Word: beowulf
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Whether it was the funeral of Beowulf or Ireland trees, Boylston Professor of Literature Seamus Heaney spoke gilded words in a poetry reading last night to raise money to support the Armenian Writers Union Publication Fund...
Heaney also addressed the audience with warmth and candor. After reading a poem about the funeral of Beowulf, Heaney said that he wrote about this Anglo-Saxon hero to win points for Irish poets...
...against the predator beasts is preserved in myth and fairy tale. Typically, a mythical hero starts out by taking on the carnivorous monster that is ravaging the land: Perseus saves Andromeda from becoming a sea monster's snack. Theseus conquers the Minotaur who likes to munch on Athenian youth. Beowulf destroys the loathsome night-feeding Grendel. Heracles takes on a whole zoo of horrors: lions, hydras, boars. In European fairy tales it's the wolves you have to watch out for -- if the cannibal witches don't get you first...
...rich with Anglo-Saxon nouns whose vowels are strong and round as the hillsides. And, once again the archaeologist, Heaney mines the forgotten caves of English to exhume fine words in their last stage of decay, words like bleb and rath and coign, words shaped in the mouths of Beowulf and Cuchulain...
Glenn sometimes got a little out of controlwhen he drank, too. At some parties, he wouldquote Beowulf and demand that everyone callhim Grendel. Then he would get sick on the carpet...