From the epic to the novel : A comparative study of Beowulf and Grendel

Download
index.pdf
2003
Dalbak, Emine
Show full item record
61
views
0
downloads
This thesis compares the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf and John Gardner's novel Grendel in terms of their generic relations within a framework of Bakhtin's genre theory. The analysis restricts its theoretical framework to basically two essays by Mikhail M. Bakhtin, namely "Epic and Novel" and "Discourse in the Novel" included in Michael Holquist's The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (1981). This study argues that Beowulf represents a monologic world, which is hierarchically distanced from the present. As Bakhtin puts it, the epic presents an already completed world placed in an absolute past, which demands a pious attitude as it is hierarchically above the reader. Gardner's Grendel, on the other hand, is a retelling of the Beowulf story through the monster's eye in the contemporary world. It suggests a dialogue between the elevated world of the epic hero Beowulf and the novelistic world of Grendel to achieve multiplicity in a truly Bakhtinian sense. For Gardner's version enables the monstrous "other", which is Grendel, to raise its voice. By changing the temporal order and narrative perspective, Gardner succeeds in re-writing an epic story in the novelistic zone of maximal proximity to the present. This thesis, however, argues that although Gardner's Grendel displays all the novelistic features, basically multiplicity and contemporaneity, as put forward by Bakhtin, it still celebrates the ideal world of the epic.
Epic peotry, English (Old), Anglo-Saxon, Absolute Past, The Zone of Maximal Proximity, Contemporaneity, Hierarchical Positioning, Monologism, Multiplicity, Dialogue
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/1218049/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/13330
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

From the "state-idea" to "politically organized subjection" Revisiting Abrams in times of crisis in Turkey and EU-Europe
Bodırsky, Katharına (2016-06-01)
Philip Abrams's notion of the "state-idea" has been of immense influence in the anthropology of the state. This article suggests a contrary reading of Abrams's "Notes on the difficulty of studying the state" (1988) that focuses instead on his notion of "politically organized subjection," which allows us to examine contemporary statehood in crisis where political practice increasingly seems "unmasked." The article examines such strategies of politically organizing subjection in the contexts of current EU-Eur...
From postmodernism to metamodernism: changing perspectives towards irony and metanarratives in Julian Barnes’s a history of the world in 10 and ½ chapters and the noise of time
Ateş, Meltem; Öztabak Avcı, Elif; Department of English Literature (2019)
The aim of this thesis is to point out and explore the changing perspectives towards irony and metanarratives in Julian Barnes’s fiction by focusing specifically on A History of the World in 10 and ½ Chapters (1989) and The Noise of Time (2016). This discussion will be located into the larger framework of Postmodernism and Metamodernism. These two aesthetic movements will be discussed in terms of their different approaches to irony and metanarratives in order to contextualize the changes in the ways in whic...
Theatricality and the chronotope in "The Magus" by J. Fowles and "England, England" by J. Barnes
Filimonova, Alexandra; Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M.; Department of English Language Teaching (2009)
The thesis reveals the main principles of the theatrical chronotope and examines the ways in which it is embodied in the novels of two postmodern authors – The Magus by John Fowles and England, England by Julian Barnes. These are analyzed as presenting two different variants of texts that employ the theatrical chronotope to exploit its different possible semantic implications. The thesis argues that in The Magus theatricality is employed to convey the author’s philosophical and aesthetical thoughts. The mai...
The death of the author in the streetscape of Ankara: A Barthesian intervention into critical toponymy
Düzgün, Doğuş; Alpan, Başak Zeynep; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2020-9)
In this thesis I use the post-structuralist textual theory of Roland Barthes that is known as ‘the death of the author’ in order to explain the politics of street names. Barthes argued that in the literary texts author cannot fix the meaning as it is the readers who produce the meaning. In a similar way, I argue that the streetscape is a polysemous text in which the meaning is produced by readers (everyday users) rather than authors (the political elites that officially determine the street names). Implicat...
History of the novel in stories of femininity: Moll flanders, Evelina and Fordyce’s sermons /
Kaya, Tuğba Billur; Yıldız Bağçe, Hülya; Department of English Literature (2015)
In this study the rise of the English novel is investigated from the perspective of Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction which put forward that the novel genre emerged out of the conduct books of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Within this scope two of the first English novels Moll Flanders (1742) by Daniel Defoe and Evelina (1778) by Frances Burney will be studied side-by-side by comparing their plots with one of the most popular conduct books of the era: Fordyce’s Sermons. The study aims to...
Citation Formats
E. Dalbak, “From the epic to the novel : A comparative study of Beowulf and Grendel,” M.A. - Master of Arts, Middle East Technical University, 2003.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr