Beowulf & Grendel
These are some ideas that I tried to use in my most recent paper – for my Monsters in Medieval Literature class, but was unable to really get in when I was writing the paper at 1am the day it was due (because of poor time management on my part, over the weekend before it was due. A mistake that shall not be made again!)
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Beowulf and Grendel are both others who have come from strange distant lands to fight each other on a turf that belongs to neither. This gives Hruthgar (roth-gar) and all those in Heorot (herr-or-ot) a kind of othered feeling. The focus is so heavy on Beowulf and Grendel that the camera of the text spends almost no time focusing on Heorot or its inhabitants. Every major group in the first two sections of the text are made out to be others. This includes Beowulf, Grendel and the inhabitants of Heorot.
I’m really confused, actually. It seems like you’re trying to say something but you’re not using specific enough words to actually…say it? tbh I don’t think “othered” is a word.
“Othered” is absolutely a word, although it’s understandable that some people (especially young people) might not be familiar with the concept of Otherness and how it is applied to groups.
I know next to nothing about Beowulf, never having actually read any version of it. But this is an interesting obsevation, and it’s a shame you couldn’t work it into your essay (although seriously, starting a paper at 1am the day it’s due is a pretty common occurence for me so I understand).
Well, coming from someone who knows something about Beowulf, I think these ideas could have been expressed in more detail rather than assuming that people understand this foreign concept of “otherness.”
Not directed at you, Nathan.
lol, love the beowulf myth. I agree with the otherness feeling too. In away its kind of like superman (of the comics) battling it out with doomsday or something. Two titans contesting for a square of terra that neither belong to (superman being from another planet) and Metropolis being just some other place.