Tag Archives: Podcast

Beowulf and Storytelling with Lex Fajardo (Podcast)

Posted on by
1

Here is episode 2 of Fate Going As It Must: A Beowulf Talk Show! On the show I talk with people who are fans of Beowulf to try to understand how they discovered the poem and why they think it’s still important. Since this is a monthly show, so far there are just two episodes. But I’m planning to release a new episode every month for the next 10 months. The previous episode is here.

My guest on this episode is Lex Fajardo, the creator of the Kid Beowulf comic series. You can find out more about his series at kidbeowulf.com. While chatting with Lex about Beowulf we covered:

  • How Beowulf handles (and mishandles) storytelling
  • Fate (especially fate through blood ties)
  • Beowulf and Grendel: more similar than different
  • The merits of the monsters
  • John Gardner’s Grendel
  • Beowulf as Marvel’s Captain America
  • Kid Beowulf as a way to get people interested in world mythology, world epics

Also, are you curious about the Burton Raffel translation of Beowulf that Lex cites as one of his favourites? If so, you can find some excerpts in a PDF here.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on the show and on the topics covered in the comments. Or, go ahead and answer this question: What epic mythological story would you want to see Beowulf in?

The theme music for the show is:

The Pyre Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

What Beowulf Can Teach Us With Paul Begadon (Podcast)

Posted on by
2

This is the first episode of Fate Going As It Must: A Beowulf Talk Show! On the show I’ll talk with people who are fans of Beowulf to try to understand how they discovered the poem and why they think it’s still important.

My first guest is Paul Begadon, whose writing about old stories (including Beowulf) you can find at woodkern.net. We cover quite a few topics, including:

  • Favourite movie adaptations
  • The importance of storytelling
  • What Beowulf can teach to us today: overcome your demons
  • Stories of katabasis; the Jungian interpretation of Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s Mother as journey to the subconscious for the power to succeed
  • Best introductory translation of Beowulf
  • What does “Hwaet” even mean?
  • Robert Graves and Grendel’s Mother as ancient goddess
  • The kenning in Beowulf’s name

Feel free to leave your thoughts on the show and on the topics covered in the comments. Or, go ahead and answer this question: What is your favourite adaptation of Beowulf?

The theme music for the show is:

The Pyre Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/