Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic

legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important

and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition
is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the
manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Scholars call the
anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the
5th and 6th centuries. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar,
the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the
monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's
mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to
Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats
a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants
cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.

Scholars have debated whether Beowulf was transmitted orally, affecting its
interpretation: if it was composed early, in pagan times, then the paganism is
central and the Christian elements were added later, whereas if it was composed
later, in writing, by a Christian, then the pagan elements could be decorative
archaising; some scholars also hold an intermediate position. Beowulf is written
mostly in the Late West Saxon dialect of Old English, but many other dialectal
forms are present, suggesting that the poem may have had a long and complex
transmission throughout the dialect areas of England.

There has long been research into similarities with other traditions and accounts,
including the Icelandic Grettis saga, the Norse story of Hrolf Kraki and his bear-
shapeshifting servant Bodvar Bjarki, the international folktale the Bear's Son Tale,
and the Irish folktale of the Hand and the Child. Persistent attempts have been
made to link Beowulf to tales from Homer's Odyssey or Virgil's Aeneid. More
definite are biblical parallels, with clear allusions to the books of Genesis, Exodus,
and Daniel.

The poem survives in a single copy in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex.
It has no title in the original manuscript, but has become known by the name of the
story's protagonist.[3] In 1731, the manuscript was damaged by a fire that swept
through Ashburnham House in London, which was housing Sir Robert Cotton's
collection of medieval manuscripts. It survived, but the margins were charred, and
some readings were lost.[4] The Nowell Codex is housed in the British Library. The
poem was first transcribed in 1786; some verses were first translated into modern
English in 1805, and nine complete translations were made in the 19th century,
including those by John Mitchell Kemble and William Morris. After
1900, hundreds of translations, whether into prose, rhyming verse, or alliterative
verse were made, some relatively faithful, some archaising, some attempting to
domesticate the work. Among the best-known modern translations are those
of Edwin Morgan, Burton Raffel, Michael J. Alexander, Roy Liuzza, and Seamus
Heaney. The difficulty of translating Beowulf has been explored by scholars
including J. R. R. Tolkien (in his essay "On Translating Beowulf"), who worked on
a verse and a prose translation of his own.

Historical background
[edit]

Tribes mentioned in Beowulf, showing

Beowulf's voyage to Heorot and a possible site of the poem's composition
in Rendlesham, Suffolk, settled by Angles.[5] See Scandza for details of
Scandinavia's political fragmentation in the 6th century.
The events in the poem take place over the 5th and 6th centuries, and feature
predominantly non-English characters. Some suggest that Beowulf was first
composed in the 7th century at Rendlesham in East Anglia, as the Sutton Hoo ship-
burial shows close connections with Scandinavia, and the East Anglian royal
dynasty, the Wuffingas, may have been descendants of the Geatish Wulfings.[6]
[5]
Others have associated this poem with the court of King Alfred the Great or with
the court of King Cnut the Great.[7]

The poem blends fictional, legendary, mythic and historical elements. Although
Beowulf himself is not mentioned in any other Old English manuscript, [8] many of
the other figures named in Beowulf appear in Scandinavian sources.[9] This
concerns not only individuals
(e.g., Healfdene, Hroðgar, Halga, Hroðulf, Eadgils and Ohthere), but
also clans (e.g., Scyldings, Scylfings and Wulfings) and certain events (e.g.,
the battle between Eadgils and Onela). The raid by King Hygelac into Frisia is
mentioned by Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks and can be dated to
around 521.[10]

The majority view appears to be that figures such as King Hrothgar and the
Scyldings in Beowulf are based on historical people from 6th-century Scandinavia.
Like the Finnesburg Fragment and several shorter surviving poems, Beowulf has
consequently been used as a source of information about Scandinavian figures
such as Eadgils and Hygelac, and about continental Germanic figures such as Offa,
king of the continental Angles.[11] However, the scholar Roy Liuzza argues that the
poem is "frustratingly ambivalent", neither myth nor folktale, but is set "against a
complex background of legendary history ... on a roughly recognizable map of
Scandinavia", and comments that the Geats of the poem may correspond with
the Gautar (of modern Götaland); or perhaps the legendary Getae.[12]

