Beowulf: the monsters and the critics

Tolkien wrote a famous article by that title, in which he argued that Beowulf should be read as literature, instead of just quarried for old forms by philologists. He had a metaphor about someone who built a tower, and how years later people took it apart to see where the rocks came from and how they had been put together; but from the top of the tower the builder had been able to see the sea. Another famous article on Beowulf, by the great Anglo-Saxonist Kenneth Sisam, starts "Often, far from libraries, I have read Beowulf for pleasure". I went to see the film Beowulf in 3D last night, and something about the way it took massive liberties with the original reminded me just what a brilliant poem it is.

I enjoyed the film too. It was silly and excellent. They came up with a tediously modern explanation for who Grendel was, but really great works can cope with that sort of thing. They skipped lots of brilliant stuff like the fight at Finnsburh, which is a story told as a digression, hinting at a sad fate for Queen Wealtheow and her sons. But any film adaptation of a book has to simplify hugely. And the animation thing, which was supposed to make the people and the monsters look like they were in the same world, worked for me. On the down side the references to religion were tediously naff; Christianity didn't get that far north until centuries later. (The tenth-century king Harald Bluetooth claimed to have made Denmark Christian; his work as a unifier is why the wireless communication specification is named after him.) And I did regret the loss of the dignified pagans portrayed in the poem; they may deprive the neighbours of their mead-benches, but in the poem they're still sensible and trying to do what's right, unlike the sottish Hrothgar in the film.

Anyway I shall dig out one of my glossed editions of Beowulf and reread it. Go Beowulf! Slay that monstah! (Possibly the film was meant as a coded message to Brad Pitt from the friends of Jennifer Aniston.)