Neil Gaiman brings Beowulf back to St Andrews

Neil Gaiman
(photo credit: Kimberly Butler)

When prize-winning author Neil Gaiman first encountered the Old English epic Beowulf, he did so via the Penguin Classics translation of the poem, made by Michael Alexander, former Berry Professor of English at St Andrews.
This week Gaiman comes to St Andrews to receive an honorary degree and to talk about (among other subjects) his part as writer on the Hollywood film adaptation of Beowulf. Dr Chris Jones of the School of English specializes in the uses that contemporary artists make of Old English literature. You can read his blog about Gaiman’s Beowulf here: School of English blog, or if you have a Reading Group, download discussions questions about Beowulf and the film here: Beowulf Discussion Questions.

Read about the research:   Chris Jones, ‘From Heorot to Hollywood: reading Beowulf in its third millennium’, in David Clark and Nicholas Perkins, eds., Anglo-Saxon and the Modern Imagination (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 13-29. Published in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, Edited by David Clark &Nicholas Perkins.