Beowulf and the comic book: Contemporary readings

Abstract

This paper explores the appropriation of the Old English poem Beowulf by such a distinctive 20th-century art-form as the comic book. Since 1941 to present day, the text has been revisited by several authors at different stages of the development of the comic as an independent genre in a process parallel to its legitimation as a central part of the English literary canon. In the context of the modern commodification of the Middle Ages, the Beowulfs in comic book become a territory of negotiation between high and low culture as they revisit early Germanic epic to render it suitable for the taste of wider, contemporary audiences.