Beowulf Anybody?

The issues raised by my title--the nature of heroism in Tolkien's fiction and The Hobbit's relationship to Beowulf--are not new.In spite of such multiple treatment, however, studies of these issues are with few exceptions flawed in three dangerous ways: by the general critical sin of Sloppy Statements, by a tendency to simple-minded and profligate Parallel-Hunting, and by the Voilà Syndrome, whereby the critic impressively points to something but fails to ask that first of all critical questions, "So what?" As an example of this Syndrome, I offer Christensen's notice of a parallel between Beowulf and The Hobbit. She writes:

Among the episodes and digressions that Tolkien here incorporates fromBeowulf are the feasting and gift-giving and recapitulation of events that occur at Hrothgar's table; Beowulf's following of the trail of Grendel to the mere where his mother's lair is; [and] Beowulf's taking of trophies, specifically, Grendel's arm and later head. . . .

In The Hobbit we meet Beorn, a skin-changer, who is sometimes a man and sometimes literally a beo-wulf, a bear. With him there is much feasting and retelling of events and, upon the company's departure, much giving of gifts. During the company's visit, Beorn retraces their steps to confirm their story, and returns with trophies of their enemies, a warg skin and a goblin head--close enough parallels to the concluding scenes in Hrothgar's hall. ("Tolkien's Creative Technique" 6)

Quite apart from objections to piling up parallels of dubious usefulness here, any thoughtful reader will want to ask Christensen a serious critical question: What are these parallels "close enough" to Beowulf for? What is it that such comparisons accomplish?

To avoid such critical perils, I propose in this paper to attack my issues in a more readerly way than seems usually to be the case: I shall begin with Tolkien's text and the terms it establishes for an understanding of Bilbo's "heroism," proceed to an analysis of the structure of Tolkien's plot as it develops Bilbo's character, and only then--and only in that context--try to understand how Tolkien's plot and protagonist use certain structural quotations from the Old English poem and its analogues. This is a topic that could be delved into severely and I could probably do something of a dissertation on it but I'm going to avoid that and ask for comments thoughts or questions on the topic and do my best to respond to them!