Beowulf (anonymous) & Grendel (1971) by John Gardner
Details
For March we will be discussing and comparing two books that deal with the same story: the epic poem Beowulf (anonymous) and the novel Grendel by John Gardner. To participate in the Meetup you will need to have read both.
From Goodreads: “Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. ”
This will be a “choose your own adventure” edition of our bookclub. Choose the edition that you wish, whether it's translated or original.
Several translations available for free at Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Beowulf+
I will be using the latest feminist translation by Maria Dahvana Headley.
From Goodreads: “A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment — of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child — but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.”
In addition to Beowulf we will also be discussing the novel Grendel (1971) by John Gardner:
From Goodreads: “The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his side of the story in a book William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions.”
If you have difficulty finding the book at your local library you can request an interlibrary loan, ask at the library your options to use libris:
https://libris.kb.se/hitlist?q=Grendel&r=;spr:eng;pers:(Gardner+John+1933+1982)&p=1&f=simp&g=&s=r&t=&m=10&d=libris