ix + 174 pp., b/w illus. The most famous engagement with Beowulf in the form of a novel, told entirely from Grendel's perspective. Each chapter is headed by a different head-portrait of Grendel by Antonucci. Chapter 1 begins:

The old ram stands looking down over rockslides, stupidly triumphant. I blink. I stare in horror. "Scat!" I hiss. "Go back to your cave, go back to your cowshed—whatever." He cocks his head like an elderly, slow-witted king, considers the angles, decides to ignore me. I stamp. I hammer the ground with my fists. I hurl a skull-size stone at him. He will not budge. I shake my two hairy fists at the sky and I let out a howl so unspeakable that the water at my feet turns sudden ice and even I myself am left uneasy. But the ram stays; the season is upon us. And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war.

The pain of it! The stupidity! (5)

And the novel concludes:

Again sight clears. I am slick with blood. I discover I no longer feel pain. Animals gather around me, enemies of old, to watch me die. I give them what I hope will appear a sheepish smile. My heart booms terror. Will the last of my life slide out if I let out breath? They watch with mindless, indifferent eyes, as calm and midnight black as the chasm below me.

Is it joy I feel?

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.

"Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all." (173-74, italics in original)

• Matthias Eitelmann, “The Construction of the Hero in Beowulf and the De-Construction of the Heroic Concept in John Gardner’s Grendel,” in The Image of the Hero in Literature, Media, and Society, ed. Will Wright and Steven Kaplan (Pueblo: Colorado State University, 2004), 358-64.

• Jennifer Kelso Farrell, “The Evil behind the Mask: Grendel’s Pop Culture Evolution,” Journal of Popular Culture 41 (2008): 934-49, at 938-43.

• Kathleen Forni, Beowulf's Popular Afterlife in Literature, Comic Books, and Film (New York: Routledge, 2018), chap. 3.

• Francisco Giusti, “Il ‘Beowulf’ nel Novecento: il fumetto e il romanzo,” Linguistica e Filologia 23 (2006): 211-29, at 220-27.

• Norma L. Hutman, “Even Monsters Have Mothers: A Study of Beowulf and John Gardner’s Grendel,” Mosaic 9.1 (1975): 19-31.

• Peggy A. Knapp, “Alienated Majesty: Grendel and Its Pretexts,” Centennial Review 32.1 (1988): 1-18.

• Anna Kowalcze, “Disregarding the Text: Postmodern Medievalisms and the Readings of John Gardner’s Grendel,” Year's Work in Medievalism 17 (2002): 33-55.

• Michael Livingston and John William Sutton, “Reinventing the Hero: Gardner’s Grendel and the Shifting Face of Beowulf in Popular Culture,” Studies in Popular Culture 29.1 (2006): 1-16.

• Joseph Milosh, “John Gardner’s Grendel: Sources and Analogues,” Contemporary Literature 19.1 (1978): 48-57.

• Darcy Mullen, “Beowulf and Aesthetic Nervousness: A Multidimensional Pedagogy,” in Lessons in Disability: Essays on Teaching with Young Adult Literature, ed. Jacob Stratman (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015), 149-76, at 159-62.

• Marie Nelson, “John Gardner’s Grendel: A Story Retold and Transformed in the Process,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 18 (2007): 340-64.

• Jay Ruud, “Gardner’s Grendel and Beowulf: Humanizing the Monster,” Thoth 14.2-3 (1974): 3-17.

• Rudy S. Spraycar, “Mechanism and Medievalism in John Gardner’s Grendel,” in Science Fiction Dialogues, ed. Gary Wolfe (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1982), 141-52.

• Joseph F. Tuso, “Grendel, Chapter I: John Gardner’s Perverse Prologue,” College Literature 12.2 (1985): 184-86.

Not in GR.

BAM.