It began as a pagan poem told around shadowy campfires about a hero fighting the monster Grendel, the monster's mother and a dragon. Christendom's world of saints and sinners reinvented Beowulf as a soldier of God and branded Grendel one of Cain's evil kin.
"Lord of the Rings" author and Old English scholar J.R.R. Tolkien reintroduced the story to the modern world in 1936 as an important work of literary art rather than an obscure artifact of Old English language. Since then, it's been resurrected in graphic novels, comic books, films and stage performances, including an opera and a dance theater production called "My Beowulf."
There have been multiple translations, including a lyrical one by Seamus Heaney, which was a surprising bestseller in 2000. Earlier this year a dance company took over a Van Nuys skating rink to mount "Beowulf on Ice!" in which Grendel rode in on a big blue Zamboni ice-leveling machine.
Every age, it seems, has its own private Beowulf, a retelling of the 8th century Anglo-Saxon classic in the context of its tastes and preoccupations. In November, "Beowulf" returns in at least the second movie version to hit U.S. theaters in two years, a $150-million digitally enhanced live-action film adapted for Imax 3-D directed by Robert Zemeckis ("Back to the Future," "Forrest Gump") and starring Ray Winstone as Beowulf, Crispin Glover as Grendel and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother.
So why "Beowulf"? And why now? After all, the poem is dreaded required reading for many undergraduates. In the movie "Annie Hall," after Diane Keaton expresses an interest in enrolling in college classes, Woody Allen advises, "Just don't take any course where you have to read 'Beowulf.' "
But scholars, authors and fans say the poem endures because it is a timeless yarn about brave souls purging peaceful societies of agents of evil. Beyond that, the story's built-in ambiguities and rough edges have always invited meddling.
Indeed, John Gardner's 1971 novel "Grendel" told the story from the monster's point of view. Gardner's book inspired the opera "Grendel: Transcendence of the Great Big Bad," which received its world premiere by L.A. Opera in 2006. Composed by Elliot Goldenthal and directed by his companion (and "The Lion King" director) Julie Taymor, it featured a sympathetic, though often grouchy, man-eating Grendel sung by a baritone. Beowulf never even sang, played instead by a dancer in what looked like a Speedo.
