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Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) 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.
Remounted page from Beowulf, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV, 133r First page of Beowulf, contained in the damaged Nowell Codex (132r). The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Old English poetic manuscripts.
It represents Tolkien's attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative of the first half of Beowulf. The book ends with two versions of Tolkien's "The Lay of Beowulf". The former, subtitled "Beowulf and Grendel", is a poem or song [5] of seven eight-line stanzas about Beowulf's victory over Grendel. The latter is a poem of fifteen ...
Beowulf answers the challenge by boasting that he is the strongest swimmer in the world, and entertains the company with a tale about how, in that contest, he swam the North Sea in full armor while carrying a sword, killed nine huge sea-monsters who dragged him to the ocean floor, and was carried by the currents to the shore of the land of the ...
For many years, Klaeber was considered one of the world's leading Beowulf researchers, and his great work, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, became enormously important and influential on scholars and students of those poems. [2] As Josephine Bloomfield observes: Among the editions of Beowulf, Frederick Klaeber's remains the most important. A ...
The parallel in the story lies with the similarity to Beowulf's hero Sigemund and his companion: Wiglaf is a younger companion to Beowulf and, in his courage, shows himself to be Beowulf's successor. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] The presence of a companion is seen as a motif in other dragon stories, but the Beowulf poet breaks hagiographic tradition with the ...
Beowulf returns to the Geats and becomes their king, ruling for 50 years up until a great dragon begins to terrorize his people. The now old Beowulf attempts to fight the new monster, which he accomplished but at the price of a fatal wound. As he lays dying, he declares Wiglaf as his heir. The old king is buried with a monument by the sea.
Beowulf, too, concerns the life and death of its hero. [ 41 ] [ 42 ] [ 43 ] Flieger writes that Tolkien saw Beowulf as "a poem of balance, the opposition of ends and beginnings": [ 40 ] the young Beowulf rises, sails to Denmark, kills Grendel, becomes King; many years later, the old Beowulf falls, killing the dragon but going to his own death.