After being the preserve of specialists for the first 150 years after its rediscovery, Beowulf began to catch the attention of general readers after the second world war. This is partially the result of the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Partially it is the result of a shift in attitudes concerning the bizarre and the marvelous. For whatever reasons, late twentieth-century audiences are willing to take seriously stories which pivot on human responses to monsters. Beowulf's monsters may be terrestrial, but they are essentially the terrors of modern science fiction, and of horror stories even closer to daily life. Many of the fears that Beowulf expressed and sublimated for its original audience are those which are similarly expressed and sublimated by the television series X-Files or the movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon or even Independence Day. We may even note that...