BEOWULF

SASHA ZHUKOVSKAYA AND SIMA BADERA

1. BEOWULF IS THE LONGEST EPIC POEM IN
OLD ENGLISH.
2. THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
OF BEOWULF WAS DAMAGED IN A FIRE
• The original copy of the Beowulf manuscript was
badly damaged in a fire on October 23, 1731, at
Ashburnham House in Westminster, England.
Now housed at the British Library in London, the
remains of the poem are incredibly fragile.
3. J.R.R. TOLKIEN QUOTED BEOWULF WITH
HIS CLASSMATES.
• J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The
Lord of the Rings trilogy, fell in love with Beowulf
during his school years. During meetings of the
literary club he and his classmates formed, Tolkien
would quote lines of the epic poem in its original
Old English.
4. BEOWULF INCLUDES SOME 36 DIFFERENT
WORDS FOR "HERO."
• The language used in Beowulf is a mash-up of
dialects from four different areas of medieval
Britain: Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, and
Wessex. The result shows just how developed and
complex a language Old English was at the time
the poem was written. For example, the poem
uses a total of 36 different words for «hero.»
• Beowulf is believed to have been composed between 700 and 750.
Although originally untitled, it was later named after the
Scandinavian hero Beowulf. There is no historical evidence of a
Beowulf, but some characters, sites, and events in the poem can be
historically verified. The poem did not appear in print until 1815. It is
preserved in a single manuscript that dates to circa 1000 and is known
as the Beowulf manuscript.
CONTENT

• The main protagonist, Beowulf, a hero of the

Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of
the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued
by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel
with his bare hands and Grendel’s mother with
a sword of a giant that he found in her lair.