Grendel Author Biography & Introduction

A student of creative writing and medieval literature, John Gardner was an extremely versatile writer. His works include essays, novels, short stories, plays, translated works, poems, children’s books, and literary criticism. Notably, Grendel is one of his few works to have received positive response from his peers and literary critics alike. He was often criticized for his views on contemporary fiction writers. In fact, Gardner believed that his strong views incentivized critics to churn out negative reviews of his works.

A lifelong teacher of fiction writing, he held that art and morality go hand in hand. He even argued that morality is a basic truth, not a social construct. He is best known for Grendel and On Moral Fiction, a book on literary criticism. With Grendel, Gardner has retold a classic from the perspective of the antagonist, the monster Grendel, who in this retelling is portrayed not as a villain, but as an antihero.

The novel uses Grendel’s journey to focus on various philosophical schools of thought. Gardner was especially influenced by Sartre’s philosophical position in Being and Nothingness. He has shared that the protagonist Grendel is based on a “beautiful intellectual monster” like Sartre himself. The original Beowulf is known as the oldest long poem in Old English, and, in it, Beowulf kills Grendel. The idea of retelling the story through Grendel’s perspective means readers are made privy to the antihero’s version of this story. Notably, Grendel also delivers the message that fiction can be a vehicle for moral good.