The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal
The literature of war in English claims its origin from the Homeric epics, and the medieval accounts of chivalry and the crusades.
J.R.R. Tolkien and the morality of monstrosity
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is Beowulf for the twentieth century.
Beowulf mini-series being created for television
A thirteen episode mini-series of Beowulf is being created by the the British broadcaster ITV.
Faith in a Heap of Broken Images: The Christian Beowulf
My paper will seek to demonstrate how the poet’s mode of interpretation informs his moral perspective, which is compatible with the unmentioned (though implied) doctrine of Christianity and diametrically opposed to the older Anglo-Saxon religious customs the poet refers to as ‘heathen.’
The Hero’s Journey: Beowulf, Film, and Masculinity
Beowulf is one of many examples of a story that employs the rhetoric of the hero. The plight of the main character Beowulf is the focus of the tale, and the tasks that he must overcome throughout the course of the poem provide insight into the development of the character of the hero.
The Horror of Saints, Slashers, and Virgins
In our modern world, the repression of sexuality is still prevalent, although it is better masked than it was in the Middle Ages, and we still use the image of women and virginity to terrorize or save.
The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal
Considering the scarcity of the Anglo-Saxon influence in modern war-literature in general, one may wonder and stop by a work like The Lord of the Rings or Silmarillion, which few would be willing to categorise as serious war-literature.
Seamus Heaney and Beowulf
Anglo-Saxonists everywhere should celebrate, perhaps annually in a brief offering of gifts at a local temple, the remarkable fact that Seamus Heaney completed his commissioned translation of Beowulf and published it in 1999, creating the first breaking wave of what was already a gradual tidal swell of interest in the text.
Making Sacrifices: Beowulf and Film
This essay reviews opening scenes in some recent film Beowulfs, which, although they have nothing at all to say about Scyld Scefing, suggest a sacrificial reading of the prologue and perhaps even the whole poem.
Grendel: Boundaries of Flesh and Law
In Beowulf, Grendel presents itself as a figure of inescapable ambiguity and as an embodiment of paradox that causes consternation in the human community.
Eight Videos about Beowulf
A selection of some of the most interesting videos on the web that talk about the Old English poem Beowulf:
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf published today
Nearly 90 years after he first made the translation, J.R.R. Tolkien’s version of Beowulf arrives at bookstores around the world today.
Staging Medievalisms: Touching the Middle Ages through Contemporary Performance
Examining the Middle Ages through modern eyes: movies, TV, stage, tourism and books. How do we perform the Middle Ages?
Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf coming out this spring
In 1926, J.R.R. Tolkien, who would later go on to write The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, completed his own translation of the Old English poem Beowulf. Eighty-eight years later that work is going to be published for the first time
Burning Idols, Burning Bridges: Bede, Conversion and Beowulf
This article will re-examine some of the information in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, completed in AD 731, on the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in the late sixth and seventh centuries.
Valentine’s Day Medieval Love: Books for that special someone
Love is in the air! Here are a few medieval books on the topic of love for your Valentine.
The Three Tellings of Beowulf’s Fight with Grendel’s Mother
Beowulf offers three descriptions of Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother. The first is by the narrator (ll. 1492-1590), the second is by Beowulf to Hrothgar (ll. 1652-76), the third is by Beowulf to Hygelac (included in ll. 2131-51, within the longer speech from l. 2047).
Figures of Evil in Old English Poetry
One of the ways, according to the Church Fathers, in which those guilty of mortal sin manifested their spiritual corruption was in their perverted imitation of the good.
Beowulf in 100 Tweets
How Elaine Treharne took over 3000 lines of Beowulf and made it into 100 tweets.
Towards A Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative
I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts.
Beowulf: a regime of enforcement
I approach the Beowulf text as a discourse valuable in the process of constituting early Germanic kingdoms, specifically, Denmark and those which would give name to England. I will talk about the possible relationship between the poem and events in Denmark, then suggest how similar connections may have obtained in early Britain.
The status of hwæt in Old English
What does hwæt actually mean?
Creating the Christian Anglo-Saxon and the Other in the Old English Judith and Beowulf
This thesis explores the thematic relationship between the Old English poem Judith and the Old English epic Beowulf. I focus on seven narrative similarities between the two texts that are used to distinguish between the heroes, Judith and Beowulf, and their enemies, Holofernes, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother.
The hero on the edge: Constructions of heroism in Beowulf in the context of ancient and medieval epic
Whatever else he may be, though — and he may be any or all of these things — Beowulf is a hero.