ABSTRACT |
Since Beowulf was recovered in the early 19th century,
this Old English poem has been the object of numerous revisitings both
within the scope of high and low culture. Contemporary popular media and
genres as film, the musical, science-fiction or adventure novels have
appropriated this ancient text and turned it into their subject matter.
Specifically the comic book, one of the most distinctive arts of the 20th
century, has addressed Beowulf to transform the Scandinavian
warrior into a modern superhero in a process parallel to the development
of Old English studies as an academic discipline that extends over the
last sixty years. By rewriting the conventions of medieval epic
according to its particular interests and parameters, the comic thus
contributes to the “desacralization” of such a fundamental piece of the
English literary canon and to the implementation of a postmodern reading
of the Germanic Middle Ages which caters to
new readers and globalized audiences.
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