Beowulf
Beowulf (/ˈbeɪ.ɵwʊlf/; in Old English [ˈbeːo̯wʊlf] or [ˈbeːəwʊlf]) is the conventional title[1] of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works ofAnglo-Saxon literature.
It survives in a single manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. Its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet[a] is dated between the 8th[3][4] and the early 11th century.[5][page needed] In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through a building housing a collection of Medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The poem fell into obscurity for decades, and its existence did not become widely known again until it was printed in 1815 in an edition prepared by the Icelandic-Danish scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin.[6]
In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the help ofHroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland.
Ancient epic poem `Beowulf' seen through a modern prism(entertainment)
July 14, 2006|By Michael Phillips, Tribune movie critic
Two elements of "Beowulf & Grendel" make a mixed-up and unbalanced picture nearly worthwhile. One is Iceland. Shooting in various, epically craggy corners of a country that hasn't been location scouted to death, the film's makers resort to not a single computer-generated effect in this pictorially imposing retelling of the heroic tale. (Scholars date "Beowulf" to somewhere between the 7th and 11th Centuries.)
The other element you never fully see. It's a bone-white
It survives in a single manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. Its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet[a] is dated between the 8th[3][4] and the early 11th century.[5][page needed] In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through a building housing a collection of Medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The poem fell into obscurity for decades, and its existence did not become widely known again until it was printed in 1815 in an edition prepared by the Icelandic-Danish scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin.[6]
In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the help ofHroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland.
Ancient epic poem `Beowulf' seen through a modern prism(entertainment)
July 14, 2006|By Michael Phillips, Tribune movie critic
Two elements of "Beowulf & Grendel" make a mixed-up and unbalanced picture nearly worthwhile. One is Iceland. Shooting in various, epically craggy corners of a country that hasn't been location scouted to death, the film's makers resort to not a single computer-generated effect in this pictorially imposing retelling of the heroic tale. (Scholars date "Beowulf" to somewhere between the 7th and 11th Centuries.)
The other element you never fully see. It's a bone-white