The Postmodern Beowulf ─ A Critical Casebook

What relevance does a 1,000-year-old poem about man-eating monsters have to contemporary identity? Plenty, apparently, given Heaney's acclaimed Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (2000), a recent opera and movies based on the epic. Joy (Fordham U.) and Ramsey (Southern Illinois U. Edwardsville) introduce 23 reprinted essays from 1979-2005 addressing this question. This unique anthology grew out of a desire to show how Old English studies has practiced and even developed theory in relation to critical analysis of Beowulf. Contributions represent innovative takes on critical approaches: the historical, ethnographic/psychoanalytic, gender/ identity, and textual (e.g., Focault's "What is an Author?"). A suggested further approach to the poem is the postcolonial. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)