ABSTRACT
Randolph Swearer, Raymond Oliver, and Marijane Osborn's Beowulf: A Likeness, published by Yale University Press, provides an instructive example of the anomalous literary status of retellings. Oliver uses a variety of modern accentual syllabic verse forms and incorporates necessary background information into the poem itself by providing descriptions of cultural and architectural details. Oliver dramatizes some of the digressions found in the poem, tinkers with chronology, introduces additional characters, and provides a more sequential narrative. And Beowulf marries Hygd. Assuming for the moment that Beowulf is broadly conceived as a meditation on the irrational malevolent forces that threaten civilization, the retellings examined certainly reject the notion of the unmotivated monster. If there is a relatively consistent form of resistance in the popular Beowulf corpus, it is found in the antipathy reserved for the academic. One might say that the monsters are the critics.
