The Beowulf poet for Paper 7
opening folio of Beowulf from the electronic Beowulf
A reading
list
(an edited version of the English
Faculty reading list.)
The Beowulf poet for Paper 7
opening folio of Beowulf from the electronic Beowulf
A reading
list
(an edited version of the English
Faculty reading list.)
link to English
Faculty full list here
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editions
Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, edited by F. Klaeber, (3rd edition, Boston, 1950)
Beowulf: A Student Edition, edited by George Jack, (Oxford, 1994). This edition (which includes the text of The Fight at Finnsburh) has a running glossary alongside the text, and is fully annotated, making it much easier for those with a rudimentary knowledge of Old English to read the poem in the original. The bibliography is extremely useful.
Beowulf: an edition, edited by B.Mitchell and F.C.Robinson (Oxford 1998)
An accessible facsimile of the original
manuscript, with a facing transcription is Beowulf, edited by Norman
Davis (The Early English Text Society, London, 1966) (but see below under
Websites)
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Translations
**R. Liuzza, Beowulf, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 1999.
S. Heaney, Beowulf, London:
Faber, 1998.
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Reference
R.E Bjork and J.D Niles, (eds.)
A
Beowulf Handbook (Exeter, 1996) - a collection of short essays surveying
the history of various aspects of Beowulf scholarship (metre, history,
gender roles, sources and so on) followed by chronological bibliographies.
This is a very valuable tool for further reading on the poem.
Other useful bibliographical aids
are:
S.B. Greenfield and F.C.Robinson,
A
Bibliography of of Publications on Old English Literature to the End of
1972 (Toronto, 1980), R.J.Hasenfratz, Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated
Bibliography 1979-1990 (New York, 1993), and the annual bibliographies
published in the journal Anglo-Saxon England.
link to Hasenfratz Beowulf Bibliography 1979-94
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Studies of Beowulf
Peter Baker (ed.), Beowulf: Basic
readings (New York and London, 1995)
Adrian Bonjour, The Digressions
in Beowulf (Oxford, 1950)
A.G.Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959)
R.W. Chambers, Beowulf, An Introduction
to the Study of the Poem, 3rd edition with a supplement by C.L.Wrenn,
(Cambridge 1959)
Colin Chase, (ed.) The Dating
of Beowulf (Toronto, 1981)
Helen Damico, Beowulf's Wealhtheow
and the Valkyrie Tradition (Madison, 1984) (to be taken with big pinch
of salt)
David Dumville, 'Beowulf Come Lately:
Some Notes on the Palaeography of the Nowell Codex' in Archiv 225
(1988), 49-63
R.D.Fulk, (ed.) Interpretations
of Beowulf (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991)
*Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge,(eds.)
The
Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1991), which
includes an essay on Beowulf by F.C.Robinson.
John M.Hill, The Cultural World
of Beowulf (Toronto, 1995) (take Norse stuff with big pinch of salt)
E.B. Irving: Rereading Beowulf
(1989)
Kevin Kiernan, Beowulf and the
Beowulf Manuscript (UTP, 1996 (rev. ed.)
Michael Lapidge, '"Beowulf", Aldhelm,
the "Liber Monstrorum" and Wessex', in Studi Medievali 23 (1982),
151-92.
and now
M. Lapidge, 'The archetype of Beowulf'
ASE
29 2001, 5-41
K. O'Brien O'Keefe, ed.: Reading
Old English Texts (Cambridge, 1997)
Ruth Melinkoff, 'Cain's Monstrous
Progeny in Beowulf', part I in Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), 143-62;
part II in Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981), 183-97
L.E.Nicholson, (ed.), An Anthology
of Beowulf Criticism (Notre Dame 1963, repr. 1976) includes many important
articles on the poem, notably J.R.R.Tolkien's 'The Monsters and the Critics',
first published in Proceedings of the British Academy XXII (1936),
and perhaps the single most celebrated piece of literary criticism of the
poem.
J.D.Niles, Beowulf: The Poem
and its Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)
Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies:
Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-manuscript (Cambridge,1995)
F.C.Robinson, Beowulf and the
Appositive Style (Knoxville, 1985)
F.C.Robinson, The Tomb of Beowulf
(Oxford, 1993)
E.G.Stanley, In the Foreground:
Beowulf (Cambridge, 1994)
Kenneth Sisam, The Structure
of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965)
Patrick Wormald, 'Bede, "Beowulf"
and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy', in Bede and Anglo-Saxon
England, ed. R.T.Farrell, 32-95 (Oxford, 1978)
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Background Reading
R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton
Hoo Ship Burial: A Handbook. (London, 1968, 3rd edn. 1979) - an account
of archaeological finds which have seemed to many to illuminate the material
world of Beowulf
James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons
(Oxford, 1982) - a scholarly illustrated history
C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry
(London 1952)
W.P.Ker, Epic and Romance
(London 1908)
Beowulf in the context of oral epic poetry.
A.B. Lord, The Singer of Tales
(Harvard 1964)
J.M. Foley, Immanent Art: From
Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington 1991)
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Related Texts and Analogues
G.N.Garmonsway, and J.Simpson, Beowulf
and its Analogues (London 1968) - an invaluable collection of translations
of many texts related to Beowulf
D. Calder, R. Bjork et al. Sources
and Analogues of Old English Poetry, vols. 1 and 2, (1976).
plus material in Liuzza.
Bede, The Ecclesiastical History
of the English People, trans. Bertram Colgrave, ed. Judith McClure
nd Roger Collins (Oxford, 1994)
Boethius, The Consolation of
Philosophy, trans. V.E.Watts (Harmondsworth, 1969)
Gregory of Tours, History of
the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1974)
The Saga ofGrettir,Hrafnkel's
saga in Sagas of the Icelanders Penguin, 2000.
The Poetic Edda, edited
and translated by Ursula Dronke, (2 vols, Oxford 1969, 1997; two further
vols still to come)
The Poetic Edda, trans.
Carolyne Larrington (Oxford, 1996) - with Snorri's Edda (below),
the basic source for Old Norse mythology
Saxo Grammaticus, History of
the Danes, the first nine books, trans. Peter Fisher and edited Hilda
Ellis Davidson (Woodbridge, 1979)
Snorri Sturluson's Edda,
trans. Anthony Faulkes (London, 1987)
Tacitus, The Agricola and
the Germania, trans. H. Mattingly, rev. S.A. Handford (Harmondsworth,
1970)
The saga of the Volsungs,
trans. Jesse Byock (Enfield, 1993)
The saga of Hrolf Kraki,
trans. Jesse Byock (Harmondsworth, 1998)
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Websites
A complete digital facsimile of the Beowulf manuscript is an electronic publication from the Britsh Library.
The University of Georgetown's Labyrinth-Old English Library contains a selection of Old English texts online, including a scholarly edition of Beowulf; and the complete corpus of Old English as well as editions of Beowulf are available online from The Oxford Text Archive.
The University of Georgetown Old English Pages Cathy Ball's OE compendium) are rightly described online as "an encyclopaedic compendium of resources for the study of Old English and Anglo-Saxon England."
The
Electronic Beowulf
Beowulf
sound files
Beowulf
teaching resources
for a specialist Beowulf and Germanic background reading list,
follow link here:
Beowulf and Germanic background