Name-dropping:
Beowulf (pronunciation: BAY-oh-wuhlf) (written between 700 and 1000 CE).
The italicized Beowulf is an epic poem, apparently written in English (although you wouldn’t know that to read it). The nonitalicized Beowulf is the poem’s hero, a knight-in-shining-armor type.

Grendel (pronunciation: GREN-dul):
A horrible monster.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
Whenever you find yourself chatting with a pretentious one-time English major (you can spot them by the repeated references to Proust and the suit jacket with elbow patches). But Beowulf will also give you a tale to tell while you drink an actual Grendel, a lemonade-based, liqueur-stuffed, sticky-sweet cocktail.

The Basics
Beowulf is widely considered to be the first great work of literature in English—even though all the words are spelled weird, as if its author (whose identity is unknown) was hooked on phonics. The language is so inaccessible, in fact, that many translations have been published (most notably, Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney’s, in 2001). Beowulf is the epic story of a fellow named, well, Beowulf. It is told in two parts.

Part 1: A horrible monster named Grendel has, for 12 years, attacked a Danish mead hall every single night, plucking drinkers from their seats and killing them. Frankly, you’d think they could just close down that mead hall that Grendel so hates and open up another one farther down the street. But regardless, a young prince named Beowulf arrives on the scene and promises to save the mead drinkers from their evil monster. That very night, Grendel shows up, eats a sleeping man, and then runs into Beowulf. Our hero valiantly battles the evil Grendel, eventually tearing off his arm. Grendel manages to escape, but the wound proves fatal. Beowulf is widely lauded for his bravery and strength, but the troubles aren’t over.

The next evening, Grendel’s mom (even monsters have mothers) shows up and demands wergild, a form of medieval payment to make up for the killing of a relative. The mead drinkers refuse, no doubt wondering where their wergild is for Grendel’s 12-year murderous rampage. Enraged, Grendel’s mother kills a man. The next morning, Beowulf gets up, tracks Grendel’s mother to a cave, decapitates her, and returns home with her head, whereupon the mead flows in earnest.

Part 2: Many years later, Beowulf has been king for a tranquil 50 years when a fire-breathing dragon shows up. The dragon’s carnage puts Grendel to shame, and Beowulf is older and weaker now, but he still summons the will to fight. After a bitter battle, Beowulf succeeds in killing the dragon, but not before he himself is mortally wounded. The epic ends with Beowulf’s somber funeral.

Most critics see the story of Beowulf as a Christian allegory—Beowulf stands up to the forces of evil, and in the end sacrifices himself for the good of the world. Besides that, it’s a rip-roaring adventure story. Sure, “English” like “swamec gelome laðgeteonan/þreatedon þearle,” makes it a wee inaccessible—but that’s why you’ve got cheat sheets. (Translation, by the way: “Me thus often the evil monsters/thronging threatened.”)

Extra Credit:
MEAD
Whether it’s a bodice-ripping romance set in the dark ages or Beowulf itself, everybody in 10th-century Europe seems to be drinking mead. So what is the stuff? It’s a sweet wine, fermented from honey, and its history dates back to 2000 BCE—when the Babylonians used to lap it up. With a reputation for being wickedly strong, you’d think it’d be popular today, but grape wine is a far more palatable taste. Still, if you’re keen on getting your hands around a flagon of the good stuff, you can probably pick some up at a Renaissance Faire. (And no, we won’t own up to how we know that!)

Although most of Beowulf is obviously made up, some details are historically accurate. Hygelac, the Danish king in Part 1 of Beowulf, really did die around 516 CE while leading a Viking raid into the Netherlands, just as Beowulf recounts. A fire-spitting dragon, however, did not show up in Denmark a few years later.

Conversation Starters
◆ Lord of the Rings author and weird-language nut J.R.R. Tolkien was fascinated by Beowulf—he often wrote about it and even wrote an unpublished translation. Beowulf was an important inspiration for Tolkien’s own epic, and much of the made-up languages in his books bear the imprint of Old English. The Rings’ antagonist Saruman, for instance, gets his name from the Old English word for treachery.

◆ With a total of 3,182 lines, Beowulf is the longest Old English manuscript in existence. In fact, it comprises about a tenth of all Anglo-Saxon poetry known to still exist. But it’s not the oldest poem in English: That distinction goes to Caedmon’s “Hymn of Creation,” which—believe us—isn’t famous for a reason.

◆ Only a single original manuscript of Beowulf survives, and it was severely damaged in a fire in 1731 while in storage at a place called the “Ashburnham House.” Just goes to show you that one ought not store a priceless, one-of-a-kind epic poem at a joint containing both the words “ash” and “burn” in its name.

◆ The world of Beowulf also attracted a somewhat dimmer literary light. Novelist Michael Crichton, so rich he won’t mind us calling him a hack, wrote a book called Eaters of the Dead (later made into the movie The 13th Warrior) that imagined the Beowulf story through the eyes of a 10th-century Muslim. In Crichton’s account, “Grendel” is not a regular monster but, well, a tribe of Neanderthal cannibals.