Beowulf

Beowulf is an epic poem detailing the heroic acts of the Anglo-Saxon warrior king, Beowulf. Originally, it was a legends told by the Geats in Scandinavia. Like most legends and myths, Beowulf's stories were passed down orally. The poems were most likely memorized and performed by traveling storytellers who made a living by going to different cities and towns to entertain the Geatish citizens. The legend of Beowulf is compared by scholars to the Iliad and Odyssey, the epic poems which shaped Greek literature.

While the legends were passed down through the generations through oral storytelling, the poem we have today is one written long after the legend of Beowulf was originally told. Historians believe that the poem originated at around 500 A.D. and was penned some two or three hundred years later, around 700 or 800 A.D. This disparity of time is clearly marked by the migration of the Anglo-Saxons to England, where the culture began to change.

In old Scandinavia, the societal structure was based on the middle ages warrior culture in which a strong king protected his people. Like many people in the feudal ages, the Geats had a pagan religion whose roots show through very clearly in Beowulf. Many historical figures who lived around the sixth century are also present in the poem, making it easy to guess when the stories originated.

The only known manuscript of the epic, however, was penned after the migration of the Geats to England. The most obvious clue to this conclusion is the fact that the anonymous narrator of Beowulf is Christian. It was only after the migration to England that the culture began to shift away from paganism and many people converted to Christianity. The Christian influences in the copy of Beowulf we read today were most likely not in the original stories, but rather added in order to merge the old culture with the new religion. The poem itself is written in old English, a very ancient form of Germanic English brought over from Scandinavia. While it is called old English, it is virtually unrecognizable by modern day English speakers.

Beowulf was not always a famous poem - in fact, it remained in relative obscurity and was almost burned in a fire during the 18th century. It was not until the 19th century that the epic was rediscovered, and new interest was brought to it. In the early 1900's, J.R.R. Tolkien, a British author and scholar, wrote a paper on Beowulf that caused the academic world to take the poem more seriously. Today, Beowulf is largely considered an original of English literature. It is taught in high schools and colleges all over the world, although in an easy to read translation of the original old English.