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There is some controversy as to when "Widsith" was first composed. Some historians, such as John Niles, argue that the work was invented after King Alfred's rule to present "a common glorious past", while others, such as Kemp Malone, have argued that the piece is an authentic transcription of old heroic songs.
The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, [1] matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, [2] and the scholarly attention given to the problem.
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.
[2] Under a commission from the Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic government, Thorkelin had prepared Beowulf for publication by 1807. During the Battle of Copenhagen (1807) his house was burned and demolished due to fire, and the text (on which he had spent 20 years) was lost. The manuscripts survived, however, and Thorkelin began again.
Beowulf is an epic poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero.He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel, [a] who was ravaging the land; he dies saving his people from a dragon.
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 eight-line stanzas on the same theme; several of the stanzas, including the first and the last, are almost identical with the first version.
Beowulf replies haughtily to Hunferth" (1910) by John Henry F. Bacon. In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, Unferth or Hunferth is a thegn (a retainer, servant) of the Danish lord Hrothgar. He appears five times in the poem — four times by the name 'Hunferð' (at lines 499, 530, 1165 and 1488) and once by the appellation "the son of Eclafes ...
The legend of the dragonslayer already existed in Norse sagas such as the tale of Sigurd and Fafnir, and the Beowulf poet incorporates motifs and themes common to dragonlore in the poem. [2] Beowulf is the earliest surviving piece of Anglo-Saxon literature to feature a dragon, and it is possible that the poet had access to similar stories from ...