Myth · Adventure
Beowulf
A hero sails to Denmark to fight the monster Grendel, then Grendel's mother, then a dragon.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Heorot
Hrothgar, king of the Danes, builds a great mead-hall called Heorot, where his warriors feast and listen to songs. The noise reaches Grendel, a monster of the dark fens nearby, who comes night after night and carries men away. For twelve years no one can stop him. Then from the land of the Geats, across the sea, comes a young warrior with fourteen companions and the strength of thirty men in his grip: Beowulf. The poem survives in a single manuscript written around the year 1000, though it may be older.
Why it works for learners
The structure could not be clearer. There are three fights: against Grendel, against Grendel’s mother in her lake and, fifty years later, against a dragon. Each is set up, fought and celebrated, a shape that helps you follow the language. The vocabulary is a small heroic world: king, hall, sword, shield, gold, ship, sea, monster, gift, feast.
Even native English speakers need study to read the original, since Old English is taught almost as a foreign language. Everyone reads Beowulf in translation or retelling; you can too, at your level. Its dragon, roused by the theft of a single cup, is often seen as an ancestor of Smaug in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Which level to start at
A2 works well: the plot is simple and the poem is short for an epic. B1 adds more of the speeches, boasts and funerals that give it its grandeur. At B2 and above you’ll feel more of the poem’s sadness about fame and death. If yours is the first request for it in your language and level, Lexo writes that edition for you, and you keep a dated First edition mark.
Read next
- The Odyssey, the great Greek hero-tale
- The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, the next age of British legend
- Grimms’ Fairy Tales, more monsters from the old Germanic world