Introduction & Overview of Grendel by John Gardner

Grendel Introduction

Completed in 1970 and published the following year, Grendel was the first of John Gardner's novels to bring him not just critical but popular success. The novel was praised as a literary tour de force and named a book of the year by Time and Newsweek magazines. As a professor of English specializing in medieval literature, Gardner had been teaching Beowulf, the source of inspiration for Grendel, for many years at various colleges. A relatively minor character in Beowulf, Grendel is a symbol for "darkness, chaos, and death," according to critic John M Howell in Understanding John Gardner. In Gardner's version, however, Grendel becomes a three-dimensional character with, in Howell's words, "a sense of humor and a gift for language." Grendel even has a weakness for poetry. As a would-be artist, Grendel strives, however comically, to escape from his baseness. Such is the power of art, Gardner seems to be...
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