My Multigenre Project
Beowulf & The Canterbury Tales
Jenna Williams
I'm a senior in Chillicothe High School and I'm doing a project on the Canterbury Tales and Beowulf. I write a ballad, draw a terrible picture, and also write a diary entry. My theme, which is mortality, is a part of every piece that I do. My theme is mortality. Mortality is throughout the entire poem. Grendel, a few idiots who think they can take on Death, and even the almighty Beowulf are all subjected to death, which is what mortality is. The lesson is that death is inevitable and no one, no matter how strong or arrogant, can escape it.
Ballad of Beowulf
I wrote Ballad of Beowulf as my first piece. It was definitely an interesting experience and although it may still need a few tweaks, I think I did fairly well. Because my theme is mortality, I wanted to use a scene in which a death occurred. For my first piece, I wanted to use one of the first ultimate death scenes, which was the battle between Grendel and Beowulf.
The Battle of Grendel
The image below is a depiction of the battle between Grendel and Beowulf. I decided to stick with the same battle on this one because of Grendel's arrogance. Grendel was so sure that he couldn't die. He bewitched all swords so they could not hurt him. But all things must die sometime, and Beowulf ripped off his arm. He bled out and he died. He was still subjected to death, no matter how great a monster he was.
Diary Entry for The Canterbury Tales
My diary entry is a little rough. I did my entry on The Pardoner's tale. The Pardoner's tale was about three men who bask in sin and then decide to take on Death. Well, greed gets in the way and they kill each other. It's a very hypocritical story for the Pardoner's to tell, because of who he is as a person.
Dear Reader,
I worked on this project with mortality as my theme. There were many deaths throughout Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. The hardest piece to do was probably the ballad. It had to have 4 stanzas, 4 lines each. They also had to rhyme. Finding words to fit my theme and still have a whimsical tone was harder then I anticipated. The easiest was the diary entry. I could just let loose and become my own character who is reflecting on the tale in the story. If I took the time to go back and tweak my pages before the due date, I totally would.