Book Review: Basilisks and Beowulf
★★★★☆ (4/5, Really Liked It)
My Rating: ★★★★☆
Intro & Summary
Tim Flight’s Basilisks and Beowulf is a discussion and exploration of monsters, what they represented and what that meant to the Anglo-Saxons who ruled in Britain in the Early Middle Ages. The first five chapters cover specific monsters or categories of monsters, while the final two chapters put all this into context using the poem Beowulf as a case study.
Beowulf is one of my favourite works of literature. I have a small collection, to which this book added a “Beowulf Adjacent” section. I also love medieval bestiaries, games like Dungeons and Dragons, and fantasy in general. Needless to say, I went into this book with high hopes, and as you can already see from my rating I wasn’t disappointed.
Flight, Tim. Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2023.
Readability
Flight’s writing style is straightforward and somewhat dry, without being so academic that he lost me anywhere. There were multiple points where I giggled a bit, often at things that maybe weren’t necessarily meant to be funny, but they could have been. And I thought they were.
The book wasn’t quite as “fun” and exciting a read as I would have liked, but I think that’s mostly down to my general dislike of religious history. It’s just not for me. But Christianity was a key part of Medieval European society, and especially among those classes who were able to write things down or sponsor the writing down of things—namely the clergy, the nobility and the “cultural elite.”
With such importance, Christianity and Christian symbolism naturally colour and define the monsters of the Anglo-Saxon period. You can’t separate the religious history even from the fantastical beasties. But Flight’s discussion managed to keep my interest despite all that.
Learning
I went into Basilisks and Beowulf expecting to learn about monsters, and I definitely did. But I didn’t expect to learn new things about Beowulf as a poem. So that was pretty exciting.
There’s a lot more going on in the writing of the poem itself beyond just the story. Most discussions of Beowulf go on about kennings (which I’ve never been able to wrap my head around beyond a basic conceptual level) and leave most of the praise there. Flight, in his discussions of various monster types, points out quite a bit of symbolism, allusion and allegory I never caught in previous readings of the poem. I don’t really want to go into detail, but honestly the last two chapters were really cool and I don’t want to spoil them for anyone.
Most of the “monsters” in this book are, in line with medieval bestiaries, real creatures seen as monstrous. Yes, there are dragons and demons, as well as the whole first chapter covering “map monsters” who exist on the fringes of civilization. I wasn’t surprised to see a chapter about wolves, but the chapter on whales was unexpected.
There are rules for monsters, governing both what defines them and how they act. The through line of this book defines monsters as beings existing in the wilderness outside civilization, and there is a boundary between that wilderness and civilization that monsters and men (humans) should not cross.
Most monsters maintain this boundary by fleeing from civilized man, fighting and frightening him or killing him. Those men who cross the boundary have either been cast out of civilization and so join the monsters as outlaws, or they are heroes (usually Christian saints) who bring civilization and order with them, pushing the boundary and the monsters back and shrinking the wilderness before the light of civilization (and God).
With the island of Britain seen as being at the edge of the world itself, the Anglo-Saxons found themselves in a unique predicament compared to their fellow Christians on the continent. Their society formed a small bastion of civilization within the wilderness of the wilderness, surrounded not just by pagan wilds but the ocean (equated with Hell) besides. It’s little wonder their wariness and portrayal of monsters is so much more prominent and personal than other early medieval societies.
Would I Read It Again?
Yes.
Despite my complaints about religious history, I enjoyed this book a lot. It lost a star for not being quite as exciting as I hoped a book about monsters would be, and for the conclusion which sort of got on a soapbox and overstayed its welcome trying to tie everything together and into the present day.
For anyone interested in reading Basilisks and Beowulf, I recommend reading Beowulf itself first. You’ll get a lot more out of this book, and especially the final two chapters, if you go in familiar with the source material that forms the case study. And really it’s just a good story.
Go read Beowulf.