Finds from Gamla Uppsala's western

mound, left, excavated in 1874, support Beowulf and the sagas.[13]
Nineteenth-century archaeological evidence may confirm elements of
the Beowulf story. Eadgils was buried at Uppsala (Gamla Uppsala, Sweden)
according to Snorri Sturluson. When the western mound (to the left in the photo)
was excavated in 1874, the finds showed that a powerful man was buried in a large
barrow, c. 575, on a bear skin with two dogs and rich grave offerings. The eastern
mound was excavated in 1854, and contained the remains of a woman, or a woman
and a young man. The middle barrow has not been excavated.[14][13]

In Denmark, recent (1986–88, 2004–05)[15] archaeological excavations at Lejre,

where Scandinavian tradition located the seat of the Scyldings, Heorot, have
revealed that a hall was built in the mid-6th century, matching the period described
in Beowulf, some centuries before the poem was composed. [16] Three halls, each
about 50 metres (160 ft) long, were found during the excavation.[16]

Summary
[edit]

Carrigan's model
[17]
of Beowulf's design
Key: (a) sections 1–2 (b) 3–7 (c) 8–12 (d) 13–18 (e) 19–23 (f) 24–26 (g) 27–31 (h)
32–33 (i) 34–38 (j) 39–43
The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of
the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf
kills Grendel with his bare hands, then kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword
that he found in her lair.

Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorised
by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial
mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his thegns or servants, but they do
not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon to its lair at Earnanæs, but only
his young Swedish relative Wiglaf, whose name means "remnant of valour",
[a]
dares to join him. Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded in
the struggle. He is cremated and a burial mound by the sea is erected in his honour.

Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels
great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural
demons and beasts. The poem begins in medias res or simply, "in the middle of
things", a characteristic of the epics of antiquity. Although the poem begins with
Beowulf's arrival, Grendel's attacks have been ongoing. An elaborate history of
characters and their lineages is spoken of, as well as their interactions with each
other, debts owed and repaid, and deeds of valour. The warriors form a
brotherhood linked by loyalty to their lord. The poem begins and ends with
funerals: at the beginning of the poem for Scyld Scefing[20] and at the end for
Beowulf.[21]

The poem is tightly structured. E. Carrigan shows the symmetry of its design in a
model of its major components, with for instance the account of the killing of
Grendel matching that of the killing of the dragon, the glory of the Danes matching
the accounts of the Danish and Geatish courts. [17] Other analyses are possible as
well; Gale Owen-Crocker, for instance, sees the poem as structured by the four
funerals it describes.[22] For J. R. R. Tolkien, the primary division in the poem was
between young and old Beowulf.[23]

First battle: Grendel

[edit]
Further information: Grendel
Beowulf begins with the story of Hrothgar, who constructed the great hall, Heorot,
for himself and his warriors. In it, he, his wife Wealhtheow, and his warriors spend
their time singing and celebrating. Grendel, a troll-like monster said to be
descended from the biblical Cain, is pained by the sounds of joy.[24] Grendel attacks
the hall and devours many of Hrothgar's warriors while they sleep. Hrothgar and
his people, helpless against Grendel, abandon Heorot.

Beowulf, a young warrior from Geatland, hears of Hrothgar's troubles and with his
king's permission leaves his homeland to assist Hrothgar.[25]

Beowulf and his men spend the night in Heorot. Beowulf refuses to use any
weapon because he holds himself to be Grendel's equal. [26] When Grendel enters
the hall and kills one of Beowulf's men, Beowulf, who has been feigning sleep,
leaps up to clench Grendel's hand.[27] Grendel and Beowulf battle each other
violently.[28] Beowulf's retainers draw their swords and rush to his aid, but their
blades cannot pierce Grendel's skin.[29] Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from
his body at the shoulder and Grendel flees to his home in the marshes where he
dies.[30] Beowulf displays "the whole of Grendel's shoulder and arm, his awesome
grasp" for all to see at Heorot. This display would fuel Grendel's mother's anger in
revenge.[31]

Second battle: Grendel's mother

[edit]
Further information: Grendel's mother
The next night, after celebrating Grendel's defeat, Hrothgar and his men sleep in
Heorot. Grendel's mother, angry that her son has been killed, sets out to get
revenge. "Beowulf was elsewhere. Earlier, after the award of treasure, The Geat
had been given another lodging"; his assistance would be absent in this battle.
[32]
Grendel's mother violently kills Æschere, who is Hrothgar's most loyal advisor,
and escapes.

