Bēowulf e Grendel: il nemico e il suo doppio

The Bēowulf, one of the most important Anglo-Saxon poems, shows a very peculiar kind of enemy: the terrible ogre Grendel. Grendel is the father of all the enemies of the humankind, the brood of Cain, and the poet describes him as the Evil itself. In this article, I propose a new interpretation of this poem as a political-juridical poem, focusing on the figure of this character: in my opinion, Grendel is the reification of the disorder, and so is more properly described as an enemy of society and of civilization. The problem with Grendel is that he can’t be fought with the rules of the law, because the law is that who Grendel denies and refuses. But the king is the lord of the law, and he can’t fight ignoring the law. The only way to succeed in this struggle against the disorder and to save the society and the civilization is to accept to set the rules apart, and this can be done only by a foreign warrior, the Swedish hero Bēowulf. Bēowulf is exceptional, and so he is the only one who can face Grendel, as well exceptional, in a battle field where the stuggle runs without any rules, and where the eye of the king can’t see