Beowulf is the conventional titleof an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set

in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature. It survives in a single manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. Its composition by an anonymous AngloSaxon poet[note 2] is dated between the 8th[1][2] and the early 11th century.[3] In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through a building housing a collection of Medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The poem fell into obscurity for decades, and its existence did not become widely known again until it was printed in 1815 in an edition prepared by the Icelandic-Danish scholar Grmur Jnsson Thorkelin.[4] In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the help of Hrogar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland. Summary: Grendel was Vanquished
When all but one of the warriors had fallen asleep, Grendel approached Heorot. The door to the hall swung open at his touch, but rage boiled up within him, and he tore it apart and bounded inside. Before anyone could move he grabbed one of the sleeping Geats, rent him into pieces and devoured him, slurping his blood. Next he turned to Beowulf, raising a claw to attack. But Beowulf was ready. He sprang up from his bench and caught Grendel in a fearsome grip, the like of which the monster had never known. Try as he might, Grendel could not loosen Beowulf's hold; he backed away, growing afraid. In the meantime, the other warriors in the hall attacked the fiend with their swords; but this had no effect. They couldn't have known that Grendel was invulnerable to any weapon forged by man. It was Beowulf's strength that overcame the creature; and though he struggled with everything he had to escape, causing the very timbers of Heorot to shudder, Grendel could not break free from the grip of Beowulf. As the monster weakened and the hero stood firm, the fight at last came to a horrific end when Beowulf ripped Grendel's entire arm and shoulder from his body. The fiend fled, bleeding, to die in his lair in the swamp, and the victorious Geats hailed Beowulf's greatness.