Beowulf And Redcrosse Comparison

Since the dawn of man, steel rings, blades flash, sparks fly, fire spews, fangs snap, and roars rip. Well, since the dawn of fantasy, anyways. Good ol’ fashioned knights in shining armor running off to slay a dragon—not that it always ends in the knight actually saving the princess. Or killing the dragon. Or living. Brave warriors of epic literature like Beowulf and the Redcrosse knight fight climatic battles against unnamed dragons of legendary proportions, and their tales parallel one another in a number of aspects; but like any two stories, they also have their more prominent differences. Contrasting the dragon battles of the anonymous epic poem “Beowulf” and the first book of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the heroes’ themselves are juxtaposed, and, individually, their motives and values are examined. Their specific differences correlate to the settings of their separate worlds, where their poets cleverly align them and provide ultimate lessons behind their actions. One of the more obvious differences between the two skirmishes is the shape in which the heroes end their battle in. In light of the repetitive foreshadowing of his death, …show more content…
Beowulf’s scene with the dragon is much grimmer and quicker fought than that of the Redcrosse knight. It mirrors a darker, gutsier, more heroic code and lifestyle in which the narrator of “Beowulf” keeps the warrior aligned, as opposed to Redcrosse, whom Spenser makes live by a more lawful, chivalric code, where the knight is often saving people from being imprisoned rather than slaying beasts for the sake of boasting rights. That being said, the society surrounding “Beowulf” is based much more around personal valor; in order to be respected, one must prove himself in mortal combat and live to tell the