Hrothgar, Beowulf, and their men track Grendel's mother to her lair under a
lake. Unferð, a warrior who had earlier challenged him, presents Beowulf with his
sword Hrunting. After stipulating a number of conditions to Hrothgar in case of his
death (including the taking in of his kinsmen and the inheritance by Unferth of
Beowulf's estate), Beowulf jumps into the lake and, while harassed by water
monsters, gets to the bottom, where he finds a cavern. Grendel's mother pulls him
in, and she and Beowulf engage in fierce combat.

At first, Grendel's mother prevails, and Hrunting proves incapable of hurting her;
she throws Beowulf to the ground and, sitting astride him, tries to kill him with a
short sword, but Beowulf is saved by his armour. Beowulf spots another sword,
hanging on the wall and apparently made for giants, and cuts her head off with it.
Travelling further into Grendel's mother's lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse
and severs his head with the sword. Its blade melts because of the monster's "hot
blood", leaving only the hilt. Beowulf swims back up to the edge of the lake where
his men wait. Carrying the hilt of the sword and Grendel's head, he presents them
to Hrothgar upon his return to Heorot. Hrothgar gives Beowulf many gifts,
including the sword Nægling, his family's heirloom. The events prompt a long
reflection by the king, sometimes referred to as "Hrothgar's sermon", in which he
urges Beowulf to be wary of pride and to reward his thegns.[33]

Final battle: The dragon

[edit]
Main article: The dragon (Beowulf)
 Wiglaf is the single warrior to return and witness Beowulf's
death. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, 1908
Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes king of his own people. One day,
fifty years after Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother, a slave steals a golden cup
from the lair of a dragon at Earnanæs. When the dragon sees that the cup has been
stolen, it leaves its cave in a rage, burning everything in sight. Beowulf and his
warriors come to fight the dragon, but Beowulf tells his men that he will fight the
dragon alone and that they should wait on the barrow. Beowulf descends to do
battle with the dragon, but finds himself outmatched. His men, upon seeing this
and fearing for their lives, retreat into the woods. One of his men, Wiglaf,
however, in great distress at Beowulf's plight, comes to his aid. The two slay the
dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded. After Beowulf dies, Wiglaf remains by
his side, grief-stricken. When the rest of the men finally return, Wiglaf bitterly
admonishes them, blaming their cowardice for Beowulf's death. Beowulf is ritually
burned on a great pyre in Geatland while his people wail and mourn him, fearing
that without him, the Geats are defenceless against attacks from surrounding tribes.
Afterwards, a barrow, visible from the sea, is built in his memory.[34][35]

Digressions
[edit]
The poem contains many apparent digressions from the main story. These were
found troublesome by early Beowulf scholars such as Frederick Klaeber, who
wrote that they "interrupt the story",[36] W. W. Lawrence, who stated that they
"clog the action and distract attention from it", [36] and W. P. Ker who found some
"irrelevant ... possibly ... interpolations". [36] More recent scholars from Adrien
Bonjour onwards note that the digressions can all be explained as introductions or
comparisons with elements of the main story; [37][38] for instance, Beowulf's
swimming home across the sea from Frisia carrying thirty sets of
armour[39] emphasises his heroic strength.[38] The digressions can be divided into
four groups, namely the Scyld narrative at the start; [40] many descriptions of the
Geats, including the Swedish–Geatish wars,[41] the "Lay of the Last Survivor"[42] in
the style of another Old English poem, "The Wanderer", and Beowulf's dealings
with the Geats such as his verbal contest with Unferth and his swimming duel with
Breca,[43] and the tale of Sigemund and the dragon;[44] history and legend,
including the fight at Finnsburg[45] and the tale of Freawaru and Ingeld; [46] and
biblical tales such as the creation myth and Cain as ancestor of all monsters.[47]
[38]
The digressions provide a powerful impression of historical depth, imitated by
Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, a work that embodies many other elements from
the poem.[48]

