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Beowulf is a an 11c heroic epic poem, written in England, in old English, by newly Christianised monks, but set in Scandinavia. If one can’t handle the Nowell Codex, the film does a pretty good raconteur job.

Grendel (1971), of course, precedes both the film and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) which subsequently utilises similar techniques: interweaving highly theoretical discourse with quotidian and utilitarian undertakings.

Effectively, Gardner takes up Beowulf a millennium post-partum and manages, without altering the ‘historical accuracy� of the poem at all, to distil it through a 20 c kaleidoscope of notionality. This can be very dangerous territory for any author, but Gardner pulls it off with aplomb.

In a ‘Thus spoke Grendel� first person narrative, Gardner approaches what are essentially two dimensional characters in the original poem and plots them sensitively, and sympathetically, on a 3D narrative grid. Actions are parsed out and framed in an intricate network of emotional and philosophical weave.

Grendel and his prey (the Danish thanes) transubstantiate from their black-and –white victim/perpetrator cardboard cut outs into a complex, symbiotic intra-dependence. They need each other in an achingly horrifying way, imbue meaning in each other’s existence. The destruction of either party would skewer the Gaia balance, and they seem to know it instinctively: men need heroes and just causes to fight for and monsters need to be acknowledged, if not worshipped.

In this fracas its becomes difficult to discern who is man and who is monster and who is god. These three seem to conjoin conceptually in some grotesque Siamese Holy Trinity, with lashings of mutual adulation acting as the gelling agent.

This is ultimately an intelligent, philosophical exploration of the dichotomy of life, poignant and hyperbolic in its own way.