ABSTRACT

Moreover, a good many things in the story of Grendel go back to a time when the nature-myth business-that is, the poetic personification of the forces of nature-had not come at all into the minds of men, when their minds were not far enough advanced for such conceptions, and when actual savage men and women existed in the dark woods and moors, among the cliffs and caves, beyond the strip of cultivated land along the seashore.