Authorship and date

[edit]
The dating of Beowulf has attracted considerable scholarly attention; opinion
differs as to whether it was first written in the 8th century, whether it was nearly
contemporary with its 11th-century manuscript, and whether a proto-version
(possibly a version of the "Bear's Son Tale") was orally transmitted before being
transcribed in its present form.[49] Albert Lord felt strongly that the manuscript
represents the transcription of a performance, though likely taken at more than one
sitting.[50] J. R. R. Tolkien believed that the poem retains too genuine a memory
of Anglo-Saxon paganism to have been composed more than a few generations
after the completion of the Christianisation of England around AD 700,[51] and
Tolkien's conviction that the poem dates to the 8th century has been defended by
scholars including Tom Shippey, Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and Robert
D. Fulk.[52][53][54] An analysis of several Old English poems by a team including
Neidorf suggests that Beowulf is the work of a single author, though other scholars
disagree.[55]

The claim to an early 11th-century date depends in part on scholars who argue that,
rather than the transcription of a tale from the oral tradition by an earlier literate
monk, Beowulf reflects an original interpretation of an earlier version of the story
by the manuscript's two scribes. On the other hand, some scholars argue that
linguistic, palaeographical (handwriting), metrical (poetic structure),
and onomastic (naming) considerations align to support a date of composition in
the first half of the 8th century; [56][57][58] in particular, the poem's apparent
observation of etymological vowel-length distinctions in unstressed syllables
(described by Kaluza's law) has been thought to demonstrate a date of composition
prior to the earlier ninth century. [53][54] However, scholars disagree about whether
the metrical phenomena described by Kaluza's law prove an early date of
composition or are evidence of a longer prehistory of the Beowulf metre;[59] B.R.
Hutcheson, for instance, does not believe Kaluza's law can be used to date the
poem, while claiming that "the weight of all the evidence Fulk presents in his
book[b] tells strongly in favour of an eighth-century date."[60]

From an analysis of creative genealogy and ethnicity, Craig R. Davis suggests a

composition date in the AD 890s, when King Alfred of England had secured the
submission of Guthrum, leader of a division of the Great Heathen Army of the
Danes, and of Aethelred, ealdorman of Mercia. In this thesis, the trend of
appropriating Gothic royal ancestry, established in Francia during Charlemagne's
reign, influenced the Anglian kingdoms of Britain to attribute to themselves
a Geatish descent. The composition of Beowulf was the fruit of the later adaptation
of this trend in Alfred's policy of asserting authority over the Angelcynn, in which
Scyldic descent was attributed to the West-Saxon royal pedigree. This date of
composition largely agrees with Lapidge's positing of a West-Saxon exemplar c.
900.[61]

The location of the poem's composition is intensely disputed. In 1914, F.W.

Moorman, the first professor of English Language at University of Leeds, claimed
that Beowulf was composed in Yorkshire,[62] but E. Talbot Donaldson claims that it
was probably composed during the first half of the eighth century, and that the
writer was a native of what was then called West Mercia, located in the Western
Midlands of England. However, the late tenth-century manuscript "which alone
preserves the poem" originated in the kingdom of the West Saxons – as it is more
commonly known.[63]

Manuscript
[edit]
Main article: Nowell Codex

Remounted page, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV

Beowulf survived to modern times in a single manuscript, written in ink
on parchment, later damaged by fire. The manuscript measures 245 × 185 mm.[64]

Provenance
[edit]
The poem is known only from a single manuscript, estimated to date from around
975–1025, in which it appears with other works. [2] The manuscript therefore dates
either to the reign of Æthelred the Unready, characterised by strife with the Danish
king Sweyn Forkbeard, or to the beginning of the reign of Sweyn's son Cnut the
Great from 1016. The Beowulf manuscript is known as the Nowell Codex, gaining
its name from 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell. The official designation is
"British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.XV" because it was one of Sir Robert Bruce
Cotton's holdings in the Cotton library in the middle of the 17th century. Many
private antiquarians and book collectors, such as Sir Robert Cotton, used their
own library classification systems. "Cotton Vitellius A.XV" translates as: the 15th
book from the left on shelf A (the top shelf) of the bookcase with the bust of
Roman Emperor Vitellius standing on top of it, in Cotton's collection. Kevin
Kiernan argues that Nowell most likely acquired it through William Cecil, 1st
Baron Burghley, in 1563, when Nowell entered Cecil's household as a tutor to his
ward, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[65]

The earliest extant reference to the first foliation of the Nowell Codex was made
sometime between 1628 and 1650 by Franciscus Junius (the younger). The
ownership of the codex before Nowell remains a mystery.[66]

The Reverend Thomas Smith (1638–1710) and Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726)

both catalogued the Cotton library (in which the Nowell Codex was held). Smith's
catalogue appeared in 1696, and Wanley's in 1705. [67] The Beowulf manuscript
itself is identified by name for the first time in an exchange of letters in 1700
between George Hickes, Wanley's assistant, and Wanley. In the letter to Wanley,
Hickes responds to an apparent charge against Smith, made by Wanley, that Smith
had failed to mention the Beowulf script when cataloguing Cotton MS. Vitellius A.
XV. Hickes replies to Wanley "I can find nothing yet of Beowulph." [68] Kiernan
theorised that Smith failed to mention the Beowulf manuscript because of his
reliance on previous catalogues or because either he had no idea how to describe it
or because it was temporarily out of the codex.[69]

The manuscript passed to Crown ownership in 1702, on the death of its then
owner, Sir John Cotton, who had inherited it from his grandfather, Robert Cotton.
It suffered damage in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, in which around a
quarter of the manuscripts bequeathed by Cotton were destroyed. [70] Since then,
parts of the manuscript have crumbled along with many of the letters. Rebinding
efforts, though saving the manuscript from much degeneration, have nonetheless
covered up other letters of the poem, causing further loss. Kiernan, in preparing his
electronic edition of the manuscript, used fibre-optic backlighting and ultraviolet
lighting to reveal letters in the manuscript lost from binding, erasure, or ink
blotting.[71]

Writing
[edit]
The Beowulf manuscript was transcribed from an original by two scribes, one of
whom wrote the prose at the beginning of the manuscript and the first 1939 lines,
before breaking off in mid-sentence. The first scribe made a point of carefully
regularizing the spelling of the original document into the common West Saxon,
removing any archaic or dialectical features. The second scribe, who wrote the
remainder, with a difference in handwriting noticeable after line 1939, seems to
have written more vigorously and with less interest. As a result, the second scribe's
script retains more archaic dialectic features, which allow modern scholars to
ascribe the poem a cultural context.[72] While both scribes appear to have proofread
their work, there are nevertheless many errors. [73] The second scribe was ultimately
the more conservative copyist as he did not modify the spelling of the text as he
wrote, but copied what he saw in front of him. In the way that it is currently bound,
the Beowulf manuscript is followed by the Old English poem Judith. Judith was
written by the same scribe that completed Beowulf, as evidenced by similar writing
style. Wormholes found in the last leaves of the Beowulf manuscript that are absent
in the Judith manuscript suggest that at one point Beowulf ended the volume. The
rubbed appearance of some leaves suggests that the manuscript stood on a shelf
unbound, as was the case with other Old English manuscripts. [72] Knowledge of
books held in the library at Malmesbury Abbey and available as source works, as
well as the identification of certain words particular to the local dialect found in the
text, suggest that the transcription may have taken place there. [74]

Performance
[edit]

The traditional view is that Beowulf was composed for

performance, chanted by a scop (left) to string accompaniment,[75] but modern
scholars have suggested its origin as a piece of written literature borrowed from
oral traditions. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, c. 1910
Further information: Oral-formulaic composition
The scholar Roy Liuzza notes that the practice of oral poetry is by its nature
invisible to history as evidence is in writing. Comparison with other bodies of
verse such as Homer's, coupled with ethnographic observation of early 20th
century performers, has provided a vision of how an Anglo-Saxon singer-poet
or scop may have practised. The resulting model is that performance was based on
traditional stories and a repertoire of word formulae that fitted the traditional
metre. The scop moved through the scenes, such as putting on armour or crossing
the sea, each one improvised at each telling with differing combinations of the
stock phrases, while the basic story and style remained the same. [75] Liuzza notes
that Beowulf itself describes the technique of a court poet in assembling materials,
in lines 867–874 in his translation, "full of grand stories, mindful of songs ... found
other words truly bound together; ... to recite with skill the adventure of Beowulf,
adeptly tell a tall tale, and (wordum wrixlan) weave his words."[76] The poem
further mentions (lines 1065–1068) that "the harp was touched, tales often told,
when Hrothgar's scop was set to recite among the mead tables his hall-
entertainment".[77]

