[Bêthberry]

This has the look to me of a set essay rather than a subject for discussion, but this work of Tolkien's deserves more than any other to be discussed with reference to Anglo-Saxon heroic verse in general, and the Maldon fragment in particular. Perhaps my response will prompt those with more knowledge of the subject to contribute their opinions.

A set essay indeed, Squatter and one I have long and several times perused it in contemplation of how best to extend the discussion. You have with eloquence compiled several facets of Tolkien's thought on Maldon and on heroic narrative.

To my mind, you provide an admirable explication of Tolkien's argument in the third section, "Overmod" to The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, where Tolkien contrasts the selfishness of chivalric sport with true heroism. As an addendum to your evidences from other works I would add a passage from LotR, Faramir's words to Frodo in "The Two Towers" chapter 'The Window on the West' which I think bear quoting here at length. Particularly Faramir?s words answer Joy's question about whether the races were differentiated by the kind and type of heroism each upheld.

'Yet now, if the Rohirrim are grown in some ways more like to us, enhanced in arts and gentleness, we too have become more like to them, and can scarce claim any longer the title High. We are become Middle Men, of the Twilight, but with memory of other things. For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valour as things good in themselves, both a sport and an end; and though we still hold that a warrior should have more skills and knowledge than only the craft of weapons and slaying, we esteem a warrior, nonetheless, above men of other crafts. Such is the need of our days.'

I would also agree that Tolkien's Homecoming reflects a modern atttitude towards warfare, perhaps the closest Tolkien comes to the perspectives of war poets such as Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen. The dialogue of Tidwald and Torhthelm reminds me of the antiheroes' speech in Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

By instinct he understood his own age, which has been too deeply scarred by misplaced heroism and chivalry and by the twisting of meaning and motive to write in the style of Beowulf or the Maldon fragment.

Yet if it can be said that The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth reflects a modern disenchantment with the ideal of war, does this temper our understanding of war in LotR? How are we to apply this thought to the War of the Ring where war so clearly is made necessary? And, more especially, if in his "sequel" to Maldon, as you name Homecoming, you see Tolkien choosing not to write in the heroic style of the Old English epics, how are we to characterise the archaic style Tolkien creates for LotR? Does it bifurcate into the contemporary style and manner of the Hobbits and the archaisms of the latter parts of the book?