Who is Beowulf & why is Grendel dead?

The eighth-century story Beowulf, whose author remains in hiding since this became mandatory reading in many high school English classes, is the great heroic epic of Old English and reflects the mix of pagan traditions and Christianity that characterized northern Europe during the Middle Ages. It also boasts lots of sexually repressed and aggressive blonds.

The saga opens in the mead hall of the Danish king Hrothgar who has been hiding under his bed as the monster Grendel breaks into his castle every night and chews the heads off of all of Hrothgar’s best mead-drinkers. (This may have been caused by a vitamin deficiency due to Grendel’s previous diet that consisted exclusively of his own toe-jam.)

So everyone in Hrothgar’s kingdom is pleased as punch when Beowulf and his jolly band of leather wearing lackeys show up fresh off the boat from Geatland (a region in southern Sweden where all the Geats used to be.)

You can see that troubles brewing and Grendel hasn’t a chance. Beowulf’s soon wearing poor Grendel’s guts for garters and starts parading around like he thinks he’s the Head Geat. (At one point he supposedly point his thumb at his chest and spouts, ‘Here’s the beef’.)

Now this doesn’t make Grendels Mother to happy to have her little head-munching boy ‘off-ed’ by a band of sword-wielding blonds from a Nordic boy band. Grendels Mom proves to be just as nasty as Grendel and Beowulf has to track her down to her lair (a cozy lair with a really nice view) and pokes her with sharp objects until she stops moving.

This makes everyone happy and Beowulf rules for another fifty years until a dragon makes dental floss out of him.

Though Beowulf’s influence on the development of English literature is often overstated (The poem was largely forgotten until the 1800’s) it gained renewed prominence in he twentieth century by inspiring the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales, written in the 1390, may have played in establishing English as a literary language to the standard French and Latin and upended the notion that English was inherently inferior to the classical languages, but man, they’re really hard to read. I mean, look a this.

In th’olde dayes of the king Arthour,
Of which that Britons speken greet honour,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.

Well, I guess if you go slow you can get the gist.

Anyway, The Canterbury Tales is a set of twenty four stories told by various pilgrims who are traveling in a group from the London area to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. (The prologue suggests that Chaucer originally intended to include 120 tales but after 24 he stopped. Probably because he couldn’t take it anymore either.)

The pilgrims of Chaucers story are a hodgepodge; the Knights, the Miller, the Pardoner’s, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, etc. and the stories range wildly from love to hypocrisy to humor.

Chaucer also wrote this stuff in iambic pentameter, the same form that Shakespeare would later use for his plays but which is not intended for common speech so don’t use it as it just makes you look stupid.

Since the Canterbury Tales are the foundation of all English literature and since they cover such a wide variety of topics, you can always use them to impress people since no one you will ever meet has actually read and understood them. Now you can say, ‘That reminds me of the Canterbury Tales’, and everyone will be really impressed and perhaps nod, especially on a college campus.

Additional

• Chaucer was able to obtain his education after his family inherited a fortune from all the extended family members who were killed by The Black Death.