Imagine my surprise when I pulled up Wikipedia’s article on Beowulf and saw someone had written that Beowulf “is an epic poem that sucks” (shown below – it has since been “fixed”).
I immediately flagged the Beowulf article for inappropriateness. I was appalled. “Sucks” proclaims unpleasantness. Epic poems that suck include The Faerie Queen and Paradise Lost. Beowulf, however, isn’t even in the same category as this sucky literature. By virtue of its Old English rhetoric, Norse and pagan roots, and scores of indistinguishable characters, Beowulf undoubtedly blows. It’s so unpleasant as to be painful. I would rather crawl on my hands and knees for 100 miles than to ever again read about Beowulf and Hroogar hanging out in the Heorot with Hreoric and Hroomund. God, that blows.
