Beowulf

Holding out for a hero:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f_HsjpSVaI&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

Epic Writing Assignment

As we read in class, you can access the sections here: **Collection 1** [|Collection Opener] [|Introduction to //Beowulf//]
 * When you are absent, check the website. You will be responsible for the material we read in class.***

Excerpts from //**Beowulf - Sections from your textbook**// [|Epic 1 - The Monster Grende] [|Epic 2 - The Arrival of the Hero]

[|Epic 3 - Unferth's Challeng]

[|Epic 4 - The Battle with Grende] [|Epic 5 - The Monster's Mothe] [|Epic 6 - The Final Battle]

Here is what we read in class on Day 1. You will need to access the links above for future days, as I will not be copying the text below each time. I will give section and line numbers when possible. ***When you are absent, check the website. You will be responsible for the material we read in class.***

**The Monster Grendel** from **Beowulf** translated by **Burton Raffel**

. . . A powerful monster, living down
 * The Monster Grendel**
 * 1**

In the darkness, growled in pain, impatient

As day after day the #|music rang

Loud in that hall, the harp’s rejoicing

5 Call and the poet’s clear #|songs, sung

Of the ancient beginnings of us all, recalling

The Almighty making the earth, shaping

These beautiful plains marked off by oceans,

Then proudly setting the sun and moon

10 To glow across the land and light it;

The corners of the earth were made lovely with trees

And leaves, made quick with life, with each

Of the nations who now move on its face. And then

As now warriors sang of their pleasure:

15 So Hrothgar’s men lived happy in his hall

Till the monster stirred, that demon, that fiend,

Grendel, who haunted the moors, the wild

Marshes, and made his home in a hell

Not hell but earth. He was spawned in that slime,

20 Conceived by a pair of those monsters born

Of Cain, murderous creatures banished

By God, punished forever for the crime

Of Abel’s death. The Almighty drove

Those demons out, and their exile was bitter,

25 Shut away from men; they split

Into a thousand #|forms of evil—spirits

And fiends, goblins, monsters, giants,

A brood forever opposing the Lord’s

Will, and again and again defeated.

[|Epic 5 - The Monster's Mothe] [|Epic 6 - The Final Battle]