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What's the Message? Building Community through Tolkien's Beowulf

  • Holly M. Wendt (author)
Chapter of: The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist(pp. 109–117)

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Metadata
TitleWhat's the Message?
SubtitleBuilding Community through Tolkien's Beowulf
ContributorHolly M. Wendt (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0205.1.10
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-ballad-of-the-lone-medievalist/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CopyrightWendt, Holly M.
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2018-08-23
Long abstractWhen I was asked to participate in a series of summer book talks, I had a number of decisions to make. The first — to participate at all — was easy. As a faculty member finishing up the first year on the tenure track at a new campus, I jumped at the chance to take part in a long-running partnership between my institution and an active, engaged local community. The second decision — the book — was far more difficult. The series’ scope ranged wide; the other texts on the schedule leaned heavily toward history, biography, and accessible social and natural science. As some-one whose academic interests and teaching responsibilities lay evenly split between creative writing and medieval literature, I was, like Chaucer’s Troilus, in kankedort.1 But I found resolu-tion in J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf. Tolkien’s Beowulfstruck the right balance of intellectually interesting and more broadly appealing; if Beowulf itself didn’t draw people in, per-haps Tolkien’s name might. The Hobbit film franchise, after all, had just drawn to a close, and the bulk of the book talk attendees would be seniors. If they had children, those children would have been of an age to discover Tolkien’s creative works in their youth. This audience, too, might have better memory of Peter Jackson’s screen adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy than my current sophomores, who were only four years old when the first movie came out.
Page rangepp. 109–117
Print length9 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Holly M. Wendt

(author)