| dc.description | In what follows I intend to show how the Rood poet drew upon the "Battle with the Monster" sequence as a strategy for the poem's composition. Albert Lord focused upon this narrative pattern within Indo-European epic, with particular emphasis on the theme of the "Death of the Substitute."3 More recently, in Immanent Art, Foley has expounded upon the sequence, defining the Battle with the Monster sequence as a combination of five specific concomitants: Arming, Boast, Monster's Approach, Death of the Substitute, and Engagement (though these events may occur in differing order). It should be said at this point that even Foley asserts that within the corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry the "Battle with the Monster" sequence is manifest in only one poem, Beowulf (1991:232). His analysis consists of a codification of this sequence in terms of the "succession of actions and motifs" (231) that comprise it as shown in that poem. Foley's aim is a consideration of how the "Battle with the Monster" sequence as evident in Beowulf helps us in understanding that poem's traditional structure, how "oral-formulaic structure stands as a viable hypothesis" for this patterning (232). But I would suggest that the pattern that emerges in Foley's discussion of the sequence in Beowulf is one startlingly close to the pattern of conflict that emerges in "The Dream of the Rood."// | eng |
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