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Essay on Comparison of Grendel and Beowulf
Beowulf is (or was originally) an eighth-century Mercian court poem, very close to oral tradition and carefully preserved thereafter, perhaps because of its excellence, by later transcribers. The poem shows no signs of having been influenced directly by writings in Latin, whether Virgil or the Fathers of the Church, or Roman rhetoricians. The awkwardly introduced Offa episode (lines 1931-62), if, as seems possible, it was intended to flatter the Mercian royal house by praising one of its eminent ancestors, would be squarely in the ancient oral tradition of eulogistic court poetry given so much prominence by Opland. Its presence in the poem gives faint but definite support to the Mercian origin of Beowulf (Greenfield Stanley B., 1967)
Whereas, Grendel, who has befouled the hall and put it out of service. Heorot must later be cleansed and exorcized for the Danes' future use by Beowulf, who is several times said to be acting as God's agent.
Grendel and his mother do not make their appearance because the Danes have taken up the worship of devils, though that seems clearly to be what he implies. Grendel attacks because he is angered that the Danes are making music in their newly-built hall. His mother later attacks to gain vengeance for her son's death. We do not have to search in hollow trees for the motives of the monsters. It is certainly absolutely plain that the devil-worship on the part of the Danes is a despairing response to Grendel's first attacks, not at all a cause of them.
The poet connects Grendel with hell, but then concludes with: "which should make it easy to recognize the metaphorical structure barely concealed beneath the relatively slight surface realism of the poem."
How eager Lee seems in his desire to get to this concealed structure, and then to go on to equate Grendel with the standard devil of Christian theology...............
