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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.
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 contains numerous digressions into other stories which have functions other than advancing the plot, in Adrien Bonjour's words rendering "the background of the poem extraordinarily alive", [32] [c] and providing contrasts and examples that repeatedly illuminate the key points of the main story with flashes of the distant past. [32]
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 ...
The longest at 3,182 lines, and the most important, is Beowulf, which appears in the damaged Nowell Codex. Beowulf relates the exploits of the hero Beowulf, King of the Weder-Geats or Angles, around the middle of the 5th century. The author is unknown, and no mention of Britain occurs.
The next day, Beowulf was lauded and a skald sang and compared Beowulf with the hero Sigmund. However, during the following night Grendel's mother arrived to avenge her son's death and collect weregild. As Beowulf slept in a different building he could not stop her. He resolved to descend into the bog in order to kill her.
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.
Burton Nathan Raffel (April 27, 1928 – September 29, 2015) was an American writer, translator, poet and professor.He is best known for his vigorous [1] translation of Beowulf, still widely used in universities, colleges and high schools.