Beowulf: The Critical Heritage

Beowulf is the oldest and most complete epic poem in any non-Classical European language. Our only manuscript, written in Old English, dates from close to the year 1000. However, the poem remained effectively unknown even to scholars till the year 1815, when it was first published in Copenhagen. This impressive volume selects over 100 works of critical commentary from the vast body of scholarship on Beowulf - including English translations from German, Danish, Latin and Spanish - from the poem’s first mention in 1705 to the Anglophone scholarship of the early 20th century.