Debate over oral tradition

[edit]
The question of whether Beowulf was passed down through oral tradition prior to
its present manuscript form has been the subject of much debate, and involves
more than simply the issue of its composition. Rather, given the implications of the
theory of oral-formulaic composition and oral tradition, the question concerns how
the poem is to be understood, and what sorts of interpretations are legitimate. [78][79]
[80][81]
In his landmark 1960 work, The Singer of Tales, Albert Lord, citing the work
of Francis Peabody Magoun and others, considered it proven that Beowulf was
composed orally.[80] Later scholars have not all been convinced; they agree that
"themes" like "arming the hero" [82] or the "hero on the beach" [81] do exist across
Germanic works. Some scholars conclude that Anglo-Saxon poetry is a mix of
oral-formulaic and literate patterns.[83] Larry Benson proposed that Germanic
literature contains "kernels of tradition" which Beowulf expands upon.[84][85] Ann
Watts argued against the imperfect application of one theory to two different
traditions: traditional, Homeric, oral-formulaic poetry and Anglo-Saxon poetry. [85]
[86]
Thomas Gardner agreed with Watts, arguing that the Beowulf text is too varied
to be completely constructed from set formulae and themes. [85][87] John Miles
Foley wrote that comparative work must observe the particularities of a given
tradition; in his view, there was a fluid continuum from traditionality to textuality.
[88]

Editions, translations, and adaptations

[edit]
Editions
[edit]
Many editions of the Old English text of Beowulf have been published; this section
lists the most influential.

The Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin made the first transcriptions of
the Beowulf-manuscript in 1786, working as part of a Danish government historical
research commission. He had a copy made by a professional copyist who knew no
Old English (and was therefore in some ways more likely to make transcription
errors, but in other ways more likely to copy exactly what he saw), and then made
a copy himself. Since that time, the manuscript has crumbled further, making these
transcripts prized witnesses to the text. While the recovery of at least 2000 letters
can be attributed to them, their accuracy has been called into question, [c] and the
extent to which the manuscript was actually more readable in Thorkelin's time is
uncertain.[90] Thorkelin used these transcriptions as the basis for the first complete
edition of Beowulf, in Latin.[91]
In 1922, Frederick Klaeber, a German philologist who worked at the University of
Minnesota, published his edition of the poem, Beowulf and The Fight at
Finnsburg;[92] it became the "central source used by graduate students for the study
of the poem and by scholars and teachers as the basis of their translations." [93] The
edition included an extensive glossary of Old English terms. [93] His third edition
was published in 1936, with the last version in his lifetime being a revised reprint
in 1950.[94] Klaeber's text was re-presented with new introductory material, notes,
and glosses, in a fourth edition in 2008.[95]

Another widely used edition is Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie's, published in 1953 in
the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series.[96] The British Library, meanwhile, took a
prominent role in supporting Kevin Kiernan's Electronic Beowulf; the first edition
appeared in 1999, and the fourth in 2014.[71]

Translations and adaptations

[edit]
Main articles: Translating Beowulf, List of translations of Beowulf, and List of
adaptations of Beowulf
The tightly interwoven structure of Old English poetry makes translating Beowulf a
severe technical challenge.[97] Despite this, a great number of translations and
adaptations are available, in poetry and prose. Andy Orchard, in A Critical
Companion to Beowulf, lists 33 "representative" translations in his bibliography,
[98]
while the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies published Marijane Osborn's annotated list of over 300 translations and
adaptations in 2003.[91] Beowulf has been translated many times in verse and in
prose, and adapted for stage and screen. By 2020, the Beowulf's Afterlives
Bibliographic Database listed some 688 translations and other versions of the
poem.[99] Beowulf has been translated into at least 38 other languages.[100][99]

