Popular Culture Review Vol. 25, No. 2, Summer 2014 | Page 42

38 Christian elements in the poem. Irving notes that Klaeber “made the indisputable claim that the so-called Christian coloring was not laid late and lightly on the surface, but was worked deeply into the very tissue of the poem at every point” (Irving 180). The scop, however he may be compelled to tell his story truthfully from his own religious perspective, nonetheless seems burdened that its effect on a fellow man is so severe. Following the scop’s recitation, Unferth turns on him angrily and is about to strike, when the shocked cries of the warriors arrest him and blood rises to the surface of the stagnant pool. Unferth’s attack and the seeming finality the blood represents prompts Hrothgar to action: he banishes Unferth. Those loyal to Unferth are apparently so moved by the narrative that they do not offer him support, and he leaves alone. Hrethric thanks the scop for ridding the Danes of Unferth: “Your story reminded Unferth’s men of what he is. It showed them their own conduct.” Still troubled, the scop replies, “Do you not understand? I told a story and because of that a man is exiled . . . I was the cause . . . I have abused my craft.” Hrethric, displaying some newly acquired intellectual maturity asks, “Have you not said that a poet reveals men to themselves? That he offers them knowledge?” (Oldham 166), and in so asking, he reinforces Barthes’ theory that it is the “writing” or “producing” of a text which creates meaning. The scop has “played” with multiple narratives — both the tale which Beowulf tells of Unferth’s crimes and that of Cain and Abel — grafting together a new one, with its own meaning which responds to the “social space” in which it is created (Barthes 905). As I theorized earlier, within this imagined Textual world, Oldham’s scop would represent merely the first generation of tellers of the Beowulf poem, but nonetheless in Oldham’s imagined scheme he seems to have had a lasting impact. The subsequent poet might be a Geat or at least someone who reveres Beowulf the hero, since the scop of The Raven Waits gives us quite an unflattering depiction of him, unless we can assume that the scop will suppress his personal feelings to give Beowulf his due for deeds performed. Oldham’s “pre-writing” of Beowulf deconstructs the story by giving us a “backstage view” of how it came to contain many of the ingredients found in its Old English version. Unlike Hrethric, who is both immature and ungenerous; or Wealtheow, whose thoughts are taken up by her children^* and by her caution to neither spurn nor fully encourage the sexual advances of the ambitious Hrothulf; or Hrothgar, who seems to live in a fog of depression about the state of his kingdom and his people, the scop, Oldham seems to suggest, is the only one who has the critical distance necessary to render the details of events