Word: beowulf
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...example, according to Mitchell, nineteenth century composer Richard Wagner's opera "The Ring Cycle" is an artistic effort which owes some of its inspiration to Icelandic sagas, such as Beowulf. "There are aspects of that tale that go back at least a millenium," says Mitchell...
Professor of Scandinavian and Slavic Literature Albert B. Lord '34 cites an example of the "innovative way [Mitchell] approaches teaching the medieval texts." Lord says that Mitchell gives his students facsimile copies of Beowulf and encourages them to decipher the old text themselves, instead of simply examining a modern English translation...
...subject is the epic poem Beowulf, which English teacher Daniels has tried to bring to life with a recording in Old English. But the school's tape recorder has an ill-fitting plug, and Daniels cannot get it to start. After several attempts, she asks a visitor to hold the plug in the socket. "This is one of the worst things about teaching in the city," she says. "Nothing ever works...
...novelist John Gardner once wrote a version of Beowulf that was told from Grendel's point of view. There is a scene in which a wandering bard arrives among the drunken cretins and begins to sing beautiful songs to them about what they have accomplished that day in battle. Atrocity becomes glory, bloodletting becomes heroic. It is a shrewd point about mythmaking, and perhaps about the making of the myth of Camelot...
...these criticisms are minor and don't stop Scapine from being a funny and absorbing play. It's an exhilarating way to relieve some tension, so that, maybe when you return to Beowulf and macroeconomics, they won't seem quite...