Examples Of Realism In Beowulf

As a child, did you dream of being a princess or a queen when you grow up? When you start growing up, parents read you bedtime stories about princes and fairies; all unrealistic things. Monsters were part of the tales told, like Grendel, dragons, and demons found in Beowulf. Then you grow out of all of the fake thoughts and think realistically. You start to dream of real occupations you can acquire and think about life from a different point of view. Although we grew up with these illusions of imaginary creatures, adults during the Anglo-Saxon period still wrote about them as if they existed; as if they never grew up. In the literature pieces written in the Anglo-Saxon and Middle Ages, unrealism was more prevalent than realism due to their lack of knowledge.
Beowulf is a tale written in the Anglo-Saxon period, it has many mythological creatures in it, as if it were written by a child. The creatures, a dragon and two demons, aren’t described equitable. Another clue to the childlike thinking in an author. In this time period, they wrote with little description and about impossible beings. Something unrealistic in the the epic Beowulf is that Beowulf could swim for hours without breathing: “For hours he sank through the waves; At last he saw the mud of the bottom” …show more content…
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was during the Middle Ages while Beowulf was in the Anglo-Saxon period. They both had unrealistic beings coming and conflicting with the people. A scene from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that shows unrealistic occurrences: “The red blood burst bright from the green body, yet the fellow neither faltered nor fell reached roughly right through their legs, grabbed his graceful head and lifted it from the ground, ran to his horse…” (n.d.). In today’s time, many would call this bogus; but, in these time periods these stories were considered