Ever since Tolkien's famous lecture in 1936, it has been generally accepted that the poem Beowulf is a fantasy, and of no use as a witness to real history. This

Beowulf, composed around 700 A.D., is the first great epic poem in the English language. It tells the timeless story of a hero's fight against monsters and sets

The Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures provides a scholarly and accessible introduction to the literature which was th

'The Origins of Beowulf' suggests that the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf was composed in the winter of 826-7 as a requiem for King Beornwulf of Mercia on behalf of W