Grendles Modor: Representation in a linguistic landscape

Beowulf has inspired readers and listeners since the eighth century, first as a performance then as a written poem. It is an epic tale of Anglo-Saxon warriors, life, and history. Recently, studies of Beowulf have introduced questions of twentieth-century gender stereotypes that provide a new understanding of the epic's characters and themes. However, these studies have delivered too simple a reading of complex characters like Grendel's mother and have led scholarship away from the poem. To bring critics back to the poem, this study attempts to make the poem a landscape. When the total landscape, the language, style, alliteration, and violence (physical and emotional), is studied, the poem is opened up to more than just simple readings. In a landscape reading, Grendel's mother becomes a force strong enough to disrupt the structure of the language and to battle the barriers between female and male, warrior and monster, and pagan and nonpagan. A landscape that is as violent as the characters is discovered, one in which all life is celebrated.