دانلود کتاب Cain and Beowulf: A Study in Secular Allegory

Cain, the inaugurator of social disharmony, bloodshed, and enmity among men, a commonplace of medieval exegetical tradition, is here examined by Dr Williams to illuminate the metaphoric use of the figure in the poem Beowulf.

The progenitor of the race of all monstrous creatures, Cain bequeaths to his descendants his own moral significance; thus Grendel and his mother, the giants, and all misbegotten creatures carry on the anti-social
crusade he began with his fratricidal attack on Abel. In Beowulf, social dissension, personal bereavement, internecine destruction, the fall of nations, are the pre-eminent themes and are pre-eminently expressed through the figure of Cain: Cain explicit as the ancestor of Grendel and implicit as the spiritual father of all violent men. The fantastic and the historical, the temporal and the atemporal, are linked through the poem's peculiar allegorical use of Cain, himself both historical, scriptural, and a fantastic disfigurement in the legend of the monsters.

The Beowulf poet used the exegetical tradition to describe the antisocial force among men, forging, with biblical figures and moral truths, an allegory which is secular in the fullest medieval sense.