#cbr10bingo So Shiny The only reason I read Beowulf for my last selection was because I wanted to read The Mere Wife, a 2018 novel which I had heard was an innovative take on Beowulf from the point of view of the monster Grendel’s mother, and I wanted to have the epic poem fresh in mind for this. I read Madeline Miller’s Circe earlier this year and loved her imagining of Circe’s point of view vis-a-vis the events of The Odyssey, and initial reviews of […]
Award Winner #cbr10bingo
#cbr10bingo Award Winner Heaney’s Beowulf won the Whitbread Award Beowulf is a classic epic poem that many students read in high school or college. Featuring brave warriors, terrifying monsters, good leaders and bad, Beowulf has been translated by many different scholars and has even been put into graphic novel form. This review will focus on the widely praised translation by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, which won the Whitbread Award. Beowulf is set about 1000 years ago in Denmark and Sweden. This is a feudal world, […]
Greatest Hits of Teaching…
Because I teach the same books each year (sometimes twice a year because I teach different courses with some books that intermingle between the two), I write the same reviews for those books each year for CBR. I don’t feel like writing reviews for the same books that I read over and over again, I present to you a literary clip show. Kick back, relax and experience rehashed posts from the past! I promise I have other reviews to finish but here’s what I’ve been […]
And I, Will Always LOOOOOOVEEEEE YOU!
It’s that time of year again! We’re reading Beowulf in class (and I, of course, reread it before them to prep). This year we’re focusing on Beowulf as an allegory and examining on whether or not when Beowulf enters battle with the different monsters is he actually battling “a demon within himself”. So far, the kids are coming up with amazing answers and I think this is an approach that I would use again in the future. They’re also creating their own monsters to reflect […]