Il Beowulf nel Novecento: il fumetto e il romanzo

Beowulf, as a character and as a story, lives fortunate days. Two films and a drama have come or are about to come out between this year and the next. Beowulf’s reception in the 20th century is not as rich as Ulysses’, for example, but there are several works that rewrite the Old English story. Two of them are taken into account in the article: the Italian comic Beowulf. Leggenda cristiana dell’antica Danimarca (1940/1941) by Enrico Basari, and the American novel Grendel (1971) by John Gardner. Two quite different works: on the one hand a graphic novel created under a strong Catholic ideology during the Fascist (and the Second World War) period of Italian history, on the other hand a novel written in the so-called Postmodern area, showing a radical deconstruction of internal ideologies and identity narrations. However, the two works can be compared, because both have clear bonds with the ages in which they were written, and are deeply rooted in the cultural background that has produced them. From the analysis of the contemporary rewritings we can understand if the old story and its characters are still living and productive, and we can learn something more about the medieval poem.