Your goal in this assignment is to perform a close reading of Beowulf and develop an original claim by identifying an opportunity for conversation in the text. The best way to do this is to begin by locating an element of Beowulf that fascinates, shocks, or perplexes you. By articulating what interests you in the text, you should have an easier time identifying a specific opportunity for conversation: a gap, tension, contradiction, ambiguity, or difficulty in the text or the subject of the text. Compose a paper of at least three full pages in which you offer your original claim and support that claim with evidence from your close reading of the text. In this assignment, you will draw on part of the Beowulf poet’s text to develop a new, original view of your own.