When it comes to stories as ubiquitously known as 'Beowulf' where people coming into it likely have some general sense of the plot through cultural osmosis, I feel like it's time to talk editions.

This edition of 'Beowulf' is fantastic. Pretty well every page of the poem is accompanied by a full color photograph either of artifacts pertinant to what's happening in the text at the time, or evokative landscapes or works of art. Each photograph comes with some contextual information of what it is and how it connects to that particular part of the poem. If you're interested in getting some snippets of information about fifth century weapons and treasure hordes with your epic poetry, this could be the edition of 'Beowulf' for you.

The introduction by translator Seamus Heaney is a gorgeous meditation on translation as an art in which he describes his own love of Old English, and how that ultimately led him to 'Beowulf.' He also gives some interesting background on the connection of 'Beowulf' to linguistics, and how it took J.R.R. Tolkein championing the story for it to actually come to the attention of the reading public as a valuable story in and of itself, outside of its value to linguists.

Between the notes in Heaney's introduction, the pictures, context notes, etc., 'Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition' really does earn its keep, and I was very lucky my local library had a copy.

The story itself needs little introduction. Our titular character, Beowulf, defeats three monsters (most famously, Grendel) and dies a heroic death. He's also just an all-around good guy: confident in his own abilities and taking due credit for his achievements, but still fairly humble. And basically everyone loves him. There's one fellow who is briefly envious of him, but he quickly changes his tune and lends Beowulf a fancy sword that doesn't actually help him, but was a lovely gesture.

To my 21st century literary sensibilities Beowulf is just too boring of a character for me to really get behind. Now, to be fair, there is a little bit more nuance than just 'undefeated, riding high, and the nicest guy" as the muses in Disney's 'Hercules' would describe the hero of that story, but that's the gist.

There are definitely some kernals in there that could be ripe for analysis (e.g. why Grendel's mother specifically and not a brother or father figure? What's the significance of the fact that Beowulf starts off the first battle with hand to hand combat only to move into needing increasingly specific weapons and even assistance in his fight against the dragon). And the broadstroke sense of the moral code and social system at the time the poem is set feels authentic enough (dragons and decendents of Cain aside) to get a sense of history coming to life.

Buuuuuuut, it's really not my thing. I definitely like my heroes grey, first of all. Second of all, I'm just not a fan of the whole: 'big brawny dude dukes it out with monsters, wins repeatedly until he dies a manly death, the end.'

As mentioned above: I recognize there's more to it than that, but wading through the actual plot to get to those pieces is an odessey I'm not personally interested enough to undertake. Although, that being said, I do plan on reading John Gardner's 'Grendel', so I guess we'll see if flipping perspectives works better for me than 'Beowulf' itself.