{"product_id":"beowulf-and-the-grendel-kin-book-helen-damico-9781938228711","title":"Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eBeowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England,\u003c\/i\u003e Helen Damico presents the first concentrated discussion of the initiatory two-thirds of Beowulf's 3,182 lines in the context of the sociopolitically turbulent years that composed the first half of the eleventh century in Anglo-Danish England.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDamico offers incisive arguments that major historical events and personages pertaining to the reign of Cnut and those of his sons recorded in the \u003ci\u003eAnglo-Saxon Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eEncomium Emmae Reginae\u003c\/i\u003e, and major continental and Scandinavian historical texts, hold striking parallels with events and personages found in at least eight vexing narrative units, as recorded by Scribe A in BL, Cotton Vitellius A.xv, that make up the poem's quasi sixth-century narrative concerning the fall of the legendary Scyldings. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eGiven the poet's compositional skill--widely relational and eclectic at its core--and his affinity with the practicing skalds, these strings of parallelisms could scarcely have been coincidental. Rather, Damico argues that examined within the context of other eleventh-century texts that either bemoaned or darkly satirized or obversely celebrated the rise of the Anglo-Danish realm, the Beowulfian units may bring forth a deeper understanding of the complexity of the poet's compositional process.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDamico illustrates the poet's use of the tools of his trade--compression, substitution, skillful encoding of character--to reinterpret and transform grave sociopolitical \"facts\" of history, to produce what may be characterized as a type of historical allegory, whereby two parallel narratives, one literal and another veiled are simultaneously operative. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeowulf and the Grendel-Kin\u003c\/i\u003e lays out the story of \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e, not as a monster narrative nor a folklorish nor solely a legendary tale, but rather as a poem of its time, a historical allegory coping with and reconfiguring sociopolitical events of the first half of eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50394349371665,"sku":"CIN1938228715VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50403317481745,"sku":"CIN1938228715G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055332917521,"sku":"NIN9781938228711","price":0.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52339675103505,"sku":"NLS9781938228711","price":88.29,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1938228715.jpg?v=1764843879","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/products\/beowulf-and-the-grendel-kin-book-helen-damico-9781938228711","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}