Beowulf: Inside the Anglo-Saxon mind
Beowulf: Inside the Anglo-Saxon mind  
Podcast: Secret Life of Books
Published On: Tue Mar 24 2026
Description: 'Although he was a brave and noble warrior, he did not often slay his own friends while drunk'. In this episode, Sophie and Jonty dive deep into the manosphere - aka Anglo-Saxon England - to look at one of foundational stones of English literature (although you need a bilingual dictionary to read it in the original). Composed sometime around the 8th Century CE, but not written down until much later, Beowulf is a nostalgic evocation of the north Germanic roots of the Anglo-Saxons. It recounts the adventures of the eponymous hero, who sails south from somewhere in modern-day Sweden to make his name by butchering monsters and telling everyone how great he is.In the first adventure, Beowulf defeats a terrible monster called Grendel who is preventing the Danes from enjoying their mead at night. He succeeds - only to provoke the wrath of Grendel's much more fearsome mother. But in the end, she too is no match for our hero. Smash cut to fifty years later and Beowulf embarks on his last adventure to defeat a dragon who is terrorising his own people, the Geats.Sophie and Jonty situate the Anglo-Saxons as a society, dissect Old English poetic forms, share highlights from the poem, make a total dogs dinner of pronouncing Anglo-Saxon names, and speculate what is really going on behind the carnage. They look at the influence of Beowulf in the works of JRR Tolkien, who took the concepts of Middle Earth, dragon lairs and Golem straight out of this poem. They ALSO look at its influence on - surprise reveal - Toni Morrison, who found Grendel's Mother far more interesting than Beowulf himself.Translations:Maria Dahvana Headley (2020) https://bookshop.org/p/books/beowulf-a-new-translation-maria-dahvana-headley/9892043?ean=9780374110031&next=tSeamus Heaney (1999) https://bookshop.org/p/books/beowulf-a-new-verse-translation-seamus-heaney/e6ac56b104eaeed2?ean=9780393320978&next=tJ.R.R. Tolkein (1926) https://bookshop.org/p/books/beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary-christopher-tolkien/030a3c2a0fa27cea?ean=9780544570306&next=tWe also mention Toni Morrison's essay "Grendel and his Mother" in The Source of Self-Regard (2019) and JRR Tolkein's lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936).Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slobOr join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.