Beowulf is like the first story ever written (at least by white people, and that's all that matters). It's basically a long, boring poem that sucks even though it has a monster and tons of violence in it, and nobody ever actually reads it unless someone else forces them to. Don't sweat it though lit majors, because this is your lucky day: in an attempt to corner that elusive Geat demographic, DC once made a comic book version:

And this is no half-assed, watered-down ripoff like the Marvel Comics adaptation of For Your Eyes Only or something- it's practically a word-for-word translation, and they don't leave anything out: the throwdown with Grendel, the big pygmy rumble, the part where Beowulf teams up with some Bible cats to fight Dracula, the visit to Atlantis, the bit where he defeats the Minotaur and his maze, and, most important of all, the oft-omitted sequence where Beowulf takes a ride in a UFO and kicks some extraterrestrial ass:

Not only is the whole story here, but the dialogue is historically accurate too:

No one likes educational comics, so you can generally get the whole series (6 issues) for under ten bucks, which means you can breeze through Beowulf in an hour or so and be back at the bar suckering idiot education majors into the sack in no time. No need to thank me, just promise me one thing: after you read your report in class drop me an e-mail. I really, really want to hear how it turns out.