#cbr10bingo Award Winner Heaney’s Beowulf won the Whitbread Award Beowulf is a classic epic poem that many students read in high school or college. Featuring brave warriors, terrifying monsters, good leaders and bad, Beowulf has been translated by many different scholars and has even been put into graphic novel form. This review will focus on the widely praised translation by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, which won the Whitbread Award. Beowulf is set about 1000 years ago in Denmark and Sweden. This is a feudal world, […]
And I, Will Always LOOOOOOVEEEEE YOU!
It’s that time of year again! We’re reading Beowulf in class (and I, of course, reread it before them to prep). This year we’re focusing on Beowulf as an allegory and examining on whether or not when Beowulf enters battle with the different monsters is he actually battling “a demon within himself”. So far, the kids are coming up with amazing answers and I think this is an approach that I would use again in the future. They’re also creating their own monsters to reflect […]
The First Action Hero
I’ve been teaching Brit lit for about 13 years now, and every year we tackle Beowulf. And every year I psych my kids up for the idea that this is not a bad poem, nor does it feel like you’re reading a poem. No, this is bad ass stuff. This is tough guys killing monsters and taking names…at least that’s what it usually is. This year I had a student teacher and he showed both my students and myself just how boring Beowulf can be, if […]