SOURCE: “Beowulf and the World of Heroic Elegy,” in Leeds Studies in English, Vol. 8, 1975, pp. 45-75.

In the essay that follows, Grant asserts that Beowulf cannot be viewed as an entirely Christian poem because it also embraces pagan values, and it is by these values that Beowulf is ultimately judged. The fact that the poet finds these values inadequate, Grant states, generates the elegiac tone of the poem.

Beowulf has justifiably attracted much critical opinion, some of which is valuable, some irrelevant, some absorbing, some tedious. I should like now to give some further reconsideration to the poem itself as it survives in BM MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv. I propose to discuss the text as a unified work of art by one poet and with a Christian colouring which is no mere interpolation. By “the poet” I mean the author who gave the poem its present form...