Beowulf

Written near the close of the first century, Beowulf tells the elegiac story of the exploits of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, who protects the Danes from Grendel, the monster who seemed to be unstoppable, and subsequently from Grendel's mother. He then goes back to his home nation, where he meets his untimely end in an epic battle with a dragon. The poem is about coming face to face with the terrible, facing it head-on, and then having to endure the worn-out aftermath. Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance in the shapes of this narrative that is both distant and uncannily similar at the start of the twenty-first century, one that gives the poem strength underneath its surface. Because of Beowulf's "four-squareness of the utterance" and its extraordinary emotional plausibility, Heaney brings these epic traits to life for modern readers in a way that is fresh and compelling.