Penguin Epics : Beowulf

by Michael Alexander (Translator)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.25

  When an evil monster terrorizes the land, only one man can stop him. A new horror stalks the ancient kingdom of the Danes. Grendel, a hideous beast, has crawled from hell to lay waste to the country and devour its people. His reign of slaughter seems unstoppable. The mighty warrior Beowulf comes forward to fight this demonic enemy. But Grendel has a powerful and deadly ally. Can Beowulf survive the rage of a fiendish mother who will destroy anyone who harms her child?

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $5.87

  Beowulf stands at the head of English literature; a poem of historical interest and epic scope. Although the first manuscript of Beowulf dates from around the year 1,000, it is thought that the poem existed in its present form from the year 850. Beowulf's adventures themselves stand in front of the wide historical canvas of 5th and 6th century Scandinavia. Against this heroic background of feuding and feasting, Beowulf first kills the monster Grendel and her mother, and later defends his people against a dragon in a battle that leaves them both mortally wounded.

• New

  paperback
  

  $9.98

  Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland. Through its blend of myth and history, Beowulf vividly evokes a twilight world in which men and supernatural forces live side by side. And it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit in a transient world. 'Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful [and] ...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ...to another half-million copies' - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English .