#Author of beowulf how to

The world of the poem-a fantastical version of Denmark in the fifth to early sixth century and the land of the Geats, in present-day Sweden-is distant, but the actions of the poemвЂ™s characters are familiar.ДЄs much as Beowulf is a poem about Then, itвЂ™s also (and always has been) a poem about Now, and how we got here. And even with vigilance, even with courage, you still might go forth to slay a dragon (or, if youвЂ™re Grendel, slay a Dane), die in the slaying, and leave everyone and everything you love vulnerable.

#Author of beowulf how to

The phrase вЂњThat was a good kingвЂќ recurs throughout the poem, because the poem is fundamentally concerned with how to get and keep the title вЂњGood.вЂќ The suspicion that at any moment a person might shift from hero into howling wretch, teeth bared, causes characters ranging from scops to ring-lords to drop cautionary anecdotes. Graying old men long for one last exam to render them heroes once and for all. Queens negotiate for the survival of their sons, attempt to save their children by marrying themselves to warriors, and, in one case, battle for vengeance on their sonвЂ™s murderers. Hoarders of all kinds attempt to maintain control of people, halls, piles of gold, and even the volume of the natural world. In it, multiple old men try to plot out how to retire in a world that offers no retirement. ItвЂ™s 3,182 lines of alliterative wildness, a sequence of monsters and would-be heroes. Beowulf bears the distinction of appearing to be basic-one man, three battles, lots of gold-while actually being an intricate treatise on morality, masculinity, flexibility, and failure. ItвЂ™s a somewhat unlikely object of obsession, this thousand-ish-year-old epic. That might have been the end of it, but by that point IвЂ™d tumbled head over heels into Beowulf itself, and was, like everyone who ever translates it, obsessed. It aggravated me enough that I eventually wrote a contemporary adaptation of Beowulf- The Mere Wife, a novel in which the GrendelвЂ™s mother character is a protagonist, a PTSD-stricken veteran of the United StatesвЂ™ wars in the Middle East. When I finally encountered the actual poem, years later, I was appalled to discover that GrendelвЂ™s mother was not only not the main event but also, to many people, an extension of Grendel rather than a character unto herself, despite the significant ink devoted to her fighting capabilities. I imagined she was the point of whatever story she came from. She was just a woman with a weapon, all by herself in the center of the page.

In the book I first saw her in, there was no Grendel, no Beowulf, no fifty years a queen. She had a ferocious look and seemed to give precisely zero fucks, not that I had that language to describe her at that point in my life. Wonder Woman and She-Ra were fine, but GrendelвЂ™s mother was better. I was about eight, and on the hunt for any sort of woman-warrior. My love affair with Beowulf began with GrendelвЂ™s mother, the moment I encountered her in an illustrated compendium of monsters,1 a slithery greenish entity standing naked in a swamp, knife in hand.