Key learning points

1. After Grendel is defeated, another monster - his mother - arrives at Heorot, taking away a Dane.
2. Beowulf and his companions travel across bleak countryside to find her lair.
3. Beowulf fights with Grendel's mother, narrowly avoiding death before killing her with a special sword.
4. Authors make specific language choices in their writing in order to have a specific effect on the reader.
5. A kenning is an Old English way of replacing a noun with a two-word phrase that describes it indirectly.

Keywords

• Setting - where a story takes place

• Language choices - decisions writers make in order to create a certain impression or have a certain effect on the reader

• Impressions - feelings about a person, place or thing gained from reading a text

• Kenning - a phrase of two words that replaces a noun that is often used in Old English poetry

Common misconception