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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.
"Sellic Spell" (pronounced [ˈselːiːtʃ ˈspeɫː]; an Old English phrase meaning "wondrous tale" and taken from the poem Beowulf) [1] is a short prose text available in Modern and Old English redactions, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in a creative attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative in the first two thousand lines of the Old English poem Beowulf. [2]
Grendel flees but dies in his marsh den. There, Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother in a mere, over whom he triumphs with a sword found there. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes his head, which he keeps as a trophy. Beowulf then returns to the surface and to his men at the "ninth hour". [4]
The commentary, occupying over 200 pages, provides a detailed picture of how he saw Beowulf, sometimes taking several pages for a short passage of the poem, and giving his interpretation of difficult words or allusions by the poet. The commentary formed the basis of Tolkien's acclaimed 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". [1] [2]
The first page of Beowulf. The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cædmon (fl. 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry. [1]
The name Wealhtheow is unique to Beowulf.Like most Old English names, the name Wealhtheow is transparently recognisable as a compound of two nouns drawn from everyday vocabulary, in this case wealh (which in early Old English meant "Roman, Celtic-speaker" but whose meaning changed during the Old English period to mean "Briton", then "enslaved Briton", and then "slave") and þēow (whose ...
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (also known as Heaneywulf [1]) is a verse translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf into modern English by the Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney. It was published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Faber and Faber, and won that year's Whitbread Book of the Year Award.
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.