SOURCE: "The Analogical Mere: Landscape and Terror in Beowulf," in English Studies, Vol. 68, No. 2, 1987, pp. 113-21.

In the following excerpt, Butts maintains that the Beowulf poet's description of Grendel's mere, or pool, is meant to be nightmarish rather than realistic.

The description of Grendel's mere in Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf (1345a-1379b) is an extended metaphor for terror. [The text of Beowulf used throughout this paper is that of Friedrich Klaeber's edition, Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd. ed. (Lexington, Mass., 1950).] The difficulty of reconciling all the features of the landscape surrounding the mere into a realistic picture has been noted by previous commentators. But to take an unsympathetic view of the poet's accomplishment here and read the description as an unsuccessful attempt to accurately and realistically render a natural landscape is to misread it. The poet gives us Hrothgar's description not so as to present a...