Beowulf sulle strade del fantasy

The paper aims at analyzing some modern rewrites of the Old English poem Beowulf: Parke Godwin’s novel The Tower of Beowulf (1995); the tales contained in the collection The Further Adventures of Beowulf (2006) edited by Brian M. Thomsen; and R. Scot Johns’ novel The Saga of Beowulf. All these narratives belong to the genre of fantasy. Whilst the novels of Godwin and Scot Johns retell and reinterpret the well-known story of Beowulf, the tales of The Further Adventures of Beowulf are completely new stories, whose main character is the famous Geat hero. The analysis intends to figure out not only how the different rewrites project different fictional worlds by interacting with the conventions of the genre, but also how the very act of retelling puts the narrative matter in a different cultural and ideological perspective. The strategies applied by the modern authors determine thus different interpretations of the medieval text and indirectly contribute to the discussion about the role of canonized literature in contemporary culture.