Cultural Progression through Beowulf

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Recommended: Text analysis of Beowulf

Beowulf is an Old English poem. It was written sometime between 700 and 1,000 A.D. Over the years it has been edited and rewritten countless times. Some of the more recent versions do their best to stay as close to the original story as possible while others make rather large changes to make it more engaging for today’s audiences
Seamus Heaney translated a version of Beowulf in 2001. He tried hard to translate the story in a way that best represents the original. Heaney’s version is bilingual with Anglo Saxon on the left and an English translation on the right. He does make a few changes from the original story. Gor example Beowulf and his company were pagans but Heaney Christianized them in his version. Most of the changes that Heaney makes are relatively insignificant and do not change the story substantially.
A film of Beowulf was made in 2007 and was directed by Robert Zemeckis. Unlike Heaney, Zemeckis decided to change some fairly major aspects of the story. Over the course of the film, Beowulf is portrayed as untrustworthy and not the pure hero from other books. When Beowulf ...

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