Annotation: Robert Chapman - "Alas, Poor Grendel"

One of the more interesting quirks of the Beowulf films is the tendency to try and make the monsters sympathetic. Or, if not sympathetic, to give them comprehensible motivations (which amounts to much the same thing). The easy link to trace is to John Gardner's Grendel. Flip the perspective, give us a lot of internal monologue by Grendel, get really philosophical about language and the meaning of life in that monologue. It's a recipe for making a monster more complex and less monstrous.

Grendel was published in 1971, but it seems that even well before that there were rumblings about the sympathy expressed toward Grendel in the poem. The below annotation is an early example, and though it doesn't give a lot of workable information relating to Grendel's Mother, it does potentially have its place. After all, if the poem can sympathize with Grendel, it ought to be able to sympathize with Grendel's Mother, who does have a more comprehensible motivation.

On to the annotation.

Chapman, Robert L. “Alas, Poor Grendel,” College English 17.6 (Mar. 1956): 334-37.

Writing in the wake of Tolkien, Chapman attempts to understand both the sympathy and ambivalence the poet expresses for Grendel. He cites lines 1278, 1546-47, and 2120-22 as evidence of sympathy for Grendel’s Mother. For Klaeber, this sympathy is proof that the poem no longer inheres in a genuine pagan atmosphere. Chapman explains the implications of Klaeber’s thinking (ignorance of basic Catholic doctrine by the poet) and instead argues it betokens a “disingenuous reservation” about the doctrine of Providence (335). Chapman’s argument is more about the poet retaining some pagan sensibilities than about anything truly learnable about Grendel’s Mother, but the notion that the poem itself may be partially sympathetic to her is something that arrives surprisingly early in the scholarship.