Basilisks and Beowulf

James Holloway

Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World

Tim Flight

Reaktion Books 2021

Hb, 264pp, £15.95, ISBN 9781789144338

Monsters abound in the literature and art of Anglo-Saxon England. From the most famous work of Old English literature, Beowulf, which relates the adventures of a monster-slaying hero, to hagiographies that narrate encounters between saints and devils, strange creatures are everywhere in England’s early Middle Ages. In Basilisks and Beowulf, Tim Flight describes these monsters and analyses their role in the Anglo-Saxon worldview.

Flight covers half a dozen main categories of monster. He begins with the grotesque and bizarre creatures who populated mediaeval maps, and who appear in works such as The Wonders of the East. From there, he discusses wolves in both Anglo-Saxon England and Anglo-Saxon literature, as well as whales, devils, and dragons. In a two-part final section, he addresses first Grendel and his mother, the monstrous antagonists of Beowulf, and then the hero himself, whose superhuman (or inhuman?) qualities give him some similarities to the monsters he battles.

Basilisks and Beowulf suggests that monsters – everything from dragons to map grotesques to real wild animals – were vital to the early mediaeval understanding of personhood. As creatures of wild places, opposed to civilised humanity, monsters defined what humans were not.

But some creatures, whether monstrous beings who possessed human reason or humans who transgressed against society’s norms, could blur the lines between human and monster, threatening the boundaries of human identity.

A very short introduction to early mediaeval English society helps make the book accessible to readers without much background in the history of the period. Readers with more experience with early mediaeval culture will probably get more out of this volume, but it’s well worth the time of anyone interested in the history of monsters.

★★★★