Beowulf
Scholars agree that Beowulf can be divided according to the three main battles of the poem.
First battle: Grendel
Beowulf begins with the story of King Hroðgar, who built the great hall Heorot for his people. In it he, his wife Wealhþeow, and his warriors spend their time singing and celebrating, until Grendel, who is angered by the singing and an outcast from society, attacks the hall and kills and devours many of Hroðgar's warriors while they sleep. Hroðgar and his people, helpless against Grendel's attacks, abandon Heorot.
Beowulf, a young warrior, hears of Hroðgar's troubles and with his king's permission then leaves his homeland to help Hroðgar.
Beowulf and his men spend the night in Heorot. After they fall asleep, Grendel enters the hall and attacks, devouring one of Beowulf's men. But Grendel dare not touch the throne of Hrothgar, because he is protected by the almighty God. Beowulf, feigning sleep, leaps up and grabs Grendel's arm in a wrestling hold, and the two battle until it seems as though the hall might fall down due to their fighting. Beowulf's men draw their swords and rush to his help, but their swords break upon Grendel's arm due to the thorny spikes and iron-tough skin of the monster. Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from his body at the shoulder and Grendel runs home to die.
Second battle: Grendel's mother
The next night, after celebrating Grendel's death, Hroðgar and his men sleep in Heorot. Grendel's Mother appears, however, and attacks the hall. She kills Hroðgar's most trusted warrior, Æschere, in revenge for Grendel's death.
Hroðgar, Beowulf, and their men track Grendel's Mother to her lair under an eerie lake. Beowulf prepares himself for battle; he is presented with a sword, Hrunting, by a warrior called Unferð. After stipulating a number of conditions (upon his death) to Hroðgar (including the taking in of his kinsmen, and the inheritance by Unferð of Beowulf's estate), Beowulf dives into the lake. There, he is swiftly detected and attacked by Grendel's mother. Unable to harm Beowulf through his armour, Grendel's mother drags him to the bottom of the lake. There, in a cavern containing her son's body and the remains of many men that the two have killed, Grendel's mother fights Beowulf.
Grendel's mother at first prevails, after Beowulf, finding that the sword (Hrunting) given him by Unferð cannot harm his foe, discards it in fury. Again, Beowulf is saved from the effects of his opponent's attack by his armour and, grasping a mighty sword from Grendel's mother's armoury (which, the poem tells us, no other man could have hefted in battle), Beowulf beheads her. Travelling further into the lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse; he severs the head, and with it he returns to Heorot, where he is given many gifts by an even more grateful Hroðgar.
Third battle: The dragon
Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes king of his own people. One day, late in Beowulf's life, a slave steals a golden cup from a dragon's lair at Earnaness. When the dragon sees that the cup has been stolen, it leaves its cave in a rage, burning up everything in sight. Beowulf and his warriors come to fight the dragon, but only one of the warriors, a brave young man named Wiglaf, stays to help Beowulf, because the rest are too afraid. Beowulf kills the dragon with Wiglaf's help, but Beowulf dies from the wounds he has received. After he is cremated, Beowulf is buried on a cliff overlooking the sea, where sailors are able to see his barrow. The dragon's treasure is buried with him, rather than distributed to his people, as was Beowulf's wish, because of the curse associated with the hoard.
A further note: according to Seamus Heaney's translation (Beowulf: A New Verse Translation) Wiglaf says this to the cowardly warriors who fled the battle. (Although it must be admitted that Heaney's translation is more poetic than accurate, Heaney being unable to read Anglo-Saxon himself)
So it is goodbye to all you know and love on your home ground, the open-handedness, the giving of war swords. Every one of you with freeholds of land, our whole nation, will be dispossessed, once-princes from beyond get tidings of how you turned and fled and disgraced yourselves. A warrior will sooner die than live a life of shame.
creation 
the hero
goddesses
gods
tricksters
afterlife