Beowulf richard wilbur author biography search
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Beowulf
Richard Wilbur 1950
Author Biography
Poem Summary
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
For Further Reading
“Beowulf” appeared in Richard Wilbur’s second volume of poetry, Ceremony and Other Poems (1950), the book that established him as one of the preeminent American poets of his generation. In this poem, Wilbur retells part of an Old English epic, or long narrative poem, also called “Beowulf.” He describes the hero of the ancient poem from a mid-twentieth century point of view.
The epic “Beowulf” was written between the mid-seventh and the late tenth centuries A.D. It tells the story of a Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, who comes to save a kingdom from a monster named Grendel who attacks the castle each night. The hero fights and kills the monster; soon Grendel’s mother appears, and Beowulf must defeat her as well. The Danes give Beowulf many gifts in thanks, and he returns home, where he is king of the Geats for fifty years. He e
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Richard Wilbur Biography
Richard Wilbur was born March 1, 1921 in New York City. Soon after, his family relocated to North Caldwell, New Jersey. In the rural town where he grew up, Richard was involved in writing his school’s newspaper. His father, Lawrence, was a portrait painter, and his mother, Helen, was from a family of journalists.
Following in the footsteps of his maternal family, upon his high school graduation, Wilbur attended Amherst College where he continued to work on the school newspaper. He graduated with his undergraduate degree in literature and subsequently joined the army. Wilbur meant to serve as a cryptographer, but he was instead enrolled as an infantryman.
Wilbur served in World War II in various parts of France and Germany; by the end of the war, he was a staff sergeant. His time serving in World War II would drastically change his worldview and push him to his career as a poet.
A Portrait of Richard Wilbur, wikimedia
Following the end of World W
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The incorporation of monsters or other mythological beasts for Beowulf to fight in the original poem, Beowulf, are eliminated almost entirely from Wiblur’s poem “Beowulf,” which shows that there is more to the legendary hero and king than merely the creatures he fought or the treasure he won. Wilbur’s poem focuses more on Beowulf’s lack of descendants, and the poem feels emptier at the end because when Beowulf dies, the people gather and sing, but there is no direct descendent of his to assume the throne, so whatever monsters he defeated in battle seem almost irrelevant.
The only monster even mentioned in Wilbur’s piece is Grendel, and even then he is not referred to by that name. The duel in Wilbur’s piece also lacks a lot of the detail and explanation that the original incorporates to flesh out the fight scenes. Wilbur’s introduction of Grendel is simplistic: “and a child, / Grown monstrous, so besieged them in the night / That all their daytimes were a dream of fri