Chapter I- Introduction

If one has to define a hero, it’ll be defined as someone who possesses strength, bravado, and ethics and most importantly he must fight evil. These characteristics apply to Beowulf and to a modern hero like Batman with slight modifications. Both of these came from different time period but both have a great impact on their society.
Beowulf
Beowulf is the 3182 lines longest surviving Old English poem. It survives in a single manuscript, thought to date from the turn of eleventh century, though the composition of the poem is usually placed in the eight or early ninth centuries, perhaps in an Anglian region. The Action is set in Scandinavia, and the poem is chiefly concerned with the Geats (now Southern Sweden), Danes and Swedes. It falls into two main sections from line 1- 2199 it describes how young Beowulf’s defeat of two monsters, Grendel and his mother, at the request of King Hrothgar, and from the line 2200 -3182, comprise of telling how an aged Beowulf, now king defeats a fire- bathing dragon but is mortally wounded and dies.
Beowulf opens with a description of the origin and history of Scylding dynasty, tracing its descent down to Hrothgar, who builds Heorot, a great hall. But the sounds of rejoicing anger the a monster, Grendel, and one night he kills thirty sleeping men. These attacks recur for twelve years, during which no man can safely sleep in the hall. Beowulf, nephew of Hygelac, king of