BEOWULF

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BEOWULF

• The Original Superhero

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Composition

• mid 7th to end of 10th century
• Old English
• Its a heroic narrative
• Written IN England About Scandanavia

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Summary

• Beowulf was great Geat warrior
• Goes to help Danes with their monster, Grendel.
• Fights Grendel, then his Mom, then a Dragon

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Main Idea

• Society governed by a heroic code of honor
• Getting a name as a warrior was more important
  than worry about the souls destiny in the
  afterlife

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Reading the Story

• Certain images will stay with you as you read
• Hrothgars Hall - Herot
• Beowulfs funeral pyre
• The three Agons - where heros enemies come at
  him in demonic shapes

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Three Agons

• Agon conflict esp. the dramatic conflict
  between chief characters in a literary work
• 3 encounters w/ monsters
• 3 archetypal sites of fear
• Barricaded nighthouse
• Infested underwater current
• Reptile haunted rocks of the wilderness

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Back Then

• Honor bound - blood stained society
• Laws of the blood feud
• Kings halls

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Beowulf and Now

• The Geat woman who cries out in dread as flames
  consume the body of her dead lord could come
  straight from a late twentieth-century news
  report, from Rwanda or Kosovo her keen is a
  nightmare glimpse into the minds of people who
  have survived traumatic, even monstrous events
  and who are now being exposed to a comfortless
  futureWe recognize her problem and we are better
  for having them expressed with such adequacy and
  dignity and unforgiving truth.

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Work Consulted

• Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York W. W.
  Norton Company, 2000.