Academic Post:

I wonder whether it's necessary anymore to talk about digressions. That way of thinking about Beowulf is pre-Robinson, pre-Lyerle, pre-Niles, all of whom have advanced more or less persuasive ways of thinking about the episodic structure of Beowulf that seems to obviate the discussion of digressions. However. Nobody so far as I know has tried to do a really comprehensive reading of the digressions. I would like to go through them with a checklist. Someone wrote that they are all about feuds; that's very interesting.

It would be a very interesting short paper to work backwards through the digressions and see whether they had been accounted for.

I don't agree with Niles about the central moment of the poem being somehow deeply significant or Christian. Hmmmmmm.