Grendel, Guthlac, and the Gulping Hell-Mouth Again

he zoomorphic mouth of hell is a syncretistic creation which has predominantly been traced to pre-Conquest England. This paper will argue that a distinctively English element that contributed to the emergence and evolution of this imagery can be pinpointed in the processes of metaphorical substitution and hybridization typical of both the literary languages of pre-Conquest England, Anglo-Latin and Old English, as well as of early English visual art. By reassessing the relevant evidence – both textual and figurative –, it will be shown that the very premises of the monstrous hell-mouth can be traced to two of the earliest literary attestations of both Old English and Anglo-Latin, Beowulf and the Vita S. Guthlaci, as well as to one of the earliest artifacts of English visual culture, the Repton Stone.