All 3 Uses of
Beowulf
in
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
- Grendel, the monster in the medieval epic Beowulf (eighth century A.D.), is an actual monster, but he can also symbolize (a) the hostility of the universe to human existence (a hostility that medieval Anglo-Saxons would have felt acutely) and (b) a darkness in human nature that only some higher aspect of ourselves (as symbolized by the title hero) can conquer.†
Chpt Intr.
- Sometimes influence is direct and obvious, as when the twentieth-century American writer T. Coraghessan Boyle writes "The Overcoat II," a postmodern reworking of the nineteenth-century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol's classic story "The Overcoat," or when William Trevor updates James Joyce's "Two Gallants" with "Two More Gallants," or when John Gardner reworks the medieval Beowulf into his little postmodern masterpiece Grendel.†
Chpt 5
- Beowulf is largely about the coming of Christianity into the old paganism of northern Germanic society—after being about a hero overcoming a villain.†
Chpt 7 *
Definition:
the legendary hero of an anonymous Old English epic poem composed in the early 8th century; he slays a monster and becomes king but dies fighting a dragon