In 1805, the historian Sharon Turner translated selected verses into modern
English.[91] This was followed in 1814 by John Josias Conybeare who published an
edition "in English paraphrase and Latin verse translation." [91] N. F. S.
Grundtvig reviewed Thorkelin's edition in 1815 and created the first complete
verse translation in Danish in 1820.[91] In 1837, John Mitchell Kemble created an
important literal translation in English. [91] In 1895, William Morris and A. J. Wyatt
published the ninth English translation.[91]

In 1909, Francis Barton Gummere's full translation in "English imitative metre"

was published,[91] and was used as the text of Gareth Hinds's 2007 graphic novel
based on Beowulf. In 1975, John Porter published the first complete verse
translation of the poem entirely accompanied by facing-page Old English.
[101]
Seamus Heaney's 1999 translation of the poem (Beowulf: A New Verse
Translation, called "Heaneywulf" by the Beowulf translator Howell Chickering and
many others[102]) was both praised and criticised. The US publication was
commissioned by W. W. Norton & Company, and was included in the Norton
Anthology of English Literature. Many retellings of Beowulf for children appeared
in the 20th century.[103][104]

In 2000 (2nd edition 2013), Liuzza published his own version of Beowulf in a
parallel text with the Old English,[105] with his analysis of the poem's historical,
oral, religious and linguistic contexts. [106] R. D. Fulk, of Indiana University,
published a facing-page edition and translation of the entire Nowell
Codex manuscript in 2010.[107] Hugh Magennis's 2011 Translating Beowulf:
Modern Versions in English Verse discusses the challenges and history of
translating the poem,[97][108] as well as the question of how to approach its poetry,
[109]
and discusses several post-1950 verse translations, [110] paying special attention
to those of Edwin Morgan,[111] Burton Raffel,[112] Michael J. Alexander,[113] and
Seamus Heaney.[114] Translating Beowulf is one of the subjects of the 2012
publication Beowulf at Kalamazoo, containing a section with 10 essays on
translation, and a section with 22 reviews of Heaney's translation, some of which
compare Heaney's work with Liuzza's.[115] Tolkien's long-awaited prose translation
(edited by his son Christopher) was published in 2014 as Beowulf: A Translation
and Commentary. The book includes Tolkien's own retelling of the story of
Beowulf in his tale Sellic Spell, but not his incomplete and unpublished verse
translation.[116][117] The Mere Wife, by Maria Dahvana Headley, was published in
2018. It relocates the action to a wealthy community in 20th-century America and
is told primarily from the point of view of Grendel's mother. [118] In 2020, Headley
published a translation in which the opening "Hwæt!" is rendered "Bro!"; [119] this
translation subsequently won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.[120]

Sources and analogues

[edit]
Neither identified sources nor analogues for Beowulf can be definitively proven,
but many conjectures have been made. These are important in helping historians
understand the Beowulf manuscript, as possible source-texts or influences would
suggest time-frames of composition, geographic boundaries within which it could
be composed, or range (both spatial and temporal) of influence (i.e. when it was
"popular" and where its "popularity" took it). The poem has been related to
Scandinavian, Celtic, and international folkloric sources.[d][121]

Scandinavian parallels and sources

[edit]
19th-century studies proposed that Beowulf was translated from a lost original
Scandinavian work; surviving Scandinavian works have continued to be studied as
possible sources.[122] In 1886 Gregor Sarrazin suggested that an Old Norse original
version of Beowulf must have existed,[123] but in 1914 Carl Wilhelm von Sydow
claimed that Beowulf is fundamentally Christian and was written at a time when
any Norse tale would have most likely been pagan.[124] Another proposal was a
parallel with the Grettis Saga, but in 1998, Magnús Fjalldal challenged that, stating
that tangential similarities were being overemphasised as analogies. [125] The story
of Hrolf Kraki and his servant, the legendary bear-shapeshifter Bodvar Bjarki, has
also been suggested as a possible parallel; he survives in Hrólfs saga
kraka and Saxo's Gesta Danorum, while Hrolf Kraki, one of the Scyldings, appears
as "Hrothulf" in Beowulf.[126][127][128] New Scandinavian analogues
to Beowulf continue to be proposed regularly, with Hrólfs saga
Gautrekssonar being the most recently adduced text