Essays on Poems

"In peaceful times the warlike man sets upon himself." The poem "Beowulf" illustrates the violent, primitive reality of the truth in Nietszche's aphorism. The monster Grendel plays a symbolic role as the primordial, inalienable instincts that exist on the fringes of human civilization whose existence...

“So that troubled time continued, woe that never stopped…” (Beowulf 38) Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay In the epic poem Beowulf, the relation of aggression and...

Throughout western history, enormous gender differences have been evident in both monotheistic and polytheistic cultures. Indeed, the patriarchal hierarchies in both social systems have emphasized the superiority of the male sex; however, greater stress is placed on the worthlessness of women in a monotheistic society....

Beowulf’s fight with Grendel proves his heroic credentials and strength. Grendel, the unstoppable demonic troll, all but surrenders at Beowulf’s squashing grip. The bone-crushing grab, however, raises a crux debated by Beowulf scholars: Does Beowulf make the first move and put the death clamp on...

Beowulf is an epic tale of a hero seeking out fame and fortune. Beowulf is a young, strong and prideful man who wants to prove himself as the greatest person, and ultimately gain kingship in his own land. Thomas Foster’s chapter, “Every Trip is a...

At their deepest level, both The Rule of St. Benedict and Beowulf deal with the question of how one can go about using his short time on earth to achieve a form of eternity in the face of a dangerous, threatening, unpredictable world. The Rule...

Within the Old English epic poem entitled ‘Beowulf,’ one theme dominates: to overcome chaos and establish order, a fearless individual must continually fight the force of evil. Even after the poem’s protagonist, Beowulf, victoriously destroys Grendel, the personification of chaos and evil, Beowulf’s battles are...

James Earl argued that Beowulf should be read in context of historical and external knowledge. He calls this method intertextuality, whose benefits are unlimited. Intertextuality gives the reader a heightened sense of genre, theme, and even “arbitrary details” (Earl 290). While Earl argues that outside...

An underlying, general disgust for the opposite sex is one of the sentiments shared by writers Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. While the two authors have similar perspectives on the two genders, both viewing males as the inferior sex, the means by which Woolf and...