Anglo-saxon poetry. Pagan poetry content Introduction 3

ANGLO-SAXON POETRY. PAGAN POETRY
Content

Introduction 3
Chapter I. _ "Beowulf" - the largest monument of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry 5
1.1 The historical context of the creation of the poem "Beowulf" 5
1.2 Artistic features of the poem 9
Chapter II I. _ Good and Evil in Beowulf 14
2.1 Opposition between Good and Evil in the poem 14
2.2 The concept of goodness in the poem 16
2.3 Representations of evil in the poem 21
Conclusion 24
Bibleograhpy 25

Introduction

The perception of "good" and "evil" reflects not only the moral aspects of a person's life, but also testifies to a certain transformation of public consciousness that occurs in the process of historical and cultural interaction, as a result of a collision with various factors (from political, external and internal to cultural ones).
As a result, the study of the perception of these philosophical categories in different historical eras is one of the leading historical problems.
The reflection of the perception of "good" and "evil" is presented, first of all, in the literary work of mankind, which is the main source in studies devoted to the study of various aspects of the life of a particular people in various historical eras.
In the period of the IX-X centuries studied in this course work. represented by a literary genre that reflects all the diversity of reality, the heroic epic, one of the brightest monuments of which is the Anglo-Saxon epic " Beowulf " (X century).
The relevance of this work lies in the lack of knowledge of the moral values of the Anglo-Saxons in relation to the study of other spheres of life of the Scandinavian peoples.
The purpose of the course work is to study the ideas of "good" and "evil" among the Anglo-Saxons on the basis of the data contained in the epic " Beowulf ".
Based on the purpose of the work, the author has identified the following tasks that will cover the topic most fully:

1. 
   Characterization and analysis of the main source on this topic, which is the Anglo-Saxon epic " Beowulf ", the ratio of Christian and pagan elements in it;
   
2. 
   Characteristics of the Anglo-Saxons' ideas about "good" and "evil" in the early Middle Ages, on the example of the text of this poem.
   

The object of study is the Scandinavian epic " Beowulf ". The subject of study is good and evil, the Anglo-Saxons' ideas about them.
In the process of writing this course work, the following sources and literature were used. The main source was, as mentioned earlier, the Anglo-Saxon heroic epic " Beowulf ", written in the 10th century, translated by V. Tikhomirov, A. Korsun , Yu. Korneev, as well as notes by O. Smirnitskaya, M. Steblin-Kamensky and introductory article by A. Gurevich to it. I would also like to note the work of E.A. Melnikova "Sword and lyre. Anglo-Saxon society in history and epos".
The authors who studied this topic, the researchers contacted by the author of this work in the process of writing it, E.A. Melnikova, A. Gurevich. But besides this, Alekseev Mikhail Pavlovich (1896 - 1981) wrote about medieval Anglo-Saxon literature - a Russian comparative literary critic, encyclopedic scientist, specialist in the field of foreign literatures (English, French, German, Spanish).