[justin66]

> Beowulf just isn't that significant or relevant in popular culture - it just isn't. I don't even know why this is controversial.

Not everyone slept through their high school English class and failed to notice when characters in movies they were watching were named "Beowulf."

And we're talking about one of the few things that is examined in almost every high school English class.

[thaumasiotes]

> we're talking about one of the few things that is examined in almost every high school English class.

I don't think this comes close to being true. Maybe in Britain.

Ancient epics and ancient languages are a primary interest for me, but no school class ever covered Beowulf.

[justin66]

> no school class ever covered Beowulf

How interesting. In that case am I right in guessing that your coverage of the Medieval part of the canon was limited to Chaucer and didn't include anything else? I'm just curious how much things have changed.

[thaumasiotes]

Chaucer was covered in a sense, but in History rather than English. The class did not read him, except for one student who chose that as the focus of a class project.

I did have a high school English class covering (among other, non-medieval works) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the story of Tristan and Iseult. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was read in translation, but Tristan and Iseult was a fairly modern reimagining (set in the original period), with an author's introduction discussing how she chose to omit the magic that was present in the original because she thought it detracted from the agency of the characters.

Edit: found it - it was this one. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374479828/ . "Tristan and Iseult: an inspired retelling of the legendary love story".

[justin66]

That sounds really good, I don't think I ever read Tristan and Iseult.

I'd have slotted Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in with Beowulf in the "medieval" part of the literary canon but I could be off-base there. I remember reading Beowulf in high school but not the other. That might be a function of which one I found more interesting at the time, I'm not sure.

[thaumasiotes]

I agree that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is "medieval". I meant to say that the English class covering it was not focused on a historical period, covering literature that was much more modern in the same year.

Beowulf is from around the 8th century; I guess that's technically "medieval" but I think of it as belonging to some nameless period that's older than "medieval". There's a huge difference between Old English of the 8th century and Middle English of the 14th.

In terms of story quality, Sutcliffe's Tristan and Iseult was in fact quite good. And it gave me a bit more appreciation for this: https://arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/1020.htm .

[justin66]

I think the "medieval" terminology is a little dated anyhow. I guess Harold Bloom's categorizations and listings and so on are a lot more authoritative now (they sure pop on a google search) and it doesn't look like he uses the term. I have no real opinion on how much any of that matters.

Memory is unreliable but I recall my high school class using a pretty good textbook that included Beowulf with both old English and modern translations, but also the chapter of The Hobbit where Bard shoots the dragon, which stylistically invited some interesting comparisons. It was a pretty good lesson for a high school kid who was also a fan of Tolkien, back before that was something you could be without reading any books.

[krapp]

Plenty of people studied Chaucer in English class as well, and yet no almost no one in mainstream culture cares about Canterbury Tales.

And yes, more people more or less slept through English class than not.