Is Beowulf Timeless or Is It Just Cool to Read It?

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Beowulf is timeless because it has this. last part where you get him as an old man. There's also a part where he remembers it actually an often forgotten portion. It was particularly beautiful kind of poem in the poem. And to me, I mean you can interpret however you want but what I love about that is if you know doom is unfolding you eventually there is no way out. So they can relate to all those things and it's timeless.

Tolkien read it as a tale about mortality. The poet David Whyte said it was a metaphor for the psychological demons deep in our minds. And that, insists the cartoonist and writer Zach Weinersmith, is precisely Beowulf's appeal: Its richness opens the door to endless interpretation. Listen as the author of Bea Wolf, a graphic novel for children based on the Old English poem, speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poetry in general, Beowulf in particular, whether we should require students to memorize poems, and the value of stories for children even without a moral lesson.