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The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy

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I confess that I know one of the editors of this book - which is how I came by it. Personal connections aside, it seemed to me that it deserves the attention of many, and that I should let people know...

As a pedagogical tool (for high school *and* college students) I have found it just excellent- not only when actually teaching texts such as Beowulf, but for a whole series of ways of thinking about films that seem, inevitably, to come up in my survey as well as medieval courses - Buffy for Dracula; Star Wars for any romance (Carl Grindley's chapter on weaponry here is especially fabulous, and hilarious, for this); ET for bindungsroman, etc. The last section of the book is actually devoted to teaching - and there is a great chapter on The Lord of the Rings trilogy on film, for those, like me, who would always rather teach the celluloid to the written version of that text (more exciting! pictures of NZ!)

But I would also recommend the book to those interested in things medieval, or things cinematic generally, and for students - the papers use theory of all sorts (narrative, feminist, queer, etc) in an accessible and interesting way, and they serve as an admirable 'how-to' for students about to write an essay on anything from Monty Python to the history of film.