San Antonio College Library

My essay is the result of an attempt to re-examine certain cruces of Beowulf, some textual, some interpretative, some both, under the now widely accepted belief that Tolkien and Miss Whitelock are correct in their assertions that the poem is a meaningful work of art and that it was addressed to a Christian audience by a Christian poet. - Introduction.

"The first part of the book provides information of interest to a wide range of readers, while the second covers more specialized topics. Thus the initial chapters review the merits of different translations and offer a detailed plot summary, while later chapters discuss the poem's language and style, its treatment of religion, its relation to Anglo-Saxon culture, and its legacy in popular culture. One of the greatest Beowulf scholars was J.R.R. Tolkien,...

"The individual chapters by eighteen scholars offer both a rapid survey of scholarly trends in the study of Beowulf and a more sustained exploration of selected problems. Each chapter begins with a brief summary of its contents followed by an annotated chronology of the most important books and articles on the particular topic it treats. The core of each chapter constitutes a history of scholarly interest in the topic under consideration, a synthesis...

A collection of critical essays on the epic poem, arranged chronologically in the order of their original publication. Contains six critical essays on the most important poem in Old English.

The aim of Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon is to recreate as fully as possible for modern readers the original force of the poetic language of Beowulf. Alvin Lee makes use of a wide, archetypal literary context for Beowulf to provide illuminating parallels and contrasts with poems and fictions from other times and places. He demonstrates how the poem's symbolic system reveals itself through the metaphorical workings of the Old English words, patterns of...

A collection of essays which offer various approaches to teaching the epic poem "Beowulf", placing it in historical, political, philosophical, and aesthetical contexts.