Beowulf is one of the world's great works of imaginative literature, set in early Christian England in the years before the end of the first millenninm--a world of harsh cold, darkness, heroic warfare, minstrelsy, death, and struggle. Beowulf remains a timeless classic a thousand years after its birth because it both brings that old English history to life in our own era and resonates with the timeless quality of all great stories. At its opening, the epic transports us into a land of mystery where a lamented king has died. At the end of the poem the story comes full circle: we see that Beowulf, who was a young hero in the first half of the poem, as an aged hero, as deeply human as was the king whose death opens the epic. Between the beginning and the end, of course, are some truly incredible adventures filled with gore, guts, horror, and heroism.

  Beowulf is one of the world’s great works of imaginative literature, set in early Christian England in the years before the end of the first millenninm--a world of harsh cold, darkness, heroic warfare, minstrelsy, death, and struggle. Beowulf remains a timeless classic a thousand years after its birth because it both brings that old English history to life in our own era and resonates with the timeless quality of all great stories. At its opening, the epic transports us into a land of mystery where a lamented king has died. At the end of the poem the story comes full circle: we see that Beowulf, who was a young hero in the first half of the poem, as an aged hero, as deeply human as was the king whose death opens the epic. Between the beginning and the end, of course, are some truly incredible adventures filled with gore, guts, horror, and heroism.

INTRODUCTION

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF Beowulf

BEOWULF

NOTES

INTERPRETIVE NOTES

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

QUESTIONB FOR DISCUSSION

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE

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