Beowulf

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, but According to my high school English teacher, It is possibly the oldest surviving long poem in Old English and is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Old English literature.  It was written in England around the 8th and the early 11th centuries. The author was an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as to the “Beowulf Poet.” Therefore, it comes with different versions, the one I choose is translated by Stephen Mitchell, and the reason I choose her work is because the spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry really catch my eyes.

I actually read some part of the story when I was in high school, and It’s odd, from what I know, Beowulf was never widely read until after it was mass-printed in the 1800s, and no other literary works allude to it or appear to be directly influenced by it. It’s now considered one of the most important canonical works in English, but none of the characters are Anglo-Saxon, it's actually all focusing on the Danes and Geats, and its setting is in Denmark rather than Britain.

When I received this book, I was afraid that I couldn’t understand, but after reading some pages, I noticed it has clever uses of the alliterative verse variation, dramatic reversal, and kennings. Like, two of kennings from Beowulf are "whale-road" in line 10 and "sea-wood" in line 208, and two examples of alliteration are "Then as dawn brightened and the day broke" in line 126 and "the storied leader, sat stricken and helpless" in line 130.

The summary from chapters 1 to 3, is basically talking about where a king named Hrothgar has a splendid mead hall known as “Heorot” A place of celebration and much merriment. However, the joyous noise angers the evil monster named Grendel, It lives in a nearby swamp. For 12 years the creature terrorizes Heorot with nightly visits in which he carries off Hrothgar’s warriors and devours them. And the fun part about Grendel is that, in the story, it didn’t specify whether Grendel is a male or female, although the story made Grendel sound something like a man, by having two arms (or claws), two legs, and one head, but he is much larger and can defeat dozens of men at a time. And I think he is probably the most interesting character so far, not only he is a mix of man and beast; his fury is based on very human feelings of resentment and jealousy.