Beowulf

The Old English epic of the Geatish hero who kills Grendel, Grendel's mother, and, decades on, the dragon that kills him.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Anonymous

type

Heroic epic poem

era

Anglo-Saxon England (composed c. 8th–11th century)

language

Old English

verse form

Alliterative long lines

cantos count

1

Core Principles & Analysis

• It runs 3,182 alliterative lines in a single surviving manuscript (the Nowell Codex).
• The manuscript was damaged in the 1731 Cotton Library fire.
• Tolkien's 1936 lecture established it as literature rather than a historical curiosity.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Beowulf