Reference
- BeowulfBeowulf is the name of an epic Anglo-Saxon poem written in Old English, named after the protagonist. It was composed probably around 1010 CE and is known from only a single manuscript, called the Nowell Codex after the name of its earliest (16th-century) known owner, Lawrence Nowell. It is a matter of debate whether the manuscript was the written version of an older oral tradition or the literary composition of the scribes, most likely monks, who put it into writing...
- BeowulfThe best-known and most admired text in Old English literature, Beowulf is an epic poem in 3,182 lines of alliterative verse recreating the heroic age of Germanic culture, an age in which the lord—”ring-giver” or “gold-friend”—distributed treasure to his retainers from his gift-stool in a mead hall, and the retainers pledged their loyalty and their support in the lord's wars, even to the point of dying with him on the battlefield. It was also a world in which vengeance for the death of one's kinsman or lord was a sacred obligation. And it was a world that the Christian poet responsible for the poem seems both to value and to criticize. The poem survives in a single manuscript in the British Library (Cotton Vitellius A.Xv), and presents its protagonist in three great battles against monstrous foes, separated by some 50 years...
- GRENDEL AND GRENDEL'S MOTHERIn the Old English poem Beowulf, composed sometime between the eighth and eleventh centuries CE, Grendel and his mother are two of the three monsters that the hero Beowulf must overcome (the third is a dragon). After the Danish king Hrothgar builds an impressively large mead hall named Heorot to celebrate his rise to power, the monster Grendel is enraged by the sounds of joy coming from the hall. From his home beyond the fens and moors, Grendel attacks Heorot and drags away the bodies of 30 warriors. For twelve years he rules the hall at night, killing all who come his way. From his home in Sweden (Geatland), young Beowulf hears of Hrothgar's monster troubles and sails to Denmark...
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Beowulf
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
In this remarkable one-man tour de force, Bagby, accompanying himself on an Anglo-Saxon harp, delivers this gripping tale — in the original Old English — as it could have been experienced more than 1000 years ago. This is a performance which will speak to many: lovers of Beowulf and oral epic, early music enthusiasts, Tolkien fans, medievalists, and anyone searching for virtuoso storytelling, great theater, or a glimpse into the fascinating beginnings of the English language.
Online Resources
- Beowulf: BritannicaBeowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. The work deals with events of the early 6th century, and, while the date of its composition is uncertain, some scholars believe that it was written in the 8th century...
- Beowulf: British LibraryBeowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest. More than 3,000 lines long, Beowulf relates the exploits of its eponymous hero, and his successive battles with a monster named Grendel, with Grendel’s revengeful mother, and with a dragon which was guarding a hoard of treasure...
Beowulf--A Hero with Hidden Depths
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowBeowulf is not an easy poem to understand, but Beowulf is not an easy character to understand. Here, analyze how this classic male hero—a big, strong, monster killer—may have a hidden vulnerability. Then, look at what insights Beowulf’s story offers about life and death, the limits of self-reliance, and the path to achieving wisdom.
Perspectives
A Readable Beowulf
Stanley B. Greenfield, one of the world's foremost Anglo-Saxon scholars, writes of why, after more than thirty years of study, he undertook the Herculean task of rendering Beowulf into contemporary verse: "I wanted my translation to be not only faithful to the original but, as the late John Lennon would have put it, 'A Poem in Its Own Write.' I wanted it to 'flow,' to be easy to read, with the narrative movement of a modern prose story; yet to suggest the rhythmic cadences of the Old English poem. I wanted it both modern and Old English in its reflexes and sensibilities, delighting both the general reader and the Anglo-Saxon specialist. . . . I wanted it to reproduce the intoxication of aural contours which... might have pleased and amused warriors over their cups in the Anglo-Saxon mead-hall, or those monks in Anglo-Saxon monasteries who paid more attention to song and to stories of Ingeld than to the lector and the gospels." Greenfield has succeeded to a remarkable degree in reaching his goals. An early reviewer of the manuscript, Daniel G. Calder of UCLA, wrote: "I find it the best translation of Beowulf. One of the great problems with other translations is that they make the reading of Beowulf difficult. Greenfield's translation speeds along with considerable ease. . . Scholars will find the translation fascinating as an exercise in the successful recreating of various aspects of Old English poetic style."
The Anthology of Beowulf Criticism
Was the Beowulf-poet a Christian or was he a noble pagan whose outlook had been only slightly colored by exposure to Christian thinking? This is but one of the fascinating topics discussed in this anthology of criticism on the early medieval masterpiece. The eighteen contribution to the anthology are arranged chronologically according to the date of the criticism's first publication. The outstanding scholars whose critical writing is presented here range from the turn-of-the-century critic F. A. Blackburn through the Englishman J. R. R. Tolkien to such contemporaries as Kemp Malone, Morton Bloomfield, and R. E. Kaske. Nearly every aspect of the Beowulf is discussed and controverted in terms of literary analysis. Old English, Old Norse, Latin, and Old French passages are translated in the accompanying text as an aid to undergraduate students meeting Beowulf for the first time.
Beowulf
A brilliant and faithful rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic from the Nobel laureate. Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the end of the twentieth century, Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in Beowulf and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader.
Interpretations of "Beowulf"
Interpretations of Beowulf brings together over six decades of literary scholarship. Illustrating a variety of interpretative schools, the essays not only deal with most of the major issues of Beowulf criticism, including structure, style, genre, and theme, but also offer the sort of explanations of particular passages that are invaluable to a careful reading of a poem. This up-to-date collection of significant critical approaches fills a long-standing need for a companion volume for the study of the poem. Larger patterns in the history of Beowulf criticism are also traceable in the chronological order of the collection. The contributors are Theodore M. Andersson, Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, Jane Chance, Laurence N. de Looze, Margaret E. Goldsmith, Stanley B. Greenfield, Joseph Harris, Edward B. Irving, Jr., John Leyerle, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., M. B. McNamee, S. J., Bertha S. Phillpotts, John C. Pope, Richard N. Ringler, Geoffrey R. Russom, T. A. Shippey, and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxons
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Using 3-D animation, location footage, archive materials, and interviews, the Beowulf epic is examined in the light of the civilization that created it. It investigates the Anglo-Saxons' religious beliefs as well as their everyday life and suggests that, old as the poem is, it may have roots in an even more ancient fertility cult.
A reading of the opening lines of Beowulf in Old English: The British Library
- A reading of the opening lines of Beowulf in Old EnglishCalum Cockburn from our Medieval Manuscripts team reads the opening lines of the epic poem Beowulf in Old English. In the poem the hero Beowulf fights a series of monsters including a monster named Grendel, Grendel’s mother and a dragon.