Beowulf

(I've been reading the finally-at-long-last released Tolkien translation of and commentary on Beowulf, and this has been driving many updates on my part on other social media. Earlier tonight I gave up trying to fit the following thought into 140 characters, and posted it to Facebook alone. Might as well copy it here, where it might actually last,)

Reading Beowulf, I'm always startled by how modern the story feels. You expect old mythology to follow odd narrative structures, involve strange leaps of logic. But Beowulf is a modern superhero! Grendel is a proper horror monster, and the dragon guards a treasure, breaths fire, and is a generic fantasy dragon (other than being a bit more snake like).

But, of course, these aren't coincidences. Beowulf is modern fantasy because modern fantasy is Tolkien fanfic, and Tolkien was largely Beowulf fanfic. It's really amazing how much influence it indirectly has had on modern genre writing. And all because some monk happened to write it down, then someone happened to save it from 18th century fire, before it had ever been translated, and a professor with a gift for languages happened to fall in love with it about a century ago. Quite extraordinary, really. The idea of pirate comics being dominate in the Watchmen universe instead of superheroes isn't so far fetched after all.