ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the illustrations that are used for very young readers both to idealize and to romanticize, and, for older children, to palliate the tragic effect of the hero's aging and death. Stephens and McCallum suggest that in retelling Beowulf for children, the authors try to provide "an inspirational or social outcome for heroic behavior." Beowulf's reward is the poem itself that celebrates his victory and preserves his youthful power and idealism. The chapter discusses three stage plays suitable for high-school audiences. In an effort to convert the poem into a modern idiom, Beowulf is retold as a news or reality show; several students pose as reporters and their names (Jeff Chaucer, Christine Marlow, Bobby Burns) suggest a hazy conception of the historical past. In providing the requisite historical background, the first stumbling block are the allusions, the most basic of which must be laboriously annotated, here emphasized by a series of homophonic puns.
