, “Old English Meter”.

¹⁶Of the seventeen instances listed by Sehrt, 611, just one (Heliand 777) seems likely to have causal significance.

¹⁷See, for example, Schmook, 322 – 53; and Suzuki, 11 – 23.

¹⁸Cronan, however, has demonstrated a degree of interesting lexical agreement between the two poems in “Poetic Words”. He inclines to the opinion, though, that this congruence reflects the poems' date of composition rather than their dialect or style.

¹⁹This Liedertheorie was espoused most prominently by Müllenhoff, with an unsuccessful attempt to revive it by Berendsohn. Campbell, 283 – 92, seems to have been the last to assume the incorporation of earlier lays. For an excellent overview of scholarship on the integrity of the poem, see Shippey, “Structure,” 149 – 74.

²⁰This view was first proposed by Schücking. Dissections along similar lines are proposed by Magoun, “Béowulf A” and “Béowulf B,” 127 – 40, and by Kiernan.

²¹For effective counterarguments to Schücking's evidence, see Chambers, 117 – 20; to Magoun's, see Brodeur, 3 – 26. In addition to the studies cited in note 22, for a response to Kiernan, see Donoghue.

²²See in particular Grinda; Bately, 409 – 31; Shippey, “Old English Poetry,” 164 – 79; Sundquist; and Fulk, “On Argumentation,” 23.

²³See Robinson, 56 – 7; also Cronan, “Poetic Meanings”.

²⁴Donoghue, 43 – 4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

R. D. Fulk

R. D. Fulk is at the Department of English, Indiana University, USA.