Dreaming of Dragons: Tolkien's Impact on Heaney's Beowulf (J.R.R. Tolkien and Seamus Heaney) (Critical Essay)

As a result of surging interest in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, due in part to the Peter Jackson film adaptations and in part to the publication of Michael D. C. Drout's variorum edition of Tolkien's Beowulf and the Critics, both popular and scholarly audiences have come to understand the role that Old English literature, particularly the Beowulf poem, plays in Tolkien's literary worldview. Anglo-Saxonists widely acknowledge their dependence upon Tolkien for the ground broken by his 1936 essay, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Without Tolkien's intercession, Beowulf may never have come to be treated as the work of art it is. Any discussion of Beowulf criticism invariably begins with a reference to Tolkien. Peter S. Baker introduces his recent collection of essays by saying that Tolkien's "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" "continue[s] to be influential" and is "still worth the student's attention" (xi). So present is Tolkien within the critical mind of the Anglo-Saxonist that Roy Michael Liuzza, in his essay about the dating of Beowulf closing the same volume, references Tolkien's unconditional acceptance of "the attribution of Beowulf to the 'age of Bede'"(281). The placement of Tolkien at the "alpha" and "omega" of Beowulf-scholarship in this particular collection demonstrates the prominence Tolkien occupies within the Anglo-Saxonist imagination. (1) Tolkien's influence is also felt in literary treatments of the poem that may not always be as welcomed by Anglo-Saxonists as they are by contemporary readers nursed on Tolkien's fantastic treatments of the poem's narrative elements. Both scholars and poets assert the centrality of Tolkien's role in Beowulf criticism. Bruce Mitchell comments that "The Greenfield and Robinson Bibliography records seventy items on 'Literary Interpretations' of Beowulf before J.R.R. Tolkien's lecture and two-hundred-and-fifty between its publication and the end of 1972" (209). Seamus Heaney credits Tolkien with an "epoch-making paper" that takes "for granted the poem's integrity and distinction as a work of art" wherein Tolkien "proceeded to show in what this integrity and distinction inhered"--a major departure from the litany of ostensibly non-literary scholarly treatments of the poem that precede his discussion of Tolkien ("Introduction" xi). Few Anglo-Saxonists would quibble with Heaney's characterization of Tolkien's significance, even though much has been said concerning Heaney's faithfulness to the original poem. (2) For scholars, poets, and students alike, Tolkien's essay has become central to our understanding and treatment of the poem. At the same time, Old English literature is central to our understanding of Tolkien's own literary canon. (3) Tolkien's re-imaginings of Beowulf in his fiction emerge seamlessly from his critical treatment of the poem. Thus, in Heaney's translation of 11. 2287-2290 we find a perfect parallel to Tolkien's recasting of the dragon episode in The Hobbit. Although Heaney's unfamiliarity with The Hobbit makes it unlikely that Tolkien's fiction influences his translation directly, Tolkien's scholarship clearly prompts Heaney to select the same literary trope to represent dragonly consciousness: the dream. (4)