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Even the 2,000 or so letters that eventually crumbled. For the most part the Beowulf manuscript is surprisingly well preserved and easy to read. There is no indication that anyone read Beowulf during the Middle Ages. Applied to some of the most illegible passages in the Beowulf manuscript, this new technology indeed shows us some things we had not seen before and forces us to reconsider some established readings. Not implausibly (but unlikely), Kevin Kiernan of the University of Kentucky believes that Vitellius A xv is the author's autograph copy. What we have is a written document that shows signs of having been composed as a text. If the poem did exist in pieces, we can never know.
Beowulf manuscript full#
The full film is available in streaming from our library.) More recently, this oral theory has been rejected or significantly modified. (Here is Benjamin Bagby reciting the opening lines of Beowulf and singing Grendel's attack. Oral poets sang these songs, and sometime in the later Old English period someone wrote down a scop's performance. This is called the Liedertheorie, or song-theory. Beowulf has been adapted many times in verse, in prose, on the stage, and in film. It has risen to national epic status in England. At 3182 lines, it is notable for its length. Its creation dates from between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving manuscript dating from circa 1010. One long-influential theory contends that it was combined from several shorter songs about a folkloric Bear's Son (OE beo, "bee" OE wulf "wolf/outlaw/thief" i.e., honey-thief or bear). Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. The date of the composition of the poem is a difficult matter. The best medieval manuscripts were made of vellum (involving uteruses of unborn lambs, and so pretty exclusive). The manuscript itself has had as interesting and harrowing adventures as Beowulf ever did. Two scribes were probably involved, but we have only the one manuscript. Another promising argument by Michael Lapidge of Cambridge University argues on paleographical grounds that the scribes of the Cotton manuscript copied a copy the original was written down in the eighth or early ninth century. The transcription of the Beowulf manuscript is dated at about 1000 A.D. Fulk argues on linguistic grounds that the poem could not have been composed after about 725. Recent arguments fail on a number of points, although the most convincing is by Robert Fulk of Indiana University. The major arguments for the date of Beowulf are gathered in a collection of essays edited by Colin Chase. "Ībsolutely nothing is known about its author or its place of composition. The poem is written in Old English and begins "Hwaet, we gardena in geardagum | þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon. The manuscript was burned in a fire at Robert Cotton's library in 1731. The image on the left is the first page of the poem. The poem was entitled Beowulf by modern editors.
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The poem was written down by two scribes around the year 1000, but was composed sometime beforehand. The manuscript is known by its library shelf mark: British Library Cotton Vitellius A. Marijane Osborn, List of translations of the poem since 1805īBC documentary on Beowulf with Michael Woodīeowulf is a character in an anonymous poem found in a single manuscript. The Electronic Beowulf (2011).Ĭhambers, Beowulf: An Introduction (1921), still worthwhile! Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript (1996). editorial emendations, and manuscript-based conjectural restorations. The Dating of Beowulf (1981).ījork, Robert. The fourth edition of Electronic Beowulf is a free, online version of Electronic. Old English student edition, Harris (2013)Ĭhase, Colin.
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This important volume will be a must-read not only for the scholar of early English history and literature, but for all those who are interested in practical applications of the new technologies.Crossley-Holland trans., Beowulf īenjamin Slade, trans. It also offers a new Introduction in which the author describes the value of electronic study of Beowulf, and a new Appendix that lists all the letters and parts of letters revealed by backlighting. This volume reprints Kiernan's earlier study of the manuscript, in which he presented his novel conclusions about the date of Beowulf. Kiernan, one of the world's foremost Beowulf scholars, has studied the manuscript extensively with the most up-to-date methods, including fiber-optic backlighting and computer digitization. The heroic Anglo-Saxon story survives to the world in one eleventh-century manuscript that was badly burned in 1731, and in two eighteenth-century transcriptions of the manuscripts. The story of Beowulf and his hard-fought victory over the monster Grendel has captured the imagination of readers and listeners for a millennium.