John Gardner's 'Grendel': Sources and Analogues
- Author / Editor
- Milosh, Joseph.
John Gardner's 'Grendel': Sources and Analogues
- Published
- Contemporary Literature 19 (1978): 48-57.
- Description
- Gardner strikingly alters "Beowulf" by granting Grendel spiritual development, by portraying the absurdity of war, and by undercutting the validity of poetic making. The changes transforms epic material into an elusive genre characterized by its tone. Like Chaucer's NPT, it develops this tone by a gently skeptical treatment of traditional wisdom and a parody of rhetoric.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Nun's Priest and His Tale.