Deconstruction of Beowulf

The book tries to show how the classic epic Beowulf is deconstructed both in John Gardner's novel Grendel and Sturla Gunnarson's film Beowulf and Grendel. It compares and contrasts all three works and tries to define the term "deconstruction". John Gardner in his novel Grendel reinterprets the events taking place in the epic; Sturla Gunnarson also bases his film Beowulf and Grendel (2005) on the epic and interprets it in a different way. These novel and film adaptations of the epic, which display the contents of the epic from different points of view, reconstruct the epic. Deconstruction is crucial to understand these new reconstructions of the epic.