Beowulf is the oldest and most complete epic poem in any non-Classical European language. This impressive volume selects over one hundred works of critical commentary from the vast body of scholarship on Beowulf - including English translations from German, Danish, Latin and Spanish - from the poem's first mention in 1705 to the Anglophone scholarship of the early twentieth century. Tom Shippey provides both a contextual introduction and a guide to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholarship which generated these Beowulf commentaries.
Added by: bukka | Karma: 785.35 | Fiction literature | 16 September 2007
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Beowulf
" 'Tis better to die than to live in shame." The oldest existing story written in Old English, "Beowulf" is the classic tale of courage and honor. In the Great Hall of Hrothgar, King of the Danes, the warrior Beowulf, son of a Swedish King, wages battle with the monster Grendel. The introduction contains a short history of the English language and a description of Anglo-Saxon culture.
