After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland. The full poem survives in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex, located in the British Library. In , the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London that had a collection of medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton.
Additional information on Beowulf can be found here. Though now an old man, Beowulf decides to take on the dragon himself and succeeds in killing it and winning its treasure. But in doing so he is also slain.
The poem ends with his funeral and the grief of his people at the loss of their beloved king. Beowulf is said to be related to a Geatish king named Hygelac, who is known from other sources to have lived in the early sixth century. Beowulf himself does not appear in any other texts, but many of the other characters feature in semi-legendary histories and sagas about medieval Scandinavia, while some were also considered to be the ancestors of Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings.
And, of course, the peoples mentioned in the poem — the Danes, Geats and Swedes — are very much real. Though the story contains fantastical elements, it takes place in the real world, in a fairly well-defined historical period, which makes it a compelling mixture of history and legend.
But Beowulf is not just an exciting and well-told story. It explores themes that are widespread in Anglo-Saxon literature, such as the human experience of time and loss, both within individual lives and collectively, across centuries. It celebrates and critiques the glamour and danger of a masculine warrior society, where violent deeds can win glory but also cause terrible harm. Many Anglo-Saxon elites believed they were descended from settlers who had come to England from the very parts of northern Europe where Beowulf takes place, around the time the poem is set.
Whether or not this was true, it was a culturally important myth, and it probably meant Beowulf was understood to be in some sense a story about the ancestors of the poet and his audience.
The manuscript surfaced in the Elizabethan era, bounced around the collections of a few antiquities scholars, and was damaged in a library fire in The first complete translation into modern English was by John Mitchell Kemble in Though intensively studied by Victorian scholars, it did not become widely read by non- specialists until the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, translations by well-known writers such as Seamus Heaney brought the poem to a wider audience.
Though it was slow to gain popularity, Beowulf has now been translated more than times. Its manuscript is housed in the British Library. In some ways, the poem is describing a society that had already passed away by the time it was written, so we have to be careful in using it as evidence for Anglo-Saxon England.
The poet was deliberately writing about a time and place distant from his own society, so what he describes is largely based on his imagining of long-ago Scandinavia, not contemporary Anglo-Saxon England. However, there are aspects of the world of Beowulf that do seem closely related to Anglo-Saxon life.
Many of its descriptions inscribed swords, elaborately decorated royal halls — have been confirmed by modern archaeological discoveries such as Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard.
They would perhaps already have been archaic by the time the poem was written, but it suggests the poet was careful to get the details right. Although historians cannot identify the individual author of Beowulf , they can provide information about the type of poet who crafted this epic.
First, let us consider when the poet lived. The most heroic events in Beowulf --the protagonists fights with the monsters--are clearly fictional, but many of the poem's characters are historical figures who lived during the late 5th century AD. Consequently, the narrative must have been written after that date. The oldest surviving Beowulf manuscript was written c.
According to J. Tolkien--best known for his Lord of the Rings saga but also a respected literary scholar-- Beowulf was almost certainly written by an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon poet shortly after England's conversion to Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons were not indigenous to England; the Angle and Saxon tribes had emigrated from Europe, invaded England, conquered the native Britons, and settled there themselves.
Thus the Anglo-Saxons had a similar heritage to the Geats, Swedes, and Danes--a few of the tribes who appear in the Beowulf narrative. This context explains why the author of Beowulf --himself a resident of England--chose Scandinavian and not English events as the basis for his poem. Since Beowulf was most likely written shortly after England converted to Christianity, the Anglo-Saxon poet would have been familiar with both paganism and Christianity.
This theory helps explain why the poem's characters at times appear to waver between pagan and Christian beliefs and practices. Some historians and literary critics go even further, alleging the story of Beowulf may have existed before England's Christian conversion, perhaps as an oral narrative or poem. They suggest a Christian monk may have heard the poem and "Christianized" it by reducing the pagan elements and adding references to the Christian God.
This theory does not explain, however, why the author left some pagan references in the poem when he wrote it down. Although the language is called "Old English," it is very different from modern English, which has strong Latin roots.
Some editions of Beowulf --including the Seamus Heaney translation--are bilingual, meaning they include the Old English text of the poem as well as the modern English translation.
Despite the differences between the two languages, careful observers can spot some Old English words that have made their way into the modern English vocabulary. Sadly, the name of the individual who first wrote Beowulf remains a mystery. However, we know the following:. I was accuaally flattered by this enourmous extravagantic perfomance.
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