Heróis da mudança?

Paralelos entre Beowulf e Palamades

Abstract

Written in different moments from the European Middle Ages, the angle-saxon poem Beowulf and the chivalric romance in Galician-Portuguese A Demanda do Santo Graal, can be seem like transition works to the heroic archetypes and conventions from their epochs. Beowulf and Palamades, respectively, face unsurpassable dangers to the character model that both oppose. In the same way, they see themselves in front of a temporary antagonist, who belong to the criticized branch, whose antagonizing is made to reenforce that a new model is needed to deal with its social transformations, like the court culture from the British kingdoms reunited under the House of Wessex, or the dilemma resulting from the conflict between Christians and Muslim across the Mediterranean.