{"id":194,"date":"2011-09-08T21:03:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T21:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/?p=194"},"modified":"2024-05-28T08:14:42","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T12:14:42","slug":"could-beowulf-have-been-a-source-for-the-star-wars-lightsaber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/?p=194","title":{"rendered":"Could Beowulf Have Been a Source for the Star Wars Lightsaber?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading my colleague Craig Williamson\u2019s splendid new translation of Beowulf<\/em>, the first time I\u2019ve re-read this poem since college.\u00a0 Coming across Craig\u2019s fun discussion of compound words and \u201ckennings\u201d in Anglo-Saxon poetry (pp. 8-9; kennings are 2-word metaphorical descriptions of important things or concepts), a thought occurred to me:\u00a0 could one of the sources of inspiration for the lightsabers in Star Wars<\/em> have been the Old English epic poem?<\/p>\n

I’ve never seen a mention of Beowulf<\/em> as a source by Lucas, but of course he has acknowledged Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces<\/em> and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings <\/em>as inspirations.\u00a0\u00a0Both might very well have led Lucas to read Beowulf<\/em>, for it was a powerful source for both Campbell and Tolkien.\u00a0\u00a0 Beowulf<\/em> has sometimes mentioned as a literary precedent for Star Wars<\/em>, but when it is it\u2019s usually by stressing such general things as the heroic quest, the battle between good and evil, etc. \u00a0Here’s another general plot parallel: \u00a0Beowulf<\/em>\u00a0gives the hero’s special sword a name, Hrunting, and stresses that all heroes fight with a particular, individual style. \u00a0Beowulf’s sword is given to him by another to honor Beowulf’s worth as a warrior, yet in Beowulf’s climatic fight with Grendel’s Mother Hrunting is not strong enough to kill the monster. \u00a0Such details have parallels with Lucas’ epic, which tried to give each lightsaber fighter a particular choreography, a distinctive style\u2014for more on this, see the Wikipedia page on lightsabers below, especially the section on Choreography\u2014and in Luke’s climactic battle with Darth Vader he too realizes he can’t defeat Darth solely by using his most trusted weapon. \u00a0As far as I can remember, though, Luke or other figures good and bad don’t name their lightsabers, though all the weaponry have distinctive features that individualize them. \u00a0 Can anyone think of a named lightsaber in Star Wars<\/em>?<\/p>\n

But what about Lucas’ idea of the lightsaber itself? \u00a0Could that too have a source in a world long ago and far away?<\/p>\n

Consider the famous kenning the poem uses for Beowulf\u2019s sword:\u00a0 hilde-leoma<\/em>, \u201cbattle-light.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0In all of Old English literature, this hilde-leoma<\/em> kenning occurs only in Beowulf<\/em>, in two places.\u00a0 The first is in line 1143 in the original (l. 1146 in the Williamson translation; the OE dictionary translates it as \u201cbattle-light\u201d and Williamson renders this as \u201cflashing sword\u201d).\u00a0 The second occurs in l. 2583 (2582 in the Williamson translation, where it\u2019s rendered as \u201cbattle-flames\u201d).\u00a0 In this second instance, the kenning is of special interest because it describes both Beowulf\u2019s sword and the dragon\u2019s fire, which of course is its main weapon! \u00a0This kenning honors something fairly literal, of course: the flash of light on a fast-moving sword-blade.\u00a0 But Beowulf is clearly battling the powers of darkness in the poem, standing for the light and the best of humanity, and so \u201clight\u201d here takes on much more than just a literal meaning\u2014and it is a light that is linked via the compound metaphor to battling darkness.<\/p>\n

Aside from Beowulf<\/em> as a possible literary source of inspiration for Lucas, there are of course many more contemporary instances of powerful weapons involving beams of light etc. in twentieth century \u00a0sf \u00a0lore.\u00a0 For a good survey of these with some fun pictures, see the \u201cStar Wars<\/em> Origins\u201d website on lightsabers below. \u00a0 But my hunch is the Lucas lightsaber has some very old origins as well.<\/p>\n

PS: Thanks to Craig for some suggestions re this post. \u00a0He’s not responsible for my daffy ideas, of course!<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Craig Williamson, \u201cBeowulf\u201d and Other Old English Poems <\/em>(Philadelphia:\u00a0 U of Pennsylvania P, 2011).<\/p>\n

Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to \u201cBeowulf\u201d<\/em> (New York: D.S. Brewer, 2005).<\/p>\n

Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller.\u00a0 1898.\u00a0 An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary<\/em>.\u00a0 Rev. and Rpt.\u00a0 London: Oxford UP, 1972.<\/p>\n

\u201cStar Wars<\/em> Origins\u201d website, on the lightsaber.\u00a0 http:\/\/moongadget.com\/origins\/lightsabers.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Wikipedia Page on the Lightsaber \u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lightsaber<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading my colleague Craig Williamson\u2019s splendid new translation of Beowulf, the first time I\u2019ve re-read this poem since college.\u00a0 Coming across Craig\u2019s fun discussion of compound words and \u201ckennings\u201d in Anglo-Saxon poetry (pp. 8-9; kennings are 2-word metaphorical … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[52,55,57,54,53,56],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/pschmid1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}