Snapshots of Postgraduate Re- search at University College Cork 2016 The Grendel-kin: From Beowulf to the 21st century Alison Elizabeth Killilea School of English, UCC Introduction Since the 19th century, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf has received sustained critical at- tention; first transcribed and translated in the early 1800’s, Beowulf was at a focus point in scholarly study, albeit not on the merit of its literary or poetic achievement. The text was valued more as an interesting linguistic document until what has been described as one of the most important turning points in criticism of the poem, J.R.R Tolkien’s study Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, delivered in 1936. In this essay, Tolkien argued for the integrity of the poem in and of itself and for the central place of what are now often seen as the defining aspects of the poem: the monsters, who Tolkien argued held symbolic significance in the poem, and elevated it to more than just an exciting epic concerning the feats of the hero Beowulf against Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. Since Tolkien’s essay, many more translations of Beowulf have appeared, joined in the 1950’s by the first of many narrative adaptations, W.H. Canaway’s The Ring-Givers (1958). Since then, numerous narrative retellings have appeared, most notably John Gardner’s Gren- del, along with comic adaptations, and — since the 1990’s — numerous animated and live-action film adaptations, most famously Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 Beowulf, memorable through the image of a naked Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mother! My thesis aims to document Beowulf’s reception history, from the beginnings of its trans- lation in the 1800’s to its most recent adaptations of the last decade, exploring how these works have engaged not only with the poem itself, but also with scholarship surround- ing the poem. Such a study will allow us to better understand these works’ engagement with the poem in relation to contemporary social and philosophical contexts, and how the poem is used as a means to express modern issues and anxieties. Furthermore, a study of these works can also open opportunities for new readings of the poem and the characters within it, offering alternative viewpoints which may have previously been overlooked. Of all the characters in the Anglo-Saxon poem, I would argue that the monstrous figures are the most appealing, and the ones who inspire the most creativity in adaptations; it is also through these figures that contemporary fears and anxieties are most clearly ex- pressed in retellings of the poem. Despite Beowulf’s role as the heroic protagonist, it is rather Grendel and Grendel’s mother (and, to an extent, the dragon) who have captured 97