The Beowulf Manuscript - 9780674052956

Among the finest works of European vernacular literature from the Middle Ages, Beowulf is a fitting tide to head the Old English family of texts published in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.

This volume sets Beowulf in a unique and unprecedented context, For the first time in the long history of Beowulf scholarship, the poem appears alongside the other four texts from its sole surviving manuscript: the prose of The Passion of Saint Christopher, The Wonders of the East, and The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, and (following Beowulf) the verse of Judith. First-time readers as well as established scholars can now gain new insights into Beowulfùand the four other textsùby approaching each in its original setting.

The volume also includes, from a lost manuscript, the fragmentary poem The Fight at Finnsburg, which recounts a tragic conflict alluded to in a resonant and memorable passage of Beowulf

Could a fascination with the monstrous have motivated a compiler, working over a thousand years ago, to pull together this diverse grouping into a single manuscript? The prose translation by Fulk, based on the most recent editorial understanding, allows readers to rediscover the brilliant mastery of the Beowulf poet along with otherworldly delights in the four companion texts in The Beowulf

R.D. Fulk is Chancellor's Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington.