| Abstract: | In 2010, the Polish translation of "Beowulf" was edited. The translator, Robert Stiller, provided the edition with a considerable introduction and comments in which he convinces the reader of actuality of the Anglo-Saxon poem and its call for fighting with everything that is primitive, monstrous and vulgar. Stiller was inducing that it is a duty of contemporary reader to fight - along with the old hero - with "contemporary grendels" among whom Stiller saw also John Gardner - tha author of the novel "Grendel" (1971) - a "postmodern" travesty of the poem. Regarding to Gardner's novel and, most of all, to pop cultural achievements constiututing an attempt to revise the poem in the critical way (the "suite" of Marillion rock group, 1982; Robert Zemeckis' movie, 2007), the author of the essay reminds that in contemporary (pop) culture the rehabilitation of hitherto excommunicated heroes is proceeding. Conversely to what the Polish translator suggests, the liking of contemporary readers and viewers are directed towards the monster. We look differently at the history and tradition of culture remembering about the victims - bastards of history - the excluded and excommunicated "grendels". Perhaps nowadays they seem to be more familiar than the old heroes. |